29 Jul 2020

by Isabel Brinsden

Royal College of Psychiatrists International Congress

Royal College of Psychiatrists International Congress 2019: Becoming one of the most prestigious mental health events in the world, enhancing delegate experience and exceeding all registration and financial targets

Success achieved

Becoming one of the most prestigious mental health events in the world, enhancing delegate experience and exceeding all registration and financial targets

Project dates: July 2018 - July 2019

Project team

Sonia Walter, Director of Professional Standards
Catherine Ayres, Head of Events
Katie Newton, Congress Coordinator
Isabel Brinsden, Events & Exhibitions Coordinator

Tools & Systems

Slido - was a new initiative for our 2019 Congress, used to encourage delegates to ask questions at the end of sessions. This was managed by our Media Champions, another new initiative for 2019.
Silent conference - headphones used for the poster rapid fire presentations.
Itineris - CMS for our website. This was new for 2019 as we moved to the new platform in November 2018. The new website was much more user friendly, attractive and enabled us to direct Congress information to our members in a more streamlined way.
Cvent - Congress App, which hosted the programme, speaker and poster abstracts, floor plans and exhibitor listings.
NG - CMS for our membership database, which links to our registration/online booking system.
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram - used extensively in our marketing campaign.

Introduction

The Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) International Congress is the organisation’s flagship event for our members, taking place annually, over four days. The Congress attracts local, national and international delegates from various professional backgrounds and is the ideal opportunity for psychiatrists to network, share best practice and ensure they are up to date with the latest findings in mental health.

The RCPsych celebrated its first International Congress in 2010 with just over 1,300 delegates. Since then, the event has grown steadily to become one of the most prestigious mental health events in the world. 2019 was the 10th rendition of the event and we wanted this to be the largest and most successful ever and to compete with international organisations such as the European Psychiatry Association and World Psychiatry Association. The result was that we attracted nearly triple the number of delegates that we had back in 2010, with 3,456 delegates from 65 countries, making it the largest ever RCPsych Congress.

Discovery

2018 feedback

We used delegate feedback from 2018 to see what areas of the Congress our delegates would like to see improved. One example of how we used this feedback was where the feedback survey showed that some sessions specifically targeted at trainees or patients were under-attended, indicating that other members were not engaging with these groups. To resolve this in 2019, we encouraged members to submit session ideas that incorporated trainees and patients within them, rather than in separate sessions. As a result, these sessions were highly attended and encouraged greater engagement with these groups.

We also surveyed all members that didn’t attend our 2018 Congress, to find out why. Using their responses, we sought to make changes in 2019. We offered free registration to those who responded with suggestions that we implemented, so that they could see the changes and feel that their feedback was valued.

Market research

We attended the European Psychiatry Association, World Psychiatry Association and American Psychiatry Association annual congresses to see what our main competitors are offering.

We attended the RCOG Congress to see how a similar event worked at ExCeL.

We attended industry events, such as Event Tech Live to research options for technological advances – this is where we made contacts at Slido.

Keeping up to date with the latest research in psychiatry through scientific journals like the BJPsych.

Session Suggestions and Committee

The most important element of the Congress is to ensure that we are offering members the highest quality programme. To do this, the Congress programme is generated by our members who are asked to submit session ideas through a portal managed by TFI. Submissions are considered by a committee of reviewers, made up of College members. By collecting suggestions from the membership, we ensure that we are delivering the event our members want.

We strategically selected a broad scientific committee including representatives from all relevant cohorts such as consultant psychiatrists, trainees, patients, overseas doctors, SAS doctors and academics to ensure the final programme was well-balanced, comprehensive and of the highest academic quality.

Exhibition

A large proportion of the Congress income comes from exhibition sales. To ensure that we are offering exhibitors what they want, we surveyed them after the 2018 Congress. Two suggestions that arose were data scanners and more exhibitor passes. As a result, we introduced the option to hire data scanners for the first time and also increased the number of exhibitor passes included in the smallest package from one to two. By taking on board exhibitor feedback, we can ensure positive partnerships and repeat business.

