The 6Connex Playbook to Planning Your Virtual Event

The 6Connex Playbook to

Planning Your Virtual Event

While widespread technology adoption is traditionally slow, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a rapid and necessary global shift to remote work and digital communication, providing virtual events technology providers with the opportunity to introduce novel solutions that redefine what an event is, and the role it can play in a marketing strategy.

Now, virtual events have become an integral component of the corporate marketing mix. Gone are traditional boundaries, such as event size and location, which means events can attract a wider audience, engage a broader panel of speakers and sponsors, and present a deeper content agenda.

Designed for ongoing use with a custom, branded look and feel that often mirrors its physical event counterpart, a virtual event includes state-of-the-art features and functionality such as intuitive navigation, rich content formats, AI-driven attendee matchmaking, interactive chats and games, and creative social media integrations. These days, virtual events almost aren’t an “event” at all, but rather a multi-use media platform enjoyed by human resources, sales, marketing, and executive teams globally for job fairs, user conferences, earnings calls, town hall meetings, corporate celebrations, and more.

Because virtual events can track every attendee touch point (clicks, downloads, interactions, etc.) they provide event planners and sponsors with myriad ways to spot trends, uncover interests, learn behaviors, and single out potential prospects – ultimately informing sales and marketing strategies and accelerating the rate of lead-to-opportunity conversions. However, the benefits aren’t for event organizers alone. Virtual event audiences also win, with quick and easy access to high quality content, experts, and a peer community - from the comfort of anywhere, on any device, and in their preferred language.

If you’re an event planner and thinking about “going virtual” for the first time, the sheer number of options a virtual event presents may feel overwhelming. Not to worry! Many of our customers find their way to us because they’re “paralyzed by possibility,” and we’ve created this virtual event playbook to help ensure success, with suggestions and tips across all types of virtual events, regardless of industry or use case.

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The 6Connex Playbook to Planning Your Virtual Event

Go Virtual or Go Hybrid?

instability. Many employees prefer not to travel under these circumstances, and companies are unwilling to ask their employees to do so. A virtual event removes these barriers and makes event attendance possible for everyone, everywhere.

Virtual Events Can Stand Alone...

Post-pandemic, most organizations are now acknowledging that certain aspects of physical events may not rebound in their pre-pandemic form. Businesses won’t immediately deem travel essential, and the collective psychology has changed over the last 12-18 months. Specifically, the pandemic altered the way people value their time. Smaller shows with smaller budgets may have a harder time attracting attendees, presenters, and sponsors, and in many cases, physical events may no longer be practical, nor able to generate an ROI. As a result, event planners, marketers, and business leaders are rethinking their entire events strategy, and pulling virtual events from the bench to starting position, due to myriad benefits that event organizers and attendees alike celebrate: X

Virtual events enable people worldwide to connect, network, and collaborate.

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Event planners save money by eliminating venue location, food, and beverage costs, allowing them to allocate more budget toward attracting high-profile speakers, workshop facilitators, and entertainment that make the event more appealing to their target markets.

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It’s easier to attract attendees to a virtual event because they are less expensive. Consider that prior to the pandemic, the average registration fee for some of the most popular tech conferences exceeded $4,000. Factor in flight, hotel, and transportation costs, not to mention the number of days out of the office, and the decision to attend an event can become impractical - so much so that at many organizations, there are limits on the number of conferences employees can attend in a year.

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In addition to eliminating travel, virtual events are less of a time commitment. Multi-day events, for example, can be broken into a long-term series to better accommodate busy calendars and keep brands top of mind beyond a finite period.

X

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Common barriers to widespread event attendance beyond time and expense are removed. In South America and Asia, for example, attendance obstacles may include security and political

X

Virtual event sessions lend themselves to interactivity, with features that include polls and live Q&As. These participatory layers can have a significant impact on the user experience, and some companies are even allowing their attendees to create and share their own content to further amplify the event’s footprint and the overall event “vibe.”

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The experts have long agreed that one way to improve sustainability and radically reduce the waste and air-travel emissions produced by trade shows and industry events is to use virtual meetings.

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Virtual events allow companies to run analytics in real time. Sales can chase leads immediately, which can greatly improve return on investment.

The pandemic altered the way people value their time.

