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The COVID-19 pandemic put virtual events front and center, but as things are slowly opening up again, in-person events are making a comeback. In this phase of transition, hybrid events — a combination of live and online events — are becoming popular, and for a good reason. 

They give your audience the flexibility to choose the format that best suits them. And like virtual events, they also allow you to reach a wider audience and at reduced costs because you don’t have to make arrangements for hundreds of people on-site. 

The technology used for virtual events also helps you track valuable information on your attendees and gauge their level of engagement with your brand and event. Moreover, they open doors to numerous sponsorship opportunities—making it a win for both you and the audience, who get access to expert speakers while sitting comfortably at home.

All these benefits combined can massively boost your ROI from the event. But don’t just take our word for it: 86% of B2B organizations say they’ve experienced a positive ROI on hybrid events within months of hosting them. 

But as lucrative as they seem, hybrid events can only be profitable if you follow some strategies before, during, and after the event. This article will explore seven such strategies that can help you capitalize on ROI in a hybrid format. Let’s dive in!

Before you start: Define your goals 

Calculating an event’s ROI can be challenging, given how many of its benefits are intangible and don’t always show immediately. 

However, you can still measure its ROI to an extent. The first step is to determine why you’re hosting the event, as well as the metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPI) you need to track for the same. Now, your goal behind hosting a hybrid event could be:

• Brand awareness: for which you will need to track metrics like event registrations, social media engagement, and website traffic. 
  

• Lead generation or sales: so track product/service inquiries and leads and customers acquired.
  

• Audience education: look at KPIs like sessions attended, and attendee engagement levels
  

• Earning revenue: track the number of event tickets sold and the revenue earned through sponsorships and new customers.
  

Determining event ROI becomes much simpler once you have a clear idea about your goals and the KPIs you have to track to measure them. 

Then, all you have to do is compare the expenses incurred to the gains (quantitative and qualitative), and you can assess the success of your event.

7 strategies to capitalize on ROI in a hybrid format

We’ve talked about calculating ROI, and the prerequisites for measuring event success. Now, let’s explore what you can do to boost your return on investment from hybrid events. 

1. Plan and market the event in advance 

One of the most significant benefits of hybrid events is the massive reach they bring. You’re not restricted by your audience’s location, ability to travel or the venue capacity and can get many people to attend the event. And the more attendees you get, the greater your ROI will be.

So the key to increasing registrations is to start marketing your event in advance. Ideally, all your marketing campaigns should include a call to action (CTA) to register for the event 6-8 weeks before it’s set to happen. Some ways to promote the event are: 

• Build a dedicated website that provides all vital information.
  

• Promote the event on your company website, social media channels, and newsletter.
  

• Reach out to industry influencers and market the event through their channels.
  

• Create value-driven content (like blogs, social media posts, YouTube videos) that positions you as an expert and builds trust with your audience. 
  

Although it was entirely virtual, content marketplace Pepper Content implemented many of these strategies and started marketing their Elevate Summit more than six weeks before the event—the result was 10,000+ global attendees. 

2. Choose an interactive virtual event platform 

Hybrid events have both live and virtual audiences, so to deliver a successful event it’s essential to keep both engaged. For your on-site audience, you can use tools like surveys, Q&A, and networking sessions. But for your virtual audience, it’s the event platform you choose that will play a significant role in determining their engagement and experience at your event. 

Choose a platform that offers interactive features, like live streaming, polling, chat, and breakout rooms to keep your attendees interested and involved throughout the event. Zuddl, for instance, offers matchmaking features, discussion rooms, and 1:1 meetings to help attendees interact with each other, the speakers, and sponsors. 

This helps attendees derive more value from your event and create positive experiences, which ultimately boosts returns for you.

3. Charge for your event 

A straightforward way to maximize ROI and generate more revenue from your event is to host a paid event.

The idea is to price your event in a way that covers your costs and justifies the value your audience will receive from it. This will be much easier if you’re bringing well-known speakers to your event and have an established audience that will be ready to buy from you. 
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But regardless of that, there are many ways you can increase ticket sales. The first is to create ticketing tiers—offering different access levels at different prices. This will give your audience the flexibility to choose as per their needs and budget and can thus increase registrations for you.

Another strategy to get more attendees is to offer an early bird or group discount—this will encourage more people to sign up fast and even build hype around your event. 

4. Create sponsorship deals

Finding sponsors can reduce the costs you personally incur on organizing events and help you invest in better tools and arrangements for attendees. 

But the question is, how can you convince people to sponsor your event? The best way is to educate them about the increased exposure and visibility they’ll get through it. Sponsorships are beneficial for both you as the event organizer and for the brand that is providing you resources. You can add their logos to event banners, landing pages and Stage backgrounds, create virtual sponsor booths, and encourage them to offer attendees giveaways or digital swag bags.

Moreover, you can give sponsors access to the attendee data you collect during the event and give them in-depth insight about their target audience, so they're further motivated to collaborate with you. See how AdWorld has clearly stated the benefits of being a sponsor on their website.

5. Leverage attendee data 

The good thing about hybrid events is they allow you to collect a vast amount of data on your attendees, including:

• Registrations and attendance 
  

• Demographic information 
  

• The sessions they attended
  

• The topics they were interested in 
  

• How long they participated in a session for
  

• The sponsor booths they visited
  

This information can help you understand what your target audience likes and doesn’t, create detailed buyer personas, and thus, more targeted marketing campaigns. You can also use real-time feedback and polling features to assess your event’s performance and make improvements on the go—this can further enhance attendees’ experience and customer sentiment. 

The bottom line: Such insights into your audience can help you optimize your marketing efforts and current and future events. 

6. Focus on lead retrieval 

A Marketing Charts survey revealed that events generate qualified top-of-funnel leads. And hybrid events make tracking and retrieving information on leads even easier—since all your attendees (in-person and online) register through a single platform. 

Collecting and storing information on potential leads is also where your event platform plays a crucial role. Zuddl, for instance, helps you track attendee data, engagement, and buyer intent and prepares solid lead sheets for you. You can immediately start following up with these leads after the event ends. 

Now, some ways you can enhance your follow-up efforts are:

• Sending out thank-you emails with a feedback form.
  

• Sharing keynote speakers’ clips or relevant articles through your company newsletter.
  

• Connecting with participants and prospects on social media platforms like LinkedIn.
  

• Sending targeted ads to their IP address.
  

• Creating exclusive post-event communities.
  

The idea is to integrate these leads into your marketing campaigns and keep your brand on the top of their minds. This can not only help you convert leads but also build meaningful relationships and retain them.

7. Repurpose event content 

If re-used intelligently, your event content can bring you returns for months after it ends. Here’s how you can go about this: 

• Share event recordings with attendees so they can revisit sessions. This will further improve their experience with you. 
  

• Turn sessions into gated content on your website—ask for email addresses to access it so you can build a list of leads. 

Click here to watch a recording of Zuddl and ETP’s hybrid event about hybrid events, SHIFT 2021.

• Create a paid content library to let people watch sessions on-demand, like HubSpot’s Inbound does.

• Turn video content into a webinar series or online course. 
  

• Use event materials to market your next event, like ONECelibre does here. 

With these strategies, you can generate leads and customers from your event content and turn it into a recurring revenue source for yourself. 

Conclusion

By reducing operational costs, expanding reach, and providing valuable data, the hybrid format can considerably boost your event ROI and provide benefits long after the event ends. 

Follow the seven strategies highlighted in this article and focus on improving attendees’ experience—whether it’s through the speakers you bring onboard, the content shared, or your event platform—and you’ll optimize your quantitative and qualitative results from the event. 

