Don't Forget Your Name Badge! - A Podcast for Event Planners & Meeting Planners

On today’s show – Captivating event experiences. Subscribe to the new DFYNB! Apple Podcasts – http://bit.ly/DFYNBpodcast Google Play – http://bit.ly/DFYNBdroidcast We've got a new home! Check out our new podcast page at https://blog.cvent.com/podcast/. Read more at http://lanyonpodcast.libsyn.com/podcast#Zzly3Zoei89rweww.99 For those of us in marketing, our live events are the rare occasions when we get to meet our customers and prospects face to face, where we can put our brand and our message front and center. So it’s crucial that we make the most of that opportunity by creating an experience that our attendees will remember. At the same time, the competition for people’s attention has never been greater. It’s not good enough to get your audience to attend – once they’re onsite you’ve got you captivate them. And provide them an experience that’s more tempting and more engaging than whatever they’ve got on their mobile device. Today I’m speaking with Jay Guilford from Cirque du Soleil SPARK Sessions. Jay works on a team that has taken aspects of the showmanship that Cirque du Soleil is known for and has applied them to the world of corporate live events. We talk about the different types of events that they’ve offered in the past as well as way that event professionals can incorporate a little spectacle in their events. We also talk about audience participation. When it works, when it doesn’t and how you can tell the difference. Jay is an interesting guy with a very interesting job in marketing, and I really enjoyed our conversation. Help us grow Don’t Forget Your Name Badge!  Share the show with your friends and colleagues – via Facebook, Twitter or the social medium of your choice. Subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Google Play. Email us at [email protected] I love to get your questions and comments about the show. And if you’re events or marketing professional with a story to tell, I want to help you tell it.

On today’s show – getting more VIP attendees at your event. Subscribe to DFYNB! Apple Podcasts – http://bit.ly/DFYNBpodcast Google Play – http://bit.ly/DFYNBdroidcast We've got a new home! Check out our new podcast page at https://blog.cvent.com/podcast/. You know, a lot of event producers and marketers are under pressure to increase attendance at our events year-after-year. But just as important as overall attendance is having the right mix of attendees. When you’re using your live events to drive demand for your products and services, or to generate leads for your sales department, it’s especially important that you attract decision makers to your events – those prospects who can ultimately cut the check to your business. Most of the time, that means executives, and executives can be the toughest folks to get to your event. So in this episode of Don’t Forget Your Name Badge, I’m joinded by Kevin Lau, Senior Manager of Customer Marketing at Marketo. Kevin and his team used focused event content and a cross-channel marketing push to get over 550 VIP attendees to their 2017 Marketing Nation Summit. Today we talk about how they did it and the lessons that we all can learn from their experience. The dapper Mr. Kevin Lau We also talk about Customer marketing and the strategies that Marketo uses to convert its customers into advocates for their brand. I learned a lot from our conversation and I think you will, too. Help us grow Don’t Forget Your Name Badge!  Share the show with your friends and colleagues – via Facebook, Twitter or the social medium of your choice. Subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Google Play. Email us at [email protected] I love to get your questions and comments about the show.

Welcome to Don’t Forget Your Name Badge, a podcast about event planners, meetings planners, and the business of bringing people together, hosted by Timothy Mercer. Subscribe to DFYNB! iTunes - http://bit.ly/lanyonpodcast Google Play - http://bit.ly/LanyonPodcastAndroid Email us at [email protected] Today on the show – The LINX Spectacular Here at Lanyon, we believe in the power of technology to transform the meetings and events industry. So it should come as no surprise that at Lanyon Live 2016, we put event technology at the forefront of the show.   Lanyon Live brought together a group of leaders in the event technology space to create an encompassing event tech experience. We call it the LINX (Lanyon Innovation Networking eXperience). It’s a place where attendees could experience first-hand a wide range of technologies that are changing the way people plan, manage and engage with events.   Over the three day conference, I had the pleasure to sit down and interview several of the fine folks who took part in the LINX, to get the scoop on what technologies they were presenting at Lanyon Live, as well as their thoughts on event technology in general, where it stands today and where it’s headed. In this episode, I speak with Tricia Colman of Eved, a Chicago-based software company that specializes payment management for events. Brian Holm of Freeman Company, who was at the LINX showing off some of their Augmented Reality gear. Damany Daniel is the Chief Imaginator of the Event Nerd, a company that brings technology to events in truly engaging ways. Joel Martin is the Vice President of Brands and Experiential for Brightbox, which offers secure charging stations for mobile devices. Rounding out this episode is my chat with Sam Stanton, Chief Engagement Officer of Redbutton.tv. In addition to event media services – like event recap and promotional videos, redbutton.tv helps event planners manage the social media buz surrounding their events. As always, I've got three requests: Share the show with your friends and colleagues - via Facebook, Twitter or the social medium of your choice. Subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes or Google Play. Email us at [email protected] I love to get your questions and comments about the show. And if you're a meetings or event planner with a story you'd like to tell, I want to help you tell it.  