Objectives

Meet financial targets set for registration and exhibition income:
- Registration – £990,595
- Exhibition - £260,000
Cost to revenue ratio to match what was forecast in budget:
- Budgeted income - £1,250,595
- Budgeted expenditure - £774,550
- Budgeted surplus - £476,045
Number of delegates registered to exceed 3,000
80% of registered delegates to attend on the day
High delegate satisfaction measured through post-event survey
High exhibitor satisfaction measured through post-event survey
High social media engagement

Timeline

26 July - Submission portal open
September - Open exhibition bookings
27 September - Submission portal closes
November - Open poster submissions
6 December - Registration opens
6 December - Programme released
January - Launch marketing campaign
26 February - Poster deadline
28 February - Early bird deadline
18 April - Send poster, quick fire and bursary results to all applicants
April - Appoint AV supplier
May - Order bags and lanyards
22 May - Last chance for any changes to programme (inc. posters and exhibition guide)
Early June
- Catering details to venue
- Send final AV details to venue
4 June
- Order stationery and pens
- App (inc. full information) submitted to Crowd Compass
7 June - Send programme to print
17 June - Send first batch of badge data to TFI o 17 June - App goes live
24 June
- Packing starts
- Send final badge information to badge supplier
25 June - Email registration barcodes and joining instructions to all delegates
28 June - Crates collected
30 June - Setup day
1-4 July - Congress!
w/c 8 July
- Send certificates to all authors who presented a poster presentation and/or rapid fire presentation and attendance certificates
- Thank you emails
18 July - Prepare final registration and international attendance report
July / August - Expenses and invoices
August - Request out-turn from finance

Activities

There were a number of groups involved in the organisation of the Congress.

College Staff

Set and monitor systems and procedures
Venue liaison, event management, marketing, logistics and administration
All financial transactions and contracts
Support and manage the other groups

ADALC and Congress Co-Chairs

Make day to day decisions regarding the Congress
Appoint Executive Committee, Advisory Board and Poster Review Group
Approve venue, budget and event dates

Executive Committee

Plan and deliver a high quality and balanced scientific programme
Review and score all suggestions and set the scientific programme
Propose and invite keynote speakers
Commission sessions if necessary
Publicise the event whenever possible

Advisory Board

Advise and steer the Executive Committee
Nominate keynotes and other speakers
Propose sessions to be commissioned by the Executive Committee
Review and score all suggestions (optional)
Publicise the event whenever possible

This was a huge project and everyone on the RCPsych events team had a role to play:

Sonia Walter – was Head of Events (now director of Professional Standards) - the main event lead, overseeing the strategic direction of the event, finances, venue and management of the team
Catherine Ayres was Events Manager (now Head of Events) - lead on the operations side of the exhibition
Katie Newton, Congress Coordinator - managed speakers, submissions and registration, and led on marketing and the event evaluation.
Isabel Brinsden, Event and Exhibition Coordinator - managed exhibition sales and exhibitor liaison.
Emma George, Event Manager and Caroline Simms, Event Coordinator - managed poster abstract submissions and poster presentations.
Michelle Braithwaite, Event Manager and Jonathan Bennett, Event Coordinator - managed social events.
Sarah Morrisey - led on social media campaigns and managed the App with Jonathan.
The whole team was present onsite to manage registration, delegate queries, speaker and exhibitor support and general onsite event management.

1. Marketing

Three of our KPIs (registration income target, registration numbers target and high social media engagement) relied upon us having an excellent marketing strategy for the event.