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

Data has become so central to every part of every business, that none can run efficiently without it. That’s indisputable. 

More controversial: not every business knows how to leverage the data they collect- and it’s no different in the events industry. 

Event data that you collect at virtual or hybrid events can help you understand if it is helping to achieve your overall business goals. Event analytics can gauge if your attendees are enjoying the event, and what kind of content is resonating with them the best. It can tell you the kinds of products or services your attendees are interested in, and whether or not they are performing critical actions and completing the tasks that lead them along the customer journey. 

There’s a wealth of information available. You just need to know what you can do with it.  Read on to learn how to start.

Data to be collected at every stage of your event 

Before we move on to how to use your event data, let’s take a moment to highlight what data you should already be capturing at every stage of your virtual or hybrid event. 

Pre Event

• Registration - Virtual event registration data that you can collect via ticketing or landing pages is a great way to get as much information about your attendees as possible, such as their demographics, and interests about your industry and product/service. So don’t forget to collect the following:
  

• Data of the attendee (Name, Job title, Name of the company they work at, Email address, Industry they work in, etc.)

• Data of their plus one

• Secondary data (Personal information, Preferences - eg. their favourite product)

• Data of people who declined to RSVP
  

• Promotion - Collecting details from your pre-event campaign promotions can help you get more information about awareness, reach, interest, and potential footfall at the event. 
  

• Source (how they found out about the event)

• Engagement (clicks, opens, etc.)

• Event website (views, bounce rate, conversion rate, etc.)
  

Day of the event

The primary data you need to collect during the virtual or hybrid event is event engagement data. And the best way to do this is through the use of a virtual event platform like Zuddl which has the ability to track attendee traffic, engagement, and buyer intent across the event, all in real-time. Things you can measure include:

• Traffic (at which sessions or event zones are your attendees spending the most time)
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• Engagement (which content drove the most interest and participation)
• Buyer intent (see which Expo Booths had the most traffic and the most interest (see how many attendees clicked ‘Register Interest’, what questions they asked at the booth, what marketing material was downloaded the most
  

Post-event

The event doesn’t end when the last visitors leave the venue. You can send out surveys (click here to learn what questions will get you exactly the information you need to collect) and solicit feedback via email or on social media to learn if they liked the event, what was the best part, and what was a big no-no. 

• Feedback (favourite speakers, favourite sessions, etc.)
• Promotion - Engagement (clicks, opens, etc.)
  

How to use this event data to drive leads and sales

1. Import your data - Now that you’ve collected the data, the next step is to use a tech tool or integration that can take the data and import it into workflows that you can use to follow up with your attendees. (Click here to read about the most important integrations your virtual event platform should be able to accommodate) It’s important to look for integrations and a virtual event platform that enables the following:
   

• Captures event data easily and consistently.
• Syncs data in real-time to the existing system.
• Sync bi-directionally with all systems for easy collaboration.
• Ability to scan cards and import data automatically to the system in real-time.
• Add new registrants easily to ensure data is collected from late participants.
  

2. Automate and segment your attendee list - With the help of software that can automate communication and segmentation of event data, you’ll be able to group attendees in different buckets in a way that helps you better understand their background, pain points and business needs. For example, if you hosted an event on medical technology and had medical professionals as your attendees, the software should be able to segment them on the basis of the department they work for, their designation, the city they live in, etc. You can then look at your engagement data to determine which attendees are high, medium or low intent. 
   

3. Send out personalized follow-up post-event emails - Marketers will already know that regular communication with attendees via email is critical to nurture leads from the event.  This can be as simple as a three email sequence, starting with a simple ‘Thank you for attending the event’ email that reminds them of the event’s highlights. Don’t forget to add a link to the post-event web page that has more resources and information for your participants to access such as video recordings of sessions. In this email, you can add a link to a post-event survey to learn even more about the attendee’s opinion of the speakers, session, event content and platform. You can also email people who RSVPd for the event but didn’t turn up, albeit with a ‘Here’s what you missed’ angle to it. Let them know they were missed and highlight the resources that they can still access. It’s a great way to build goodwill and can motivate them to register for your next event. Follow-up emails can share more personalized and targeted content based on an attendees behaviour at the event - which we’ll cover in the following points.
   

4. Share relevant content - Based on your insights on attendee behaviour - the questions they answered via Polls, the Expo Booths they expressed an interest in, the sessions that were the most attended, you should be able to get an idea of what matters most to them in reaching their goals. (This is information your sales teams should have too). In your follow-up emails, you should therefore share content that shows them how your product or service can help them. This can be in the form of videos, ebooks, case studies etc, which will be especially effective with medium intent leads. Prompt high-intent attendees to sample your product by signing up for a demo, or make a direct purchase in your emails. To sweeten the deal, you can offer attendees exclusive discounts or premium offers on your services, gift cards, and even a VIP invitation to your next event. 
   

5. Engage attendees on social media - Thanks to integrations like Taggbox which lets you display a social media feed populated by attendees’ posts and tweets, you’ll have a goldmine of user-generated content (click here to read more about Zuddl x Taggbox’s social media display integration). You can reshare this content to highlight attendees’ favourite moments of the event, follow up with attendees post-event to keep conversations around the event going. It’s a simple but effective way to raise more awareness about your event, brand and partners, and stoke FOMO for your next event.
   

6. Invite attendees to your next event - Use the feedback data you collected to improve your strategy for the next event you plan to hold. If you are able to finetune everything based on attendees’ suggestions and recommendations (and communicate that too), they’ll be more likely to join in. Think of your virtual events as a funnel to find out which of your attendees are the most invested and engaged. Using events data from each concurrent virtual event will help you discover this. 
   

To sum up...

Your virtual event metrics and event-based analytics will only be helpful to you if you are able to gather the right data, analyze it thoroughly, and use it effectively.

Yes, it will take a lot of careful planning to ensure that your data is not lost in a sea of spreadsheets. But keep in mind that you’ve made a significant investment in organizing your event and you need to use event analytics data properly to make the most out of this investment. Those who are able to do so will have a considerable advantage over the competition‍

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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Did you know that introverts make up nearly half the world's population (a recent MBTI® global sample puts it at 56.8%), and therefore form half of an event’s attendees? We’re not surprised if you don’t. It’s a quiet detail that event organizers often overlook; after all, most activities at events are typically high-energy formats and activities that lean towards extroverts.

But when it comes to virtual events, putting the experience of introverts at the core of event planning is important for organizers, in more ways than one. 

Besides the obvious reason that virtual events should be exciting, engaging, and impactful experiences for all attendees, paying a little attention to introverted needs and behaviorisms when building your event design can help to make your event ROI more profitable too.

To this end, there are three statements that organizers need to keep in mind:

1. The crux of success for a virtual event lies in how engaging it is for attendees.
   

2. While extroverts inherently look to form social connections, a trait that lends itself well to virtual events, introverts are known to prefer one-on-one experiences and intimate interactions, according to Psychology Today.
   

3. Introverts are truly empowered by digital and virtual platforms. The internet, writes Susan Cain, the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, offers introverts “the chance to connect — but in measured doses and from behind a screen.”

Therefore, as a virtual event organizer, understanding how to leverage the features and capabilities of a virtual event platform to better connect and engage with introverts is key to driving better results from the event. Here are a couple of suggestions.

Tools that encourage communication are critical

Think back to the last in-person event you attended. Chances are that when the floor was opened up to audience participation, attendees who wanted to ask a question or offer their commentary were handed a mic and asked to speak up in front of the audience. Not an ideal situation for introverts who usually hate being put on the spot.

