EP 20: Tech It or Leave It: Convincing Your Guests to Embrace Technology

Jeff: Welcome to the Elevate Your Event Podcast, where we talk about how to plan and execute an unforgettable event that will dazzle your guests and generate more income for your organization. From fundraising and securing trendy auction items to event production and logistics, get the best tips and advice from seasoned fundraising and event professionals who have been in your shoes.

Jeff: Welcome back to the Elevate Your Event Podcast, where we talk about all the different ways that you can make your next fundraising event better. And today in the studio, we have the most famous, most asked-for co-host, Diana DuPontchet.

Diana: Hi, guys. It's good to see everybody.

Jeff: And then we have a special guest, one of our favorite Handbid customers. Liz Skull is joining us from beautiful Atlanta, Georgia. And I am hoping -- when I say beautiful, I am hoping it's getting warm there because we're in that season in Denver where it's 75 degrees one day. It is beautiful out today, Liz. But guess what's going to happen tonight? It's going to snow. We're going to get a foot of snow. Whatever you do, don't talk about the beautiful weather in Atlanta because it's going to make me want to go home and make a glass of bourbon and a pot of grits. And it's not going to be good for my family. I'm just saying that right now.

Liz: So I'm crying crocodile tears over here in the springtime.

Diana: She moved to Colorado two years ago?

Jeff: Yeah. And I remember the first year you moved out here and you called me up and you said, "Okay, tell me this is unusual. It's the middle of May and it just snowed." I said, "Well, unfortunately, it's really not." I said, "Diana, it's snowed on my daughter's birthday one day." Now, it never collected on the ground, okay? That was July 28th.

Diana: Oh God, that's bad.

Jeff: It was coming down and I'm thinking, either we're getting ash from a forest fire falling on my backyard or it is actually snowing. But I mean, you can have a 75-degree day in January in Colorado, so it's just one of those things. But we're not here to talk about Colorado weather, are we?

Diana: We're not.

Jeff: Okay. And we are here to talk with Liz about the common objection or statement we get about mobile bidding, which is: "My guests are just simply too old to use technology." So we're going to get into that, but I'm going to make a slight detour here.

Diana: I love detours. Okay. Bring it.

Jeff: So last week we did a podcast on when things go wrong at your event. And Liz, we're certainly not trying to pick on you, but we know you have a story to tell us.

Diana: Liz, you're our hero, really.

Jeff: About your last event. So if you could kindly share with folks what happened at your last event and any advice that you would give listeners who are coming back from the previous episode. How would you deal with a situation like that in the future? Please share with us.

Liz: I'll be happy to. We used to call it the Voila Vala Mardi Gras Ball, and I now call it the Wala Mardi Gras Fall, because I took a really unfortunate fall near the end of the evening. After our live auction, someone handed me a bank bag full of cash because there are a few little things we sell for games that people prefer to pull out a $20 bill and pay us in cash. And I said, "I'm going to take this up front and put it somewhere safe." And as I was leaving the dance floor -- you know how there's a threshold around the wooden dance floor that's mounted in most venues -- that little slippery thing caught me and I went down. I'm told from people who watched me that it was very graceful, that I folded like a table. But I broke my shoulder in two places. So that was 10 weeks ago, February 18th. And today is seven weeks out from surgery. I had this shoulder replaced. So I'm a bionic woman over here.

Jeff: You're a bionic auction manager now.

Liz: Oh, I'm going to put that on my business card. Maybe I can charge more. It's a volunteer. I work for nonprofits, and I am really non-profitable.

Diana: That's right.

Liz: But anyway, that was an emergency event. And here's the advice I have for everyone who's hosting an event. You probably think about emergency plans for a golf event and a fun run event. But for the ballroom, when you're doing a gala event, you probably don't have an emergency plan. It's really worth having one. We had a bit of a problem getting the ambulance onto the property because it was an exclusive club. And they got stopped at the gate, which in the aftermath, I was not very happy to hear.