… and Virtual Events Can Complement Physical Events Prior to the pandemic, some companies were implementing virtual events as part of their marketing strategy to extend the reach of their physical events. Known as “hybrid events,” these were often the equivalent of an in-person event that was livestreamed and available later on-demand.

The 6Connex Playbook to Planning Your Virtual Event

The Key is to Plan Your Event Accordingly

Exiting the pandemic, however, hybrid events are more sophisticated than ever, and are gaining in popularity due to their broad audience appeal. Attendees, presenters, and sponsors who want to travel and attend an event in-person can, and those who are more comfortable participating in an event digitally also have this option.

How do you know which approach is the best for your event?

As each event approach provides its own unique benefits, the best approach boils down to several different factors, such as:

Hybrid events are built on the premise of flexibility and choice, a menu if you will, from which event planners, presenters, sponsors, and attendees can order any item - in person or virtual - in any category to satisfy their appetite. For example, if an attendee wants to physically attend a multi-location conference in their hometown but sit in virtually on a presentation on another continent, it’s possible. Likewise, an event sponsor can opt for a traditional in-person booth or build a virtual one. And similarly, a presenter can choose to share his or her content live, or they can pre-record their message.

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Event size

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Event goals

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Available internal resources

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Timeline

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Geography of attendees

But chances are, if you’ve downloaded this guide, you’re planning to host a virtual event and have seen the merits of digital event formats over the last 12 months. In this case, the question on your mind probably isn’t, “Should we do our event virtually?” but rather, “How can we host a virtual event effectively?”

We recommend that to execute a hybrid event well, event planners first think about where technology adds value to an in-person event and then introduce the technology accordingly. The most successful hybrid events are those that can blur the lines between digital and physical engagement and drive traffic to each other.

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Factors to consider when planning your event 4

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The 6Connex Playbook to Planning Your Virtual Event

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The Three Phases of the Virtual Events Engagement Cycle As with any marketing program, you need a plan to execute a virtual event. This plan should encompass the three phases of the virtual engagement cycle: pre-event, live-day, and post-event. The following summary outlines best practices within each stage.

Phase 1: The Pre-Event Phase The pre-event phase is critical to your success. Conceptualizing a theme, developing a timeline, and collecting all the elements (content, speakers, chat rooms, etc.) lay the groundwork for the virtual event creation process. As you begin, consider these fundamental questions: X

What are the objectives of this event? Are you creating a virtual event to drive leads, generate brand awareness, or more? Is your virtual show set up for a product launch, recruitment fair, or an internal training session?

X

What metrics will you use to measure the results or define success? (Registrants, attendees, leads generated, average time in virtual environment, downloads, chat interactions, etc.)

X

Who is your target audience? Is there more than one?

X

Will you have sponsors or partners as part of the event - if so, how many? What will your sponsorship packages look like, and how much will you charge for them?

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Will this event be internal (employees-only) or external (open to prospects, customers, and vendors)?

X

Will you charge for the event, or is the attendance free?

X

What do you want people to take away from attending the virtual event?

Once you have answered these questions, you can begin to identify staff and partners to produce the event, as well as start brainstorming event themes, agendas, content, and speakers, all of which will contribute to the strategy - and success - of your event.

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Picking Your Virtual Event Platform Provider Not only have comfort levels with virtual events increased in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, but so too have the number of virtual event solution providers in the marketplace.

Unfortunately, this can make it difficult for event planners and marketers to know how to choose between opposing platforms. Here’s some advice: Capabilities and Functionality The right virtual event platform will support both virtual and hybrid events. Even as quarantine restrictions ease, how they ease will differ from one region to the next. Also, different people will have different feelings about attending events in-person. There may be a prolonged hesitancy to re-join large gatherings of people. At the risk of sounding pessimistic, remember that event disruptions can come in any form and at any time. Recently, we experienced a pandemic. 12 months from now it could be a weather event. Three years from now it could be an economic event. You need to have a long-term event strategy that accommodates different scenarios and investing in a platform that hosts both virtual and hybrid events will be critical.

You need to have a long-term event strategy that accommodates different scenarios and investing in a platform that hosts both virtual and hybrid events will be critical.

