THE SPONSOR DOC

BRUCE L. ERLEY, APR, CFEE

IT’S ALL ABOUT “WHO” - THE IMPORTANCE OF AUDIENCE INSIGHTS

Dear Sponsor Doc:

I produce a large festival that is free to enter. My sponsors are asking for an accurate attendance count and demographics. Other than having clicker counters at entrances and doing audience intercept surveys, do you have any other suggestions to determine accurate attendance and an audience profile.

D.R. – San Antonio

Dear D.R.:

Event organizers have been struggling with this question for years. Needless to say, it is easy to provide accurate attendance at gated events, but it has been a daunting task to get a reliable attendance estimate at free events. Further, many event producers do not conduct the needed research to be able to answer “who” is coming to my festival.

Why is this data important? Accurate attendance numbers and audience insights are essential to inform a variety of factors. How can I better plan for event production, insurance, and other key performance indicators if I truly know (rather than guess) how many people come to my event? Where and how should I be marketing my event to grow attendance? What potential sponsors would be interested in the specific audience attending my event?

The good news is that there have been remarkable advances in the technology available to event producers to track this information. The key to all these options is mobile phones.

According to industry sources, 97% of Americans own a smart phone and spends 5 hours and 24 minutes on their mobile device each day. That means the vast majority of those attending your festival or event have their smart phone on them.

There are now a number of companies that can provide detailed information on your audience by tracking the unique signature each of our devices emits. Don’t get too creeped out by this, as this information is aggregated and cannot identify the specific user by name or address. But the detail of the data provided is truly amazing! Here are three options that I have reviewed and demoed.

LiveGauge (www.livegauge.com)

Toronto-based LiveGauge is a pioneer in the field, collecting data for live events since 2012. They collect mobile phone signatures by providing the event with a small, “black box” cellular “Audience Traffic Sensors” that track cellular unique signatures in a radius of 50 feet of the unit. As they work on cellular data, no WIFI is needed. Each sensor can operate for up to ten hours on a single battery charge.

They pre-ship the sensors for you to place at festival entry points and special attractions (stages, kids’ areas, etc.,) wherever you want to measure attendance. If you have a single entrance and exit, you can get away with one box. If you have multiple entry points and assets at which you want to track attendance, you’ll need more.

After the data is collected, you access their dashboard and can adjust the collection radius as needed to track total attendance, (unique phones signatures detected), movement around the event and linger time, (all the monitors work together to show where each phone signature went and how long they were there) as well as attendance peaks and valleys throughout the day. They can even overlay local weather conditions to gauge its impact on visitor traffic.

Their basic program provides some extrapolated demographic information such as age, marital status, and race. They also can provide a much deeper dive into demographics and lifestyle information with an overlay program from a third party at an extra fee.

The cost for one monitoring unit is about $1,200 for a one-day event. They provide volume discounts for additional monitors and days of use. If you had a two-day event and used five monitors; I estimate it would cost around $10,000.

The real benefit of LiveGuage is their high accuracy of measuring pings in very specific areas and providing highly granular attendance data.

Placer.ai (www.placer.ai)

Both Placer.ai and Spatial.ai (see next service) use a different technology to monitor and track unique phone signatures which measures foot traffic. Rather than issuing a physical sensor as LiveGuage does, they collect data directly from cellular towers.

In essence you will create a “geo-fence” around the specific area, (your event site) you want to count phone pings. Also called a polygon, these specific geographic boundaries can be adjusted and moved for various locations within your site, but the data collected is not quite as precise as the LiveGuage sensors can detect.

Since this phone data has been collected and cached for several years, you can actually go back one, two or three years to compare and see how attendance has changed at your event. You can even look at data from your competitors or other similar events around the country. Using their dashboard, Placer.ai’s location analytics include the number of visitors, frequency, duration of stay. Further, this service can track the movement of your festival guests to sponsor locations thus demonstrating the effectiveness of bounce back activities.

Placer.ai’s special sauce is the insights they can provide on your audience profile. Their proprietary aggregated data provides a broad range of customer demographics – income, gender, even favorite shopping spots.

When you subscribe to their annual service, you can use it for any number of events, venues, or other purposes. The cost runs between $15,000 and $20,000 based upon number of users and audience size.

Spatial.ai (www.spatial.ai)

Spatail.ai uses a similar smart phone data collection technology to Placer.ai. Within their dashboard, you establish the geographic boundary and set the dates you want to monitor around your desired festival site or venue. In the same manner as Placer.ai, it provides an accurate measurement of visitors, frequency, and duration of stay.

In my opinion, what makes spatial.ai so interesting is how they take the collected cellular analytics and cross match with social media usage to provide highly specific consumer insights. If you want to have a remarkably granular profile of who is attending your festival, this will blow your mind.

Their “Proximity” software provides a methodology whereby they categorize neighborhoods into 17 different household classifications, segmented into 80 descriptive lifestyle segments. These cohort groups include such descriptions as “Rising Professionals,” Plugged-In Parents,” and “HighRisers.”

You can even download your membership, email or registration lists and they can sort and categorize your current followers into these lifestyle classifications so you can focus your marketing to grow those segments.

Their “Persona Live” software segment customers by what they actually do online and offline. This customer segmentation system classifies people by their social, mobile, and web behaviors using an address link. “FollowGraph” reveal the top interests of every neighborhood by uncovering the brands, interests, and activities people love, to improve audience targeting and location strategy. This annual subscription can also be used for as many events, venues, and other research you like. For most event producers, the base cost is going to be $10,000 for the annual subscription.

D.R., this is a lot to digest, and I know for many annual event producers these prices may be out of reach. But I believe this data will be a game changer in how we grow our events and attract new sponsors. As I know the costs of these services may be budget-prohibitive for many organizations, I suggest you consider working with other events in your community under one subscription, which is already being done here in Denver by several local nonprofits.

I would encourage you to schedule a free demonstration from two or more services so that you can compare and contrast what best meets your needs. In any event, I hope this helps you see what is out there. I think it is a total game changer when it comes to measuring attendance and providing audience insights.

The Sponsor Doc

Bruce L. Erley, CFEE, APR is the Founder and President of Creative Strategies Group, a consultancy based in Denver, Colorado which he founded in September, 1995. Creative Strategies Group (CSG) specializes in sponsorship and event marketing consultation for events, festivals, nonprofit organizations and other properties as well as municipalities and for-profit companies. With more than four decades experience, Erley is considered a master in the field. In 2012, Erley served as the World Board Chairman of the International Festivals & Events Association (IFEA). He is a 2015 inductee into the IFEA Hall of Fame. He is Accredited in Public Relations (APR) by the Public Relations Society of America and a Certified Festival & Events Executive (CFEE) by the International Festivals and Events Association.

Contact Info:

Bruce L. Erley, APR, CFEE

President & CEO

Creative Strategies Group

Phone: +1-303-558-8181

Business Email: berley@csg-sponsorship.com

Column Enquiries Email: bruce@sponsordoc.com