engagement Archives -

4 Common Questions We Get About Hybrid Events

It has been a little over a year, but the world is still adjusting to functioning during a pandemic and the events industry space is no exception. In fact, 89% of companies have reported that they cancelled in-person conferences because of the pandemic and replaced them with virtual conferences.

Just like there was a pivot when the pandemic started, now that people are getting vaccinated, we are seeing a new pivot. And the new norm for the events industry is hybrid events.

What Exactly is a Hybrid Event?

The simple answer to this question is that hybrid events bridge the best of both worlds of in-person and virtual conferences. This approach has allowed brands to reach a wider audience.

Taking it a step further, it’s important to note that hybrid events offer unique experiences for both the in-person components and the virtual components. A common mistake is that some brands stream their in-person presentations online and call it a hybrid event. So, while hybrid events bridge the two worlds, they also treat them separately to foster high engagement rates and provide a great experience for all attendees.

What Makes a Hybrid Event Stand Out?

Let’s discuss the basics of what makes a good hybrid event since it’s a relatively new concept.

Hybrid events embrace audience engagement. For the in-person potion, it’s easy to get attendees to participate and network. Gleaning from what we know about virtual events, attendees can be engaged with polls and Q&A sessions.
Hybrid events should be insightful. There definitely have been brands who create conferences for conferences sake and this mentality needs to be changed. Key takeaways and opportunities need to be conveyed to get people to sign up for your event.
Hybrid events need to prioritize speakers. High profile and interesting speakers are what sparks the interest of a potential attendee. So, allocate enough time to identify and recruit speakers and feature them on all of your event material.
Hybrid events should be flexible and offer attendees a variety of in-person and online sessions that attendees can choose from. Many event planners use multiple tracks in the virtual part of the event so that attendees can choose their topics.

What Goals Do Hybrid Events Accomplish?

One thing that people love about events in general is that they accomplish many goals within one strategy. Hybrid events achieve more than only in-person events or only virtual events as hybrid events can reach more people. Check out the most common goals we see and determine if you would like to accomplish these same goals for your own brand.

Thought leadership
Lead gen
Monetization
Brand awareness
Networking
Reusable content

What Are the Next Steps For Me To Host a Hybrid Event for My Brand?

Have we gotten you excited about hybrid events!? If you’re ready to get moving on your own such event, here is a list of your next steps so that you can pull off a hybrid event with smashing success. Note that from ideation to the day your event takes place, you should give yourself at least 3 months to execute it properly.

Brainstorm a name for your event
Pick a location for the in-person portion
Choose a platform like vConferenceOnline to stream the virtual portion of your event
Create a landing page where you will collect registrants
Reach out to thought leaders that align with the theme of your event and recruit them to present
Make a marketing plan to promote your event

Have you attended a hybrid event? We’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!

A Virtual Conference Checklist

We are so passionate about virtual events here at vConferenceOnline because they are the best lead gen strategy that we’ve ever seen. However, to reach the fullest potential, a virtual conference must be well organized and strategic in all steps to pull off this type of event.

Because we’ve helped over 1,000 brands host a virtual event, we have it down to a science. In order to support your next virtual conference, here is a checklist you can print off, hang on the wall and use it to organize your event.

Planning

Don’t get ahead of yourself and start promoting your event without having all of the details in place.

Name your virtual conference
Get a logo designed for your event
Write a tagline for your event
Choose the date(s) it will stream
Hone in on your budget
- Budget for conference platform
- Budget to promote event
- Budget to pay speakers (optional)
Determine if you want to have vendor booths
If having vendor booths, do you want to charge?
Determine goals for your virtual conference
- Target number of attendees
- Number of qualified leads
- Decide how many speakers you want
- Establish if you are doing the event for lead gen and/or monetization
Make a list of speakers that would appeal to your target consumers

Organizing

Once your details are outlined, it’s time to do some actionable steps to pull off your virtual conference.