The 6Connex Playbook to Planning Your Virtual Event

Must-Haves and Nice-to-Haves At a minimum, platform “must-haves” are: ease of use for attendees, fast build time, multi-language features for global events, and reporting for ROI measurement. Keep in mind, though, that there’s a lot of “nice to have” functionality outside of these basics that will enhance the entire event, deliver better event value, and help you utilize event data more effectively. For example, advanced platforms will have AI capabilities that allow you to leverage your registration and behavior information to recommend activities, content, contacts, etc. to each attendee both before and throughout the event, sending push notifications and personalizing the event experience to increase engagement.

Technology Most importantly, the technology must be rock solid, hosted in the cloud to manage scale, and built with HTML5 for accessibility on any browser and any device. It’s also wise to consider how easily the platform integrates with other applications. Ideally, you want a platform that is technology agnostic, meaning you can integrate the tools you use day-to-day with the platform, as well as take advantage of the solution provider’s technology partners, such as virtual photo booths, captioning, social media walls, etc. Seamless integrations will empower you to provide an almost endless array of flexibility and choice for your attendees.

Security Don’t overlook the solution provider’s cybersecurity capabilities. You need to ensure attendee information and all the data you’ve collected throughout your event is secured to the highest standards, with end-to-end encryption and no local applications for hosts or attendees to install.

Consulting and Support Choose a virtual event platform provider that isn’t just providing technology, but also providing consulting on how to plan events. It’s important to know what the possibilities are with a virtual event, and the right provider will have real ideas on how to optimize the technology’s features and functionality to meet your goals.

Think Mobile iOS and Android smartphones and tablets are increasingly important to your users - how does your platform provider supports these devices? You certainly don’t want to build a separate environment for your mobile users - ask whether this is required. Given the visual elements of a virtual environment, also ask whether the display looks similar on mobile and desktop devices. Are live webcasts supported on mobile devices? Are there compatibility issues with running legacy webcasts? You need to engage those mobile users.

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Consider Your ROI Would you like to predict the ROI of your virtual event? Do you want to compare costs of creating a virtual versus a physical event? Look for cost savings in virtual events, such as reduced travel costs and catering.

Utilizing an Agenda In addition, talk to your virtual environment provider about how to use the agenda to your advantage, particularly for corporate events such as training. A creative agenda can reduce the costs associated with removing employees from their day-to-day work. Consider, for example, an annual sales kick-off. By presenting the educational content virtually for half days over a couple of weeks, organizations avoid pulling their teams out of the office for several days at a time. Furthermore, the content is readily available for sales reps who join the organization after the kick-off has taken place, improving onboarding and increasing the time-to-value of new employees.

Sponsorship Opportunities Finally, consider using sponsorships to offset costs. By offering opportunities such as banner ads and video commercials, virtual events create more opportunities to draw in sponsorship dollars. In our experience, this is where event planners can get really inventive.

For example, offer free digital ads to sponsors that purchase a booth. By increasing the value of the sponsorship, you might be able to sell more. In a virtual event, there’s no limit to the number of booths, further increasing sponsorship revenue opportunities.

The 6Connex Playbook to Planning Your Virtual Event

Create Outstanding Content and a Reasonable Agenda In virtual events, content is still king. Select interesting speakers, engaging subjects, and timely themes that resonate with your audience. Invite industry experts, customers, and preferably at least one high profile speaker who can draw a crowd.

Some of our best practices for program agendas are:

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When developing the program agenda, remember to leave time between sessions for attendees to network, collaborate, or simply peruse the virtual environment.

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Consider shortening session duration to 20-30 minutes, since studies show attention spans online are abbreviated.

Shorter presentations, expert panels, breakout sessions, and networking events keep attendees moving between content and activities and create an active event flow.

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Be sure to consider the length of the event schedule. A virtual event agenda starting at 10:00 a.m. and ending at 4:00 p.m. might work better than the traditional in-person event schedule, usually 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

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Build agendas that give attendees flexibility and prevent high value content from competing. People increasingly want to be able to customize their own content schedule, so be sure they have the option of selecting between tracks or choosing activities that appeal to them. Additionally, make sure everything is available on demand; for example, if an attendee forgoes a session to attend a networking event, he or she can still access the content later.

Generate Your Audience Promoting your event early should beef up registration, and it’s important to make sure registration is easy, no matter what device your registrant is using. Here are some ideas to get you started:

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Execute an integrated campaign using email, social media, online advertising, e-newsletters, contests, and press releases. Work with partners for promotional opportunities. Depending on your promotion period, send out at least two to three invitation emails for your event.