We first had to identify our target audience, which included but was not exclusive of the following:

International psychiatrists – London is attractive to international delegates as it is convenient in terms of travel. Key countries of interest include The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Brazil, Argentina, Oman,Emirates, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Portugal,Canada, US and Greece
UK consultants
Student associates
UK core and advanced trainees o UK associate specialists

We then had to identify the core messages to market to our target audience. Key messages that were advertised :

The congress is an ideal opportunity for networking
The congress is an efficient opportunity to obtain CPD points
The congress offers a high-quality programme with cutting edge science, clinical sessions and star speakers
London is an accessible and attractive location
Registration deadlines and calls to action

Several marketing avenues were used, including but were not exclusive to:

The College website

The website is the most effective and efficient marketing tool. The Congress was featured prominently on the homepage from January 2019. This was alongside a dedicated event page which served as the main platform for the event and included information about the Congress, a platform to buy tickets and a contact us section.

Direct marketing

Direct marketing for the International Congress took the form of email campaigns and were sent every 2 to 4 weeks to the whole College membership, those that had joined the mailing list and non-members that had attended the Congress in the last three years and had opted in to receiving information. One of three key messages were used for all email campaigns:

General: save the date, deadlines, social events, the Congress in numbers
Programme highlights: highlighting different aspects of the programme each month
Speaker spotlights: including biographies and short interviews with star speakers

All emails included a registration counter to encourage attendance and tap into the target market’s fear of missing out. They also included clear calls to action, such as, prominent ‘register now’ button.

Strategic partnerships

International sister societies were approached to enter a partnership agreement whereby they advertised the Congress among their members and in exchange they were credited in the Congress programme as supporting organisations. An enhanced agreement was negotiated with the APA and they sent two emails regarding the Congress to their entire database, in exchange for a complimentary exhibition stand. Promotional material was also distributed at the European Psychiatric Association Congress, American Psychiatric Association Congress, World Psychiatric Association Congress and other events that staff, officers and committee members attended.

College officers and members of the executive committee and advisory board were also asked to distribute flyers at relevant events and meetings, engage with peers on social media, attach their name to the Congress where appropriate and promote the Congress at any given opportunity.

Advertising

Several advertising methods were used to promote the Congress including:

CALC e-Newsletter
College e-Newsletter
The Congress banner applied to the email signature of all RCPsych staff
Flyers were distributed at RCPsych conferences, courses and meetings
Monthly full-page ads were included in the BJP
The Congress featured in the President’s blog which is sent to all College members
Flyers and promotional material were displayed in the members area of the college building
The Congress was also promoted on a variety of industry websites

Social Media

The International Congress had a presence on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. All posts included the hashtag #RCPsychIC. Registered delegates, committee members and speakers were encouraged to join the event and engage with content prior to the event to raise the social media profile. An established Social Media campaign was launched from December 2018 and college staff regularly posted Congress content.

Analysis

The main marketing campaign for the 2019 Congress began in January 2019. From January 1 until the actual event the dedicated Congress event page received over 59,000 hits from over 39,000 users. The top five visited pages were:

The landing page
The programme
Registration page
Keynote speaker information
The FAQs

In terms of direct marketing between December 2018 and the event 16 direct emails were sent using Dotdigital at various key points throughout the organising process. On average these emails were sent to 18,056 members and received on average 5,480 unique opens, equating to 30.32%. This is well above industry standard, which according to Mailchimp is 20.41%. The average click to open rate for the emails sent was 7.56%, again well above industry standard which according to Mailchimp is 2.19%.

2. Exhibition

As well as delegate registrations, one of our KPIs was around reaching our exhibition sales target of £260,000.

Exhibition Packages

RCPsych IC19 Exhibition.PNG — Exhibition area

To maximise our revenue from Exhibition, we made some adjustments to the exhibition packages we were offering. At Congress 2018 we surveyed exhibitors to find out which elements of the packages they valued and which they did not. Amongst other findings, we found that the Platinum exhibitor did not value exclusivity, therefore we decided to offer three Platinum packages in 2019. We also found that the most valuable asset was the location of the stands in the hall. We therefore increased some of the prices for more desirably placed stands.

We also introduced data scanners as an optional extra, increasing the value of the exhibition for the exhibitors and providing a new source of revenue.