Welcome to Don’t Forget Your Name Badge, a podcast about event planners, meetings planners, and the business of bringing people together, hosted by Timothy Mercer. Subscribe to DFYNB! iTunes - http://bit.ly/lanyonpodcast Google Play - http://bit.ly/LanyonPodcastAndroid Email us at [email protected] In this episode, we’re doing things a little differently. On October 25, 26 and 27, we held our annual customer conference, Lanyon Live, right here in Dallas, Texas. Lanyon Live was the culmination of 10 months of hard work by our in house event team (thanks, Teri Harper and Robin Rankin) as well as our whole marketing team – many of whom you’ve heard from right here on the show. One reason Lanyon Live is such an interesting event is that it’s an event by event planners, for event planners. So the whole team really challenges themselves to make it a memorable experience. So for this episode of Don’t forget your name badge, we’re going to take a look back at Lanyon Live 2016. First we’ll chat with Patrick Mendoza – friend of the show and Lanyon’s top PR guy – about the general sessions and keynote speakers at Lanyon Live. And a little later in the show, you’ll hear an interview with Kendra Cluck from CrashedToys, a really unique event venue, where we held our big Lanyon Live After Hours party. Kendra talks about her experience working with event planners of all kinds, as well as ways that planners can spice up their events with really engaging parties.   In upcoming episodes, you’ll hear from some of our expert speakers and exhibitors from Lanyon Live, including experts in attendee engagement, event marketing and event analytics, and representatives from some of the industry’s most exciting event tech companies.

Welcome to Don’t Forget Your Name Badge, a podcast about event planners, meetings planners, and the business of bringing people together, hosted by Timothy Mercer. Subscribe to DFYNB! iTunes - http://bit.ly/lanyonpodcast Google Play - http://bit.ly/LanyonPodcastAndroid Email us at [email protected]   Today in the show – all about event websites.   It’s obvious, to me at least, how important it is to have an event website. But building websites can be tricky. A really good event website has to do a number of things. It needs to be attractive and easy to navigate, so that people who visit the site will stick around to learn more about the event. It has to deliver the information that potential registrants want and need to know, but in a way that is quick and easy to read. And a good event website needs to perform well. Search engines need to be able to find it and it needs to convert viewers into registrants.   That’s why I was really pleased to sit down last week with the digital team here at Lanyon to talk about websites. We discussed some fundamentals of website design, how to write copy for an event website and how to use internet tools to maximize website performance.   By the end of the conversation, you’ll get some concrete advice on how you can begin improving your event websites – or how to begin building one.   As always, I've got three requests: Share the show with your friends and colleagues - via Facebook, Twitter or the social medium of your choice. Subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes or Google Play. Email us at [email protected] I love to get your questions and comments about the show. And if you're a meetings or event planner with a story you'd like to tell, I want to help you tell it.

Welcome to Don’t Forget Your Name Badge, a podcast about event planners, meetings planners, and the business of bringing people together, hosted by Timothy Mercer. Subscribe to DFYNB! iTunes - http://bit.ly/lanyonpodcast Google Play - http://bit.ly/LanyonPodcastAndroid Email us at [email protected]   Today in the show – email marketing tips from our resident email expert, Val Perez. A Lanyon Live update, and a look into event planning at the University of Arizona. It’s back to school time, and for our friends working in higher-ed, that means freshman orientations, academic conferences and scores of student-run events are hitting campuses nationwide. That’s why I’m excited to welcome Cheryl Novalis-Marine, Robert Lanza and Robbyn Lennon – three staff members from the University of Arizona (go Wildcats) – on today’s show. As a large research institution, the University of Arizona hosts hundreds of events every year – from large international conferences to small, faculty and student-led events. For me, what makes these events – and other university events – interesting is that the folks running them are rarely full-time event planners. Cheryl, Robert and Robbyn are here to talk about how they’re using event technology to make it easier for planners at the UofA to manage their events, run registration and accept payments online. As always, I've got three requests: Share the show with your friends and colleagues - via Facebook, Twitter or the social medium of your choice. Subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes or Google Play. Email us at [email protected] I love to get your questions and comments about the show. And if you're a meetings or event planner with a story you'd like to tell, I want to help you tell it.