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Create a clean, mobile-friendly registration site to capture attendee details. Allow participants to register with their social media credentials (Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google) and include calendar reminders for registrants. Consider combining your registration with an industry poll, survey, or offer a prize incentive.

X

Implement a social media strategy using tools such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to promote your event.

Create a Facebook event and invite all your fans. Find LinkedIn groups relevant to your audience. Schedule regular tweets to create a cadence of interest before the event. Don’t forget to create a #hashtag for your event so people can find and reference it as they tweet.

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Share content pre-event to attract attendees to speaker sessions.

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Send reminders to all registrants a minimum of one week before, one day before, and the day of the event.

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As with any marketing program, you’ll want to track the progress of different campaigns/marketing vehicles by embedding a “promo code” to the event URL link. This way, you can monitor the progress and gauge the effectiveness of each vehicle.

Offer Sponsorship Packages Event sponsorships are an excellent way to defray event costs or generate revenue, and virtual events give sponsors access to a larger audience, which makes them attractive to potential sponsors. Also, they give sponsors more ways to engage. For example, they can host a booth, display digital banner ads, run video commercials, and even send mobile push notifications.

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The 6Connex Playbook to Planning Your Virtual Event

gives your audience a chance to review it and know what to expect during a virtual event.

You can also invite attendees to experience the virtual event platform before the event takes place. Allow them to familiarize themselves with the format ahead of time so they understand how to navigate the platform and take advantage of different experiences. You may even want to offer some virtual content prior to the event itself to increase the likelihood registrants will attend and encourage colleagues to join.

Sell sponsorship packages (e.g., Platinum, Gold, Silver) with varying investment levels. Allow sponsors to host an entire webcast session, brand a networking lounge, livestream a booth event, and/or sponsor a game or a prize giveaway.

Once signed up, include your sponsors as part of your integrated event promotion, with mentions and advertising in emails, e-newsletters, banner ads, and registration pages.

Get Sponsors to Help Recruit Attendees Create an incentive for your event sponsors to promote the event. For example, send your sponsors the event registration page with a tracking code embedded. Those who generate the most registrants through their promotion efforts receive a discount on their sponsorship, more advertising opportunities throughout the event, or similar.

Resemble In-Person Registrations with Physical Gifts To make their virtual user conference resemble a physical event, many companies send out “Welcome Packages” to all registrants with t-shirts, coffee mugs, and trade show collateral.

Allay Their Fears with Preparation

Pre-Stuff the Bag, But Don’t Overload the Booth Pre-populate the virtual briefcase in the environment with one to three pieces of your most relevant collateral: white papers, videos, data sheets, or news links. Alternatively, you can allow a major event sponsor to pre-populate their content as part of their “premium” sponsorship.

Booths should include relevant and timely content, of varying types for attendee interest. Be sure that each booth content area has at least three pieces of content, but don’t overload the booths with too many items for attendees to consume. For sponsors, make sure their most important content appears in the top view of the kiosk interface; be aware of which content is revealed and which is hidden from an attendee’s view without scrolling.

Make Your Creative Work for You If your company lacks the necessary creative resources to expertly brand your virtual event, seek an outside contractor, third-party marketing vendor, or agency. A clear, creative vision for your virtual event elevates the user experience.

Here are some key elements to remember: X

If your registrants are new to virtual events, provide them with an Attendee Guide early in the promotional period. For example, including the guide as part of your email campaign

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The 6Connex Playbook to Planning Your Virtual Event

Carry a consistent look-and-feel (theme) throughout all elements of your virtual event, including the preevent promotion/messaging as well as post-event follow-up.

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Create a stylized, event-specific logo and incorporate your company’s branding; do not hyperlink the event logo to ensure attendees remain inside your virtual event once logged in.

Many companies find that an email sent right before the live event day generates the highest registration.

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X

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Create a virtual host for the main hall or booth with a two-minute welcome message to enhance the user experience. Welcome messages could be a short introduction to what the event is about, or “instructional” on where to locate collateral, view webcasts, etc.

Do a quick inventory of your company’s creative assets by searching for existing stock images, photos, graphics, logos, etc. This can save time and money in creating your virtual environment.

