Categories

What are Categories?

In Jomablue, Categories serve 3 main purposes:

Event Communications

Categories are used to segment all the communications that you send to your Attendees. Any material intended for a specific audience can be sent to that audience via a category rule. You may have different Email/SMS Templates for Delegates vs VIPs, or for Attendees arriving on different days - to ensure the right people receive the right communications at the right time, you select Categories when you set up your Campaigns.

Access Control

Categories are used to determine who can go where at your Event. If you have an Event running across multiple days, and you are offering single-day Admissions, you would use Categories to ensure Attendees are not checking in on the days that they should not be attending. Similarly, Restricted Sessions can be made available to only certain types of Attendees via the use of Categories. For example, if you have a VIP-only Session, you can set the Session to Restricted and only allow the VIP Category access to that Session.

Insights and Data Export

Categories form a valuable part of the real-time Insights available during your Event, as well as your post-Event Data Export, allowing you to better understand your Attendees experience and to plan for future Events. Category segmentation can allow you to easily identify how many customers vs non-customers or member vs non members came to your event.

Good Categories = Great Data

When working with data it's always important to keep data clean so that it’s easily reusable - and it's important to make the right Category decisions in the outset to achieve this.

Great decisions now, ensure your data is consistent from one event to another and allows you to retrospectively look at data without having to “learn” the data each time.

The following are our recommendations:

• Keeping the number of Categories to a minimum is recommended - more is not necessarily better. Think about how you’re attendees’ journey to your event and how you’ll be communicating to them as well as their onsite experience. Is the journey and onsite experience different for a Alumni Delegate vs a Delegate? If not, then both of these products could go into the one category of delegate.

• It's better to use a smaller number of Categories and add People to multiple Categories than it is to use a large number of Categories in order to add People into exactly one Category each. Although you need to fully consider your Event Communications and how you can apply rules to get the segments of people you want.

• Consider all of your events when deciding on categories, it’s best to keep the same categories across all the events you run. It makes it easier to setup your events and easier to do cross-event reporting.

Plan your Categories

There are a few things to be considered when planning your Categories. When deciding if you need a particular Category, ensure you ask yourself these questions:

• Do I want to communicate to these people differently?
• Do I want them to have a different experience?

In a real world example, you might decide you need a Speaker Category. Would you send different e-Tickets to the speakers over another Category (eg. Delegates)?

• At the event, do you want them to have a different experience (such as access a Speaker lounge where Delegates are not allowed)?
• Answering yes to both of those questions validates that “Speaker” is a great Category choice.

In contrast, poor Category examples are provided below:

• Delegate Early Bird - this references how much they paid and is not relevant to their communication or experience.
• Cancelled Delegate - people do not need to be in a cancelled category, they can all be cancelled within their current Category.
• Full Delegate - can be used sometimes within the right scenario but we would generally recommend having “Delegate” and not the percentage of their participation in the event.

Create a Category

One of the most important steps in the creation of your Event is correctly setting up Categories as they affect everything from Attendee Communication to Entitlements, as well as your data export after your Event.

Once created, Categories exist across your entire Instance, not just the Event you are currently in. When you create a new Event all Categories will be disabled by default. We recommend re-using Categories where possible, but only where it makes sense without changing the Category name (ie. you can re-use a VIP Category across multiple Events, but don't re-name it "Executive" and then use it as an Executive Category).

To create a Category:

1. Log into the Jomablue portal.
2. Navigate to Event Configuration > Categories. Here, you'll see a list of Categories (if they already exist in your Instance).
3. To add a new category, select the Add Category button on the top right.
4. You'll be presented with a single-field form where you can enter the name of your category, then click the Save button at the top-right of the screen.

That's it! You've created that Category and it will now appear in the list of Categories. Click on Event Configuration > Categories to return to the list of Categories and you'll be able to see it. When a Category is created, the In Event toggle switch will be set to the On position in the Event you are currently in, but will be set to Off in all other Events (you can switch it On if you wish to use the same Category in another Event).

Manage Categories

Once all your Categories exist in Jomablue, you'll be able to manage them via the Categories page. Click on Event Configuration > Categories.

Current Events tab

• Category Name - the name of the Category
• Category Code - printable on a Smart Badge
  Note: This field must be added to the Smart Badge Layout.
• Priority - if a person exists in multiple Categories, this will control which Category Code will print on the Smart Badge
• Total People - the total number of People that belong to that Category. This includes People that have been cancelled from the Event.
• Show in Insights
• Actions
  • Make Default - this indicates which Category will be applied automatically if no other Category is selected when adding People.
  • Event Settings - this allows you to customise the behaviour of the Category - for more on this read Planning your Categories.

All Events tab

• Category Name - the name of the Category
• Total Events Using this Category - display the number of events using this Category
• Attached To Event - enable or disable this Category for this event
• Edit - update the Category name

Note: Updating the Category name will affect every event where it is enabled. We recommend caution when updating names.

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Additional notes

• To prevent multiple Categories of the same name, when adding a new Category Jomablue will display similar names that already exist. This allows you to activate an existing Category instead of creating a duplicate.