Welcome to Don’t Forget Your Name Badge, a podcast about event planners, meetings planners, and the business of bringing people together, hosted by Timothy Mercer. Subscribe to DFYNB! iTunes - http://bit.ly/lanyonpodcast Google Play - http://bit.ly/LanyonPodcastAndroid Email us at [email protected] Today, a meetings-focused episode of DFYMB. Today I chat with meetings industry pioneer and 2016 Meetingsnet Change Maker, Kevin Iwamoto. Kevin’s career in strategic meetings management spans several decades, including some pretty turbulent times for the meetings and travel industry and the world economy as a whole. We talk about some of these tough times and how they presented opportunities to create lasting change within the industry – the most well-known being the Strategic Meetings Management Program, which Kevin developed in the wake of the dot-com bubble burst of the early 2000s. We also discuss travel itself – both business travel and travel for leisure – the differences between the two and how each has changed over the last couple decades. As always, I've got three requests: Share the show with your friends and colleagues - via Facebook, Twitter or the social medium of your choice. Subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes or Google Play. Email us at [email protected] I love to get your questions and comments about the show. And if you're a meetings or event planner with a story you'd like to tell, I want to help you tell it.

Welcome to Don’t Forget Your Name Badge, a podcast about event planners, meetings planners, and the business of bringing people together, hosted by Timothy Mercer. Subscribe to DFYNB! iTunes - http://bit.ly/lanyonpodcast Google Play - http://bit.ly/LanyonPodcastAndroid Email us at [email protected]   Robin Rankin is one half of Lanyon Dynamic Duo of event planners in charge of Lanyon Live, our annual customer conference. Today, she sits down with me to discuss event sponsorships: What should planners look for in a potential event sponsor? What's the difference between a sponsor you need versus a sponsor you want?  Robin also shares with us how being an event planner has shaped her everyday life - from how she interacts with other people to how planning events has changed the way she looks at events from the perspective of an attendee. Later in the show, we get a call from Scott Owens, Director of Event Technology at Salesforce. Scott is on the team that plans and manages Dreamforce, the largest and most influential software user conference in the world. In 2015, Dreamforce saw over 172,000 registrants and booked - literally - every available hotel room in San Francisco - and then had enough attendees left over to fill a cruise ship! Scott talks to us about his role in using event technology that makes it possible for such a large and complex event to take place. As always, I've got three requests: 1. Share the show with your friends and colleagues - via Facebook, Twitter or the social medium of your choice. 2. Subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes or Google Play. 3. Email us at [email protected] I love to get your questions and comments about the show. And if you're a meetings or event planner with a story you'd like to tell, I want to help you tell it.   

Welcome to Don’t Forget Your Name Badge, a podcast about event planners, meetings planners, and the business of bringing people together, hosted by Timothy Mercer In this first full-length episode our good friend and DFYNB! contributor, Patrick Mendoza, joins us to talk about finding the right keynote speaker for your event, and some of the ways it can get tricky. Then, you’ll hear him speaking with Angelia Meaux from the Colorado Judicial Branch. Angelia organizes educational events for the CJB – helping to keep public servants in that great state up-to-date on new legislation and other trends so they can better serve their communities. She’ll share some of the ways she’s been able to increase attendance at her events by simplifying the registration process, as well as how she meets the stringent reporting standards for public-sector events. Recorded and produced at Lanyon HQ Studios in beautiful downtown Dallas, Texas, USA. As always, help us bring you more great content. Share this show with your friends and colleagues. Subscribe, rate and review on iTunes. Email us at [email protected]

Welcome to Don’t Forget Your Name Badge, a podcast about event planners, meetings planners, and the business of bringing people together, hosted by Timothy Mercer   In this introductory episode (a half-episode, really), Timothy sits down with Madeline Hessel, event blogger, to discuss the basics of event blogging and how planners can use their blog and social media strategy to drive registrations at their events.   Recorded and produced at Lanyon HQ Studios in beautiful downtown Dallas, Texas, USA.   Help us bring you more great content. Share this show with your friends and colleagues. Subscribe, rate and review on iTunes.   Email us at [email protected]