Meetings technology solutions provider Aventri, formerly
Etouches, has a revamped meetings website-building technology in "private
beta" with under a dozen clients. The tool offers ease of use with
drag-and-drop functionality, more design options and flexibility. Modernizing
the aesthetics and user experience were just the table stakes, however, according
to Aventri chief technology officer Shane Edmonds. "We wanted to inject
innovation to trends coming down the road," he said.
That means deep data connections for meetings and
registration websites. Those traditionally have been the first data collection
point in the life cycle of the meeting, but Edmonds said there are use cases
for data earlier in the process. "Data is everything in marketing,"
and meeting websites are nothing if they aren't marketing the right content to
potential attendees. Aventri wants to move clients beyond just sharing the meeting
agenda, promoting speakers and hoping for the best. "We want users to be
able to access any part of any event in the system and add conditional logic,
display certain content based on any metric," he said.
Simple use cases could include tracking session registration
numbers and dynamically promoting lagging sessions to attendees while they're in
the registration flow or displaying a downloadable white paper after an
attendee registers for a specific session or learning group. Edmonds said the
possibilities are pretty much endless, depending on the content the client has
in the system. He also pointed out that every content element would be easily
transferable as a widget to internal and external partner websites to create
better distribution opportunities for marketers.
Edmonds acknowledged that while the breadth of opportunities
could open new worlds to clients, they also could paralyze some. That's one
reason for a robust private beta program: so initial users can define the most
common use cases. Edmonds said Aventri eventually would build these cases out
as "wizards" to eliminate some of the keystrokes. It won't happen in
the first iteration of the tool, however. That said, he underscored the
company's dedication to assisting clients as they identify meaningful metrics
and translate those into actions. "There will be so many ways to use the
data to better market the events and better serve our customers," he said.
While there is no solid date on the horizon, Edmonds said
Aventri will look to sunset its existing website builder as clients transition
to the new platform. The company will release the tool for "open
beta" in November or December, which means any Aventri client who wants to
access the tool can do so.
Aventri's announcement coincides with the scheduled October
launch of Cvent's Flex platform. Billed as Cvent's largest-ever technology
investment, Flex also focuses on website creation, registration and emails, but
the company has not touted deeper data capabilities specifically.
Edmonds said Aventri's tools answer to needs that providers
on both ends of the market haven't been able to address. "There are a lot
of point solutions on the market that can't provide access to broader,
integrated data; [on the other hand] our platform competitor has launched a
tool that's almost a different product" from the rest of their platform.
He added that Aventri's goal is to offer a totally integrated solution.