Exhibition Sales

Immediately after our 2018 Congress, we sent our exhibitors personalised thank you emails with photographs from their stands and let them know that information about the 2019 Congress would be available soon. Early in September we opened bookings for 2019 and emailed all of our 2018 exhibitors again, giving them ‘early access’ to book for 2019.

This approach was designed to make previous exhibitors feel valued and develop our partnerships with them and ultimately encourage them to re-book. The result was that 70% of 2018 exhibitors returned for 2019.

44% of the exhibition income in 2019 came from new business. This was sought using direct email marketing with contacts found online on relevant organisations’ websites and also through LinkedIn. We also had a dedicated section of the Congress website for exhibition, with delegate statistics available for potential exhibitors to view.

Once a potential lead was identified, we followed up with them regularly, offering support with the decision to attend, information around the event for new exhibitors and support with logistics in the lead up to the event itself.

Logistics and floorplan

For the 2019 exhibition, Europa was contracted to create the floor plan, build the exhibition stands, provide furniture, poster boards and run the electrics. For shipping and AV two ExCel contractors were used, Agility Logistics and Blitz. Europa have been used in previous years creating a positive relationship between them and the College. Feedback from exhibitors is also generally positive regarding Europa with many stating that they were helpful and efficient with furniture orders, graphics and stand advice.

Several amendments had to be made to this during the organising process, largely due to the need to add in extra exhibition stands as they initially sold out. Originally it was only planned to use 3,333m2 of the hall, however this was increased to 3,400m2 and then 3,534m2 to occupy the whole hall. Additional space also had to be added to allow for more catering points.

3. Positive delegate feedback

To ensure that the feedback we received was positive, we had to deliver a programme that was of excellent scientific quality.

Programme and speakers

RCPsych IC19 Auditorium.PNG — Congress - Auditorium

The Congress programme is put together through a call for suggestions, alongside commissioned sessions, which come from the Executive Committee, and invited keynote speakers. The advisory board provides various expertise and steers the direction, shape and look of the programme, while the Executive Committee sets the final programme. As the International Congress is primarily for members, the content needs to meet the attendees’ needs. Over the last few years the quality of the programme has been improved to make it a world class event. Alongside the main academic programme there was also a social programme, wellbeing activities, art exhibition and poster presentations.

Keynotes

Keynote speakers for the Congress are chosen and approached by the Executive Committee and invited to speak. It is important for the keynotes to reflect the diversity of the profession and have good gender and ethnicity balance. It is also important for the keynote talks to represent different areas of psychiatry and therefore there needs to be a split between differing academic perspectives and a socio-cultural perspective. There were 17 keynote speakers in total.

Sessions

As with previous years the Congress programme was put together through a general call for suggestions, which was sent to the whole membership. Of 260 proposals submitted 65 were selected for the programme. These tended to be the highest rated sessions following the review process however, to create a balanced programme, all sessions were considered. The remaining six sessions were commissioned by the Executive Committee.

The final programme was made up of 59 sessions, 10 masterclasses and two training courses. These were split into the following streams which ran concurrently.

Clinical Practice
Psychopharmacology
Leadership and management
Ethics
New Science
Quality Improvement
Policy and media
Developmental and personality disorders o Education and training

Posters

For the 2019 International Congress 755 poster abstracts were submitted. Submissions were taken through an online portal and reviewed by the academic faculty in a similar process to the session submissions. Of the 755 posters submitted, 674 were accepted for presentation. The top 60 posters were selected for rapid fire presentations, where authors are given the opportunity, during the lunch break, to speak next to their poster and take questions from the audience. The poster area at the Congress was held in the exhibition hall and all posters, including the rapid-fire presentations, were presented in paper format.

This decision was based on negative delegate and author feedback from previous years where ePosters were used instead. In order for the rapid-fire presentations to be heard effectively in the large exhibition hall, headphones were used as a silent conference. This appeared to work well and again was based on feedback from previous years where delegates had commented that it was often difficult to hear the rapid-fire presentations.

