Events today, be it sporting events, music festivals or tech conferences, heavily rely on technology to offer enhanced experiences in order to not only drive event attendance but also popularity and event success. Among the gamut of technologies available, a key focus area is mobile. In fact, according to CrowdCompass, 86% of planners will have an app at their event by 2016.
Leading events, from the Mobile World Congress to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival leverage cutting edge mobile technologies like iBeacon, that seamlessly solve important functions like event marketing, ticket sales and attendee engagement among others. While iBeacon technology is a solid technology, it still requires attendees to download the event app in order to fulfill desired actions.
A great way to overcome this hurdle while still delivering the same value is to leverage Google’s Eddystone beacons. Eddystone is not only efficient but is also cost effective and helps event organizers to precisely and contextually reach attendees straight on their smartphones. Eddystone can fulfill a host of functions at events from promoting ticket sales to providing wayfinding assistance.
In this post, we provide a step-by-step guide on creating 5 key Eddystone campaigns to solve important use cases at events. Each campaign is made up of 3 simple steps, explained in detail below:
Step 1 – Set Campaign Objective
Campaign 1 – Run special promotions
The objective of this campaign is to run special promotions at certain areas of the venue (e.g: crowded areas, like performance stages). The idea behind this campaign is to drive mobile engagement by offering special offers and promotions to attendees. To illustrate this, let’s create a campaign called ‘Exclusive Photo Shoot’ and set the display message as, ‘Join the RoadRunners for an exclusive photo session at a discounted price of $30’. This will trigger a message to all attendees who attend the RoadRunners concert at the event.
Campaign 2 – Navigation assistance
Navigating at events, especially the ones with large venues and multiple areas/sections can be quite difficult. Eddystone offers a simple and effective way to solve the navigation/wayfinding problem at events. To illustrate this Eddystone solution, let’s name the campaign ‘Event Map’ and set the display message as ‘Easily navigate the Soul Flea Market & find your favourite stall by viewing the Map’. This message can be sent to all attendees at strategic points in a venue (the entrance, for example) in order to help attendees get a detailed idea of the event layout. Once attendees click on the message, they will be routed to the maps section of the event’s website on their smartphones.
Campaign 3 – Send live updates
Sporting events like Bike races/rallies and football games among others are often very exciting, filled with constant changes/updates to the game’s score and nature of play. An exciting way to engage attendees further is to send live updates (and even game trivia, if needed) directly to their smartphones, by leveraging Eddystone beacons. To illustrate this, let’s call the campaign ‘Live Updates’ and set the display message as ‘Goal! Find out the latest scores and interesting game trivia’. Once attendees click on this notification, they will be routed to the live score updates section of the mobile website.
Campaign 4 – Promote merchandise sales
It has become hugely popular to retail co-branded event merchandise during events. A good way to entice attendees to visit merchandise stalls and make purchases is to send them appropriate prompts on their smartphones by using Eddystone beacons. Let us call this Eddystone campaign as ‘Exclusive Merchandise Sales’ and set the display message as ‘Exclusive event merchandise – tees, mugs and more at special prices. Visit Stall No. 15’.
Campaign 5 – Trigger ticket sales
Large scale events many times have smaller sub-events or shows that require attendees to purchase additional tickets. Such occasions call for additional efforts from the event organizers. Eddystone provides the perfect platform to seamlessly and effectively promote such events. To illustrate this, let us create a campaign called ‘Special Show Tickets’ and set the trigger message as ‘Attend the dazzling Dancing Light Show today at 5.00pm. Pre-order your tickets here’. Events can also build such a campaign to promote event ticket sales outside the venue, in order to attract new visitors.
Step 2 – Install Beacons
Once the campaign objective has been clearly understood and finalized, you will need to purchase and install a few Eddystone compliant beacons, in order to kickstart the campaign. Also take a look at our Beaconstac platform, that includes everything you need to get started. Once you have purchased the beacons, their details such as the UID-Namespace, UID-Instance and URL, will be added to the Beaconstac dashboard (by us) before shipping the beacons to you.
For easy identification, the beacons can be named based on their location, campaign objective or any other point of reference. The beacon names for the 5 campaigns mentioned above are as follows:
| Campaign | Campaign Name | Beacon Name |
| Campaign 1 – Run special promotions | Exclusive Photo Shoot | Photo Shoot |
| Campaign 2 – Navigation assistance | Event Map | Entrance |
| Campaign 3 – Send live updates | Live Updates | Grand Stand |
| Campaign 4 – Promote merchandise sales | Exclusive Merchandise Sales | Merchandise Stall |
| Campaign 5 – Trigger ticket sales | Special Show Tickets | Special Stage |
Step 3 – Set up notifications
After the campaign have been decided and the beacons have been installed, all you have to do is to follow 3 simple steps to complete setting up your Eddystone campaign. The 3 steps are as follows:
- Go to the Captive Audience app
- Click on the specific beacon (named according to where it is placed), and click on ‘Edit’ on the top right corner.
- Change the ‘Eddystone URL’ which is set to ‘www.CaptiveAudience.tech’ by default, to the specific link you want to send to your customers.
The message and url will be sent to anyone in the range of the Eddystone beacon. By clicking on the url, the customer/user will be directly taken to the specific webpage that will display the intended message to the user (as mentioned in each campaign)
If you are planning an Eddystone beacon pilot, take a look at Captive Audience , that includes everything you need to kickstart your campaign in under 15 minutes. Using Captive Audience you can set up your own campaign, without a developer’s help!