As technology trends unequivocally demonstrate, hyper-personalization is the way of the future. Consumers experience it in almost every modern marketing experience, from social media algorithms to the way content is pushed out through the internet and into the smartphone, table or computer monitor you’re looking at right now.
Savvy DMOs, of course, know this all too well when it comes to marketing to business event planners as well as providing meaningful experiences to their attendees.
Visit Irving, Texas is one such DMO that is ahead of the curve by providing hyper-personalized service with an old-school ethos.
“I think for us, especially when you're a little guy, you have to try harder to get attention,” said Maura Gast, executive director of Visit Irving, Texas. “So, how do we understand what makes the nature of that meeting special or distinct? And then how can we use our talent, our treasures, our time, our connections to build on that for the customer?
“The more we know about why the meeting is happening, the more we can fine-tune what we can offer—we’ve got a slate of convention services offerings we can give people,” she added.
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And while hyper-personalization typically refers to recommendation algorithms in the tech space, this contemporary term can also be applied to that old school notion of personalized customer service in which customers aren’t treated as numbers and experiences aren’t stamped out of a cookie cutter.
“What are you trying to accomplish? How can we help you? Would you like a welcome from our mayor? Can we help coordinate a 5K charity run for you and have the police chief and fire chief go and be in the pace cars?” Gast offered, listing examples of the good, old-fashioned customer-centric legwork her DMO provides. “It’s about understanding what the group's trying to do, and then because we're small, because we're nimble, because we're very interconnected with the community, how can we one-up what they're expecting and really make it customized. How do we make sure it's special?”
Visit Irving’s High Standard of Service
Describing itself as a mid-sized niche destination, Visit Irving maintains it works harder to stay competitive through a high standard of service at every stage of an event. This “white-glove,” personalized client interaction is perhaps best evidenced during business event planner site visits, where the bureau can discover the profile of the group and suggest unique, destination-specific activities and program components.
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“We’re trying to do more of that really on the front end of the sales effort when we're bringing clients in for site inspections or for property tours or visits; really kind of going back to old-school things,” Gast said. “It's the things we did before the internet was there to do it for us, because often people, for site visits, they're not coming just to Irving, they're going to look at 20 or 30 properties and possibly five or six destinations while they're here. How do we make what we do stand out when 10,000 square feet is 10,000 square feet is 10,000 square feet?”
According to Visit Irving, some recent examples of successful program components stemming from site visits include the following:
Champagne dress at Rayleigh Underground Toyota Music Factory. Credit: Visit Irving. For a major welcome reception, Visit Irving replaced the traditional hotel ballroom format, creating an old-fashioned supper club experience with Texas flair at the Rayleigh Underground, complete with cowboy greeters, a living statue, a live big band, themed characters and handcrafted cocktails.
- During a customized site visit for the National Association of Division Order Analysts, the Visit Irving team curated an immersive journey: a private reception at the Rayleigh Underground, dinner and tequila tasting at Hugo’s exclusive Tequila Table, a scenic gondola ride on Lake Carolyn and a heartfelt “message in a bottle” moment culminating in guests placing a symbolic lock on the area’s iconic love lock bridge.
- Another hosted group of 20, on a site visit in collaboration with Omni Las Colinas, enjoyed a Golf & Spa Day, a Family Feud-style game night and VIP access to a Meghan Trainor concert. Their stay concluded with a farewell brunch and a police escort to a private suite at the Dallas Cowboys vs. Detroit Lions game—the kind of over-the-top finale that makes an impression.
According to Gast, this personalization effort has even been realized right in its backyard—literally.
“Across the street from us, Wells Fargo is getting ready to open later this summer, and they'll bring 5,000 employees onto this campus,” she said. “We had one of their employee relations people come over because they're looking at doing some community building before they're able to move into the building, and so they're going to do backpacks for the Irving Schools Foundation. They're going to bring about 250 employees here and build 1,000 backpacks.
“They can't get into their building yet, but we have a bird's-eye view of the building on the patio at the convention center, so when she came in for the site visit, our marketing team created a frame—a ‘picture yourself here’ kind of thing—and had her pose with it, with their new offices in the background, so that she could share that with her team,” Gast continued. “How do we incorporate things that we know are their things and how do we deliver it in a way that says this we're listening to you, we hear you? That is the best way for us to set ourselves apart. Space is space.”
Another unique way Visit Irving is rapidly adapting to the needs of attendees at the Irving Convention Center via touchscreens installed by facility manager ASM Global.
“There's iPads as well as QR codes throughout the building for attendees, in the moment, to have input, which is very different from the meeting planner post-event ‘how was your experience?’ This is attendees in the moment,” she said. “Are the rooms too hot? The rooms too cold? The food was good? The coffee's out? Our staff can respond to that, at least on the building side, in real time, often before the word gets to the meeting planner that the coffee ran out sooner than expected. Our staff is monitoring those things and making sure that we're quickly responding.”
Connection
This article was produced in partnership with Visit Irving Texas.