Introverts can be critical of their social performance, as per Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, and may even “second-guess what they have said in social settings.” With virtual event platforms, organisers can give introverts tools that make it easy, comfortable and fun for them to share their thoughts and opinions. With the right tools, an introvert will use technology as a way to participate more fully.

Polls, Emoji reactions and text-based Chat help to remove inhibitions to participation that stem from fear of social judgment and self-consciousness. These tools make it far easier for introverts to take part in a discussion and join in on a conversation when they want and choose to; typing a question in a box on a screen, expressing support and enthusiasm via a 😃 , and answering a Poll, may seem like small actions, but they can make introverted attendees feel seen, heard, and most importantly, included.

By ensuring that all your attendees feel comfortable and empowered enough to speak up, you can derive more insight about your event - for instance, you can ask which topics they enjoyed the most, and which they wish had been covered. This can help direct your strategy for future events as well as your content marketing efforts.

Furthermore, attendees whether introverted or extroverted who take the time to respond to Polls or interact in a Chat, are usually engaged and invested. They’re more likely to convert into leads. If attendees use your app or platform tool to express interest or register for sessions, you can capture their data. This in turn contributes to more targeted marketing campaigns, and more effective lead nurturing.

Safe ways and spaces for interaction = more ROI

While extroverts inherently look to form social connections, a trait that lends itself well to virtual events, introverts are known to prefer one-on-one experiences and intimate interactions, according to Psychology Today. If organizers can build their event with this in mind, they can make their introverted attendees feel more confident and empowered to meet and connect with new people. Here are a couple of ways to do this:

Searchable attendee list - Introverts are natural planners, reveals research by Dr. Laurie Helgoe, which helps them ease into social interactions. Contrary to popular belief, they aren’t really antisocial; in fact, they can be extremely social — with people they know or want to interact with. That’s why a searchable attendee list, a feature provided by some virtual event platforms, can be such a great way to get them to engage right at the onset. 

‍Interest-based social Rooms - When attendees walk into an event, they tend to sit with the people they know. So in-person events can make joining cliquey groups and socializing challenging for introverts. Virtual event platforms give organizers a way to make group socializing easier for introverts via Rooms. Interest-based rooms facilitate small group conversations within a larger 10,000+ audience.

These are spaces where introverts can relax and connect with other attendees who share their interests, whether that’s Mutual Stocks or TikTok Trends. Introverts can really open up when they’re truly interested in a topic. With only a limited number of interested people attending, everyone can bring in their experience and knowledge. Furthermore, some platforms like Zuddl even allow attendees to create their own private rooms, invite other attendees, watch sessions together, have discussions and more. All this makes for quality attendee engagement!

Anxiety-free networking - Think of an on-ground event, and it is not surprising to see that most attendees are naturally anxious about going up to someone and striking up a conversation, especially if that person is already conversing with a group. The easier you can make this for introverts at virtual events, the better. Smart Networking is a gamechanger for virtual events in this regard, and one that serves introverts as well as their more gregarious counterparts. It takes the guesswork out of the network-building process and allows attendees to book 1:1 video calls with top matches. (Click here to read more about ature).

This AI-driven feature aids the process of fostering deep and thoughtful interactions, something that is cherished by introverts. Other tools like those that allow attendees to share contact information easily or those that offer the convenience of pre-booking meetings, for instance, can facilitate easier connection and better conversations as well.

Why does this matter for your ROI? 

Firstly, research shows that if a conference attendee can make 10 good connections in the first3 hours, that person is 92% more likely to return to the conference. So, helping your attendees make valuable connections is a no-brainer. 

Second, you can measure which networking activities and/or areas were most popular, as well as specific attendee feedback. 

And third, helping your introverted attendees connect with others is a way for them to feel a part of your community. Community management efforts work to create positive references about the business, drives organic leads and referrals.

Interactive Expo Booths elevates brand awareness and gets you leads

Introverts hate being put on the spot, whether that’s taking part in a conversation or making a decision about a purchase. This is where interactive Expo Booths come in. Unlike in-person events where you have to jostle with a crowd and compete for attention with a salesperson or a company representative, virtual Expo Booths make life much easier for an introverted attendee. 

Introverts can visit Expo Booths to learn more about a company and its offerings. They can watch product demos. They can download marketing materials such as documents, audio/ video clips, website links, surveys, business cards, and more. And, features like the live chat manned by booth staff put introverts in the driver’s seat. Never has it been easier to access info and make a decision.

To sum up...

It is no surprise that virtual events can be a boon for introverts, allowing them to interact, listen, learn and participate at their pact tools in your virtual event platform arsenal, you can not only boost engagement for introverts, but drive more and better-qualified leads and create loyalists. 

While most attendees of your virtual event will fall along the introvert-extrovert spectrum rather than at the two ends of it, planning to maximize engagement with something for everyone isn’t just clever — it makes better business sense too.

Virtual event hosting platforms like Zuddl offer all the features you need to make introverts feel like they’re at home. Find out more with a demo.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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‘Thank You, Mario! But Our Princess Is In Another Castle!’

Sound familiar?

If reading that line conjured up memories of red overalls, and green pipes, it’s a safe bet to assume that you - just like tens of thousands of others - once fired up a Nintendo console and piloted a small man wearing a funny hat through a world full of gold coins and Goombas on a mission to save a princess.

And it’s no surprise that you remember this line from Super Mario so well; the game is a classic because it hooks you right from the moment you appear on the screen. As you make your way through the game, you experience the rush of collecting coins, jumping on turtle shells, and finally, jumping on the flagpole next to the castle to finish the level, complete with victorious music playing loudly in the background.  A satisfying experience!

The mechanics of the game - overcoming obstacles, killing bad guys, and earning rewards - make Super Mario exciting and fun to play; it keeps players glued to the screen and encourages and pushes them to go from one level to the next.

Virtual and hybrid events can also implement game mechanics to make virtual events more engaging and drive higher ROI.

But we’ll come back to this in a second.

Why bother? The importance of keeping attendees engaged at your virtual or hybrid event

When you host a virtual event or a hybrid event, one of the challenges you’ll be up against is retaining the attention of your attendees. 

There are a hundred and more things online that can distract attendees from your virtual event - Netflix, busy inboxes, social media platforms, and online shopping are just a click away. To cut through the noise, your event will have to be more interesting and engaging than a FRIENDS or Breaking Bad rerun; remember getting attendees to your event is only half the battle, keeping them hooked on the virtual event platform - ‘virtual event stickiness’ so to speak - is another thing completely.

So, how can you stop them from abandoning your event halfway? How do you keep attendees interested and enthusiastic about spending time at your event? 

Virtual event gamification is one of the most effective ways to get your attendees doing instead of simply watching. 

Indeed, a study by Gigya and its partners including Pepsi, Nike, and Dell, found that gamifying your website boosts engagement by the third. There was a boost in the number of comments by 13%, social sharing by 22%, and content discovery by 68%! There’s no reason why you can’t do the same at your virtual event.

But let’s backtrack for a second. What is virtual event gamification? And how does it work?

What is gamification?

One of the best definitions comes from Michael Wu, Chief AI Strategist at PROS, who defines it as: “the use of game elements to drive game-like player behavior in a non-game context with predictability”. Think of the coins and superpowers in Super Mario, which create a loop of progress and reward.

Simply put, just like with any point-based game or video game,  it’s the application of elements like the completion of tasks, earning badges, points, rankings, and leaderboards to visually encourage participants to achieve goals. For instance, consider how the language-learning app Duolingo operates. Users earn virtual currency when they complete lessons which can then be spent at a virtual shop. This is a great motivator to help participants keep learning, and it keeps engagement at high levels for the company.

