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March 2008
Best Practices: RFID tagging
Pilot program tracks attendee pathways through booths to reveal product preferences
By Cathy Chatfield-Taylor
Imagine your marquee sponsor’s exhibit crowded end-to-end with visitors eager to learn about new product offerings. There are curiosity seekers, tire kickers and, perhaps, even qualified buyers. At the fringes, waiting in line to get in, is a VIP from the exhibitor’s wish list of ideal customers. Frustrated by the crowd, the executive is about to cut and run. Just then, the exhibitors No. 1 sales rep breaks free from the mob to greet the VP, then steers her away from the melee and into a private meeting space. How did he know she was there?
In a pilot program introduced by Alliance Tech (www.alliancetech.com) and Experient (www.experient-inc.com) at the Radiological Society of North America (www.rsna.org) annual meeting, November 25-30, 2007, in Chicago, 10 exhibitors used long-distance radio frequency identification (RFID) tags inserted in attendee badges to track visitors who entered their booths. One exhibitor upgraded the “LeadInsight” service to include “Smart Notification,” which sends a signal to booth personnel when select individuals enter their realm. “RSNA is a very meeting-oriented conference,” says Roger Lewis, Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Alliance Tech, Austin, TX. “If an executive shows up, has to wait, then leaves, an opportunity is lost.”
RFID operates on two spectrums — at a short range of about 6 inches, and a long range of about 15-18 feet. For some time, show organizers have scanned short-range RFID tags on attendee badges to monitor conference session attendance and track traffic into the exhibit hall. Now, a long-range tag makes it possible to unobtrusively read badges of attendees who enter each exhibit.
Two packages were available to RSNA exhibitors. Priced at $8,000, the Gold Package included six read points, with additional read points for $750 each. The $12,000 Platinum Packaged included 12 read points, with additional read points for $650 each, plus the Smart Notification service. Both packages provided access to an online dashboard where booth traffic is reported by job function, title, duration of stay and product areas visited.
By placing an average of 27 RFID readers throughout their booths, exhibitors got a read on who entered the booth, how long they stayed, what product areas they lingered in, and whether they volunteered their ExpoCards to be scanned as sales leads. In the largest booth, about 30,000 square feet, the readers did not provide blanket coverage, but they did cover specified product stations.
Other means of monitoring booth traffic, such as videotaping, can reveal volume and flow. RFID can reveal individual preferences and behaviors. “You can derive product interest from how long they stay in an area,” Lewis says. “You may be a lead on the MRI, but you were interested in these other products as well.”
Post-con reports were broken down into “Leads” (those who volunteered their ExpoCards to be swiped) and “Visitors” (those who entered the booth but did not volunteer their ExpoCards). Lead data included the full registration profile that is magnetically encoded in the ExpoCard. Visitor data included just the attendee name, title, job function and company. Additional information can be encoded into RFID tags, but privacy concerns led RSNA to restrict the RFID data to just the information that is readily visible on the name badge.
Attendees were informed upon registration that their RFID tags would be scanned. About 1-2 percent opted out by visiting the Help Center to have the tag removed. Despite the “Big Brother” implications, “very few people opt out,” Lewis says. “Exhibitors aren’t using the data to spam people. They want to know what they can do to accommodate attendees’ interests.”
Cathy Chatfield- Taylor is a San Francisco Bay-area freelance writer/editor. E-mail cathy@ cc-tunlimited.com.
Goal: Understand attendee preferences and behavior.
Objective: Design exhibits that are responsive to attendee product interests.
Strategy: Measure number of visitors, length of stay and product stations visited in each booth.
Tactics: Embed RFID chip in name badge, mount RFID readers at 15- to 18-foot intervals in exhibit, track visitor pathways through booth, report metrics by demographic (e.g., job function).
Results: 10 exhibitors participated in the pilot program. |
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