Pitch potential speakers
Create a landing page for your event’
- Presentation timeslots
- Speaker bios and headshots
- Lead capture form
Set up the workflow and emails that go out to people who register for your event
Make a marketing plan for your conference
Build out the virtual environment
- Conference halls
- Vendor booths
- Resource library
- Networking lounge
Create resources for speakers

Promoting

A good rule of thumb is to start promoting your virtual conference 6 weeks before it goes live.

Create graphics for social media
- LinkedIn
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Instagram
Utilize both paid and organic posting on all of your social channels
Pre-write social posts and email copy for your speakers to leverage to their audience
Purchase email blasts from like-minded brands
Research digital newsletter slots
Email your brand’s network of contacts
Incentivise attendees to invite their connections
Write guest posts on high profile blogs linking to your conference landing page
Publish a press release about your event

Post-Event

After your event streams, your work isn’t done as you can still leverage your event after it takes place.

Publish recording of your event
Email out the landing page for recording of presentations
Create a lead nurturing program for everyone who registered
Analyze data/goals
Send thank you notes to speakers

If you want some actionable virtual events insights, we are hosting a virtual conference about virtual events best practices on June 29th and we’d love to see you there! Sign up for free here.

How to Foster Engagement During Your Next Virtual Event

With a plethora of virtual event technology, consumers expect to be able to interact with brands digitally and the best way to meet consumers where they’re at is through virtual events.

One of the best ways to gauge event success is to track engagement. The more engaged attendees are, the higher the chance of them converting from a lead to a sale. So, it’s crucial to sprinkle interactive elements throughout your virtual events.

There are many types of virtual events and you can read all about them here. One thing that all of the event types have in common is that there should be built in features to encourage engagement between attendees and brands.

To make sure your next virtual event is a smashing success, consider the following strategies which will help foster higher engagement rates.

Pre-Event Communication

Don’t wait until your event streams to interact with attendees. Get people excited about your virtual event by keeping up conversation about it on email and social media.

Marketing your event: When marketing your event, utilize speaker headshots, topic themes, etc. to make it an event that people will want to attend. Always mention that if they have a time conflict, the event will be available on demand so that they will sign up regardless of their schedules.

Interact with attendees before the event: Once people sign up for your event, keep the communication going to build excitement. Drip emails leading up to your event and encourage attendees to invite their friends and/or coworkers to your event. Lead with messaging about key takeaways, your top speakers,etc.

Polling

Polls are arguably the most popular way to foster engagement. Asking questions during the event and discussing the results in real-time sparks curiosity and incentivises attendees to stick around.

Ask questions that are multiple choice so you can quickly display data in a digestible way.

Plan your polls strategically because they will offer great data to be used in blog posts, social messages, etc.

Be sure to pick a platform with polling functionality like ours!

Vendor Booths

Not only do vendor booths provide a way for you to monetize your virtual events, but they also are a great way for attendees to interact with your brand and/or other brands that sponsor your virtual event.

Vendor booths in virtual events have the same functionality as in-person booths. Attendees can stop at the booths and chat with staff via text chat or video chat. It’s a great way to add a humanized element to your events and generate new leads and sales.

Networking Lounge

Take advantage of networking lounge functionality to interact with attendees in an organic way.

Unlike a vendor booth where attendees expect to talk about your brand, the networking lounge is a more organic way to foster engagement. When networking with attendees, be sure to stray away from sales pitches and instead, have humanized conversations with them.

Gamification

Spruce up your event with gamification to encourage engagement. The form of gamification we do a lot here at vConferenceOnline is to create a points system to reward attendees for completing certain items. Points are often awarded for visiting vendor booths, attending whole sessions, asking questions, etc.

Keep in mind that a little bit goes a long way. So offering prizes of $50-$100 gift cards to Amazon will really ramp up the amount of engagement you see at your next virtual event. After all, who doesn’t like a little fun and competition?

Social Media

It is smart to have event interaction take place within your platform and on social media. When attendees post on social while attending a virtual event, their friends and followers are likely to join in and this leads to new attendees.

