How Lessonly created a unique Yellowship experience with a branded event app

About Lessonly

Lessonly is powerfully simple training software that helps teams learn, practice, and Do Better Work. Lessonly is used by 3 million learners at more than 1,000 leading companies, including Trunk Club, Jostens, and U.S. Cellular to power enablement, develop skills, and reinforce best practices.

The result is faster onboarding, higher NPS scores, more closed deals, and a superior customer experience.

About Yellowship

Lessonly launched its annual Yellowship tech conference in 2018 with the goal of building a truly remarkable in-person experience for customers, teammates, and industry partners.

Our goal with Yellowship was to inspire attendees to experience Better Work in action and take what they learned back to their companies.

Olivia Schwan, Lessonly

The challenge

Connect attendees, boost engagement, and demonstrate ROI via a fully branded event experience.

Like many organizations, Lessonly faced unique challenges and goals with its annual Yellowship conference. Delivering a brand-forward experience presented added nuances, too. 

1. Compile event info into a single, easy-to-use interface

“We had a ton of information to communicate with our attendees—breakout session locations, speaker bios, sponsor blurbs, maps, how to earn points in Llama Loot, workshops, and more,” Schwan said.

One thing was clear from the start: Lessonly needed a simple solution so attendees could maximize their Yellowship experience and minimize any sense of confusion.

2. Create buzz before, during, and after the event

Choosing the right platform was just the start. Getting attendees, sponsors, and exhibitors to actively engage with the tool was another challenge.

Lessonly understands the power of event marketing. Whatever tool they chose had to integrate with social media platforms, or offer its own social functionality.

3. Immerse attendees in a fully branded experience

From their trusty mascot Ollie Llama to their signature yellow, and mantra “Do Better Work,” putting their brand identity front and center was a must. That meant finding a platform they could fully customize with their logos, colors, and other branded assets.

4. Demonstrate ROI for sponsors and Lessonly

Lessonly not only needed to deliver quantifiable ROI for event sponsors and exhibitors, they also wanted to see a return on their own investment. Their event management platform had to include data reporting and analytics.

The solution

Lessonly partnered with Webex Events (formerly Socio) and launched a branded event app for Yellowship 19.

1. Mobile event app

Lessonly’s event app served as the main information hub for all things Yellowship. Lessonly uploaded their agendas, speaker bios, maps, sponsor information, and more. Additionally, attendees could connect with others at Yellowship, join challenges, create custom schedules using the “My Agenda” feature, and access Yellowship documents.

The app not only cut down on paper and printing costs, it centralized all event information so attendees and exhibitors could access it on the go.

2. Social wall

Building pre-event excitement is important for any conference, and Lessonly promoted Yellowship (and the app) no less than 44 times leading up to the event.

“Don’t forget to download the official mobile app of Yellowship. Browse the schedule, explore maps, connect with fellow attendees, and more. Visit yellowship.app on your web browser to download.” – Yellowship Promotio

Utilizing the app’s social feed, Lessonly created their own community within the event where attendees could post comments, like photos, and respond to discussion threads.  Lessonly was surprised how the social wall took off — attendees used the in-app feature more than actual social media channels.

3. Full customization

The ability to deliver a fully branded experience was a key reason Lessonly chose the Webex Events event app. 

Branding

“[Webex Events] catered to our every design need,” Schwan said. “We were able to do custom icons and splash screens in the app to really bring to life the overall vision of what we wanted for the Yellowship digital experience.”

Gamification

Using the app’s built-in gamification feature, Lessonly created the “Llama Loot” game to boost Yellowship engagement. Attendees earned points by visiting sponsor booths, sharing selfies, answering trivia questions, and visiting different landmarks around Indianapolis. Attendees who earned enough points received a LEGO kit to build Ollie Llama. 

“[Webex Events] helped us make Yellowship feel like more of an immersive, on-going experience than just a three-day conference,” Schwan said.

4. Data and analytics

Lead retrieval

While Yellowship is all about the attendee experience, Lessonly utilized Webex Events’ Lead Retrieval product to give exhibitors an edge. Lead Retrieval offers a seamless way to capture and qualify leads by scanning a QR code with a smartphone or tablet. Exhibitors can rate leads, leave notes, and export data to their CRM’s in real time. It eliminates the need for business cards, and exhibitors don’t have to wait for weeks to download post-event data.

 In-app reporting

The in-app reporting in Webex Events provides insights on how attendees rate sessions and speakers, respond to polls, and much more. That made it easier for Lessonly to see their ROI and make informed decisions for future events.

The results

An immersive event experience for attendees, exhibitors, and llamas.

1. 70% app adoption 

Lessonly saw strong engagement over the three-day event. Out of 695 attendees, 488 downloaded the Yellowship app.

“Yellowship truly wouldn’t have been the same without [Webex Events],” Schwan said. “[Webex Events] made accessing this information simple so attendees could maximize their Yellowship experience and minimize any sense of confusion. Attendees were empowered to find what they needed right within the Yellowship app.”

2. 284 social wall mentions

Not only did Lessonly see high social engagement throughout Yellowship (almost 100 posts per day), attendees continued to use the app’s social wall after the event. 

“In a lot of ways, the event app allowed attendees to tangibly take a piece of Yellowship home with them. People were still posting pictures on the Event Feed days after the event of themselves reading Max’s book, “Do Better Work,” and building their LEGO llamas,” Schwan said.

3. 33% participation in Llama Loot

“The way people engaged with Llama Loot, our conference game, honestly shocked us,” Schwan said. “Going into Yellowship, we didn’t know if attendees would want to play the game, but people were literally downloading the app to start playing the game and collecting points before they even arrived in Indianapolis for Yellowship.”

In total, 225 attendees completed at least one challenge, and 31 attendees completed all challenges. To show their appreciation, Lessonly recognized the top engagers on their website in the “Llama Loot Hall of Fame.”

4. 500 leads

And they weren’t just any old leads: Seventy-seven percent were considered “5-star.”

“Using [Webex Events] for lead retrieval could not have been easier for our sponsors,” said Alex Yoder, field marketing specialist at Lessonly. “It was a simple solution to gather all the attendee information that they needed to see a return on their investment as a sponsor.”

Llama Loot also drove traffic to sponsor tables, where attendees earned varying amounts of points by entering codes into the app.

“Every sponsor had their own custom code, and based on the level of sponsorship, we adjusted the point valuation to drive traffic accordingly — and it worked,” Schwan said.

The in-app data proved invaluable for Lessonly, helping them optimize Yellowship for 2021.

“Gathering feedback and session ratings for 35 breakout speakers and five keynotes was simple with Webex Events,” Schwan said. “Attendees could anonymously rate and leave comments for each keynote and breakout session they attended, right in the app, and we had access to all of that data immediately following Yellowship. Without Webex Events, we’d have no quantitative idea of how each session went, but they made collecting that data feel simple and seamless. This data is already helping us make more informed, smarter decisions as we prepare for Yellowship 2021.”

Elevate our event experience with a branded event app

Yellowship ’19 was a huge success for Lessonly, thanks in part to their branded event app. But they also had 24/5 customer support on their side, meaning they could truly focus on the Yellowship experience.

“You won’t find a team better at customer service than [Webex Events]. It felt like their people were literally on our team. They were responsive, helpful, informed, and kind. Every interaction felt like a win, and it was clear they wanted Yellowship to be as big of a success as we did,” Schwan said.

If you’re interested in building a beautiful event app that:

• Makes networking a breeze for your attendees
• Increases ROI of exhibitors and sponsors
• Allows for full brand customization

Webex Events (formerly Socio) can help!