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Using anchoring to increase (online) event ticket sales

As pricing and increasing sales for online events is currently a hot topic, I thought it’s a good time to remind about anchoring effect.


In 1974 Kahneman and Tversky did an experiment in which they first asked participants to spin a wheel containing the numbers 1 through 100 (but participants were not told that the wheel was rigged to land on either 10 or 65).  Then the scientists asked them whether the percentage of African countries that belong to the U.N. was higher or lower than the number on the wheel, and last, they asked what each participant’s own estimate of the percentage would be.

The results indicated what is now known as anchoring effect.

online event ticket sales
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3 Event Psychology Hacks (that you can use for your event today)

I have recently talked to Melanie of EventPlanningBlueprintTV about Event Psychology, and she asked me to provide 3 hacks – examples of how event psychology can help event planners in creating better event experiences.

Watch here:

Read EventPlanningBlueprintTV’s blog here.

7 tips to make the most of attending online event

For the last 2 or 3 weeks there have been a lot of articles, tips and advice on how to pivot to digital and create fantastic online event experience shared among event community. Right now, event planners are on the steep learning curve about making online events as efficient and satisfactory as possible, and oftentimes it’s not that easy as one may think. But this post is not about tips for eventprofs. Since part of my consulting is about helping event participants to attend meaningfully, I was thinking about how they feel about their event experience in these changed circumstances. It turns that it is equally uneasy for participants of our (emerging) online events to switch to this new mode and make the most out of online participation. I can clearly see it can be confusing and frustrating, partly because right now the online experiences are not ideal, and also because event participants themselves are not necessarily well familiar with technologies and virtual environment ‘rules’. So what do they need to know and do in order to adopt the new ways events are being made and adapt to it with max benefits? Here are some thoughts for online event attendees.

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Live vs Virtual event amongst coronavirus outbreak: how framing can help us with this dilemma

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve seen large events cancelled or postponed indefinitely during the coronavirus outbreak, and most likely we’re going to see more of such cases in the near term. I think no need to describe how challenging the times are for the events industry and  – given how huge its economic and social impact of just one event can be – basically, for everybody else. I find this tweet very telling.

sxsw

There are many things that we as industry are discussing now. I recently sat with Attendify team to discuss some actionable tips from event psychology perspective, and one of the things we talked about was transition from a live event to a virtual version and some obvious practical challenges for such rapid and imposed change. I’d like to elaborate more on one of the points I made during that discussion, namely – our perception of such change.  Although to a large extent it’s true virtual can not replace live, I believe we should really re-consider how we think about it – and here is where behavioral science can help us understand how.

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3 things that make Toolkit event memorable

I attended the first edition of Toolkit event yesterday, and would like to share 3 things that are, among others, to make it memorable for attendees. As you can imagine – all 3 are rooted in science.

Toolkit event
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Dare to Be Different [with your event design]

How one psychological experiment and your event design are linked

What’s it all about with ‘dare to be different’ when it comes to event design? Let me tell you about an infamous experiment that Hedwigg von Restorff did in 1933; she discovered an effect which was eventually named after her (“von Restorff effect” or “isolation” effect). She handed participants of the study a sheet of paper with sets of letters on it. It was completely random sets of three letters each, which at some point included a set of numbers. So it looked like that:

bgu, dwa, pkl, 396, yft, jyo

And then she asked them to recall the items.

An amazing finding of the study (which has since been widely leveraged) was that people were much more likely to remember the items that were different from the rest (in this case it was a set of three numbers, but further research showed that is true for whatever stands out).

What we can learn from it

That made me think that oftentimes, when planning an event, we copy what others do. We don’t dare to be different. I guess the reasons are a) we follow the trends b) we want to improve our own event by implementing the best practices c) we fall victim to status-quo: if something has proved to be working well, why change that?

And it seems to be reasonable – at least, two of the reasons are pretty justifiable. Yet, the isolation effect shows us that to really stand out and get stick in one’s memory – which is the primary reason why attendees would come back to your event – we don’t need to be exactly better than competitors. While fine-tuning and improving event design is no doubt what we want to pursue, to make a difference we would need to do something differently. Musical keynote? Fascinatingly weird topics? Stunning concept? Leveraging event psychology tools to provide a lasting impact? There are many ways to get in the spotlight and most important, stay there. As Sally Hogshead famously put it, ‘different is better than better’.

In the context of our industry – I’d say, the goal is not to get better in designing events, but to do it differently.

Would you dare to be different?

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Event’s Psychological Value (and my favorite podcasts)

I recently became a fan of podcasts

Having never been a big fan of audiobooks and the like, I resisted it for a long time. The initial driving force for me was that I have not been able to read much over the last couple of months, and I have been traveling more. So, I decided to try podcasts – and since then became hooked. 

There is a sea of different shows, hosts, and topics, and one must learn to swim in it. Just like in the sea, there is a lot of garbage and one needs to sort through it to find those pearls that would bring joy. In short, podcasts are great sources of knowledge, inspiration, and fun – and now I am enjoying them. I will share my favorites at the end of this post. I like that they aren’t too narrow or highly specialized to discuss specific topics. There are so many things to be interested in in life, and if I can learn and laugh at the same time, or learn about one field and apply it to my own – that is what I am looking for. 

Then, how does that relate to the blog title? Read on.

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Research-backed Ways to Improve Engagement

Now that IMEX America 2019 is over, I want to tell you about what it was like (Spoiler: it was awesome 🙂 )

Talking Event Psychology

First and foremost – I got to speak about #eventpsychology! Having already been excited about sharing insights on applying psychology and neuroscience to events with fellow eventprofs, I got even more excited when I saw a packed seminar room with people standing around. This feeling is hard to describe, but it gave me goosebumps! It is clear that the event community is becoming more interested in the topic. The evidence I have comes from the feedback I have received online, my own session experience, and looking at the IMEX agenda, which has a number of similar topics (e.g. the measurement of emotions; how to improve learning and networking experiences with science-backed methods). 

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Three ways to improve engagement

Secondly, I’d like to share three cool things I experienced firsthand at IMEX that have a lot to do with my favorite subject above and in particular, the concept of engagement I discussed during my presentation. Here are these three things.

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