Designate a hashtag for your event so that you can follow the social conversations.

Q & A Time

Whether you’re doing a webinar or an all day summit, be sure that presenters leave time at the end so that attendees can ask questions. Encourage questions and they can be asked in the event platform or on social media.

Attendees want to gain as much knowledge and strategies from virtual events as they can, so make them feel part of the event by allowing them to weigh in with their questions.

Do you have any additional strategies that brands can implement to increase engagement at virtual events? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

The 7 Different Types of Virtual Events You Need to Know About

It’s no secret that the state of the planet has led to a huge pivot from in-person events to virtual events. While it’s understandable why so many brands are jumping on board to virtual events, this has led to a saturation in the online events space. So, it’s your job to breathe some creativity and engagement into your new events strategy.

Here at vConferenceOnline, we have been helping brands like yours host virtual events for over 10 years and want to offer you some insights on the different events you can host to engage attendees, generate leads and close deals.

Research shows that virtual events are cheaper to execute than in-person events and have the ability to reach a wider audience. In fact, since so many brands have hosted virtual events after the pandemic started, many companies report that virtual events are here to stay even when the world goes back to normal.

To inspire your next event, here are the 7 types of virtual events that we see and some tips on how you can host such an event successfully.

Webinars

What is it?: Webinars are the most popular type of virtual event. They are composed of 1-5 speakers and can reach an audience that spans the entire globe. The goal of these events is to educate, promote thought leadership and to generate leads. The average webinar lasts 1 hour and leaves time at the end for questions.

Pro tip: Utilize polls and a Q & A period to maximize the engagement during your webinar.

Roundtable Events

What is it?: A roundtable event consists of multiple speakers weighing in on a topic in one session. There is a moderator to make sure everyone gets heard. Usually the goal for this type of event is to generate new leads and establish thought leadership with intelligent discussions.

Pro tip: Don’t incorporate a sales pitch into your event. Consumers are smart and can spot a sales effort in seconds. Be sure you’re adding value and your event will go swimmingly.

Conferences and Summits

What is it?: A virtual conference aka a summit lasts for 1-3 days. This type of event features a variety of speakers and more attendees than the other types of virtual events. Conferences and summits usually aim to incorporate all the functionality of an in-person event. This includes conference halls, virtual libraries, networking lounges, vendor booths, and sponsors.

Pro tip: After your conference runs, make the sessions available online to attract new eyeballs and generate leads on an ongoing basis.

Trade Shows

What is it?: Virtual trade shows feature vendor booths and presentations that showcase a product or service. Networking and lead gen are central themes to these types of events. Usually the vendor booths have webcam functionality to humanize the feel of a virtual trade show.

Pro tip: Monetize your trade shows by charging vendors to be part of your event. Keep in mind that you need to show value to these vendors which usually comes in the form of how many attendees are signed up for your event. This means that the monetizing component comes after you start marketing the event and signing up attendees.

Employee Hiring and Training

What is it?: From job fairs to recruit new talent to team building in a virtual world to training a large amount of employees–virtual events are a great way to engage with your workforce. In an increasingly virtual world, brands need events like this to maximize the potential of their workforce.

Pro tip: Productive employees result from great communication and humanized interaction. The more you can bridge the gap from a desire for in-person communication to the reality that business is done remotely, the more talent you will harness from your employees.

Workshops

What is it?: Virtual workshops are all about education and providing value to the people who join your event. Oftentimes, the thought leadership and teaching is extremely enticing to attendees and they’re willing to pay to attend these types of events.

Pro tip: In order for attendees to get value out of your workshops, limit signups to a small group so that you can give customized strategies to the attendees. This will make your workshop feel exclusive.

Fireside Chats

What is it?: Fireside chats have gotten really popular in the startup space and are compiled of a moderator and a speaker or speakers. The goal with these types of virtual events is to reach potential consumers in a humanized and conversational way.

