“That’s a rather bold statement.” And I’m sure there are plenty of event app companies who have a mountain of marketing material ready to disagree with me.
One commenter on LinkedIn even mentioned, “our engagement is amazing! Over 80% of people go to the home screen of our app every day!”
Not a very convincing metric, if you ask me.
Before I continue, let me give you a bit of context. From 2017 to 2020, I built an event app. And looking back on it, I now realize I wasted my time.
Why?
Event apps are at the center of the perfect storm of suck.
-
Most require installing from the app store. That cuts out a surprising number of people. Even if people are savvy enough to install, it still requires logins, passcode, and setup. It gets relegated to the “just do it later” pile. Later never comes. (And before I get a reply that says “one-tap sign in,” that’s not a guarantee that everything just works)
-
People don’t want to fill out yet another app profile. When we added the ability to import from LinkedIn, few people did it. Not enough info = bad discoverability. AI can’t do much about that.
-
Most people didn’t install the app ahead of time. Often we had to take their phones and install it for them. Clients loved that, but it’s not a scalable business. After a flight, checking into the hotel, getting to the venue, getting your badge, etc., you have two brain cells left.
-
People want to be present with other people. When I first made our app, I thought, “hey, everyone is looking at their phones. Let’s give them something to look at!” I had it backward. They were looking at their phones because the experience wasn’t engaging.
-
Getting someone to opt into push notifications is a nightmare. And Apple/Android make it hard to re-enable if you decline. Something like 40% of our users declined push.
-
People already have enough channels for communications and connections. Group texts. Slack. Discord. Telegram. LinkedIn groups.
-
Apps drain batteries. All that data in a crowded RF environment means your overworked phone has to scream that much louder to get a signal out, which kills battery life. If your battery is flat, you can’t use the app.
-
Most apps can be a simple web page and lose nothing of value. It’s trivial to spin up a page that includes calendar invites to sessions.
-
Complying with privacy regulations, consent, etc., and the easiest button to smash is “No.” because that makes it all go away.
tl;dr: 95% of what would make an app useful requires attendees to invest time into using the app.
And for what?
To use for 72 hours and then never touch again?
The only way this makes sense is if you’re a behemoth. Think Cvent, Zoom or LinkedIn.
Sidebar: LinkedIn would CRUSH it if they had an event app. They own all the good matchmaking data already.
IMO, event apps as a standalone piece of event tech are done.