Jeff: The ambulance was not allowed to enter the facility. I'm still trying to let that sink in.

Liz: I'm not going to say the facility because we're not allowed to say the name of it. But what you want is an emergency plan in case things go awry. I'll just say it -- if your ball turns into a fall, get that on the list. And that's now on our list of things that we prepare for. Because certainly with many people in the room, something could happen. And someone would need to be escorted out or taken out and cared for. So now that's part of our plan. And then the other piece of advice I can give you is it's well worth investing in having a Handbid expert on site with you because I was the auction manager. And I left and the wonderful person from Handbid, her name is Caroline, just stepped into place. In fact, she's the last person I spoke to as I was wheeled out of the ballroom. Tossed it to Caroline. And then on Sunday the next day, when I was home from the emergency room, she contacted me. And all of the volunteers were very complimentary. But I did not worry about that. I didn't really have any choice. I had other things to worry about. But I'm telling you, that was well worth the investment of time. She brought it all down to a close. Everybody took home their prizes for the evening. Everything was balanced. Nothing was missing. Everybody paid their invoices. And that's because Caroline stepped into a position that I usually would have taken care of. Spend the money.

Jeff: Well, that's good to hear. And definitely took a bit of a stress load off of you as you did need to focus on your health.

Diana: Very sorry that happened to you. But our hat is off to you, though. Gosh, I mean, you just let the show go on. There were live auction bids to be entered and things to be done and you just said, "Go do it, Caroline." Guest complaints to handle.

Liz: Yes, you name it.

Diana: That's right.

Liz: And the bank bag full of $700 of cash was safe because I fell on it. It was under me.

Jeff: That worked out great for you.

Liz: It was because I asked the first person who got to my side, I said, "Listen, James, I was carrying a bank bag with a few hundred dollars in it. Did you see where that got off to?" He goes, "You're laying on it." I'm like, "Okay, you're safe."

Jeff: Liz, thank you for sharing that with our listeners. I feel like that is a really extreme example of something that could happen, but these things happen. And we appreciate you sharing your experience with us.

Diana: Yeah.

Jeff: But that's not why we brought her on the show today.

Diana: Yeah, let's switch gears to talk about it because Liz, you've been a Handbid client for a while. And I know at some point in the past, your board made a decision to move from paper bid sheets or however else you were fundraising to go mobile. And I would imagine one of the concerns you had was whether your guests would go for it. And part of that concern might have been that they're just not technology users. Do you remember that conversation you had with your board and the decision-making process around it?

Liz: I most definitely do. And I can back up.

Jeff: I'm seeing a little smirk on your face, Liz.

Liz: And I'm looking at you, Diana. I can back up and tell you that we had been doing benefits for ages, close to 30 years. And we decided to end a relationship with a particular charity that we had been doing for nine years. We'd been having the same beneficiary, and we decided to go off the grid a bit, and we started a Mardi Gras ball for our city. And I obviously jumped on board because I'm originally from South Louisiana, and I have some experience, and I still have family who can do the shopping for us down in New Orleans and South Louisiana. And so our first auction in 2015 -- paper bid sheets, which we'd been doing for 30 years -- we thought, "Let's get techie." And we convinced people to do that. And we used a company that I'm not going to name, that's still around, that lots of people use. And it was a disaster. They made big promises, charged us big bucks, and then didn't deliver. So when that first Mardi Gras Ball was over, I set about doing the due diligence with another friend in researching all the mobile bidding auction platforms. We decided to go with Handbid, and I can tell everyone who's thinking about that -- I probably don't have to tell anyone who is a client of yours -- we stay with you all these years because of the people. It's the people that make the difference to me.

Diana: And so you had some experience with technology, but the disaster was that it was web-based. You had to log into their website. You had to bid through them. Wi-Fi was sketchy because you had to go onto their web page to make it work. It was not an app. It wasn't a mobile bidding app.