Pro tip: Find a moderator that resonates with your target consumers. They need to know the questions to ask and interact at an engaging level with the speakers.

What is your favorite type of virtual event? We’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!

The Ultimate Guide to Monetizing Your Virtual Conferences

Virtual conferences have dramatically increased in popularity in a Covid-19 world. However, we’ve been helping brands host virtual conferences for over 15 years and have helped over 1,000 brands host virtual events. Over the years we have observed what works and one of the things we see a lot of is brands monetizing their virtual events.

In this post, we will explore how to monetize virtual conferences based on tangible evidence that we have gained from learning through our customers. There are many different ways to monetize virtual events successfully and we are going to go over all of those.

Over half of our customers have monetized virtual events in some way successfully. Some do it to offset the cost of executing a virtual conference to break even and some do it to make revenue. So, let’s dive in!

Put the Pieces in Place to Make Your Conference Appealing

Monetization doesn’t happen right away. You need to organize a virtual conference that looks appealing to sponsors and attendees. Once the right pieces are in place, you can start monetizing it. Don’t know the pieces to put in place? Here is a list:

Event theme
Goals need to be defined
Create a timeline
Recruit speakers early
Create a landing page with speaker headshots and brand logos with a teaser blurb of what people can expect from your conference
Pick the date that your virtual conference will stream
A plan for vendor booths
The marketing plan for maximizing the amount of attendees you will have

Define Your Goals to Determine How to Monetize

Our customers come to us with a variety of goals they hope to achieve with virtual conferences. We’ve helped people with a variety of goals and coach them on how to create a conference that achieves these goals. Here are some common goals that we see and the type of event that accommodates these goals:

Thought leadership: In order to position your brand as a thought leader in your industry, hosting an event with expert speakers is in order. Find the best speakers and leverage them to get like-minded brands to pay for a vendor booth at your virtual conference.
Networking: Interacting with attendees who are also potential consumers is one of the most common goals that we see. Make your event free for attendees so you maximize the amount that you have and monetize your event through sponsored commercials that play in between presentations. Emphasize to your attendees that they need to check out the networking lounge so that you can interact with them.
Make a profit: Some of our customers cite their main goal of making a profit. If this is you then you should consider charging attendees, charging for vendor booths, charging speakers to present, and charging for commercial style clips in between presentations.
Lead gen: Another common goal we see a lot when it comes to virtual conferences is lead gen. In order to gain a lot of new leads you’ll want to make your event free to attend. But, you can monetize by charging presenters to speak and/or charging for vendor booths.

Once you have honed in on your goals, it’s time to explore the options you have to monetize your virtual conference.

The Rundown on Charging Attendees

We see a lot of companies charge attendees for their virtual conferences. It’s very doable but it yields a smaller amount of attendees. So if your goal is lead gen, this is not a good option for you.

A good tactic to try is to offer some presentations and features of your virtual conference for free and then have a premium ticket option for attendees to purchase where they have access to more presentations and resources. It’s a balanced approach and we highly recommend it.

About half of our clients have charged attendees and they usually charge $300 or less per ticket. If you plan to do this, make sure that your landing page and marketing materials convey a lot of value.

Commercial Ads Are Always an Option

Commercial ads are simple to incorporate and are an easy way to monetize your virtual conference.

When making your conference schedule, leave 5-10 minutes in between presentations to play commercials.

After you start getting attendees to register and you have an awesome lineup of speakers, pitch the commercial slots to like-minded brands who would want to be in front of your attendees.

Charging for Vendor Booths

Vendor booths are arguably the best way to monetize a virtual conference.

Our platform offers the functionality for attendees to do video sessions with the booth owners and allows them to be super engaged.

Consider offering your vendors a slot in your virtual conference lineup so that they can encourage attendees to visit their booth.

Speakers and How to Make it Appealing for Them to Pay to Present

Charging speakers to present is a little less common than the other monetization strategies that we’ve explored but it’s doable.

