If it is a concert of a very popular brand or it brings together the legends of yesteryears then there is hardly any need for personalization. The attendees will groove to whatever is sung. They already know the songs, they love the singers, musicians or the performers and it is all fun. When we talk about corporate events, business seminars or even industry meets and tradeshows, the scenario is entirely different. The attendees must be enticed and not every event manages to captivate the audience.

One way to entice an audience is to personalize the whole experience. And data can come in very handy for that purpose.

Personalizing the experience for a guest may mean many things. The seat may remain reserved, possibly with the name and company details of the guest. Invitations and all correspondences can be personalized with names and different types of messaging. But these are only the tip of the iceberg. Personalization has to go beyond these cosmetic niceties.

Factor in segregating your audience into those who have attended your events in the past and those who are attending for the first time. You can personalize the treatments accordingly. You can invite startups and established firms in different ways. You can charge the corporate honchos more than what you would charge a budding entrepreneur. It will have financial implication but you cannot discard the impact it would have on your attendance and also on participation.

From the initial messaging to conducting polls and contests during the event, from asking if certain attendees need special services or provisions to following up after the event with relevant messages; everything can be personalized using data.

Now, you may wonder how you would get or obtain such data. You can use your event registration forms, you can conduct surveys, run a telephonic campaign to get the prospective attendees answer a few questions and you can come up with social media campaigns as well to obtain the relevant data.

In this era, obtaining data is no big deal. What is important is how you use that data, how well you personalize the experience of your guests at the event and how well you follow up. Have customized programming updates for your guests, come up with different content to entice different types of companies or guests from across an industry or myriad industries, centralize and yet personalize all online correspondences.