Integrated onsite registration ‘boosts revenue and insights’

Organizers can create new revenue streams and uncover data-driven insights using an integrated registration onsite service, according to an industry leader.

Keith Findlay, CEO of Klay, has set out how badge-printing kiosks offer a seamless experience for participants as well as offering branding solutions.

The company, which specializes in a range of contactless registration tools, embarked on a partnership with ExpoPlatform to make this process possible and add more value.

He said: “There’s a growing expectation from attendees to be able to arrive onsite and do things efficiently and moreover, autonomously. 

“They don’t want to line up at counters waiting to be greeted by someone who is essentially doing what they can do for themselves. 

“For some, there’s a perception that using a premium kiosk solution will increase your registration costs but that’s often not the case, you’re also creating a new revenue stream through all the branding possibilities which you don’t have when you have a traditional check in counter.

“Costs need to be reviewed holistically so that you factor in all of the savings and additional revenue streams, even if you arrive at the same place but have improved your attendee experience, that’s a huge win. 

“You can brand a kiosk front of house – most if not all of our clients offset all of the costs of the registration now through improved branding revenue opportunities.”

The native integration of the service alongside other digital solutions offered in partnership means an organizer can remove pain points and costs – as well as reduce environmental impact. Here’s how:

• Streamlined and efficient processing of attendees upon arrival resulting in faster badge collection and no long queues.
• Self-serve badge printing reduces the number of attendees requiring hosted registration assistance, resulting in cost savings.
• Fully customisable badge and kiosk design. Limitless profiles, badge types and designs can be printed on demand from the same kiosk using eco-friendly badges.
• Sustainable solution with no wasted badges. On demand full color printing removes the requirement for any pre-printing ahead of the event.
• Seamless integration with lead capture and session tracking functionality as well as a full event app suite.
• On-site support. Highly trained staff support the solution, available internationally

Event participants can sign up to the event ahead of arrival and then turn up to the show with a QR code which they can scan at a kiosk to have their badge printed.

It has been argued that attendees have become much more comfortable with this technology since the pandemic and has set new expectations for this sort of process.

Keith said the number of machines needed is typically lower than planners expect, while the number of staff needed to assist is dramatically lower than more traditional methods.

Klay – which works with ExpoPlatform to offer a fully integrated solution – can also cut out headaches for organizers as the registration process is already set up with the event software.

He said: “Having this partnership just removes that risk completely – which is a huge advantage – if their registration, lead capture and onsite badge printing can all be running off the same platform.

“All the data is shared in real time, which is a massive benefit for them.”

Keith added: “There is a solution for onsite printing that organizers can activate globally that doesn’t require integration.

“We’ve spoken to a lot of clients over the last 12 to 18 months and there have been horror stories that we’ve heard from events where an integration was required and it simply wasn’t managed correctly resulting in worst case scenarios onsite.

“When we take our hardware on site, we’re actually working directly on the client’s project and it’s running natively on our hardware, no integration.

“The client’s project is literally live and interacted with onsite, which just takes all of the risk and excess work out of it. 

“That solution is there – a native partnership that allows people to deploy the onsite registration piece without having to work with a series of different companies and processes and databases.”

This also helps with data and analytics, which have respectively been described as the oil and combustion engine of a digital economy.

Keith believes having this registration information seamlessly integrated with the partnership tech provider ExpoPlatform allows organizers to uncover trends and profit from them.

He said: “The organizer is able to jump on a tablet, access a dashboard and see how many badges are printed at a certain time. 

“Or know when someone has arrived by checking a profile showing they have timestamps that they checked in. 

“This then all falls into the event analytics, which then helps you create revenue the following year. 

“You can see what the historic arrival data looks like and exactly just how much investment you need to make on the registration. 

“The reporting sits on the AP side, but the registration page actually sits within it and that’s shared across everything – it’s a lot more harmonious and easy for the end user.”

Meanwhile, the onsite badge printing service also has another important quality – cutting waste.

Sustainability has increasingly become an important issue for organizers for ethical, optical and promotional reasons.

A total of 29% of marketers in our industry rate this as a good opportunity for them, according to findings in our Events Amplified ebook.

There were also 21% who said it was a great opportunity and 36% who said it was an average one.

Keith set out how this onsite approach helps planners to reduce their impact on the environment by reducing the number of unused badges.

He said: “No one wants to pre-print badges or badge stock that ends up in the bin, it’s just an outdated process for various reasons.

“We don’t supply plastic pouches anymore -we have a custom made badge stock that we have developed that is durable enough to last very well for multiple day events.

“Klay takes the footprint from its business practices very seriously and we encourage all of our clients to work with the current solutions in the marketplace.

“It’s very sobering to see 20,000 plastic pouches arrive on site on a pallet, you’re looking at a huge volume of single use wasted plastic. When you multiply that in your mind by the number of events happening simultaneously across the world on any given day, you have to adapt.

“Once upon a time, there weren’t great solutions out there. But now there’s really great eco-stock and alternatives that you can use.”

He added: “There are multiple areas where the whole attendee check-in process is really being reinvented – increased analytics, printing live on demand, sustainability, revenue opportunities in branding, a reduction of staff onsite, reduction of shell schemes for registration counters and an overall improvement in attendee experience.”

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