Liz: So off we went and did that. Then the night it closed out, they were done. We paid for five people to show up, an auction manager and four auction kiosk managers. And at 11 o'clock, when the band stopped playing and said good night, they disappeared. And they weren't there to help us close it out. So when the mobile bidding app was demoed to us, I thought, "This is great, but how am I going to convince my board?" There were 11 members of the board besides me. And you guys have these great demos. And by the way, it's just fun. It's user-friendly and y'all make it fun. So we did a demo and I went to the board meeting. And you guys equipped me because I said, "What about the what-ifs? What if they ask me this? What if they ask me that?" And so we put together a demo auction and then I asked everybody -- when I did my presentation after the business of the board meeting -- "Please turn on your phones and turn up the volume. I'm going to introduce you to Handbid and we'll get you all on there." And people started bidding. And of course, when it said, "You're winning!" and "Oh no, you're losing!" -- it got to be hilarious. And they were all in. And they were all ages. And they were all degrees of comfort with technology. So they bought into it.

Jeff: So that's great. And I think you made an important point there. Certainly there's probably some correlation between age range and comfort with technology. But we've run into plenty of people that are in their 20s and 30s and 40s that are not tech savvy. Wouldn't you agree?

Liz: Oh, yeah. And then I have an 82-year-old father who has more apps on his phone than I do.

Jeff: Hilariously, he does. And that man can do things to his iPhone I have never seen before in terms of breaking it or getting it into a contorted state. He even came back one day and told me, "Jeff, I stumped the genius at the Apple store."

Diana: That's awesome. I think there's a badge for that.

Jeff: I love that he knows they're called geniuses. Let's dive in a little bit to why the app is kind of unique and different, because when you hear the comment, "I don't think my guests are comfortable with technology," there are different layers to that. The first is, do they even want to use a tablet or a phone at all? Not what kind of interface it is -- just are they used to paper bid sheets and that's what they want? And we have clients that will do it. They'll get complaints from their guests, and then they go back. And we struggle with that because we've consistently seen organizations raise significantly more using a tech platform than with paper bid sheets. But in short, when you are using technology, you change the dynamic of the auction. We talked about this. People are instantly notified when they've been outbid. You can reduce your bidding increments. You create this competitive bidding environment when you're using tech. And it generates more revenue. In my auction, when we launched Handbid in 2011, we doubled our auction revenue. Nothing else really changed. Same people came every year, roughly the same items. So it does work. So when you guys made that change from paper to technology -- I understand you had some struggles with the former mobile bidding company and it didn't work in certain ways, but you didn't go back to paper, right? You guys decided to stay with technology, just pick a different vendor.

Diana: I think that's really remarkable, Liz.

Liz: Well, part of that was my commitment not to go back to paper because this is the reason you go away from paper -- the close out at the end of the night. Because all of these people who say, "But I like the paper bid sheets," they're not there by your side at midnight until 1 o'clock in the morning, finishing up, closing out, getting people settled, breaking up tug of wars. They don't get that. And once I got them to tech, I was not going to let them go back. Once we go forward, we're not going to go back. I'll tell you that there were some silver linings to the pandemic. And one of those is that people learned how to use Zoom. And they learned how to shop on Amazon. And they learned how to order their groceries. So they're comfortable with apps now.

Diana: And they learned how to scan a QR code.

Liz: Exactly. And they love it. They ask for QR codes.

Diana: You get your martini, Liz.

Liz: Yes, exactly. Come on. There was a time when that was the only way you got it brought to your house. So it helped us. And in fact, with the Roswell Women's Club, which is a group of 200 women of all age ranges and ethnic and tech capacities, it made them -- we were able to build an app. We had the good old paper church-like directory for our 200 members, which I was like, "Oh my God, we have to come into the century." And I was trying to talk them into going to a mobile app so we could find each other's phone numbers easily and stay connected. And I was just about to convince them. And then suddenly we were all on lockdown. And they said, "How fast can you get that thing up and running?" So it was just a quick step to get them to go, "Hey, we can't host a gala this year. We can't host a home tour. We can't do that. But we can have an auction." So that was our event.

