The newspaper industry is known more for maintaining traditions than for pioneering innovative new technologies. But at its mediaXchange conference, held in Orlando in April, the Newspaper
Association of America (NAA) took strides to lead its members beyond the printed page and open their minds to the possibility of going mobile. The association partnered with Handmark, a media company specializing in mobile solutions for publishers, to develop an official mobile application for the conference, which was available as a free download for any iPhone, BlackBerry, Android or Windows Mobile smartphone.

“Digital and mobile innovation was a key topic at this year’s conference and we wanted to offer our own mobile app to provide attendees with fast and convenient access to conference information from their pocket,” says Kevin McCourt, NAA’s Vice President of Advertising and Exhibit Sales. “We want to do everything we can to get members involved in new technologies and help them stay on the cutting edge.”

In addition to the conference program and speaker and exhibitor information, the app included a live Twitter feed, which was updated in real time with posts from the NAA community. Of the 1,307 conference participants, 632 (about 48 percent) downloaded the mobile app. Of those, 579, or about 92 percent, followed through by using the app at least once, McCourt says. Headlines, which included session names and locations or exhibitor names and locations, were viewed 25,436 times, and users clicked through to read the full descriptions more than 6,300 times. Those statistics show an average of more than 40 interactions per user, with a 25 percent click-through rate to get more information on a session, speaker or exhibitor.

“We heard lots of buzz about the app,” says Lindsey Leisher Estes, Business Development Project Coordinator at NAA. “There hasn’t been anything in a while that generated this kind of buzz. I saw a lot of people using the tool and heard lots of very positive feedback.”

Because the mobile app was a sponsorship program for Handmark, it didn’t involve any out-of-pocket expenses for NAA. Handmark contributed the development of the app and the association was responsible for promoting it.

To promote the app, NAA announced it on its weekly pre-conference “Countdown to the Show” e-newsletter, which is e-mailed to attendees and some 15,000 prospective attendees. The app was also promoted in NAA’s weekly member newsbrief, Presstime Update, the mediaXchange Web site and blog, as well as the event pages on LinkedIn, Facebook and through Twitter, with the show’s hashtag.

Once on-site, NAA featured the app on the front page of the printed program, on a banner entering the conference area, on a pre-session video loop and in the association’s daily e-mail to attendees. “We continued to refer attendees to it through our Web site and social media throughout the days of the show,” McCourt says.

According to attendee surveys, the app was the second most important tool, after the show Web site, for planning their show experience. Pleased with the adoption rate and use of the application this year, NAA organizers plan to incorporate a mobile tool again next year with a few changes. “Next year, we’d also like the ability to control the feeds so we could make last-minute updates such as speaker changes and room changes,”McCourt says.

This year, because NAA provided information to Handmark in a format that had to be converted before being posted to the app, final changes had to be provided a few days before the conference. “It’s a learning process; there’s a lot more to designing a mobile app than you think,” Estes says. “It’s more than just replicating a Web site on your phone.”