As part of the poster submission process, authors were able to apply for bursaries, which were available to trainees, students and foundation doctors and international delegates from band C or D countries presenting posters. Bursaries can be used towards travel, accommodation and registration fees. For the 2019 Congress, 64 international bursaries were awarded and 80 UK bursaries.

The poster presentations overall received positive feedback from delegates that completed the feedback form, gaining a weighted average of 3.09 where 4 equals excellent.

Social programme

The social programme for the 2019 Congress included the below:

International Delegates Welcome Reception - held at the Royal College of Psychiatrists headquarters and was free to attend. It received a mean score of 3.47 in the delegate feedback, where 4 equals excellent.

Blake Marsh Welcome Reception - took place at ExCel in the exhibition hall on Monday 1 July and was free to attend. The reception was well attended on the day and received a mean score in the delegate feedback of 2.75.

Student and trainee’s dinner - took place on Tuesday 2 July at the Old Brewery in Greenwich and cost £40 per person. The student and trainees’ dinner received a mean score of 3.5.

Congress gala dinner - held at the Cutty Sark on Wednesday 3 July and cost £85 per person. The Gala Dinner received a mean score of 3.34 in the delegate feedback.

Wellbeing programme
For the fist time in 2019 a number of wellbeing activities were added to the Congress programme through the week. These included:

International Congress Psycle
Yoga
Speed coaching
Job planning
Mindfulness
Reflection
Walk
PoeTea

These activities were open to all registered delegates and were complimentary, although pre-booking was required. Uptake for these activities was high with several reaching maximum capacity. The majority of the wellbeing activities scored a mean of 3.00, where 4.00 equals excellent, on the delegate feedback. Only one activity, the walk, scored below this with a mean of 2.67.

Innovation

Wellbeing Programme - was introduced to enhance the delegate experience and included ‘International Congress Phycle’ bike ride, yoga, speed coaching, job planning, mindfulness, reflection, poetry, Congress walk
Social media champions - were introduced to engage members and generate great social media content. Champions were selected through an application process. Their role was to actively engage with and produce content at the Congress and in advance. The social media champions also managed Slido onsite. The Champion role was advertised to psychiatrists at all stages of their career, as well as medical students and foundation doctors.
Slido - was introduced to encourage delegates to ask questions at the end of sessions. Throughout the Congress 430 delegates were active on Sli.do submitting a total of 523 questions, averaging at 7 questions per session. Positive feedback showed that that the tool generated more questions and engaged more delegates.
Silent Conference - headphones for the oral poster presentations. Previously noise in the poster area has caused problems for these presenters. This solution was hugely popular and even encouraged more people to attend the presentations as people wanted to try out the new technology, making a better experience for both audience and speakers.

Photo corner
Data scanners for exhibitors - After feedback from exhibitors in 2018, data scanners were offered to exhibitors to help them capture leads and improve their Congress experience.
Photo corner - We hired large ‘RCPSYCH’ letters to give delegates the opportunity to be playful, take photos and increase the social media buzz.

Challenges

Location - One of the challenges was the very ambitious financial targets set and the high expense of London as a destination.
The venue - A number of challenges arose when working with London ExCel. In particular, different departments (e.g. operations, AV, catering) are outsourced to external companies by ExCel and there were times when communication between the different suppliers was problematic. There were also challenges during the event itself around the conference catering, with portions being too small and vegetarian options running out. These issues were dealt with at the time and resolved by the final day of the conference, but it was frustrating to be let down by the supplier.
Submissions - Several problems arose with the online portal used to collect submissions. Submitters had frequent issues logging in to edit their submission, there were a number of administrative errors in the collection and reporting of the review results and reviewers noted that the system wasn’t particularly easy to use during the review process. As a result, a new system has been implemented for the 2020 submission process, which has so far been very successful.

Achievements

The event met all KPIs set!