Jeff: Yeah. And you pointed something out that I think is important for our listeners to hear, which is despite any bumps in the road on a transition from paper to mobile, you stuck with it. And those bumps -- they can be tech bumps. In most cases, at my event, they weren't tech bumps. They were complaints because lots of people do not like change. As one of my old colleagues used to say, the only people that like change are wet babies.

Diana: I never heard you say that. That's like a Southern quote or something.

Jeff: Anyway, the point was that we ran our event, we doubled our auction revenue, our checkout went from -- to Liz's point -- an hour and whatever, to 15 to 20 minutes. And despite all of that, some people complained. So here we go. We go back to the next board meeting. It's all sorts of good news, right? Technology worked. We doubled our auction revenue. Checkout was a breeze. We didn't have all the disasters that we had in previous years around trying to read handwriting on bid sheets and the fights. I can tell you a great fight story between two women over an item. So that was paper. But despite all of that, it's "Well, this person and this person didn't like it. They're some of our biggest bidders and donors." Or "This person felt like they should have won it and they didn't feel like it was fair." So we fielded all of those. But the one thing I said in the beginning, and I did get support from the board, was, "Okay, we can address all these concerns, but let's just make one thing clear -- as a board, we cannot go back."

Diana: Exactly.

Jeff: We cannot go back. We can make changes. We can make adjustments. But did you see what just happened? And to your point, not every board member was sitting next to my wife, calculating invoices for an hour and a half after the event, right? They were sitting back with their feet propped up somewhere.

Diana: They're at the bar. Right.

Jeff: That's totally right. You cannot go back. And guess what happened? The following year, all of the naysayers -- and there weren't many, but when they walked back in and saw it again, they thought, "They must be serious about this." And "I guess I'm just going to have to get on board." They will come around.

Diana: Yeah. They really will. This reminds me of a story. I can't believe I haven't told this story in a long time. So way back, I would say in 2016 or 2017, I was working with a group in D.C. And I show up to their event as on-site staff. And this man comes up to me and he is furious. He has a flip phone and he's like, "This is not what we've done. I can't even believe my eyes." And I said, "Sir, I have a way for you to bid tonight. I have an iPad. I will help you." We went all around the venue and let me tell you something -- he did not place a single bid on an item because they were all over what they normally go for. These items were already so high. They became too expensive. And he was like, "This isn't what I usually spend. I come here and shop. This is what I do for Christmas. And now this is three times my budget." And I said, "Sir, this is a charity event. We're raising money for the community." And guess what -- this is -- oh my God, don't use those words out loud. So the next year I show up again, and I want you to know, he remembered me. He came up to me. He was like, "You're Diana, aren't you?" I said, "Yes." And I think I might have remembered him too. I was like, "Oh, you're such-and-such." He was like, "I want to show you something." He takes out his gleaming new Apple phone and shows me. He was like, "I've been bidding. I'm winning. I'm spending more than I planned, but I don't care. I'm on board this year." I was flabbergasted. I felt like I wanted to cry with joy. I mean, it was really something.

Jeff: No, that's great. And there's a similar story to that at a client in North Carolina.

Diana: Some of our favorites in Greenville, North Carolina.

Jeff: I know where you're going with this one. We walk in there the first year, and they had -- I'm not sure what they did the year before because it was a fairly new event when Handbid came in there. But I just remember they walk up to me and they say, "That gentleman over there" -- who was, I would say, easily in his 70s -- "he is our biggest donor and supporter and he has a flip phone. And we're really nervous about how he's going to be able to handle this because he's not a tech guy." And I said, "We have a solution for this. Don't worry." We could have put him on the iPad, but they had about 20 college student volunteers. And so we just grabbed one. And we said to this girl, "You're going to log in with his information. And you're his personal bidder tonight. You're just going to follow him around the auction area. He's going to tell you what to bid on. And when you get outbid on your phone, you're going to go tell him." So this happened maybe two years in. They may have been a client for seven or eight years. And a few years ago, I go out there and I see him. I say hello. And I said, "So, we'll get you set up with a bidder." He goes, "Oh, no." He pulls out his iPhone and goes, "I got Handbid installed. I know what I'm doing." And to this day, he bids on his own, and they spend $15,000 or $20,000 in the auction. So those are the types of stories where, again, if you just stay on track -- stay the course -- your donors, your bidders, your guests, they will come around on this despite the flack you might get. Any sort of change -- you change the venue, you change the theme, you change the caterer, whatever it is -- someone's going to complain about it.