Use your corporate branding guide (if available) as a reference during the environment creation process.

mention key functionality of the webcast interface such as how to use the Q&A function, respond to polls, etc.

Launch Last-Minute Promotions Launch an email campaign the day before the event, and even on the day of the event. Last-minute campaigning to your target audience can draw additional registrations, as people may have forgotten your previous emails; or their schedules may have changed, and they can now attend.

Many companies find that an email sent right before the live event day generates the highest registration.

Plan for On-Demand During the project scoping phase, determine the length of your event’s on-demand period, the time after the event when content is still available in the virtual environment.

Think of this as “anytime browsing” for new and returning attendees. The on-demand time will serve as a lead generation mechanism that can continuously produce leads and engage customers for your company.

Build Your Reports Plan to capture metrics to prove event success and identify sales and marketing opportunities. The following metrics are a great place to start: X

Registrations: The number of people who registered for the event.

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Session Registrations: The number of people who registered for a specific session.

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Demographic Information: Data such as location, age, and gender can help you better understand your audience.

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Speaker Engagement: The number of speaker profile views.

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Speaker and Session Engagement via Live Polling: Measure attendee engagement during specific sessions and identify popular speakers.

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Session Feedback and Ratings: Data such as attendee satisfaction, attendee session engagement, content relevance, speaker performance, etc.

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Qualified Sales Leads: The number of customer prospects generated by the event.

Ask Speakers to Help Webcast speakers can do their part to help facilitate live-day activities by pre-recording “housekeeping” announcements as part of their presentations for the audience. They should

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The 6Connex Playbook to Planning Your Virtual Event

X

Connections: Data such as the number of people who attended networking events, exchanged contact information at networking events, set up 1:1 in-event meetings, engaged in 1:1 chats, etc.

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Attendee Surveys: Data regarding attendee satisfaction.

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Sponsorship Engagement: Attendeesponsorship engagement such as visits, views, likes, actions, etc.

Phase 2: The Live-Day: A Standout Event Live-day attendance of your virtual event ranges from 3050% of the registration number, depending on program type and audience. While there is no magic bullet to guarantee a successful virtual event, you do have a captive audience in a controlled environment. This section explores some best practices on how to take advantage of live-day activities.

Animate Your Event Leverage advertising panels, logo banners, environment-wide announcements, media walls (to categorize and display content visually against a “wall”), and green-screen videos of virtual hosts to generate a feeling of “live” excitement. Have company leadership serve as the virtual host welcoming attendees. Swap out the standard booth rep images for those of your actual staff. Launch real-time, environment-wide announcements throughout the day to inform (i.e., scheduled webcasts), engage (i.e., last chance to enter contest), or drive attendees to different locations (i.e., moderated chat in the networking lounge).

Poll Your Audience Polls help presenters learn about the audience so they can tailor their presentations. For attendees, these questions make the session interactive and more engaging. Make sure you launch the first poll early in the presentation. Polls can breathe life in your webcasts, but only if you capture the audience’s attention quickly to get your point across or get real-time feedback. Share results within the webcast for greater attendee engagement and be sure to ask multiple questions. Demographic questions about visitors help you understand the audience.

Get Social Activate the Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook features within your virtual environment. This allows attendees to

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share thoughts and insights live with their communities in real-time. Social media creates and extends buzz inside and outside your event and may produce viral registrants during the live day. Run a contest that challenges attendees to use social media tools to create “buzz” during the live day. As an example, offer an incentive to the top ten attendees who create the most buzz by using LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

Designate a Social Media Manager Dedicate a person on your team to manage and monitor social media tools: send out tweets, post announcements on Facebook, update your company LinkedIn profile, and blog about the event on external sites. Put this person in charge of delivering buzz, creating excitement, and drawing additional audience to the event.

Hold Contests and Prize Giveaways Incent attendees to compete in a contest, challenge, or prize giveaway during your event. Include the incentive as part of your pre-event promotional campaign.

Here are some ideas: X

Invite attendees to view a sponsored webcast, then go directly to the sponsoring vendor’s booth afterwards to answer questions about the webcast to claim a prize.

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Keep the challenges simple to understand, fun to do, and scattered throughout the live day.

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Create a “Prize Booth” for the event and activate the “prize” tab in the environment to prominently display giveaways.

