Digital Events in 2021 and Beyond: Plan for Success
By: Intergalactic Agency
Tags: Creative, Immersive Experience, Virtual Events, Digital, Thiisintergalactic

The global pandemic has disrupted and challenged the tried and true methods of the physical events industry for the near and foreseeable future. The need for social distancing coupled with advances in digital engagement have resulted in experimentation with virtual events and realization of its associated benefits: wide distribution, increased attendance, pre and post engagement, hyper-personalization and meaningful metrics. Post pandemic, these benefits and the high return on investment of virtual events will lead to hybrid virtual / physical events that leverage the benefits of both. In all cases, the need for a strong virtual events platform and approach will be critical. We wanted to share with you five tips that will make your virtual event a success.

At Intergalactic we’ve been handling the digital aspect of physical events since 2004, and with over 880 successful projects to date; this is a space we understand and know how to thrive in.

Having successfully created EventXr, a proven enterprise grade virtual events platform, we’re sharing our top five tips and things we’ve learned. For the next five weeks we’ll also be publishing a sequence of articles covering each of the five tips in more detail. Here’s how to make your virtual event a hit:

1. Scalability

For a successful virtual event, you need to prepare for all possible outcomes including a runaway success. The platform must be able to cope with large numbers — the more successful you are at attracting an audience, the greater and more public the risk of failure. This is where some high profile virtual events have struggled, under the weight of their own success. Our approach is to ensure the stability of the platform, in particular during peak moments. We know the right way to do this from events we’ve done over the years, such as our events with Cisco (21,500+ attendees) and our music festival sites supporting 70,000+ attendees. We’ve learnt from the study of others to anticipate issues rather than learn from painful experiences. As a rule of thumb, for open registration virtual events we plan for up to 10x the physical audience numbers.

Virtual events have the potential to attract global audiences in significant numbers, which makes testing critical. When considering additional scalability possibilities, think about whether the platform is global and whether it uses leading edge content distribution networks to ensure distributed load and lag-free loading for international users. Registrations, managing personal data, presenting, and heavy bandwidth content will all put a strain on the solution architecture, in particular if you are using multiple systems and vendors. Avoid issues by asking the right questions around connectivity and load well in advance, so you can arrive at the right solution with plenty of time.

2. Content-led approach

Attending a virtual event is fundamentally different from the physical experience. The UX solution needs to respond to, and direct a user through, ideal journey scenarios to optimise their experience and takeaways from the event. The content needs to do six things to keep users engaged, interested and keen to explore more:

Be memorable and easy to share

Be easily accessible on and off the platform

Encourage conversation that can make the content travel even further

Include Live Hosting and Commentary — similarly to events like the Olympics where they have On-Air hosts, this is a great way to keep people interested throughout

Provide content recommendations based on the user’s profile and interests, helping to remove the guesswork for them

Delight users — distraction, when used properly, refreshes the brain and helps form memory

Provide tools to help visitors discover and consume content as conveniently as possible, allowing them to construct their own schedule. Things that are really helpful are to send reminders of sessions that are about to start, provide recommendations of other relevant content to keep people engaged, and allow friends/colleagues to attend and explore your event as a group.

We understand the importance of working to your strengths which is why it’s key that you’re able to concentrate on the content creation, leaving the platform creation to your partner (us). As a flexible and partner friendly company, we can either design and build the entire online digital experience or work with our client’s events partners and design agencies, to build what you, our client, is looking for. We have a deep, solid knowledge of how to structure and present content to optimise delegate interest and understanding.

3. Engagement and rewards

Digital events need to keep people engaged and be rewarding for those attending. With digital fatigue being more prevalent than ever, to combat this and ensure your event stands out, we suggest trying to prevent over-scheduling. Think about ‘content snacking,’ so your content can be quickly and easily consumed for optimum engagement. Instead of adding too much, find a good balance of both Live and On-Demand that allows delegates to drop in and out and pick up from where they left off with seamless transitions.

One of the key reasons people go to conferences or live events is to network for new business or new contacts — elevate your digital event with the creation of a delegate meeting place. At EventXR we can create a Networking Zone to enable this, helping to facilitate networking with 1:1 chat capabilities and moderated session chats that create a flexible, accessible event space.

For rewards, it’s necessary to both surprise and delight your guests, so consider incentivising people to get involved with the content by ensuring the event is worthwhile in as many ways as possible. Make it competitive so people will get involved, even if it’s just to achieve a personal best. A core feature of EventXR is our reward scheme, where there is the opportunity to accumulate tokens for engaging with content — this can be kudos, trophies, badges or actual real-life swag. Not only does this help your event become more valuable to the user, it also motivates them all the way through their journey to explore new offerings and content.

4. Leverage the power of digital

When it comes to leveraging the power of digital, think back to physical events such as trade shows or exhibitions. These environments were essentially anonymous as booth workers had little to go on to understand the wants, needs, context and role of the attendee. Compare this to a registered user on a website where the role, interests and previous browsing information is available for consideration and to help tailor the user experience.. With this in mind, it’s key to optimise content and not to miss this opportunity. Having these metrics in place will help to complement the live event whilst it’s happening, and will be beneficial for future events.

Make sure that the virtual event platform you use has the ability to understand visitor behaviour and optimise the content experience for them with hyper-personalization. We have the ability to do things such as tailor content specifically in a way that was never possible in the physical event space. One size doesn’t have to fit all — you can even optimize your content based on the user role and/or demographic for those situations where selling to an engineer may not look the same as selling to the C-suite. Crucially, digital allows you to:

· Engage earlier before the event so users can get excited and get a glimpse of what to expect

· Engage more deeply during the event to ensure users are finding and benefiting from the content throughout

· Engage for longer after the event with hyper-personalised content — users can take content away so the doors of a digital event never really have to close

We firmly believe that the post-COVID world is in hybrid events (a combination of physical and virtual events working in unison). For those digital attendees, make the most of the web and make sure those on the other side of the screen are getting to experience your brand. With EventXR, we have the tools in place to ensure that the digital strand integrates smoothly with the live event.

5. Plan for the future

Moving forward, we know people will be much more reluctant to travel significant distances. A recent study by Ipsos MORI found that, “many are still uncomfortable about some aspect of life returning to normal.” Currently in the US, a survey by McKinsey and Company found that over 60% of Americans are worried about engaging in out-of-home shared services like public transport, flights and ride sharing, and over 70% are not engaging in a “normal” levels of out-of-home activity. In the UK, the majority of Britons would be uncomfortable attending large public gatherings (65%) and using public transport (59%).

With that in mind, hybrid events will need a well-planned strategy to deliver measurable ROI over individual, isolated executions. Digital events aren’t just a proxy for physical events due to limitations and attendee discomfort. The tools and technology are now at the level where we can create meaningful engagement and deliver that experience to all corners of the world, developing and growing as we go. Hybrid events will continue to be the future, due to their ability to reach larger audiences. Great platforms will facilitate the forming of connections and interactions between those at events physically and those attending digitally.

A digital platform can support you through each step of a physical event. Keeping these five things in mind when planning a virtual event will mean that you’re set for success as you ensure your event is scalable, content-led, rewarding and digital-focused, while also being ahead of the curve as you prepare for future events.