Behavioral Science Technology, Inc.

"We were able to reduce the amount of paper used by asking all of our presenters to use the app for their own agendas, a considerable cost savings."

Melanie Scharton,Behavioral Science Technology

A Long Wishlist

Behavioral Science Technology (BST) was looking for a more efficient way to manage its online registration system and improve attendee experience. They were using an internally developed online registration system for its major conferences, but the system could not accommodate rising attendance numbers and BST’s desire to grow. The BST staff began feeling overwhelmed.

BST was committed to offering attendees an enhanced interactive onsite experience, and they needed the right tools to help them accomplish their goals. They needed the ability to capture detailed attendee info in order to steer attendees down different registration paths. After gathering that info, they wanted to be able to integrate the different fields with BST’s CRM software, and finally allow registrants to modify their own registrations and receive credit for participating. Thankfully, Cvent had everything they needed and more to enhance the attendee experience at all their conferences.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Prior to Cvent, the staff had to manually keep track of clients and prospects in both BST’s CRM system and event management system. With Cvent’s integration capabilities, all contact data and registration information in BST’s CRM system is automatically updated in Cvent. Kyle Ellingsberg, Events Administrator at BST, also loved how he could use old events as templates and simply build upon them or make minor changes for future events. He said, “I like how we don’t have to build a completely new event landing page and registration page each year. The process saves between 10 and 15 hours for every event.” BST continues to expand its events — in the company’s third year using Cvent, over 2,400 people flocked to its Safety in Action Conference, a 10.2% increase from the previous year.

BST also offered its first-ever mobile event app in 2013. Not only did the majority of attendees download it, but the app had 4,700 page views, 1,500 session openings, and nearly 700 banner clicks for that event alone. BST promoted app usage through the event website, registration pages, email blasts, pre-conference webinars, orientation sessions, QR codes, and on-site conference collateral.

Streamlining the process of capturing attendee information and the integration with Cvent made this easier than the BST team could have imagined. That integration also freed up team members’ time so they could focus on creating a CrowdCompass event app that allowed the staff to interact with attendees, provide easy access to break-out and pre-conference session information, integrate agendas, and reduce paper consumption.

Looking Forward to Better Events

In its third year with Cvent, BST’s attendance and participation grew across the board. The company plans on increasing its number of conferences from two to four by adding new events in Brazil and Chile. BST can now focus on growing its global presence without worrying about the internal logistics.

With promising mobile app adoption rates using CrowdCompass, BST also wants to cut down on costly printing, shipping, and labor for future conferences, while enhancing the attendee experience through more thoughtful technology.

After adopting Cvent’s event management platform, BST staff members eliminated their most time-consuming tasks and began successfully increasing conference attendance numbers, expanding BST’s event initiatives, and using a mobile event app to better engage their attendees onsite and off.