Nowadays, providing a customized experience is a common goal for retailers, entertainers, and event planners. The more personalized an event feels to your attendees, the bigger impact it has. It will be more engaging, more memorable, and more shareable. To make that happen, you’ll need one essential tool — technology — because it takes tech-driven data to customize.

Technology comes in many forms, so there are many ways you can use tech tools to enable event personalization.

The Opportunities are Endless

It used to be that “customizing” an event meant asking if anyone was a vegetarian or if they wanted to sign up for an extra-curricular activity. But today’s attendees want every detail to be “their way” — the sessions they attend, the entertainers they see, etc. Technology puts personalization right in their hands.

Technology Facilitates Customization

With an event app, you can offer a menu of options that make event customization as easy as choosing ingredients for a make-your-own pizza. People can pick what appeals, skip what doesn’t, and – most importantly – view and manage their schedule in real time. This benefits you as the event planner, too, because you can see in advance what aspects of the event are attracting the most attention. If necessary, you can add seating capacity here, or eliminate something there, to make your event even more relevant and engaging.

You don’t even have to wait for comments or watch as people sign up. You can reach out to prospective attendees (and those already registered) for advice — should we do this or that? This also helps get the buzz going to promote your event, and it gets people talking about how they’re customizing the event for themselves.

Technology Proactively Makes Suggestions

Technology uses complex algorithms (and, increasingly, artificial intelligence) to capture attendee information and then suggest individual options based on their data — aspects of the event they might like, or even other attendees they might like to meet.

Technology Deepens Engagement

An event app makes it easy for everyone to personalize their own experience. But you can also use it to communicate with attendees and enable them to connect with one another. You can instantly send individualized confirmations, share real-time updates about activities, entertainment, and even event vendors. You can also conduct polls and surveys as the event progresses.

Go cashless with RFID wristbands, something that is rapidly gaining popularity with event planners and attendees alike. Your people can zip through registration and tap-to-pay for food, beverages, tickets, or merchandise within the event. It’s faster, it’s easier, and it’s just plain cool.

Encourage and simplify social sharing. Sharing is part of the experience these days. In fact, nearly three-quarters of millennials say sharing their experiences at live events is how they reveal their interests to others. Make that easy with smart photo booths, short shareable videos, snazzy event-specific images, and a great big Everwall that displays their posts.

Post-Event Personalization

After the curtain drops on your event, you can further personalize the experience with a heartfelt “thanks so much for attending” email. But don’t stop there. Use email, social media, and/or your event app to de-brief your attendees with key stats and “findings” so everyone can revel in the accomplishments (and relive the great moments). Think survey results, attendance figures, most-shared photos, miles walked from session to session — whatever will be fun and informative.

And don’t forget to include one final survey: “how can we make it even more amazing for you next time?”