Diana: Well, I would like Liz to have the final story here because, Liz, I think the evolution of where you came from with your paper bid sheets to this mobile situation that didn't work out, and then the story that you told about bringing Handbid to your board -- you mentioned that you kind of presented to them. I think that's a really interesting and remarkable idea. Did you say to them, "Listen, I've been researching and I think I have the one. I want you to go ahead and install this on your phone"? And did you specifically ask them to use the app instead of the mobile interface?

Liz: Yes. I came back because they didn't really know that it wasn't successful, because they weren't there. They left the venue and me and a team of three volunteers dealt with the fallout of getting people out the door with their prizes. And we were there until the next day. It was 2 o'clock in the morning before we left the venue by the time we got all that settled. And still had to chase down people to pay invoices because they didn't self-pay. They had to check out with us. So when the board came back -- "Oh, great, great results." Of course, we did raise a little bit more money because they were doing it, but they had to have a device and they had to have access to the internet. And that was kind of before venues had free Wi-Fi in the room. But the board was like -- and many of them were in their 30s -- "Oh, but we just want to go back. We want to go back to paper bid sheets." And it's what Jeff said: you just have to stay the course. We got to stay mobile. I can't do that anymore. And that was a long time ago. I'm older now. There's got to be a way to do it that is fun, user-friendly, and will help us multiply. Because it's a fundraiser after all -- I need us to make more money. Not that that's all on Handbid. First you got to put together a nice auction and offer some really good stuff for people to bid on. But anyway, back to that point, it's keeping your board engaged. But you can show them analytics now. I can show you. I will proudly tell you, I was speaking with Elise yesterday. She said, "I hope you're getting some rest today." I'm like, "I don't know if I can rest enough. Did you see our total?" And she went, "What? You did three times what you did last year." Yep, same auction, same time frame because we had a multi-day auction. We opened it on Wednesday night at a preview party and didn't close it till Saturday at the end of the home tour. And we did three times the revenue.

Diana: Very wise choice.

Jeff: Yeah, and that's a benefit of mobile bidding, right? So let's talk, as we kind of finalize this last segment, about the app. This is obviously the elephant in the room. Although, maybe the elephant on the podcast. Maybe the elephant in your car. I don't know where you're listening. But anyway, we decided to build an app back in 2010-2011 time frame, specifically because we believed -- and we still do -- that it's going to drive higher user engagement and be easier to use than a mobile web page. Now, we offer both. So for those people that would prefer not to put an app on their phone and would prefer to open up a web page on their phone and use that -- they can. The struggle with that, and I think obviously the pandemic taught people to download apps -- can you order a Starbucks coffee through a web page? I don't think so. And I know you can't deposit checks through a web page. You're pretty certain that you have to have your bank's app. So I think people of all ages got real comfortable with that. But we'll be honest, right? Over the years, going back to 2011, roughly -- and I actually know the exact figure -- 17% of mobile subscribers in the U.S. owned a smartphone. That number's in the high 80s right now. But going to a fundraiser, I will tell you it is 100%. 100% of the people walking in those doors today have a smartphone. Now, whether they bring it or not is a different story, but they have one. So you've already kind of tackled that issue. So why an app? Well, the advantages that we see are, one, accessibility. So if you have a seasoned user --

Diana: And I'm going to put myself in that category.

