Meetings technology firm Certain next month will release a
new tool that uses data offered by attendees at the point of registration to
generate one-on-one appointments at events.
Dubbed Match2Connect, the technology will be available July
2 as an add-on to Certain's Pro or Enterprise platforms, according to the
company. Initial pricing has been set at $10,000 for 10,000 appointments,
"and it scales up from there," Certain CEO Peter Micciche told BTN.
Match2Connect allows meeting organizers before an event to
define categories of attendees, set numbers of available appointments and
designate questions to be asked of registrants, including a ranking of their
preferred appointment partners. The technology collects the data and uses an
algorithm to generate a schedule for each attendee.
"This isn't a manual process, self-scheduling or
calendaring," Micciche said. "This is looking at data at scale and
being able to ultimately get it down to putting the right two people
together."
Each appointment schedule generated by Match2Connect depends
on attendee responses to questions and the preference rankings of all other event
attendees, said Certain marketing consultant Tara Thomas. For example, if one
attendee lists another as the top-ranked appointment preference, but the second
attendee doesn't list the first attendee at all, "sometimes you would be
on the schedule and sometimes you might not," she said. "There is a
pool of participants based on all those mutual matches. That's how the schedule
is determined."
Certain had been "supplying scheduled appointments for
hosted-buyer programs and increasingly doing that for corporate
environments," Micciche said. The development of Match2Connect represents
"opportunities to see beyond that," reflecting Certain's focus on tools
that help determine and increase the business value of meetings, particularly
marketing events.
"The registration cycle, which really has been trending
toward commoditization status within the industry, [offers] the opportunity for
engaging highly relevant data that ultimately feeds analytics," Micciche
said. "We believe that this is a transition that is good for the industry
because it creates a focus around registration as the first point of engagement
with the attendee, gathering important information that helps us down the
road."