Meet financial targets set for registration and exhibition income:

Registration – £990,595 (target), £1,102,250 (actual) – exceeded by 11.27%
Exhibition - £260,000 (target), £327,150 (actual) – exceeded by 25.8%

Cost to revenue ratio to match budget forecast:

Income - £1,250,595 (budget), £1,435,545 (actual)
Expenditure - £774,550 (budget), £774,765 (actual)
Surplus - £476,045 (budget), £654,634 (actual) – exceeded by 37.52%

Number of delegates registered to exceed 3,000:

3,456 delegates registered for the event – exceeded by 15.2%
80% of registered delegates to attend on the day:
87.9% attended on the day – exceeded by 9.88%

High delegate satisfaction measured through post-event survey.

High exhibitor satisfaction measured through post-event survey.

High social media engagement - During Congress 727 tweets were posted on the College twitter page. This generated 1.9 million impressions, an average of 1.1 thousand likes per day and an average of 430 retweets per day. The hashtag RCPsychIC was used in over 13,876 tweets during the four days, making 108.872 million impressions.

In addition to the high quality programme developed by our members, we were also honoured with a number of very special sessions, including a keynote talk from TV personality Louis Theroux, an interview with TV presenter Mark Austin and his daughter Maddie, and a session with Dr Teerakiat Jareonsettasin, Minister of Education, Thailand about the recent Thai cave rescue. These sessions were a real draw for delegates and helped to boost our registration and attendance numbers.

Targets & Statistics

Attendees:

Total bookings: 3,456
This is a 23.6% increase on delegate numbers for the 2018 Congress.
Number of speakers: 254
Number of exhibitors: 319
Speaker gender split: 43% female, 57% male UK delegates: 2,794 (81%)
International delegates: 662 (19%)
Number of countries represented: 65

Exhibitors

Total exhibition stands: 61 (1 platinum, 17 gold, 15 silver, 24 bronze, 3 charities and 1 book seller)
This is a 32% increase in the number of stands we had at the 2018 Congress and a 154% increase from 2017.
44% of exhibitors in 2019 were new business partnerships formed this year.

Financials

In total we invested around £774,765 into the project, and saw an income of £1,435,545. This resulted in a profit of £654,634, which exceeded our budget by £178,589. This was due to registration income exceeding our targets by 11.27% and exhibition sales exceeding targets by 25.8%.

The financial surplus from the Congress gets put back into College funds to allow us to continue to provide excellent services to our members.

What would we do differently?

Explore other venue and destination options
Work more closely with the catering teams to ensure similar issues do not arise
Implement a new system for submissions
Introduce regular blogs to build familiarity and engagement with target audience both before and during Congress
Explore App design to improve static content
Encourage more diverse social media champions and work with them more closely in the lead up to Congress
Make more effective use of Slido – brief social media champions, session chairs and AV teams well in advance
Simplify exhibition booking process – have all options, including smaller advertising opportunities and data scanners on the same form as exhibition stand booking to encourage uptake.

Advice

Know what you want to achieve and have a plan on how to get there
Make it a team effort and make the most of everyone’s strengths
Be ambitious! And once you’ve hit your targets... be even more ambitious!

Feedback & Testimonials

Delegates:

95% of delegates surveyed agreed when asked Did the Congress fulfil your educational goals and expected learning outcomes.
94% of delegates surveyed voted positively when asked How useful for your professional activity did you find this event?
90% of delegates also agreed that attending the Congress will improve their professional practice.
80% of delegates surveyed responded positively when asked How likely is it that you would recommend this course to a friend or colleague.
Surveyed delegates gave the event a net promoter score of 20.

Exhibitors:

89% of survey respondents said they were ‘happy’ or ‘very happy’ that their aims in exhibiting had been met, with an average score of 4.23 out of 5.
86% responded ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ when asked if they were likely to exhibit in 2020 and the remaining 14% were not the decision maker.

Attendee testimonials:

“This was the best Royal College annual meeting I attended in the past 40 years”

- Congress delegate

“I would like to say thank you to organizing team - they were excellent as usual.”