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Promote a “scavenger hunt,” in which attendees need to visit various locations within the environment (to find an item or answer a question), then submit their answers for a drawing.

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Make sure to consult with your company’s legal department for any rules/regulations for prize giveaways, contests, etc.

Staff Smartly Ensure the booth staff, including sponsors, is prepared to answer a multitude of questions, ranging from inquiries about the program agenda, to networking event locations, to product information. Create a Frequently Asked Questions or “cheat sheet” document for the day’s event so booth staff have quick access to important or common questions.

The 6Connex Playbook to Planning Your Virtual Event

Make sure booths are staffed appropriately, with more booth reps for larger events and fewer for smaller. Also consider staffing other locations, such as the networking lounge, to moderate discussions between attendees.

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Launch a live-day poll or survey to spawn greater engagement within your virtual event. Publish the results in real-time to keep the buzz going.

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Schedule chats or forums in the networking lounge or at a major booth sponsor to promote networking.

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Encourage your speakers to be available for one-on- one or group chats after their webcast sessions.

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Promote a “VIP” lounge chat or discussion.

Involve the Audience Invite participation during webcasts through questions and/ or comments via the Q&A feature. Have a list of seed questions ready for speakers during the live Q&A session. This way, your speakers can quickly familiarize themselves with the Q&A process and feel more comfortable as questions come in. Additionally, your prepared questions can trigger follow-up questions from an otherwise shy or inactive audience. Post-session, use match-making tools and networking lounges to allow attendees to meet with speakers of interest.

Schedule Other Activities

In addition, build social and “non-business” activities into the agenda. Events are usually a big part of the corporate social calendar. Whether it’s a chance to socialize off site with peers, explore a new city, or participate in a unique activity, events offer more than “on message” content. Therefore, it’s important to satisfy the audience’s desire to socialize

The idea is to provide a sense of continuous activity for the attendee and encourage participation wherever possible.

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The 6Connex Playbook to Planning Your Virtual Event

and explore with in-event activities. Without physical constraints to limit the size or nature of these activities, virtual events have a lot to offer. For example, event planners can include guided meditation sessions, a kickboxing lesson, or a Netflix party on the agenda.

clude getting the rest to attend the event during the on-demand or “anytime” period.

To achieve the goal of a follow-up plan, you should: X

Send out both a “thank you” and a “sorry we missed you” email a day or two after the event. Summarize key findings and outcomes from the event. Write as though you’re a reporter for an industry trade publication.

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Run another integrated campaign to promote your on-demand event using targeted email, online advertising, SEM, and other vehicles after a few weeks or a month.

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Have your inside sales team follow-up on attendee questions that were not answered during the live Q&A portion of the webcasts.

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Continue the dialogue about the event on your company blog, Twitter, or other social media sites; encourage attendees to get involved by asking questions and initiating conversation.

Create a “Mission Control Room” If all your staff members are physically located in one location on the live day, create a “mission control room.” In a large conference room, your staff members can assist each other with questions/issues, and build a sense of excitement for the event. Alternatively, they can use a web conference or other shared communication to stay in close contact throughout the course of the event day.

Like physical events, many elements during the live-day virtual event can be unpredictable. With virtual events, however, you have the flexibility to control and act swiftly when issues arise. You must have immediate access to your key team members to address or escalate issues. Keep all lines of communication open, regularly monitor all locations in your environment, and prepare a contingency plan with your staff before the live day to ensure program success.

Phase 3: It’s Not Over Yet The post-event period is usually characterized by a sense of achievement, satisfaction, and sometimes relief - but don’t give in to this yet! The truth is, you’ll be managing your event long after the event is over, in the form of lead qualification, follow-up activity, and ideally, sales.

While engaging with the audience is important during the event, you must now look for ways to continue the conversation. Below are key steps to take after your event concludes.

Collect and Inspect As the organizer, you can track attendee data throughout the virtual event. You’ll capture detailed attendee activity, with reports on the collateral they’ve downloaded, webcasts they’ve viewed, and people with whom they’ve networked.

Rank, categorize, and distribute these leads internally. But act quickly: aggregate the data the day or so after the event, and make it available to your sales team right away.

