This year, the trade showfloor at Expo! Expo! IAEE’s Annual Meeting & Exhibition, which took place Dec. 3-5 at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, featured plenty of new and innovative event technology and tech partnerships to keep attendees buzzing. Here are a few event tech providers that generated lots of on-site excitement.

CadmiumCD Upgrades Exhibitor and Sponsorship Management Software 

CadmiumCD announced the launch of upgrades to its Expo Harvester software, which now features registration badge allocation, improved administrative functionality and more robust financial reporting. The company has made many updates over the past six months to maintain its competitive edge in the trade show sponsorship sales and exhibitor management software market.

“We’ve had a lot of interest in the product from trade show managers,” said Michelle Wyatt, CadmiumCD CEO and co-founder. “Since 2016, we’ve seen a 220 percent increase in new projects for the Expo Harvester alone.”

Expo Harvester’s major updates include:                        

• Registration Badges: New admin tools have been added for allocating exhibitor registration badges to companies, allowing admins to define the exact amount of registration badges sponsor levels receive with their packages. Exhibitors can also now purchase additional badges after completing the purchase badges task. Prices for these can be defined on a sliding scale to accommodate bulk orders.
• Sponsorship Management: Admins now have more robust tools to reorder sponsors via drag and drop, copy sponsor levels from past events, easily associate icons with sponsor levels, assign sponsor benefits to packages and include images in sponsor opportunities.
• Financial Reports: Seven new financial reports were added to the system, allowing trade show managers to gain better access to their financial data associated with booth and sponsorship sales (watch the webinar to learn more). This helps admins report sales numbers and ROI in more robust ways to their management staff.

“The user-friendly functionality that exhibitors and sponsors have come to love has stayed the same,” said Megan Brodbeck, CadmiumCD project manager. “What’s a big deal is the way we’ve improved the admin tools so that they’re just as easy to use as the front end.” 

Convention Data Services Unveils Two New Tech Tools

Event registration, business intelligence and lead management company Convention Data Services previewed two new event technologies currently in development: Digital Backpack and Mobile Badge Print.

As a self-standing lead collection device for exhibitors that distributes product information to attendees, the Digital Backpack allows attendees to electronically collect the information they want by scanning their own badge. If booth staff are busy or the attendee is in a rush, they can use the software’s simple, easy-to-use interface to quickly gather specific and targeted information about single products, product lines or the exhibiting company itself. Once the request is made, an email notification is sent to the attendee with a link to their personal portal where full information is available.

Meanwhile, exhibitors receive passive yet highly qualified leads as well as specific attendee information, including product information requested and demographics. 

CDS’s Mobile Badge Print, which has just completed its beta phase, provides fast and easy mobile check-in for event attendees. Using a link provided in their check-in email, attendees simply enter a code on their phone for the nearest onsite print station and instantly print their badge. Each Mobile Badge Print area has a printer code prominently displayed on nearby signage and print stations can be set up in hotels, airports and throughout the show venue.

Not only do attendees appreciate the speed and convenience of Mobile Badge Print, the smaller footprint of just a badge station also allows it to be set up in strategic locations wherever there is event traffic, according to CDS officials. In addition, sponsorship spaces are available on the various promotional pieces including the check-in email and signs.

Gleanin and CustomReg Form Alliance

Referral marketing technology provider Gleanin and Custom Registration, developers of event registration technology platforms, have formed a partnership in which Gleanin integrates its Connect solution with CustomReg’s platform. This allows CustomReg to offer referral-marketing capabilities to its exhibition organizer clients while expanding the Gleanin partner base, according to Gleanin officials.

“We are pleased to have been invited to leverage CustomReg’s leading platform to provide our mutual customers with an opportunity to access Gleanin Connect’s attendee-acquisition capabilities,” said Gleanin CEO Tamar Beck. “We look forward to a great partnership.” 

Besides, delivering new and verifiable registrations and attendees for exhibitions, Gleanin Connect identifies genuine advocates at the point of registration and makes it easy for them to recommend the event to their contacts and networks via social media, email and WhatsApp. 

The integration with Gleanin allows CustomReg to become the first leg of a two-part attendee journey that results in new attendees by first, guiding registrants through the registration process and facilitates a seamless handoff to Gleanin Connect’s referral dashboard, after which Gleanin Connect quickly moves registrants from the dashboard into a referral-marketing funnel that, on average, delivers organizers a boost of 5.4 percent in total event registration. 

“While we offer a range of innovative registration and lead retrieval solutions, the collaboration with Gleanin helps us broaden our portfolio of services and add additional value for our customers,” said Keith Bunch, vice president of CustomReg.

What was the most innovative tech you saw at Expo! Expo!? Tell us on Twitter, @tsnn_us_news.

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