Jeff: We're getting there. Yes. The font type is bigger on my phone. My kids think I'm -- "Dad, what happened?" It's like, "I can't read it when it's that small." So the font type, I've increased the font size on my phone. You can mess with the contrast and ratios and all that kind of stuff and create a high contrast for people who can't really see grays on whites. Well, the beauty is a native app can pull all of those settings into it. The website will not. Without the user having to make any changes to their phone.

Diana: That's right.

Jeff: So that was one big reason. Two, they're more responsive. Obviously, you can stick your finger on the screen and move it around and the app should do something like scroll or whatever. And that's easier to do than on the web. The other reason is that we can do certain things as it relates to notifying the user and getting them engaged through an app. When you get alerted that you've been outbid, we can send that notification directly to the device digitally, not a text message. Because what's a text message going to do? It's going to take me out of my website to my text messages to read that I got outbid and then I have to go back into the web page to respond to that. With the app, they're going to pop right in there. We can vibrate the phone and we can play sounds. And Liz was mentioning earlier, this idea that not only can I vibrate the phone, I can play a sound that's very distinctive so that the user knows exactly what happened. Because ding, ding, ding -- if that's your text message sound, that could be "I've been outbid." It could be my kids wanting the Netflix password. It could be whatever. You don't know. But when you hear "Oh no!" you know exactly what it is. So those are the things that we did purposefully around that. And the objections over the years I think are getting better. But when we hear from people saying, "Oh, my guests will not want to download an app," the first answer is, well, they don't have to. But they're going to want to. And Diana, I've seen you do this, so I know you're really good at it. I'll reinforce what I'm about to say: people will pretty much do what you ask them to do at an event.

Diana: Totally.

Jeff: Yeah. "We're going to the app store. Let's go." "What do I do?" "We're going to download this Handbid app and you're going to click the link I just sent you." No one looks at me anymore and says, "Really?" They don't. And so they just download the app, they click the link, and they're like, "Yeah, this is great. So easy." So I'd encourage you not to make that decision for your guests. Let them make the decision when they walk in the door. "Hey, there's three ways you can bid here. You can bid from your phone, either from the web or from an app, or if you don't want to use your phone at all, we have tablets." And sometimes it's funny, they'll say, "Well, I don't want to bid in this auction." This is the grumpy voice. And these are the people where you think, we need a little checkmark in the mobile bidding app that says, "Don't invite this person next year." The one that's like, "I'm not going to spend any money today." What are we doing here then? But anyway, they'll say, "Oh, I'll just use the tablets." So they go out there, they see something they like in the auction, they go to your strolling auctioneer. Your strolling auctioneer puts a bid in for them. And then they get a text saying they've been outbid. So they keep going back and doing this. And finally -- I kid you not, 75% of the time or more -- they're like, "Okay, how do I get this on my phone? Help me. Help me get set up." Easy. "Come over here. I'll help you out."

Liz: I'll go one more for you, Jeff. We have in our script, when someone comes to the door to check in, we don't say, "Let's get you registered for the auction." Sorry, we don't use that word. We say, "Let's get you registered for all the events tonight." Most of them will say to you, "Oh, I'm not going to bid." And that's fine if they make that choice, but we don't give them that option upfront. We say, "Let's get you registered for all the fun events."

Diana: But what about your champagne lady?

Liz: Exactly. What about all your other fun games?

Jeff: Yeah. So that's part of the check-in script.

Liz: And that is -- I love it. I will tell you, one of my proudest moments at the Mardi Gras ball -- before the fall -- was a long-time top sponsor, usually one of our top three bidders, he came to me and said, "Liz, I got to learn. Teach me how to use this max bid so I can go have some fun." And I took him aside and I said, "Mr. Bruce, it's pretty easy. Let's get this done." And he goes -- I said, "Which items would you like to place a max bid on?" And he walked me over to them. And I said, "Okay, let's figure out how much you're willing to pay for that." And later in the night, his son approached me. He said, "I think my dad set a max bid. Did you teach him how to do that?" And I'm like, "I don't tell. That's private."

Jeff: We don't tell them.

Liz: That's right. But he's come around. But senior bidders are teachable.

Diana: That's what you're saying. Senior bidders are teachable.