Prioritize Follow-Up As mentioned earlier, on average 30-50% of registrants attend the live-day virtual event. Your follow-up plan must in-

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Launch a Survey Smart reporting may capture attendee activities, but not necessarily their feelings about the event. Within one to two weeks after the event date, launch a short survey to capture this information. Keep the survey friendly and to the point.

Without physical constraints to limit the size or nature of these activities, virtual events have a lot to offer.

The 6Connex Playbook to Planning Your Virtual Event

Create a separate survey for event sponsors or exhibitors.

Use survey data to augment or enhance your next virtual event. For even better results, consider including the survey in the thank you email.

Analyze Carefully Conduct a post-event meeting with your team within a week after the virtual event ends. Identify metrics, challenges, trends, and lessons learned while your memory is fresh. Collect feedback from others. Capture any positive customer feedback or testimonials, and relay them to your marketing or sales team as marketing ammunition. Set up your ROI metrics and wait for at least one sales cycle before calculating your event ROI. Capture this information in a document and use it as a guide for future events.

Pursue Perpetual Engagement The truth is, event planners have long wanted to increase audience engagement beyond a two- or three-day event. Fortunately, a virtual event platform has always been a gateway to long-term content engagement, and post-pandemic, the format is now a standard tool in every event planner’s toolkit.

When you make the switch from live to on-demand, remember the event will be in the public eye for as long as you wish.

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It’s best practice to refresh content periodically to extend your on-demand period. New material may draw additional attendees, energize your space, and keep your brand relevant. Also, consider keeping session chats open following the event to create a community resource center and facilitate continued networking opportunities.

If you’re hosting more than one virtual event, you may want to create a virtual conference center, where attendees can access multiple events and their respective content at any time and from any location. One benefit to this approach is of course the ability to monetize the content over the longterm. In fact, many organizations have found their content can be an additional revenue stream, off- setting the cost of the virtual events completely.

Continue to Promote A clever way to promote your on-demand event is to record a session strictly dedicated to answering all the unanswered questions during the live Q&A sessions of your webcasts.

This “answer the-leftover questions session” can then be placed as an on-demand webcast within the conference hall.

Promote this session with a follow-up email or other marketing campaign to all registrants and attendees alike.

The 6Connex Playbook to Planning Your Virtual Event

The Wrap-Up As you navigate through the virtual event creation process, one thing is clear: virtual events may be easier to attend than physical events, but they still require a well thought out strategy and project plan. As one experienced virtual event marketer notes: “Virtual events are not the same as physical events…they’re a rich, interactive, and multi-faceted marketing tool that are as complex and daunting as they are valuable.” And the payoff can be huge. A virtual event allows you to capture rich marketing information that is unmatched by any other marketing vehicle.

Furthermore, event planners that leverage their virtual events as a longterm media experience are generating ongoing revenue by offering myriad content formats and engagement opportunities year-round. In fact, companies such as CA, Hootsuite, and Intuit, among others, are capitalizing on the evergreen nature of their virtual events, regularly promoting event content through social media and paid marketing channels, ensuring the event is optimized for SEO on an ongoing basis, and leveraging programs that keep attendees coming back, such as sponsoring online trivia contests and hosting a weekly speaker series. Many companies have successfully transformed their virtual events into a continuous revenue stream, using their virtual environments to sell products, promote third party advertising, direct attendees to sponsor websites, or feature fun branding opportunities.

There’s no doubt that today, virtual events are a sophisticated marketing tool, serving a larger audience and empowering event planners to increase the value of their events. And by increasing event value, attendees, sponsors, and presenters are likely to keep coming back - building lasting relationships and creating long-term revenue streams.

Virtual events are not the same as physical events... they’re a rich, interactive, and multi-faceted marketing tool.

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The 6Connex Playbook to Planning Your Virtual Event

About 6Connex Virtual Event Solutions Our Digital Experience 6Connex is the leading provider of virtual and hybrid event solutions. Our secure, cloud-based platform expands audience reach and drives in-depth content engagement for marketing, sales, recruitment, training, and HR communities to make for successful online events around the world. Our product portfolio includes virtual environments, learning management, and webinars. Demand more from your virtual and hybrid event solution.

Request a virtual event demo with 6Connex, or contact our event software experts for more information. www.6Connex.com Have Questions?

Please call 1.800.395.4702 or email us at sales@6connex.com.