Bett Show Case Study

Delivering real-time visitor footfall analytics and advanced attendee engagement for the team behind the world’s biggest education technology event

Bett is a flagship show in ITE Group’s global portfolio of trade exhibitions and conferences. Located at London’s largest event space, ExCel, every January, and running over four days, Bett attracts more than 34,000 influential attendees and 850+ leading suppliers, making it the global meeting place for the education technology community. The show covers almost 44,000sqm of main floor area, plus additional off-floor meeting and presentation suite spaces.

Bett is one of more than 150 events operated by ITE Group, which posted £175m turnover in 2018, ranking ITE in the top 10 global exhibition organisers. ITE’s vision is to create the world’s leading portfolio of content-driven, must-attend events that deliver an outstanding experience and ROI for exhibitors and visitors alike.

Consistent with both parent ITE Group’s vision and the technological nature of the event itself, the Bett management team sought to leverage the popularity of event’s official mobile app to tackle a number of business challenges.

The Challenges

The Bett management wanted reliable quantification of visitor movement around the main show floor, for certain feature locations, as well as for several off-floor show areas – beyond scanning on entry to ExCel’s North Hall for the show itself.

While there were a variety of alternative ways to achieve this, the team wished to avoid the significant price-tag associated with a deployment of expensive sensors, particularly given the size and scale of the show. Instead, a full evaluation of a more affordable mobile-based solution appealed. This was especially the case given the high adoption of the Bett app among visitors, with investment already committed to increasing the utility of the app including, for example, the addition of matchmaking functionality.

Additionally, Bett management wanted to segment visitors in real time based on their journey patterns to/from/around the show floor. This would then enable targeted messages to be sent to tightly defined groups of visitors – for example to drive footfall to certain feature locations or to otherwise influence visitor journeys around the show environment.

It was recognised that this would help personalise the event experience for visitors through the mobile app, as well as providing additional digital inventory for headline sponsors in the form of branded push notifications.

The Solution

The Bett management team selected Crowd Connected’s Colocator as being the best fit.

Colocator combines footfall analytics and visitor engagement in a single platform. It is the only software that provides the tools to:

• track mobile app users persistently in the background around the entire event environment and beyond it,
• process consistent high-quality data, at scale and in real time, and
• influence audience behaviour through location-based messaging.

Colocator works by adding a simple plug-in to an event’s existing mobile app. For Bett, the app was supplied by a new mobile app from Goomeo, a leading developer based in France which focuses on the exhibition market.

Colocator uses multiple techniques to accurately and reliably position mobile phones, including GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth – even measuring signal strengths between phones. Location data is visualised in a series of easy-to-digest graphical representations such as heat-maps, charts and tables via an intuitive web console

The same console provides a fully-fledged visitor engagement module which makes available an entire toolset for audience segment building and content management, so that targeted push messages can be scheduled and delivered. Colocator even enables the effectiveness of messages to be measured – did a message recommending a visit to a certain area have a positive impact?

The Results

Colocator delivered accurate footfall tracking and personalised visitor engagement, leveraging the popularity of the Bett mobile app, which achieved record downloads in 2019.

Through data visualisations and analytics specifically tailored for the indoor exhibition environment, the Bett management team were provided with enhanced behavioural data on the show’s visitors. Outputs included:

• Offsite insight, e.g. on fringe events or app users who didn’t visit the show.
• Onsite analytics, including show floor heat mapping for visitor flow management, attendance counts for selected areas and dwell times.
• Advanced visitor behavioural segmentation modelling / mapping.

Additionally, almost 8,000 targeted messages were delivered across multiple different segments using business rules created via the Colocator Engage module. Reporting on the positive impact of this digital messaging on influencing visitor movement – for example to sponsor locations – was also provided.

The addition of Crowd Connected’s technology for Bett 2019 demonstrated just how effective our mobile app can be. We were able to gather valuable visitor behavioural data, to deliver impactful messages to attendees and to examine the potential for managing visitor flow. There is genuine enthusiasm about how we might further benefit from Colocator, aligned to our objectives for the show such as enhanced visitor segmentation. Philippa Brook – Head of Project Delivery for ITE Group

I have evaluated a number of different visitor tracking solutions in recent years and often deployments of new technology are a headache for show organisers. I was really pleased not only with how smoothly the Colocator deployment went onsite, but also the outputs provided by Crowd Connected. Jon Little – Event Technology Workstream Lead for ITE Group

We’re delighted to be able to offer Crowd Connected’s location intelligence to our entire customer base. We’re really convinced of the value this can bring to show organisers and what we saw at Bett simply confirmed this. Florian Courgenouil – Marketing and Sales Manager for Goomeo