The BT Sustainability Festival showcased how innovative technology can drive sustainability and help achieve net-zero emissions across various industries. It featured experts and innovators from organizations spanning multiple sectors, an illuminating tech expo, and prominent sponsors of sustainability. From inspiring talks to exciting demonstrations, PheedLoop provided physical and virtual attendees the chance to explore Adastral Park's cutting-edge research and development. You can learn more and watch the video replays here.

About BT Group

BT Group operates as a single business, made up of different organizational units, including three customer-facing lines of business: Consumer, Business and Openreach. Globally, BT is a leading communications provider, serving business customers in 180 countries across the world. They provide managed network, security and cloud solutions, enabling their customers' digital transformations. In the UK they are the leading business communications provider, connecting more than one million businesses and public sector organizations to their colleagues and customers. Their network, products and services also underpin the operations of other UK communications providers.  

To showcase their capabilities and commitment to sustainability, BT organized a Sustainability Festival. This event gathered over 1,100 physical attendees and 239 virtual participants, creating a dynamic environment for knowledge sharing and innovation across various sustainability themes.

Why PheedLoop?

PheedLoop stood out as the ideal choice for several reasons. It offered a comprehensive set of features that perfectly suited the needs of the team delivering the Sustainability Festival. The most important of these was the ability of the BT event team to self-serve to create and make changes to the Sustainability event themselves. This meant the team could make changes and see the result immediately at no additional cost. PheedLoop’s pricing model meant that BT could select just the features it needed for the event, but at the same time PheedLoop still delivered greater functionality at less cost than before.

Specific PheedLoop Features Used

The event team utilized various features of PheedLoop for their Sustainability Festival, and the plethora of PheedLoop configuration options enabled them to create a consistent brand image across all event-related channels.

Meanwhile the Application Programming Interface (API) played a pivotal role in streamlining their event management. The event team seamlessly integrated PheedLoop's data into their event marketing website using the API enabled real-time data feeds, ensuring a consistent look and feel to their marketing website. Using the API, the event team were able to give account managers insight on whether their customers were attending. This provided a better experience for the customer and reduced the cost, since account managers only needed to physically attend the event if their customers were planning to attend.

Problem Addressed

BT wanted to streamline and enhance the physical and online experience for attendees. With PheedLoop’s highly customizable registration options, the event team provided tailored registration journeys for attendee types and rapid check-in using PheedLoop’s onsite capabilities. Using PheedLoop, the event team were able to extend what they offered to attendees to include a mobile app and virtual portal, driven using the same single source of data, whilst providing an enhanced virtual expo and event messaging to drive engagement.

The event team received a late requirement from the business for account managers to see if their customers had registered to attend the event and whether they then did so. Initially manual spreadsheets were used, but this resulted in delays and potential inaccuracies since they were only updated weekly. The PheedLoop API resolved this issue by enabling the event team to create a real-time GDPR compliant view for account managers to see the status of their customers.

Results Achieved

PheedLoop delivered on its promise to increase event functionality, drive efficiency, reduce cost, and to improve the physical and virtual visitor experience.

This led to:

• Attendee feedback for the event averaging 4.4 out of 5.
• 1.5M social media impressions.
• Fantastic comments back from BT’s customers.
• Protection of BT’s brand by providing a consistent brand image across various event channels, including the marketing website and virtual portal.
• Increased satisfaction among account managers, who were better able to support their customers.

Future Considerations

Exhibitor attendance was still handled outside of PheedLoop as event staff were already trained on the existing proven processes to support their unique needs, such as setting up stands the day beforehand. One key learning for the event team was to ensure that all attendees, including exhibitors, are managed through PheedLoop. Managing some attendees outside of PheedLoop caused data discrepancies and challenges. For future events, BT plans to enforce the use of PheedLoop for all attendees, streamlining the management process.

Additionally, BT will likely explore PheedLoop's lead retrieval feature for exhibitors, which they didn't utilize in their previous event, but received many requests for from exhibitors.

Advice for Other Planners

Andrew Miles, Innovation Consultant at BT, offers valuable advice for other event planners:

• Start Early: BT recommends starting event planning as early as possible. The learning curve can be steep, especially if you're new to event management or a new platform.
• Collect Requirements: Gather requirements from all stakeholders well in advance.
• Early collaboration and clear understanding of expectations are crucial for smooth event execution.
• Use PheedLoop's Features: Explore PheedLoop's wide range of features. You may find innovative ways to streamline your event management processes and enhance the attendee experience.

Favourite Thing About PheedLoop

Andrew Miles highlights two favourite aspects of PheedLoop. The first is the ability to input data once and have it appear seamlessly across all event-related channels, such as the marketing website, virtual portal, and mobile application. This feature not only saved time but also ensured consistency and efficiency in delivering event information.

The second favourite feature is PheedLoop's translation capability, which allows them to customize menu names to match their specific requirements. This flexibility in adapting the platform to their needs contributed to a smoother event management process.

Conclusion

BT’s experience with PheedLoop showcases how an innovative event management platform can transform the way organizations plan and execute their events. With a keen focus on sustainability and a commitment to providing a great attendee experience, BT successfully leveraged PheedLoop's features, with a particular emphasis on the API for real-time data integration. By doing so, they addressed their challenges, achieved significant results, and provided valuable insights and advice for fellow event planners.

As BT continues to expand its use of PheedLoop and other BT divisions show interest in the platform, this case study highlights the power of modern event management solutions in driving successful, efficient, and sustainable events.