Gamification taps into psychological motivators like competition, exploration, and curiosity - which form the basics of gaming dynamics. When participants achieve something related to these motivators, they get pulled into a powerful reward-compulsion loop that makes them want to keep playing. This is how it works:

How gamification works

1. Perform a desired action

 2. Receive a reward for performing it

3. Triggers a “feel-good” dopamine hit  

4. Incentivizes participants to repeat action

Now, let’s see how you can apply virtual gamification in events:

How gamification works at virtual events

1.  Attendees perform a desired action (eg. answering a Poll) 

2. They earn points, badges or coins for completing the action 

3.  They enjoy their success aka the ‘winner effect’ 

4. Attendees are thereby motivated to complete more actions 

What this means is that you, as the organizer, can use gamification in virtual events to nudge attendees towards a desired action or outcome. It’s a simple and fun way to drive value for all stakeholders - attendees, sponsors, partners, and your organization too.

How to use Zuddl’s virtual event gamification feature to drive the highest levels of engagement  

With Zuddl’s gamification feature, you can now make virtual events more engaging -  almost as much as your favorite game, whether that’s Super Mario or Candy Crush. Here’s how:

1. Digital Leaderboard:  Create a digital leaderboard to incentivize learning and engagement. The leaderboard is visible to everyone at the event, on the virtual event platform. It updates in real-time to show attendees how many points or coins they have earned.
   

Result: Boosts attendee participation

Attendees are motivated by the visual aspect of getting more coins and points, and reaching the top positions on the leaderboard. Plus, it just makes your event even more fun and interactive for virtual event audiences.

2. Reward Systems : Reinforce high-value behaviour, such as commenting, networking, setting a display photo, etc. with predefined reward points, to drive desired actions and interactions.
   

Some other examples of high incentive behavior could be :

• Asking a question during a session
• Answering a Poll
• Visiting an Expo Booth
• Connecting with another attendee during a Networking session
• Visiting a Breakaway Room
• Watching a product demo video
  

You can be as wildly creative as you want in blending gamification with the features available on your virtual event platform . For instance, you could set a riddle to which the answer (ideally your brand’s product or service) points to a specific Breakaway Room on the virtual event platform or even the name of a person attendees will need to find at a Networking session.

Result: Increases conversion rates

Rather than feeling marketed or sold to, using gamification at your virtual event lets you nudge attendees towards performing specific actions that contribute towards your event KPIs, like audience engagement, participation, loyalty, in an authentic way. It’s the ideal way for you to achieve larger event goals strategically  Here are some examples:

• Is the purpose of the event to highlight a new product at a virtual conference or summit? Tie this to actions that help an attendee learn more about it.
  

• Is it to drive networking opportunities for attendees at an internal company event? Connect this with actions that nudge attendees towards connecting with others on a 1:1 or group basis. 
  

• Do you want to increase your social media footprint? Give attendees points for sharing updates about the event with your event hashtag. (As a bonus, you’ll know how effective this tactic is thanks to our social media wall integration! With it, you and your attendees will be able to see their posts in real-time. This also provides positive reinforcement for the targeted behavior.)
  

• Or do you need to drive leads for sponsors? Set points for visiting the sponsor’s Expo Booth. Not only are you driving value for the sponsor by sending them traffic, but you’re also driving value for an attendee , and driving value for your own business. Win-win-win.
  

3. Set prizes for those who rack up the most points and reach the top of the leaderboard. While the dopamine rush will encourage attendees to keep participating, prizes and rewards will drive even more motivation and make virtual events more engaging for them.

Result: Makes your event even more memorable

This one needs no explanation - everyone loves rewards! Giving attendees awards is just one more way for you to solidify that sense of achievement. Prizes can be tied to product education and lead generation efforts.

Hopefully, over time, you can use gamification to turn these actions into habits, resulting in sustainable engagement.

In conclusion...

Whether you’re looking to boost inter-company camaraderie at your next virtual company offsite, or looking to drive leads for a sponsor at your upcoming virtual conference, Zuddl’s gamification feature can help you achieve your event goals when you host a virtual event.

But keep in mind that just like in Super Mario, your ultimate goal is to make your virtual event more engaging and fun for your attendees, and make them eager to attend your next event.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to gamification in virtual events, but it takes the right tactics and the right virtual event platform to see measurable results. Talk to our team today to learn how to get it right!

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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As remote working continues to be the norm, but with offices slowly reopening, every company leader faces a common question: How can Virtual and Hybrid Team Building Activities help me manage my remote or hybrid workforce effectively?

Virtual and hybrid engagement activities can be instrumental in keeping in-person and remote employees in sync, as it can be a challenging task. Managers and leaders not only need to ensure that daily tasks are accomplished but also need to focus on establishing connections, building trust, and fostering camaraderie. These aspects are crucial for team members to collaborate effectively, and virtual and hybrid engagement activities can play a significant role in achieving these objectives.

“The biggest dilemma for us in the current scenario of work from home model is…how to translate the same level of 'belongingness' in the virtual space”, says Anita Bhatia, HR Director for the Times Internet, the digital arm of the Times Group, the largest media conglomerate in India. “[This is important] to ensure seamless engagement, motivation, and retention of our key talent…”

The need of the hour is therefore for managers and leaders to work with purpose towards uniting their team, regardless of whether their colleagues are at the office or are half the world away. Technology can help — but only to an extent. But if you are deliberate about helping your team to bond and build relationships, it can yield great benefits in teams of communication and productivity.

One way to do this is through virtual team building activities. 

But let’s come back to this in a second, and cover the basics first.

Why team building is important for your bottom line

Yes, it’s true that suggesting team building activities for employees is often met with a roll of the eyes, but there’s no doubt that they’re effective.

According to a Gallup study, incorporating virtual and hybrid engagement activities can result in increased employee engagement and performance. The study found that such activities can lead to a 41% reduction in absenteeism and a 21% increase in profitability, highlighting the importance of incorporating virtual and hybrid engagement activities in the workplace.

These findings are buttressed by a new research from Better Up which show that workplace belonging leads to a 56% increase in job performance.

Team building is central to this. According to the Gensler US Workplace Survey, people see team building as the most important aspect of great workplaces, with 43% choosing ‘promotes team building and collaborate’ as a key attribute, 20% choosing ‘foster camaraderie and fun’ and 18% choosing ‘build social connections and community.’

Now that this is clear, here are some simple but effective  virtual team building activities you can use to strengthen your team.
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Additional reading: Here's a sneak peek of event trends in 2023 as per our latest report.

Here are 9 virtual engagement activities that can add some fun to your hybrid workforce

1. Virtual scavenger hunt

As you’re running this activity for a virtual or hybrid team, keep in mind that you’ll need to try to find items for your list that can be found by colleagues in the office or at home, such as books or keyboards. To up the ante, you set riddles as scavenger hunt clues, for instance “I have a spine, but no bones” (answer: books).

To make it even more creative, your list doesn't have to comprise physical objects - they could be people at the company instead. So your participants will first need to figure out who the person is and then take a picture with them either on-screen or at the office. 

This is one of the best virtual team building games that can also help build inter-company camaraderie.

2. Cultural celebration parties

When you have a diverse workforce, with employees from different parts of the world, it’s important to recognize and celebrate the cultural environment and location where each person works. Cultural celebration parties are a great way to do this. On the day of the celebration, you can decorate the office. 

Your team members whose culture you are celebrating can attend wearing cultural clothing, while others can dress up too in support. They can hold virtual cooking classes to teach others how to cook a national dish, and you can order delivery of the dish to the houses of remote colleagues.

Though these are small activities, they’ll go a long way in making each person feel like they’re part of your company community.

