How to Get Millennials to Attend Your Meetings

Contributed by: Ted Janusz

People are more likely to remain members of your organization, tell others about their experiences, and pay to attend your future events when you get them actively engaged.

I find that most meetings that I attend are structured as though the attendees do not have sophisticated tools of the 21st century at their disposal.

For instance, Millennials don't stay up to watch someone deliver the weather forecast at the end of the evening news like Matures or even some Baby Boomers might do. In fact, they don’t stay up to watch somebody read them the news at all. No, they have instant access to (better) information from The Weather Channel and similar apps, right on their phones.

Yet many meetings are still designed as though the Internet does not even exist, believing that the primary way Millennials will still get the information they need is by attending gatherings once or twice a year. This is the organization's equivalent of having the television meteorologist tell Millennials what they need to know.

These organizers fail to realize that much of the information being presented in these meetings could now be accessed by attendees through a simple Google search after just a few seconds of effort. Articles, recorded webinars and white papers are there for instant assimilation.

Why should attendees pay hundreds (or thousands) of dollars and spend dozens of hours dealing with travel hassles - just to get the same information?
And do they (or you) really enjoy just sitting in silence - for days?

In addition, Millennials may have even already watched a YouTube video of the same presentation your keynote speaker will deliver to every association he or she works for. Why should they sit through it again?

Be a Hero; Provide an Experience Instead
For future meetings to be attended and successful, they will need to provide experiences.

Conferences, for their continued existence, will need to do more for attendees than simply dish out information. They will need to provide something that becomes harder and harder to get anywhere else - face-to-face interaction with like-minded people. That is why interactive keynote addresses have become popular.

So why have an energetic and enthusiastic interactive opening session?
An attendee who gets involved in your meeting right from start (rather than just sitting there as a passive bystander) is more likely to remain a member of your organization. They will be more willing to invest significant time and money to attend future events - to once again get the unique opportunity to interact face-to-face with other attendees they have come to know.

Millennials do not want to be lectured at. Instead of being all about the speaker, they want the presentation to be all about them. They want to be able to help write the script.

Not only do other speakers and I offer an interactive opening keynote address, scheduling an address as the closing general session can also make the difference between the overall success and failure of the meeting.

For instance, last month I was told by a meeting organizer, “We did not end well yesterday. We needed to discuss some changes in policies and procedures that nobody was happy about. They left the conference grumbling yesterday. I certainly hope you can turn things around this afternoon.”

Within minutes after beginning my presentation, I could sense an immediate change in the spirit in the room. After our opening interactive activity (which was a welcome change after a day and a half of just sitting), people were talking, smiling and laughing with each other.

After the event, the organizer sent me an email with read, “I have had many people come by and thank me for inviting you to present at our meeting last week. Everyone had a great time, and they also learned a lot about themselves and their co-workers. You did a great job and had great energy! Thank you for helping to make our event a success!"

The Bottom Line for Meeting Success
The point is to do something different during your annual meeting this year. Don’t let the speakers on stage have all of the fun while your audience is limited to being passive onlookers. In fact, don’t just schedule speeches, but instead actually create experiences for your attendees.

Ted Janusz, MBA, facilitates “Creating Strategic Relationships; Here and Now,” an interactive keynote address. 

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