Rapport annuel de Palexpo

COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE COMMUNICATION, DIGITAL MARKETING, AND OWN-EVENTS ORGANISATION DEPARTMENTS

A strategy that helps to make events hosted and/or organised by Palexpo more relevant, efficient, and attractive.

“DATA WILL PLAY A KEY ROLE IN PALEXO’S SUCCESS AND GROWTH”

Convinced that the collection, analysis and interpretation of data on event participants will help to create events that are tailored to their expectations, optimise their presence, and thus contribute to Palexpo’s long-term success, the three clusters COV (communication), MKD (digital marketing) and ORM (own-events organisation) decided to pool their expertise in order to set up a data-driven Marketing strategy. Diana Da Costa, web designer in the COV cluster, and Marcello Ronchietto, CSM data scientist in the MKD cluster, explain what it’s about. “Data-driven marketing consists of making marketing decisions based on the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. Instead of merely relying on intuition or guesswork, we decided to use real information to understand more about our targets’ behaviour, optimise our marketing strategies, and improve the performance of some of our own events like Automnales, the Geneva book fair, or the International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva. To collect all of these data, we use registration and ticket-sales software plus satisfaction surveys through which we get valuable information on the profiles (age, place of residence, centres of interest…) and expectations of our audience, but with the utmost respect for their privacy.

THESE DATA ALLOW US TO:

SEGMENT OUR AUDIENCE ACCORDING TO DIFFERENT CRITERIA

and personalise our communications to align our responses as closely as possible to their needs. How? By offering them personalised recommendations when they connect to our event websites or by sending newsletters with content that match their expectations.

BETTER UNDERSTAND THEIR PREFERENCES IN TERMS OF CONTENT

and experience: “During the book fair in 2023, the COV and MKD teams for instance identified a strong need among the audience to have more crime fiction on the programme; we therefore managed on our end to adapt our 2024 programme in this direction,” says Nine Simon, art director of the book fair.

ATTRACT AND CONVERT EXHIBITORS EFFECTIVELY

“We are aware that more and more exhibitors are assessing the relevance of their investment and looking for optimal ROI. Analysing the data really allows us to know more about our visitors and thus create more relevant sales tools by providing our exhibitors with valuable information on their target audience, market trends, and the efficiency of their presence at the trade show,” Jacques Weber, co-organiser of Automnales, explains.

A WINNING STRATEGY

All these actions increase the commitment of our audiences and thus their presence at trade shows For the 2022 edition of Automnales, 35% of the people who took free tickets on line ended up not going, whereas in 2023, this dropped to 25%: we therefore succeeded, through a host of highly targeted actions, to convince 10,000 people to come and enjoy the event!

More generally speaking, this strategy allows trade-show organisers to identify emerging trends, points that could be improved, and opportunities for development and innovation to offer an increasingly enriching experience to participants.

We are convinced that data-driven marketing will play a key role in the future of trade shows organised and/or hosted by Palexpo by helping to make them more relevant, efficient, and attractive… Or even to create bespoke trade shows tailored to the needs and expectations expressed the target audience! Watch this space in the next (few) years!”