3. Online adventure games

Online games are a fun way for virtual team members to work together to solve puzzles and riddles, usually against a clock. They are great exercises in creative problem solving and collaboration. Some popular options for your to consider:

• Heist

Your team will have to solve a series of challenges to find the jewels before time runs out. Or, you can take this up a notch and make your team the bad guys who have to escape from the police with the jewels. 

https://try.outbackteambuilding.com/ap-virtual-escape-room/?utm_source=timedoctor 

• Murder Mystery

Assign a character to each of your team members. They will have to put on fancy costumes, learn about their characters, and solve the clues to identify the murderer. 

Psst... Teambuidling.com organizes some really enjoyable team building events, catering to both in-person and virtual settings. Their events are typically designed to last for 90 minutes, offering a unique combination of fun games and activities that are worth considering!

4. Virtual house tours

A virtual house tour is a fun way to let your team members show off their creativity and personality! Each week, ask a different team member to take the others on a virtual tour of their house. To make this even more entertaining, everyone can present their homes in the style of MTV Cribs or Architectural Digest just like celebrities do.  

This activity allows team members to learn about each other on a more personal level and see colleagues as parents and hobbyists too.  It deepens relationships and fosters greater understanding.

5. Virtual deserted island game

You’ve probably played this one before as it’s a classic team building activity for employees. Ask team members to pretend that they are stranded on a deserted island with an object that each possesses (distributed from a list or picked on their own). They will then need to work together to come up with creative ways to combine the various objects to improve their chances of survival. Working together in unfamiliar territory has a way of creating bonds that cannot be created in any other way.

6. 20 questions

This is another classic, although there are different variations. 

Ask each employee to choose an item and tell everyone what category it belongs to (for instance, if they choose ‘ball’ as an item, then the category will be sporting equipment). Everyone else must guess the item by asking 20 yes or no questions. You can award points based on how many questions it took for the team member to guess the item. It is a simple game that can be played during a tea time break. 

7. Two truths and a lie

This is another fun and light-hearted team building activity. To play this game, ask team members to write down three statements - two that are the truth and one that is a lie. Each team member will read their statements aloud in a random order, and the other participants will need to guess which one is the lie.  The winner of the game is the team member whose lie wasn’t caught. 

It’s a fun activity that’s a lot of laughs and helps your team learn more about each other too!

8. Idea workshops

The aim of organizing an idea workshop is to give your team a platform where they can brainstorm and work together to solve a problem. 

It could be something that solves a problem the team or the company is facing. Or it could be a more lighthearted workshop wherein your team discusses ideas to make the company more fun - perhaps debating the merits of a pool table or casual Fridays. 

9. Lunch and learn!

Eating lunch together is a simple way to strengthen the connections between hybrid team members. You can order a catered lunch for employees at the office, and food delivery for virtual teammates. As everyone eats their meal, they can relax and socialize. 

In conclusion...

Building effective communication and camaraderie among virtual and hybrid teams requires intentional effort, but incorporating virtual and hybrid engagement activities, like the ones discussed in this article, can help transform your distributed team into a cohesive and productive unit.

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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When you’re organizing a hybrid event for the first time, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. There are hundreds of moving parts that you need to keep track of, last minute changes, and plenty of challenges you need to deal with. 

These key challenges include: 

• Managing the increased cost, complexity, and risk associated with different technologies and platforms. 
  

• Offering attendees bespoke experiences specific to their interests and roles. 
  

• Creating inclusive, engaging, and memorable event experiences for both in-person and virtual audiences. 

Enter integrations.

From ticketing to registration, software integrations offer automated solutions that can help you more efficiently manage every stage of the event lifecycle. When used together, virtual event platforms and powerful integrations can help your business save money and time, and create a smoother and seamless experience for your attendees.

In this article, we take you through several integrations you can use to address the challenges faced during hybrid events so you can conduct them successfully. Let’s get started!

1.Ticketing 

With a hybrid or virtual event, you no longer need to worry about scanning tickets at the entrance or reducing long lines at the check-in tables.Incorporating ticketing integrations can smoothen the registration process for your audience.

With an integrated ticketing system, your event guests can purchase tickets online and download or print the ticket in real-time. Such streamlined one-stop event shopping can encourage event participants to buy one or multiple event tickets. Here are two tools that offer ticketing integration and which you can use for your events: 

• Cvent is an effective tool that streamlines registration through its Express Ticketing Event solution, allowing you to customize the registration process and fields per your event’s needs. 
  

• In addition, Eventbrite offers an integrated ticketing solution for your virtual events with an easy promo code creation for improved marketing and sales strategy. 

Pro tip: When your audience performs registration using these tools on a ticketing platform, the registration can be automatically imported into Zuddl.We also offer a webhook API for ticketing, so you can use that to integrate with any ticketing platform for registrations.

2.A social media wall integration 

When you host a virtual/hybrid event, a social media display integration can help you make your events more interactive, appealing, and engaging. 

How? You can use a display screen to integrate your social media feeds, brand or event hashtags, which means that you can broadcast User Generated Content (UGC) like visuals of users using your products, customer reviews or testimonials, and ratings at your event. Attendees can then browse through your social media or use your event hashtags when posting on their social media to contribute to your virtual/hybrid event. 

Taggbox Display is a popular display integration tool that allows you to integrate social media with your hybrid and virtual events for a unique and interactive user experience. 

For this very reason, we have proudly partnered with Taggbox to offer a Zuddl x Taggbox Display integration which allows you to: 

• Amplify your brand awareness and virtual event’s reach by putting up a social media wall for real-time user interaction and encouraging participation. 
  

• Build a sense of sociability and community by displaying specific event hashtags. 
  
  

3.Email marketing 

According to Markletic, 76% of virtual event organizers consider emails their most critical marketing medium. Email marketing is an efficient way to promote your virtual event, gain a good number of registrations, and send event reminders to ensure maximum participation. 

However, performing this process manually can get tedious and time-consuming, often resulting in human errors. Human errors are common during drafting an email and cost a lot to your business. For example, including the wrong name of your guest can not only seem unprofessional but lower the chances of them showing up to your virtual events. 

It’s a good thing then that you can use email marketing integrations to send and deliver highly personalized and branded emails. A ticketing integration can also help smooth your email marketing process and make it more efficient and accurate.

Here are two ticket integration tools that can help you automate your email marketing strategy for your virtual or hybrid event: 

• Marketo offers an automated and highly scalable email marketing tool that lets you interact with your customers through their unique online behavior and drive maximum results with personalized emails. 

• Mailchimp is another example that offers marketing automation applications and tools to let you reach your customers with smarter and faster marketing and drive sales. 

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Pro tip: When your guests register for an event on Zuddl, we push them into an existing mail campaign within your email marketing tool. This takes away the trouble to add recipients manually or scratch your head over coordinating ticketing and marketing efforts.

4.Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Integrating your virtual or hybrid event platform with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can be the key to a successful event as CRM software facilitates the management and interactions with your event attendees. This is also why Gartner named CRM tools as the world’s biggest and largest software market. 

When a user registers for your virtual event, you can use the CRM to log their personal information (name, email, phone number, address), unique food or transport needs, and any other details. You can use this recorded data to interact with your guests on a personal level post-event for further promotion, marketing, or other campaigns. Instead of using outdated paper-based or email systems, you can leverage the CRM integration for event management.

Using CRM integration with your event management platform, you get a centralized view of all your attendee’s data, their engagement rate, and how long they attended your event for more operational accountability. 

You can use the following effective tools that offer CRM integration: 

• Salesforce offers a wide range of CRM categories that help you manage over 150,000 customers with a full range of functionalities and features at a scalable price per your business needs. 