If you’re going to charge speakers, you have to make your virtual conference extremely valuable. You need to set aside the marketing budget so that you can gather thousands of attendees. You should also consider offering them a robust package like a vendor booth to compliment their presentation.

If you are going to charge speakers, it’s smart to offer them the list of attendees who view their presentations so they can email them and spark a conversation.

Offsetting the Cost of Producing a Virtual Conference

While virtual conferences are cheaper to produce than in-person conferences, they still come with some costs. You need the budget for a virtual conference platform as well as a marketing budget to promote it. We see a lot of people monetize pieces of their virtual conference to break even with the costs of running a successful virtual conference.

How Virtual Conferences Compare to Monetizing In-Person Conferences

View virtual conferences as the new norm and think about how they are replacing in-person conferences. The virtual conference environment was created to mimic in-person events.

Think about how in-person conferences are monetized. Attendees pay for tickets, brands pay for booths and there are sponsors providing swag. Virtual conferences can accommodate all these components and cost a lot less to produce. Win-win.

Final Thoughts

Whether you want to break even and offset your virtual conference costs or make a profit, there are a few ways you can monetize your event. From charging attendees to vendor booths and more, you have a lot of options.

Be sure to outline your goals before deciding to monetize your event and create a virtual conference plan accordingly.

Do you have any tips or insights when it comes to monetizing a virtual conference? We would love to hear all about it in the comments below!

How to Boost Virtual Event Registrations

So you want to host a virtual event. From small events like one-person webinars to all-day conferences with 20 speakers–your virtual event deserves leverage and the maximum amount of attendees.

Lining up speakers and organizing an event is a lot of work. And if you put in a lot of effort, of course, you want a lot of attendees to be part of your awesome virtual event. There are other events occurring that compete with your event, so you need to stand out.

In this post, we will explore both paid and organic strategies to boost attendees for your next virtual conference.

Allocating Enough Time

When you are working on your virtual event timeline, it’s crucial to allocate enough time for you to promote your event and for attendees to plan for it.

For a large event like an all-day virtual conference, budget 6 weeks from ideation to launch day. If it’s a smaller event like a single webinar, plan 4 weeks ahead of time.

Leverage Your Speakers

Great speakers will power your virtual conference. Secure these thought leaders before you start promoting your event so that you can leverage them.

Headshots of your speakers on your landing page and marketing materials will make your target consumers want to sign up for your event.

Additionally, your speakers are a powerful asset in getting attendees. Help them share the details of your event on social and email. When you write the copy for the influencers, it makes it super easy for them to share your event.

Convey Value

When marketing your event, you get a very small amount of time to convey a lot of information.

Create a landing page for your event and feature headshots of your top speakers, logos to brands participating and of course, the details of the event laid out cohesively.

Determine what questions and pain points your conference can serve. Flip the pain points on their heads and utilize this information for marketing verbiage.

When marketing your event, use messaging that makes your target audience feel like they need to register right away. Messages like “the price will increase tomorrow” or “there are a limited amount of spots left” will create a sense of urgency.

The Power of Email

Our brands that have hosted virtual events have had more success with email marketing more than any other strategy to promote a virtual event.

In fact, 76% of marketers report that email is the single most effective way to drive event registrations.

Tap into your own network and invite them to your event. Explore email blasts from like-minded brands. Email blasts can be a dedicated email or a space in their online newsletter.

We recommend that you use 75% of your virtual event promotion budget on email.

Your Social Media Strategy

Second to email, social media promotion is an important asset to your virtual event marketing plan.

Post organically on your social media channels about your event. Start promoting as soon as your speakers are lined up and post on each channel every other day leading up to your event. Analyze which posts are the most successful and put some budget behind them. It is also smart to track the effectiveness of the speaker-generated posts and consider putting money to boost those as the third-party social proof is what your target consumers want.

Gamify the Process

Contests are fun and you can leverage gamification to drive virtual event registrations.

Consider doing a contest for both your speakers and your attendees to see who can get the most signups. Offer the winner a $250 Amazon gift card. This will be worth the power of authentic content.

