Feathr is a set of digital marketing tools built for events, created to personalize the experience for attendees and help planners find and engage new audiences to boost registrations and sponsorships. In 2016, the Gainesville, Florida-based company worked with about 400 events, including C.E.S., the P.G.A. Merchandise Show, New York Comic Con, and others produced by Reed Exhibitions, Questex, and Emerald Expositions.
At the helm of the company are Aidan Augustin, 26, and Aleksander Levental, 28, who met as undergraduates at the University of Florida. While still in school, the two created an app for exchanging digital business cards, and Levental says it was that early work that helped them understand the needs of the event industry.
“Over about two years we worked with 200 to 300 separate events, mostly small-ish conferences, and we started to learn the basics of the event business,” he said. And one thing that became clear was that in order to differentiate themselves and create a viable business, they needed to think bigger than business cards to address the primary issues for planners—namely attendee acquisition, revenue generation, and community building.
The two have now grown their business from just four people 18 months ago to nearly 30 today. The Feathr platform offers a variety of digital marketing tools, and what sets them apart from others in that space is that they are completely focused on the event industry. One area of expertise is in retargeting—a strategy to nudge people who have already signaled interest in an event, for example by visiting the website, to take action in the form of registration. Feathr is also educating planners about the value of their event data to sponsors and exhibitors.
“For example, someone who watches an Avengers show on Netflix is sending one signal, but someone who pays $250 and dresses up in costume for three days at Comic Con is sending a much louder signal about how much they love the Avengers,” Augustin says. “Sponsors are trying to reach these people, and the organizer has the digital version of them and can monetize that digitally pre-event and post-event online.”
The company has been recognized with a variety of industry awards, most recently Best New Event Technology in the Eventex Global Event competition, as well as UFI’s Technology Award, I.A.E.E.’s Innovation Award, and SISO’s Event Innovation Battlefield.
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