• Hubspot offers a free and easy-to-use CRM software with features including pipeline management, reporting dashboard, deal tracking, and company insights. 

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By integrating these tools with your event management platform, you will be able to record and track your guest’s data with ease. 

Pro tip: One of the critical features of these tools is that all the attendee information like how much time they spent on your virtual/hybrid event, can be pushed back to augment CRM customer information. Through this information, you can lead better and personalized post-event campaigns with enhanced customer relationship building.

5.Accessibility

As an event organizer, you need to accommodate the needs of every abled and disabled event attendee.

Thanks to the ADA Act (Americans with Disabilities Act), organizers have options like closed captioning for hard of hearing and deaf people and audio recording for the visually impaired and blind people. Integrating these options or services with your virtual/hybrid events promotes a sense of inclusivity, making your events highly accessible to every present attendee. 

Here’s how you can create highly accessible virtual events: 

• Keeping 4:5:1 color contrast
  

• Including alt-text for all images 
  

• Providing audio description or transcript for all video content 
  

• Describing visual representations as crafts and charts
  

• Using clean and easily readable text fonts

Here are two effective integrations for accessible virtual/hybrid events:‍

1. Interprefy (multilingual audio capabilities)
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Thanks to Interprefy, clients can now turn on multilingual audio capabilities, which can be done at a stage level. Interprefy is a Zurich-based partner company that facilitates multilingual audio support by removing language barriers through cloud-based solutions which make real-time interpreting accessible from anywhere.The audio translation will be human-driven and not AI ( human translators will be translating the audio in real-time and not driven by an AI), and thus the lag will be approximately 5 seconds.

2. SyncWords (closed captioning capabilities)

Your attendees can now turn on closed captioning capabilities, which can be done at a stage level through the partner company, SyncWords, to facilitate closed captioning capabilities. 

SyncWords Live meets Section 508 Compliance, a primary tool to help hard-of-hearing and deaf attendees effectively engage in the events. Once turned on, the attendees can choose the preferable language in which they want to see the captions on stage.The closed captioning will be human-driven and not AI ( human captioners will be feeding in captions in real-time), and thus the lag will be only 2-3 seconds. 

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Conclusion 

From planning hybrid/virtual events to post-event lead retrieval, choosing the right event integration tools lets you efficiently connect, manage, and interact with your attendees from start to finish. 

It can be challenging to streamline the registration process without powerful integrations, keep your attendees engaged and involved, or effectively follow up with them through emails. Thus, making these tasks more tedious, time-consuming, and expensive. 

Integrations ensure that you can have an engaging and user-friendly registration process, deliver relevant marketing materials, and offer interactive and appealing experiences.

From creating a branded virtual event set up, tracking attendees to post-event recordings, Zuddl’s easy-to-use and highly customizable virtual event platform gives you complete control and flexibility to build your virtual event and deliver an immersive and engaging attendee experience. 

Book your demo today and leverage the benefits of the aforementioned powerful integrations to conduct memorable, interactive, and profitable virtual or hybrid events for your business. 

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

Planning hybrid events is a combination of keeping track of small details and taking some big decisions. The venue? It’s one of the most important decisions you’ll make as an organizer, because the smallest oversight when picking the venue can blow up, causing huge issues on the day of the event. And if you’ve never hosted a hybrid event before, it may feel a little overwhelming trying to figure out which is the right venue for your event.

There’s a lot to think about and a lot riding on your choice, but don’t stress. If you carefully evaluate the following factors, you’ll end up with a wishlist that you can use to start your search

1. Internet connectivity
2. Space and equipment
3. Power supply
4. In-house support
5. Dry runs
6. Safety measures

Now, let’s break each of these down.

1. Internet connectivity

This one’s a no-brainer. 

79% of event professionals feel that wifi performance and availability are a big issue in the event industry according to a study by EventMB. 44% of the participants also said that having poor wifi was one of the main frustrations they faced when dealing with venues. 

Internet connectivity will be central to hosting an integrated event experience for both your in-person and virtual attendees. You’ll need excellent connectivity and bandwidth so that live-streamed sessions and pre-recorded videos play without interruption for your virtual attendees. And your in-person attendees will need to be able to access your event app to access virtual content, post to social media, and connect and network with virtual attendees.

To this end, the venue should have an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that is capable of processing high bandwidth and can keep the connection secure, even in a high-density environment. It’s best if you confirm with the venue that you have dedicated bandwidth and not shared bandwidth, as this will guarantee that you have consistent internet connectivity throughout the event. A venue that doesn't offer dedicated bandwidth will most likely not have fiber optic cable either. 

Here are some other considerations related to internet connectivity that you should look for:

• A streaming speed of at least 10 Gigabytes (GB) with low latency
• Dual-band WiFi that offers a frequency of 2.4 GigaHertz (GHz) and 5 GHz for certain users
• A latency speed or ping of 30 milliseconds or less along with a rate of 2 MP per 100 users
• A networking engineering team that is available on-site to assist you during outages
  

Be sure to screen your venues with these requirements in mind, and vet their online streaming capabilities through the online event platform you are using so there are no issues later. When you’ve chosen a venue, work with them to finesse your requirements.  Even if you have to pay more for a larger streaming package, it will be worth it to avoid any stress and hassle on the day of the event.

2. Space & Equipment

When you’re organizing a hybrid event, the venue space is just as important as the right equipment.  Not only does your venue need to accommodate the number of attendees you’re expecting, but it also needs to have the space for any setup you’re considering - like a stage for instance, with lighting and cameras. 

Think about these questions when evaluating the space of a venue:

• How are people going to walk around the venue during your event?
• If you’re planning to showcase any products via booths or a special setup, is there adequate space to do this?
•  If a stage isn’t available, can one be set up? And is there space to accommodate your AV requirement?
• Does the venue have high-definition cameras for your live-streaming needs, including ones that can support a wide range of screen sizes? Do they provide high-quality microphones?
• Where will attendees register or check in?
• Is there space for your main stage as well as areas for smaller group discussions and for networking?
• Where should audio and video equipment be stationed?
  

From AV capabilities to dedicated studio space, the right venue can help you take advantage of the expertise and infrastructure they offer to ensure that your audience is able to have a good experience.

3. Power supply

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No one wants a power cut to bring everything to a halt, so check that your venue has the capability to support your power needs, including entertainment, lighting, decorations, video and audio equipment, photo booths, band, catering, etc. And don’t underestimate the value of a good power backup system.

4. In-house support

Hosting a hybrid event that caters to a live as well as remote audience at the same time can be challenging because  not all companies have a team that is large enough to take care of both your virtual attendees and your in-house attendees.

Having an in-house support team will make the job easier for you. 

Having a capable and friendly venue team to work with means that they can help address issues attendees face at the physical venue, allowing you to focus on other pressing issues of your hybrid event like attendees engagement, integrating sponsorships into your event. If you’re working with a studio partner to produce your hybrid event, keep in mind that you’ll be able to leverage the talent on their team as well.

Either way, ensure that you have the following professionals support the event, regardless of whether they are on your team,  or work for the studio partner or the venue: 

• A video operator who can ensure that the video is recorded at all times and who can work with your team to live-stream the sessions.
• An AV operator who can set up and operate equipment used to enhance hybrid events, such as microphones, video recorders, projectors, lighting and sound mixing equipment
• Technical support to help in case internet connectivity goes awry
  

If the venue does not have in-house support, you can negotiate your venue package pricing since you will be sourcing support yourself, and which - though necessary - can take up a significant amount of your budget. 

5. Dry runs

For ultimate peace of mind, choose a venue that lets you hold practice runs before the main day. There are 100 different things that can go wrong on the day of your event, so having the opportunity to hold a dry run, check all the essentials like the internet speed, audiovisual equipment etc, and fix any issues is invaluable. 