Consider the Cost

It’s tempting to charge attendees to sign up for your virtual event. However, if your goal is lead gen, you should make your event free to attend. A free event means more leads so take that into consideration.

If you are hosting an event to make revenue, be mindful of the cost to attend. Look to like-minded events and get a pulse on the industry standard in terms of what it costs to attend similar events.

If you want to offset the cost of your virtual event, consider charging vendors and sponsors.

Have you hosted a virtual event? We’d love to hear how you boosted registrations in the comments below!

Post-Event Engagement (Part 2)

(This version is for Event Exhibitors. If you’re an Event Manager, the post ‘Post-Event Engagement (Part 1)‘ will be a little more applicable!)

After an event you’ve sponsored has ended, you’ll probably be pretty relieved. Setting up a booth, selecting sponsorship benefits, and engaging with the attendees in and out of your booth can be a lot of work. It’s always fun to be involved in events, especially online, but there’s a fair amount of leg-work involved as well.

However, in that quiet period right after an event is over, you may be asking yourself, “Okay…now what?” You spoke to attendees at the event, promoted your business’ products and/or services, and you feel like your booth was pretty engaging. But all of that had to do with the during-event portion. What do you do afterwards?

The First Step

First of all, you’ll want to make sure your event manager fulfilled your sponsorship benefits. A lot of times, this involves a list of leads and their contact information, feedback from any sponsored sessions or advertising mtaerials you hosted, and possibly the results of a giveaway. More specifically, you’ll want to make sure you specifically know who interacted with the materials you provided for the event, if you didn’t set up your own lead capture. Those leads will be considered ‘hot’ leads, or people who have already shown significant interest in what you have to offer. You’ll also want to make sure you get the contact information and chat logs from anyone who visited your booth to speak with you.

Post-event, you’ll want to do a couple of different things to make sure you get the most out of your leads.

Types of Leads

First of all, make sure you contact those who chatted with you in your booth or via your ‘Email Us’ button with personalized messages discussing what they talked about with you. Those leads are going to be your best bet for future sales. They initiated contact with you – that’s a great sign.

Next, you’ll want to put together at least two email campaigns. If you don’t know, email campaigns are “a coordinated set of individual email messages that are deployed across a specific period of time with one specific purpose, such as download a white paper, sign up for a webinar, or make a purchase with a provided coupon.” (Thanks, Campaign Monitor.)

Email Campaigns

Your first email campaign will be for those hot leads we talked about earlier. These are people you already know are interested in your products or services. You’ll be able to skip the formalities of introducing who you are and what you do (though a bit of a refresher never hurt); you can get straight to why they care who you are and what they may find useful that you have to offer.

Your second email campaign will be for the cold leads. These are ones you have to ease into contact with you; you’ll have to explain who you are, how you got their contact information, and why they care about who you are. I also recommend being extremely transparent about how they can get off your mailing list. You’re required to allow them to unsubscribe, but I find it makes you a little more personable if you make that process fairly easy to execute, even though you don’t want them to.

After a few emails in your cold lead campaign, chances are a certain number of them (between 10-30%) will click on some of your links and either interact with you directly (attend a webinar, check out some whitepapers or articles, or even contact you). Those people should be put into a hot lead campaign similar to your first. They’ve interacted with you and shown that they’re interested in what you have to offer – no need to beat around the bush with them.

The rest of the people should be dropped into a less-frequently touched email campaign that offers things like special deals, asks direct questions that they may feel compelled to answer, or shows them some great content you have to offer that will help them. These emails will be focused on ways your business will assist them for free, without a sales hook. This kind of contact will help them become warmer leads, who you can eventually drop into your hot lead campaign.

Finally…

Finally, you’ll want to keep an eye out for future sponsoring or even event hosting opportunities yourself. Things like webcasts, classes, or full conferences are a great way to offer content to all of those people you now are in contact with; they’re also a great way to find even more people to keep your funnel churning.