Liz: I don't like to use that word, but old dogs can learn new tricks. I'm evidence. They can.

Jeff: Well, and I was at a completely unrelated event, I'd say two weeks ago. It's a networking event. I meet this gentleman. And he's a seasoned person as well, no doubt. And so they said, "Hey, this is Jeff. He works for Handbid." "Oh, Handbid, I have your app on my phone." I'm like, "You've got to be kidding me." So he pulls his phone out and starts flipping through pages of apps. He goes, "Yep, here it is right here. I just used this a few weeks ago." And sure enough, he pulls it up and there was an auction he had been bidding in. There you go. I mean, people, when they get comfortable with it -- and this gentleman was no different -- they not only remember it, they know how to get back in it. Imagine if you're just bidding from the web and then that goes away. Or you lose the page somehow. You have to go hunt down the email. But this is on your home screen. And that's really an untold, massive advantage for charities who are using mobile bidding companies that have an app -- that you are now getting yourself a spot on a user's home screen on a device they take with them everywhere.

Diana: That's right.

Jeff: And that is powerful. And for all those charities out there thinking you're going to go build your own app for your charity, keep in mind you might get your members to download it, but that's hard in most cases. Whereas nobody's going to argue with you when they walk into your event because they want to spend money with you. They want to support you. So when you say, "Put this app on your phone, start bidding in this auction," they're very unlikely to delete that. And you have the ability now to communicate with them throughout the year, honestly. So just keep that in mind as you're thinking through the advantages. And will your seasoned bidders get on board with this? In our experience, they will. We've seen that for sure. Change is uncomfortable for people that are just uncomfortable with change. But as it relates to age range, the numbers are startling. I shared a graphic with Diana and Kristen earlier today, Liz, and I'll share it with you guys later. Maybe we'll post it in the podcast. But it shows you for digital usage, what the share of digital usage is by age range. I think the categories are desktop, native app on a phone, and then web on a phone and tablet. When you're looking at the mix, clearly, if you're looking at somebody 18 to 25, it's native app on their phone. And when you get down to the highest age range -- I think it was 65 or above -- native apps on phones are less, but it's still 45% of a user's time in that range. And number two is actually tablet.

Diana: Wow.

Jeff: Yeah. So I'd say a lot of seasoned bidders like iPads, and you can put the Handbid app on your iPad if you want. But then mobile web was like three or six percent or something like that. So when you're thinking about, "Hey, I'm going to do mobile bidding and I want to provide a solution that my seasoned bidders are going to be comfortable with," well, go look at how they use technology today. They're not big mobile web users. They're not tapping on the Safari button and opening up a web page. So just keep that in mind. It's a Comscore report, and love Comscore to death -- they're great at data and analysis. It was an interesting graphic that I thought applied to this particular topic as well.

Diana: Yeah, for sure.

Liz: We appreciate you. And I appreciate Handbid. Y'all have made it easy for me and you've walked it through for me. Obviously, we have challenges. Y'all are very open to suggestions, constructive criticism. And I like that a lot, that you're responsive to it. Because we've come a long way in suggestions and you follow through because you get it. You were fundraisers before you were a mobile bidding app. So you fix the problems that we all have walked through. And that makes it easy for me to endorse you for sure. But mostly it's because of the people and you deliver the promises that you make.

Jeff: Thank you for that. I appreciate that. This has been a great conversation. Hopefully all of the listeners out there found this valuable information. And I think we should continue down this path and pick up with paper versus tech. We didn't even get into the auction. But we'll do that again in the future. And Liz, we'd love to have you back on. Until then, heal.

Liz: Yes. Thank you.

Diana: All the rest. We are sending prayers of healing towards you, the bionic auction manager. Maybe we'll send you a QR code for a martini. We'll see.

Liz: Please do.

Jeff: All right. Thank you so much, Liz. Well, that'll wrap up this episode of Elevate Your Event Podcast. Thanks to everybody for listening, and we'll be back in a week with another episode.