A Crash Course On Event App Sponsorship Strategy: Sponsorship Packaging 101
To follow up on our first post of the Ultimate Guide to Event App Sponsorship, in this post we’ll give you tips on how to structure your sponsorship package. Read on to discover how to develop your best possible sponsorship strategy!
Here at EventMobi, our job is to help make every event planner’s job easier. To date, we’ve helped event professionals to congregate over 5,000,000 attendees on our event apps. Consequently, we’ve had quite a bit of feedback along the way. A common refrain that we hear goes something like this: “Well, I know how many sponsors I want but I have no idea how to convince them to sponsor me!” (If you don’t, check out Part 1 of our strategy crash course). Fortunately, we hear you loud and clear, and we’ve got you covered.
Your pitch consists of two main components: How to build and promote your package and how to tailor your pitch to prospective sponsors. In this post, we’ll cover the first part by taking a detailed look at some examples of packages you could offer.
Building a Sponsorship Package
To give you a sense of the different combinations of packages you can offer, this example breaks down a hypothetical shared sponsorship by tiers. If you would rather opt for an exclusive sponsorship, feel free to combine all these packages into one feature-heavy pitch.
Bronze Sponsor – Present Yourself
For your first level of sponsorship, offer sponsors the chance to get noticed and generate interest with engaging content. If they’re exhibiting, a sponsor profile allows attendees to gather information, such as product details, contact information, and booth numbers. With a few external links, your bronze sponsor can also drive click-throughs from their profile to external pages. You can communicate this level of sponsorship as the ability to be “present” at your event. This option is great for sponsors who are testing the waters or who are less concerned with high exposure than cost-effectiveness.
Silver Sponsor – Talk To Your Customers
Offer your second-tier sponsors the chance to engage your attendees at a premium. On top of the bronze package, you can include features that allow your silver sponsors to address the crowd. Allow sponsors to deck out their profiles with product brochures and promotional documents. Or let them distribute in-app coupons to be redeemed at their booth. While the bronze package gives sponsors visibility on the app, enhanced features in silver sponsorship lets your sponsors be seen and heard.
Gold Sponsor – Have a Conversation With Your Customers
Sponsors who want the engagement value of a two-way conversation can take silver sponsorship to the next level in your gold package. This package would allow them to use the app to create a dialogue with your attendees. Sponsors can create customized banner ads that serve a variety of purposes (eg. linking to an enhanced profile). Get attendees to proactively learn about your gold sponsors by directing them to a sponsored poll or survey. Ad incentives, by entering all the attendees who answer the questions correctly in a draw. With your attendees’ permission, you can even offer your sponsors a list of the participants. In these ways, attendees can engage in conversations with sponsors, providing more customer data and improved lead qualification.
Platinum Sponsor – Build A Relationship With Your Customers
For a sponsor that wants it all, only a platinum package will do. This can include the full suite of features and benefits on the event app. Options such as custom branding on the app’s loading screen, a sponsored poll or survey, gamification opportunities. Offer customized banner ads placed prominently on highly personalized areas of the app such as attendee listings and maps. This package is for the sponsor that wants to move beyond conversations and develop relationships with attendees who might become fiercely loyal customers.
These examples of sponsorship tiers are meant to give you an idea of how your own packages could look. Your sponsorship strategy is yours to design. With an event app, you have full control over which features your different sponsors will receive and the flexibility to determine the feature combinations. For more package ideas, check out EventMobi’s Ultimate Guide To Event App Sponsorship!
How to Promote Your Event App?
We’ve covered how to build a sponsorship package in detail, but creating an enticing package is just the first step to getting sponsor buy-in. You can wax poetic about all the great features of your sponsorship package, but this requires a good app adoption. Higher usage and adoption of your event app means more exposure for your sponsors. You can be certain that one of the first questions your sponsors will ask will be: How much promotion are you putting behind the event app? This is why it is essential to have a well-promoted event app that works seamlessly for everyone.
Moreover, you want to have the ability to implement turnkey promotion before and during the launch of your event app. An effective call to action to download the event app can dramatically increase adoption and usage. Your campaign doesn’t have to be a huge time, scope, or money drain. Ask if your event app maker has promotional materials included in their package.
The most important promotional aspect of any event app is accessibility. Ease of use and how well it integrates across devices effects how many attendees can view and interact with your app and, by extension, your sponsors. Your attendees will be using a variety of devices that run on different operating systems, including phones, tablets, laptops, and more. You want to ensure that attendees can access your event app from everywhere and that their experience across any platform will be as cohesive as the messaging of your sponsors.
EXCLUSIVE APP SPONSORSHIP CAN GENERATE UP TO 5x THE COST OF YOUR APP.
A multi-platform compatible app provides your sponsor with more reach while providing you with an opportunity to extend the life cycle of the event. With the advent of event apps, you can find new ways to continue conversations and strengthen connections post-event. For example, your sponsor can send a survey to attendees a week after the event, in order to gain customer data and feedback. This is also useful for attendees, who can access the survey from their desktop, all while staying within the event app. With a flexible event app that can work across devices, you have the most essential selling point for sponsorship: a win-win for all stakeholders of your event.
Package Delivered
Considering the immense value to sponsors, attendees, and yourself, event app sponsorship is a no-brainer. The question is how to define your strategy for sponsorship success. Hopefully parts the series thus far have put you well on your way to choosing an effective sponsor strategy and determining what types of sponsorship packages you should offer.
In our next post, we’ll tackle the second part by covering some promotional basics to ensure that the app generates a lot of views and, in turn, a higher ROI for your sponsors. In the meantime, if you want to discuss your event app sponsorship strategy, the team here at EventMobi is always available. For over 5,000 event planners, we’ve been the Robin to their Batman, the Watson to their Sherlock. Let us know how we can help you!