Executive Summary
The Association of Energy Services Professionals successfully hosted its 35th Annual Conference from March 10-13. The event leveraged Whova’s event services, enhancing participant engagement through networking features and facilitating efficient communication via the announcement tool. Additionally, the team streamlined event management by utilizing Whova’s webpage creation tool, ensuring seamless synchronization of event information.
About the AESP Conference
The Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP) is a nonprofit, membership-based organization dedicated to advancing education, training, and community building within the clean energy industry. The organization has members including utilities, consultants, implementers, researchers, clean power vendors, and government and state employees.
AESP’s 2025 Annual Conference & Expo is a premier energy industry conference dedicated to energy efficiency and other key aspects of clean energy. It brings together clean energy professionals to advance solutions, share knowledge, and foster community. For the past thirty five years, AESP has hosted its annual conference, bringing together thousands of members to connect, collaborate, and share insights within the industry.
Total Messages
Attendees Profile Views
%
Announcements Open Rate
Agenda Webpage Views
Challenges
Time-Consuming Update Implementation
In the past, implementing agenda changes would require the AESP conference organizers to involve their marketing team to manually update both the organization’s website and the event site directly. This process was time-consuming, especially when multiple changes were necessary.
Limited Attendee Networking Opportunities
Previously, AESP conference attendees lacked direct digital communication with each other, requiring organizers to manage attendee communications directly. If one attendee wanted to reach out to another, the organizer had to facilitate the connection, as the only alternative was attempting to find the individual in person, with no direct communication method available.
Inefficient Real-Time Communication with Attendees
AESP organizers struggled with inefficient communication methods, which made it time-consuming to keep attendees informed during the event. They aimed to eliminate repetitive explanations and sought to implement a system for scheduling updates and reminders.
Solutions
Simplify Your Workflow with Automated Webpage Synchronization
AESP organizers loved how the event webpages feature seamlessly synchronized event information, ensuring that updates were instantly reflected. They enjoyed the ability to efficiently create and manage the agenda, with all changes automatically syncing to the event webpages for a smooth experience. This feature saved their team valuable time and energy, allowing them to focus on other important aspects of event planning.
Agenda Webpage
To embed the agenda webpage, the organizers went to the ‘Agenda Webpage’ tab under Marketing, customized the design, and selected a template. After completing the modifications, they clicked ‘Add to My Website’ to copy the embed code and integrate it. Once embedded, updates made in the Agenda Center automatically synced with the webpage, saving time and eliminating manual edits – allowing organizers to focus on other critical event planning tasks.
“One of the things that’s really nice on our end is being able to build out the Agenda in Whova and then have it built in directly into our webpage. We can make changes in one place in Whova and that’s automatically updated on our website without having our marketing team go in and make individual edits.” – Jenny Senff, Vice President of Programs and Education at AESP
The seamless agenda webpage kept attendees updated throughout the event.
Speaker Webpage
In addition to the agenda webpage, AESP organizers created a dedicated speaker webpage by following the same process through the “Speaker Webpage” tab. Once embedded, updates made in the Speaker Center automatically synced with the webpage.
“We have a speaker webpage built out from the speaker portal in Whova. Having all that in one place, and where speakers can update their information and bios and that’s just automatically populated on the website, is really helpful. ” – Jenny Senff, Vice President of Programs and Education at AESP
Other Webpages
Beyond speakers, event organizers can also create webpages for sponsors, exhibitors, artifacts, logistics, and the venue, ensuring all key event details are easily accessible and well-organized for a seamless event experience.
Simplify Networking through Meet-Ups and Direct Messaging
With features like attendee list access, private messaging, and meet-up opportunities, AESP Conference attendees seamlessly connected and engaged. These tools enhanced networking, strengthened community building, and boosted overall event engagement. AESP organizers achieved all of this with minimal moderation, allowing attendees to take the lead in fostering connections and discussions.
Direct Messaging
Direct Messaging was a popular feature among AESP Conference attendees, who used it to connect with each other seamlessly. They accessed it through the Whova app, navigating to the Attendees tab, selecting a profile, and tapping the message button to start a chat.
Meet-Ups
AESP Conference attendees created 29 meet-ups, including a Wednesday morning run, Women in Energy Leadership, themed chats, and community topic discussions. Organizers set up these meet-ups to foster community building in an informal environment. Attendees could suggest or view meet-ups through the app or web portal by accessing the Community tab.
Attendees formed stronger connections with easy access to event meet-ups.
Update Attendees in Real-Time with Announcements
The AESP organizers made great use of Whova’s ability to send and schedule announcements, keeping attendees in the loop about activities and last-minute issues. With an impressive 83% announcement open rate, they ensured attendees were consistently informed and engaged with event updates. This high open rate indicated that participants relied heavily on announcements to stay up-to-date with key event information.
The system not only boosted attendance and engagement but also made problem-solving more efficient. For example, when there was a delay in name badge delivery, the organizers quickly sent an update, saving time and eliminating the need to contact each attendee individually. Similarly, important details, like lost and found updates, were communicated swiftly, minimizing disruptions.
Organizers sent real-time or scheduled announcements to keep attendees informed.
“It was very easy to set up an alert for the attendees, to say there’s a delay with the name badges and a new alert once they were ready, so everyone could come by the registration desk. A big percentage of our attendees were able to see the announcement and it just saved them time from stopping by and asking the same question over and over.” – Jenny Senff, Vice President of Programs and Education at AESP
AESP used announcements for reminders and last-minute changes to keep everyone on track.
Testimonial
Our attendees like it. Our staff likes it. It’s been a good app for us.
Two years ago we tried a different vendor. Then, at that annual conference we did have a lot of people asking where Whova was. They liked being able to talk one-on-one, especially with other attendees. And that was a particular solution we lacked, that Whova had.