Forget trawling through websites trying to find what’s on near you – soon you could have personalised events from your area read out to you by your home assistant.
Evvnt founder Richard Green started the London-based start-up after realising that digital marketing for events didn’t cut the mustard.
Now the event marketing automation software can save users hours of time inputting their events into listing sites.
Since its launch in 2012, Evvnt has had over 30,000 customers across 139 countries. The company is also preparing to launch in the US, having recently entered into an agreement for a $450,000 investment from three US newspaper group.
Through building ties across the pond, Green has come to realise voice could well be the future of the industry.
“To get the events out to the right communities could mean integrating with newspapers to get events printed and with voice to get content read out by hubs like Alexa,” he told BusinessCloud.
“Companies I’ve spoken to in the US see consumers wanting between 60 seconds and three minutes of local news delivered through voice. There are rumours in the states that voice search will be bigger than mobile, and mobile is already bigger than desktop.
“I can imagine that – my three-year-old daughter who can’t type can tell Siri she wants to watch Peppa Pig. This generation will grow up with it, they’re happy to have an Alexa in their house and if they want music on or to turn the lights turn off they will ask their hub.”
Getting the right events into a segment of local news in a format that works for voice is no mean feat, but by leveraging existing networks such as newspapers in the US suddenly becomes manageable and you can even wrap advertising around it says Green.
“For example, your hub would say ‘Good morning, this is the Manchester Evening News bringing your local news’,” he said.
“It’d then say ‘we’re sponsored by Dave’s Motor Show, why not go down to Trafford and take a look at his bikes today? Here are the headlines and there’s also a drum and bass party on this evening and Britney Spears is playing at the Arena’.”
In the meantime the company is focussing on making events more manageable for companies in the UK, especially as most traffic going to sites like Time Out comes through a Google search.
With Evvnt organisers submit their event to the site and then it gets automatically pushed onto all sites that are relevant for their target market.
“Someone Googles ‘art event Manchester’ and suddenly they also get 30-40 listing sites presenting the event back to the consumer,” said Green. “Google becomes an event discovery platform for people.”