Have any questions? Reach out to us at production@vconferenceonline.com and we’ll be happy to help out!

Good luck!

Post-Event Engagement (Part 1)

(This version is for Event Managers. Keep an eye out for Part 2 – specifically for Event Exhibitors! You can send that post to your exhibitors to make sure they get the most out of your event!)

You’ve hosted your event, you had a lot of great attendees come see it, you had great engagement, and the speakers all had a blast. It was a successful event and you’re pretty happy with how it went. Now what?

Post-Event Engagement Checklist Download

TIP: Download this checklist to make sure you follow-up on all the tips in this article!

Well, once your event is over, there is a lot that you can (and should!) do. First of all, you need to collect your leads from the event. That’s easily done on vConferenceOnline by going to the Reporting section of the VME and downloading the registration report. Do you have a marketing tool similar to Hatchbuck or SalesForce? This is the time when you upload these leads to a tool like that and make sure you can easily access and sort them.

After that, look through the reporting tools given to you. For example, on our platform, you’re able to see which speaker and session were the most popular, as well as get some feedback from the surveys you may have hosted in the event. You can sort through all the information and come up with a couple of key pieces of information: 1) what did your audience like the most and 2) what did they feel you could improve upon?

Immediately after the event, I highly recommend your event continues into an On Demand portion. This can be anywhere from 1 day to 180 days, or even longer if you want the information to be available. This allows those who registered, but were unable to attend live, to catch the sessions, view the exhibit hall, and ask questions so they can learn as much as possible from your event. It also allows continued registrations and lead capture even after the event is technically ‘over.’

TIP: extend that On Demand period for people who are registered members with your website. For example, if you have a standard and a premium membership available on your site, allow standard members two weeks to view the content and allow premium members 60 days! You can change this combo in any manner of ways, but this is a great way to offer a perk to those who support you.

If you had 1-4 highly appreciated sessions in your event, the next step is very easy. Those sessions can be turned quickly into a separate event, an encore webcast or expo down the road. This is a great way to continue engagement as well as to make sure that those who were unable to attend are able to learn from those presentations, even after the On Demand period has ended.

Aside from continued content distribution, make sure you’re engaging with your registrants fairly frequently. You don’t want them to forget who you are between now and your next event (which you should start planning soon to get ahead of the curve!), so you can contact them every once in a while with a simple email giving them information on who you are, how to support your business further, and what great deals you can offer them.

For example, if you offer the memberships mentioned above, email your leads with information on why those memberships are great and how they can get their hands on one. Tell them about the content you share or the services you provide. They were clearly interested in your event – make sure they know you have more to offer!

I recommend using a marketing tool to schedule these sorts of emails in a funnel system. You can add tags to leads that engage more and drop them into a campaign that guides them through the process to supporting your business further – purchasing a membership, services, or other products that you offer.

If you continue your engagement with those leads, it will be easy to estimate how many of them will want to attend your next event, which will make your estimates to exhibitors and sponsors that much easier.

Need more tips? Contact your project manager or contact us here.

Happy planning!

Why Is Customization Important?

One of the more important options you have when selecting a virtual event platform revolves around customization options. You’re already putting in major effort in creating and providing your virtual event, so the customization (being able to contribute your own look and feel on several key elements) is the fit and finish to your event that can make a huge difference.

This is part of a series of posts that supplement the “5 Things to Ask…” free planning guide, available at the top of the right column of this page. Get your free copy here.

There are several areas to consider for your customization: they include items that are based in the platform, but also items that are things you control entirely for the presentations. Here’s a quick look:

Slide templates – make sure your slides have a common theme and look and feel. While this seems perhaps tedious and odd, it’s important to have your event (even if it’s a webcast), have your logo information, your branding, you “look and feel.” These things reinforce to the attendee who is providing the event, and where to turn with questions on the overall event and information provided. Creating templates in your presentation tool (like Powerpoint, for example) is typically pretty straightforward. Taking the time to create the template and distribute it to your speakers is a small step that has a big branding and consistency pay off for your event.

