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The company of today’s interview partner is already a veteran in its industry. Founded in 1909, VOLLMER WERKE Maschinenfabrik GmbH is a globally successful specialist for tool machining in production and service with a comprehensive range of machines. The technological leader’s range of products includes the most advanced grinding, eroding and machining tools for rotary tools and circular saws in the woodworking and metalworking industries, as well as for metal-cutting band saws.
Part of this winning strategy is close contact to existing and potential customers. For this reason, VOLLMER welcomed more than 450 guests from all over the world at VDays 2019 to present their products up close and talk about the future of the industry. A LineUpr event app was also used at these VDays.
In this interview, Nicole Skoberla, who as a marketing manager, is also responsible for the VDays, tells us how she individualized the app and what changes and features she wishes for the future. Another great customer story. Really worth reading. 😊
LineUpr: Hello, Nicole. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Please introduce yourself and VOLLMER.
Nicole: My name is Nicole Skoberla and I am the Marketing Manager in the field of Online & Magazines at VOLLMER WERKE Maschinenfabrik GmbH. Since our beginning in 1909, VOLLMER has developed into a technology leader for state-of-the-art grinding, eroding, laser and processing machines for rotary tools and circular saws in the wood and metal processing industries as well as for the metal-cutting band saw. The extensive machine program is supplemented by tailor-made service and service offers. We see ourselves as a solution provider to our global customers – including sharpening services, sawmills, toolmakers and manufacturing companies.
LineUpr: You have used an event app from LineUpr for the VOLLMER VDays. Please tell us more about this event.
Nicole: At our four-day VOLLMER in-house event VDays, we had a total of over 450 participants from all over the world. In addition to lectures, exchange with experts, company tours and virtual reality applications, the visitors could also experience our machines live in the context of product demonstrations. For our guests to be able to put together their individual program based on the variety of offers, we decided to use an event app that we could create and design according to our needs. Our choice was your event app and we got a lot of praise – so much for now! 😊
LineUpr: What strategies and tools do you use to address your target group? Do you attach special importance to something in particular?
Nicole: In addition to our website, we also use social media marketing (LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube) and email marketing to address our customers optimally. Furthermore, we are also well positioned in the print sector with a large number of product and image brochures and our customer magazine.
LineUpr: Your app also looks very individual. You, for example, linked your newsletter in the footer and created a menu item for the current weather information. Why did you do this? And how did you adapt the app to your corporate design?
Nicole: For us, it was important to have the opportunity to familiarize our guests with the expertise of VOLLMER and to identify ourselves externally with the app.
Thanks to the easy handling of the app in the dashboard, I was able to incorporate our VOLLMER corporate design with just a few steps and adapt it to our individual needs. To implement our corporate design, we integrated the color scheme of VOLLMER in addition to the key visuals of our VDays.
LineUpr: Did you also use the info pages?
Nicole: Yes, exactly. In addition to information on the various speakers, the agenda, the locations, and the weather, we also published all the facts that are worth knowing about the event in the “About” section.
Here we could list the highlights of our event or inform participants about our partner companies. Additionally, in this category, we were able to communicate all organizational issues, such as meeting points, bus transfers, and wi-fi access data.
LineUpr: How did you use the locations in the app?
Nicole: Since we had many guests and therefore had to send them to many hotels, the location page helped us to list the various hotels and our evening venue with addresses and contact options. The link to Google Maps made it much easier for many visitors, especially our foreign ones, to find their way around.
LineUpr: How would you rate the creation of the event app with LineUpr? What do you like and what can we improve?
Nicole: The creation was really intuitive, and you could immediately see the results in the dashboard. Your quick support when we were stuck was also excellent.
Also, it was practical that you can send notifications via the app. Of course, pop-ups would still be great here.
LineUpr: Did you mention the event app at the beginning of or during the event?
Nicole: We had already mentioned and linked the app in the pre-communication as part of the invitation mailing to allow guests the opportunity to plan their personal VDays before they arrive in Biberach. On-site, the app was presented as part of the welcome speech and the QR code to the app was mentioned in the printed agenda and posters.
LineUpr: How did your visitors react to the app?
Nicole: Following our VDays, we obtained feedback from our guests via a survey tool. The result was that the visitors who used the app rated it as exceptionally or very helpful.
Also, during the event, we received positive feedback from the guests as well as from our colleagues about the app.
LineUpr: The event is over now. Would you use the app the same way at the next event to communicate with your participants or is there something that you would change?
Nicole: We plan to use the event app again for our next VDays, because it made our event more digital, more individual and super rounded.
Next time, we will think about using the survey feature to evaluate our entire VDays.
LineUpr: Thank you for the great interview, Nicole. I’m always thrilled every time an event organizer takes full advantage of the features of the event app and makes it their instrument.
You can find much more information about VOLLMER on the internet. And their profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook are also worth a visit.
We are already looking forward to the next VDays.