Protip: Keep in mind that many of your speakers may not be 100% comfortable with interacting with a live and virtual audience and other speakers simultaneously, so allowing them to practice at the venue will help them feel more comfortable and confident on the day of the event as well. 

Most venues should give you the time you need to set up and practice the day before your event. However, if you are getting access only on the day of your event, you’ll need to consider whether your team will be able to combat major problems on the spot or not. 

6. Safety measures

With variants of the pandemic emerging every other day, you’ll now have to deal with twice the safety issues as before. For in-person attendees, the venue will have to conform to the safety regulations of their respective local and national governments. 

Pro-tip:  Look for a venue that has well-documented and clear safety policies and protocols. When your attendees see that the venue is committed to keeping them safe, your on-site attendance will improve.

In conclusion…

Keep these factors in mind when evaluating potential venues, and you should end up with one that’s the perfect partner for your hybrid event. And if ever in doubt, just think about the venue from an attendee’s perspective. How would you feel if you were attending a hybrid event in the space? Does it have everything that would make an attendee feel delighted to attend the event, as well as looked after during it? Is there anything that would cause discomfort or stress?

Keep customer-centricity in mind when picking the venue, and you won’t go wrong.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

From training sessions and team huddles to business conferences and networking events, everything has turned digital — and events are no exception.

For businesses, virtual events have become an avenue to stay connected in a still largely remote world. And the success that organizers have seen from virtual events is evident by the fact that 65% of marketers now plan to reallocate most of their live budget events towards organizing virtual events. 

But hosting a memorable virtual event is no cakewalk.

The long-drawn process of researching, strategizing, rehearsing, and conducting an event requires intensive effort. Bridging the gap between an offline and online event to give your audience a memorable time is perhaps the biggest challenge organizers face today.

Besides, it’s difficult to optimize your efforts for measurable results without the right event management software. Enter Zuddl – a 100% customizable event management solution for event organization and management. From summits to company offsites, conferences to virtual offices, we’ve helped our clients host incredible events by ensuring that key elements are addressed. 

Read on to learn what are the 6 key challenges of virtual events and how Zuddl can help address these issues.  

1. Audience engagement

How often have you found yourself wondering "when will this be over" while attending an online event? You’re not the only one feeling bored listening to one speaker after the other.

Even the most intricately planned virtual events can turn dull without the right tools to keep attendees engaged. And keep in mind that you’re already fighting for your attendees’ attention. With distractions like email, online shopping, and social media platforms just a tab away, you’ll need your event to be more attention-grabbing than anything else.

The bottom line is — if you don’t involve your audience in the event, their participation levels are bound to dip gradually, which directly impacts event success and retention.

Fix it with Zuddl

The platform enables organizers to boost participation and attendee engagement using a variety of tools. With them, you can encourage group discussions, invite people on stage, gamify your event, and more. Here are some of our most popular engagement features:

• Gamification: With gamification, you can incentivize participation and encourage your audience to take part in your event more. By assigning points to actions such as asking questions, answering polls, visiting booths, and awarding those on the top of the leaderboard, you make engagement fun and valuable. 
  

• Live polls: Everyone has a voice. Using polls, you can give your audience a chance to share their views and make them feel valued. 
  

• Join the stage: Replicate the in-person experience with this unique feature that lets attendees join the stage alongside speakers to ask them questions.
  

• Breakout rooms: Create the perfect atmosphere for attendees to interact within small groups, drive meaningful conversations, and network in Rooms.
  

2. Effective lead capturing

Events are an effective marketing tool so it’s a no-brainer that being able to track the number of leads or demo requests, etc. is critical. But this has always been difficult to do at in-person events. And at the same time, organizers have struggled to find avenues to drive lead generation at virtual events because of a lack of opportunities to give product demos, and address visitors face-to-face. 

Many events end up as nothing more than a lengthy video stream with no interaction among the audience, which hurts your ROI. (Click here to read more about how exactly do go about calculating ROI at your virtual or hybrid event)

Fix it with Zuddl

With Zuddl, you have the ability to customize your very own Expo Booth, and to give your partners and sponsors the opportunity to do so too. Here’s how booth features help with your lead generation:

• Tiered sizes: Have the ability to choose from booths of three sizes with different customizations and options for configurability, branding, and messaging.

• Showcase your brand: With widgets like videos, image carousels, files, and call-to-action buttons, you can play attendees product demos,  share marketing collateral with them, as well as exclusive perks like coupons. 

• Live booth staff: A live representative can staff the booth and connect 1:1 via video call with your attendees to immediately answer any questions or doubts, and drive more interest in your products. That human connection is invaluable. 

• Register interest: Participants have a ‘register interest’ button to convey their interest in any brand in a booth. Once a participant has registered their interest in your booth, you’ll be able to see their name and email address which can effectively help you run more targeted post-event lead nurturing campaigns.
  

3. Lack of proper control for organizers

Organizing an event - any event - with hundreds and thousands of participants is never easy. Besides bringing so many people together, running an event seamlessly is a daunting task. 

Platforms like Zoom and Google Meet don't offer the intuitive control you'd expect for maintaining the rhythm of your event And while event management platforms give you far more control over how your event pans out, using the software in itself is a challenge.

Fix it with Zuddl

With Zuddl, you can steer the flow of your event with ease and confidence. Organize meetings, conferences, and summits of any capacity with Zuddl's intricate and easy-to-navigate moderator features.

• Completely self-serve: Zuddl is 100% customizable, meaning that you can customize every aspect of your event, from lobby to networking. There’s no coding required at all.
  

• Virtual backstage setup: Ensure everything goes as per the schedule with intuitive backstage for every live session. Give your speakers a space to practice and do a quick run-through before going live.

• Manage multiple sessions: You can easily oversee different live sessions with a separate backstage setting for each session. Experience the backstage feel of an offline event with the control options to manage every detail of the session.

• Seamless control: Make your live events power-packed with pre-recorded videos, panel discussions, product launches, and presentations. Display these elements with moderator control for all your stages.

4.  Result-oriented and seamless pre-event marketing

With pre-event marketing, your goal is to increase registrations for your event while also generating more and more interest in it. 

To achieve this, your marketing efforts should essentially focus on creating curiosity about the event while making it easy for the audience to register. However, carrying out event-related activities manually can become time-consuming and chaotic with a lot of planning and data handling. 

Most event platforms only ‘step in’ after the pre-event phase, leaving organizers stressing out about how to integrate their registrations with email marketing with the event software. It can be a huge mess.

Fix it with Zuddl

From creating appealing landing pages to convenient registration and reminders, Zuddl offers an easy and efficient alternative to take care of your end-to-end pre-event formalities. And thanks to ticketing and email integrations, you can manage registrations and pre-event marketing easily and seamlessly within one platform.

• Landing pages: You can create customized landing pages and share all relevant information about the event. Drive your audience to this page and increase registrations.

• Ticketing: Create customized tickets based on the days and sessions people wish to attend. With the ticket customization feature, you can offer your audience the choice to register only for the days or sessions of their interest.  

• Email integrations: Send your registered participants announcements, reminders, and countdown emails before the event to keep them updated and ensure maximum participation. 

5.    Storyboard and presentation options

The lack of attractive presentation options is another critical challenge for virtual events, directly impacting audience retention. 

Most virtual speakers deliver their talks with a presentation. But research shows that 79% of people believe presentations are boring.

Without an immersive setup to present visual content, you miss out on opportunities to make your event more interactive and impactful.