On-screen elements – talk with your provider about options you have for customizing the environment. Things to ask about include:

Your logo placement throughout the event environment
Your graphical backgrounds and designs (1)
Your graphics and designs on the registration pages and microsite

(1) examples of this include one event where we were doing some work with school busses. We changed the lobby to include a school bus and used the windows of the school bus as the navigational elements in the event (instead of conference room doors). Consider using your offices, or your campus or other items that relate to your business and the industry you are serving.

Exhibitor booths – if you’re having booths inside your virtual event, consider the options you have for booth designs and how much your exhibitors can easily take advantage of those options. Graphics sizing, options for using the “margins” on the page (some exhibitors like to include coupons in these spaces), custom menu and button options, custom videos and assets, along with general customization to the look and feel are the things you’re looking for here.

Emails, (Attendee Correspondence) – How much control do you have over the branding, look and feel and other elements that make up the email contact capabilities for notifications, announcements, etc. These are important because you may be able to offer sponsorship opportunities (as an example) where you can include sponsor logos in the emails about your event. In addition, you will want to make sure your branding is prominent and consistent.

There are many different components to customization. While most platforms will indicate that customization is allowed, the “how” of it all – the options available – vary widely, as do the tools and approach to implementing the customization. Ask lots of questions, find out the various things possible and make sure they align well with your company and show branding and functionality requirements.

How to have Successful Interaction with Virtual Events

The most common concern people express about virtual events – webcasts, online classes, or virtual conferences/trade shows – is the apparent lack of communication between the hosts/speakers and the attendees of the event. Without face-to-face interaction, many are concerned that they will be unable to truly connect with their attendees and will therefore not have a very successful event. To help to ease these concerns, I’ve put together a few tips for how to make sure you get the most out of your online interaction.

Utilize text and/or video chat for Q&A’s throughout or after your presentation.
- This feature is a fantastic way to make sure that any questions are answered thoroughly and possibly even better than they would be during an in-person event. If you pre-record your presentations – which is already highly recommended – you have the full duration of your presentation to interact with viewers. You can make connections with them at the beginning, by asking where they’re from, what companies they work for, what the weather is like where they are. You can then easily transition into answering questions. If they don’t seem to have many questions, I highly recommend having a few points to encourage discussion in the chat, such as additional tips or anecdotes. This makes everyone feel at ease and encourages questions and deeper discussion, allowing the attendees to get even more out of the event than an in-person one.
  If you choose to do a video chat Q&A, using a tool like livestream or Google Hangouts, you can really easily make the online event feel nearly identical to an in-person event. You can even invite viewers to join you on the video chat, allowing them to really be a part of the event.
Utilize chat in exhibit booths as well.
- This is another way to make the transition from in-person to online seamless. As a booth administrator, you can reach out to attendees as they enter your booth, just as you would at an in-person event, and offer them some information about your company, services, or simply talk about the event.If your company has sponsored a session, that’s a great time to talk about it. Mention that the session is either coming up, or has happened (and is going to be available On Demand for their leisure), discuss the topic and what they can get from it.
  This approach is great because, instead of poking at the attendee with sales pitches, you’re making a connection with them. People with a connection to a company are far more likely to purchase from them, without the cognitive dissonance that comes from a guilt-based purchase made only to quiet a sales pitch.
Set up chat rooms outside of the presentation rooms.
- This acts as sort of a networking lounge for the attendees and speakers. Instead of being boxed into the topic of a presentation, people are able to find others that are interested in the same topics, but move beyond them. Private chats are a great way for these attendees to ask further questions of the speaker or to connect with a possible business partner.These function exactly the way the outside hall of a conference center does, where attendees go to fill up on coffee and charge their laptops. This too makes the transition from in-person to online seamless.

Have you hosted online events before? What did you find helped you the most with encouraging interaction between attendees and the host/speakers?

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Happy event planning!