Fix it with Zuddl

Zuddl offers game-changing features to deliver content in a virtual setting. You can use multiple formats for your sessions, allow speakers to share their presentations and content easily, and transition between images and videos with ease—taking your events a level high above boring presentations.

• Play pre-recorded content: Add pre-recorded videos to your event to make it more accessible for participants and speakers from varying time zones. 

• Smooth transition: Whether it’s an image overlay or a push video, keep your attendees engaged in between sessions or speakers.

• Zero lag: Audio-video lags have no place at a virtual event. Thanks to zero lag at Zuddl, you’ll be able to live-stream and share content with no glitches, buffering, or audio issues. Offer a seamless experience to your speakers and audience alike. 

6. Event management and coordination

A significant reason why organizers avoid event management software is the struggle of operating the tool. A lack of tech support from the company only adds to the inconvenience.

With little knowledge of the tool, you can neither make the best use of it for planning your event nor help your participants with any queries. Besides, any glitches during the live event can end up spoiling the entire experience.

Fix it with Zuddl

The Zuddl team offers you support throughout the entirety of your event —before, during, and after. 

The platform was designed and built by leaders in the event industry; our CEO Bharath Varma used to run an event management agency called Phoenix Live which hosted live events for companies like Microsoft, Deloitte, Google etc. So we know how important it is for you to have a partner who counts your success as our own.

From onboarding to a knowledge base to assistance during your live event, the team is always there to help.

In conclusion…

Virtual events are a key ingredient of any marketing and lead generation strategy. Hosting an unforgettable online event can do wonders for your brand. So before planning your next event, think about how you can include these six elements and make your event flawless.

While the backend process of planning the details of your event can be taxing, the right event management software can help you host the event of your dreams. Ideally, the software should allow you to engage with your audiences, organize multiple sessions simultaneously, and offer seamless control of the live show.

With Zuddl, you have a simple and efficient solution to ease the process and your experience of running the show! We’d love to show you a live demo of the platform. Just click here to set up a time to chat with us.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

Contrary to popular assumption,  hybrid events have been around for years. 

Just look at the Super Bowl. Thousands of fans would watch the game at the stadium, and many millions more would watch the game from their homes. It's a classic example of a hybrid event with both in-person and virtual components.

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It’s taken the pandemic for businesses and corporations to realize that they can hold hybrid events, and the unique value they offer. Hybrid events combine the irreplaceable feeling of connection of in-person events with the amazing data-based insights and reach of virtual events.

But, not all hybrid events are created equal!

Hybrid events come in all shapes and sizes, delivering unique and memorable experiences to their attendees. We found 9 of the coolest hybrid events example that really showcase how versatile the format can be. All it takes is a little bit of creativity.

1. Austrian Wine Marketing Board

What’s a wine company to do in a middle of a pandemic? The Austrian Wine Marketing Board seems to have taken the question as a personal challenge. Instead of shutting shop, the company decided to hold a hybrid Austrian wine tasting event in Moscow instead!

At the in-person event, wine professionals were given their own socially distanced tables on which they tasted several hybrid wines from Austria, and learned about each product. Using an online app, the tasters could connect virtually with suppliers in Austria through 1:1 video calls in private video meeting rooms or live chat at virtual booths, that had easily accessible documentation and technical specifications. This allowed the tasters to place orders directly from suppliers they would never have known existed, without the event.

2. Meeting Professionals International: WEC Grapevine

It’s no surprise that the largest meeting planner and event planner industry association worldwide held one of the most successful hybrid events to date: WEC Grapevine. The association's flagship event brought together more than 600 in-person attendees in Grapevine, Texas, along with 1,000 virtual attendees. It garnered a 93% satisfaction rate from attendees.

The reason? All WEC Grapevine sessions ensured that both the in-person and digital formats complemented one another. This includes keynote sessions structured like a late-night talk show, where an emcee engaged with the speakers and in-person audience, while virtual attendees participated online. Break-out sessions, midday broadcasts, and Zumba workouts boosted the virtual side, with 23 concurrent sessions.

3. Twitch’s GlitchCon

Twitch, an online streaming service for gamers and content producers, hosts a conference – usually in San Diego – that attracts thousands of attendees from around the world. TwitchCon 2019 focused on community-building regardless of where their attendees were. Virtual attendees are able to participate in the event through live streaming, panels, tournaments and more! There were also keynotes, dozens of heavily-produced gaming tournaments, and even a Blink-182 performance. 

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4. SHIFT 2021

What better way to impress upon event marketers and organizers the benefits of virtual and hybrid events than host one yourself? Shift 2021 did exactly that.  Powered by virtual and hybrid events platform Zuddl and studio partner,  Entertainment Technology Partners, the event was held at a physical venue in Orlando and virtually on Zuddl. 

The event boasted speakers from companies like Google, Hubspot, LMG, Viacom, Invision, Redstone, VEI, and more, talking about all things hybrid, as well as online networking sessions too. As a consequence, although this was Zuddl’s first hybrid event, it was a resounding success. More than 55% of in-person and virtual attendees actively participated during Shift, asking questions to speakers, upvoting questions asked by other attendees, and connecting 1:1 to network with each other.

Watch a video recording of the event here.

5. Empower 21

Soon after Texas opened up in early 2021, the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention successfully held a Christian mission-inspired conference titled Empower 21 as a hybrid event. The target audience for the event were the members of the 40,000 Southern Baptist churches under the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (STBC) spread throughout the country.

The organization used a single platform for both in-person and virtual attendees instead of a patchwork of different programs. Because of this, SPTC was able to promote the event over 100 channels to the families and individuals of the community. Virtual attendees tuned in from the safety of their homes, and attendees who went to the event in-person in Texas, followed social distancing guidelines and wore a mask. 

All attendees were able to attend 29 sessions that included panels, luncheons, workshops, and keynotes. And thanks to enhanced integration, virtual attendees were able to network with their in-personal counterparts. Empower 21 is one of the top examples where a unified audience was created across virtual and in-person so that attendees could share the same experience, communicate, and interact with each other. 

6. Apple Special Events‍

When it comes to events with power and pull, Apple is, of course, one of the front runners - and it’s no different when it comes to hybrid events. For years, the company has live-streamed product launches and special events to thousands of technology enthusiasts and Apple fans all around the world in addition to on-site attendees. 

7. Growth Marketing Conference

There are some who believe that hybrid events disproportionately favor in-person attendees over virtual participants.  The Growth Marketing Conference is one hybrid event that disproves that. Organizers created a ‘Virtual Access Pass’ that gave their virtual attendees bonus content, such as access to more than 200+ webinars, to make sure they felt included and valued.  

8. Gainsight Pulse Everywhere

 This conference has been running every year since 2013. Last year, because of the pandemic, the organizers decided to pivot to a hybrid model. Key staff members and speakers attended the event in person, and thousands of attendees were able to watch the event live and online free of charge. 

Organizers used a virtual event platform to keep attendees excited, engaged and make them feel taken care of. When attendees logged in, they were greeted by DJ Skemaddox, top-notch swag, and puppies of Pulse to set that tone of excitement.  And welcome video popups shared helpful tips for navigating the virtual platform to make the experience as frictionless as possible.

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Organizers used their virtual event platform to great effect - organizing networking sessions for all attendees, driving virtual event engagement, and capturing attendee feedback. It was one of the most sophisticated hybrid events held to date.

9. INBOUND by Hubspot

HubSpot's annual INBOUND conference is usually a three-day affair held in Boston that brings together business professionals from almost every industry. The company’s hybrid event featured all its trademarks.  

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Known for its great entertainment - stand-up comedians, actors and industry leaders regularly feature on its roster of excellent speakers - this year, both in-person, as well as virtual attendees were able to interact with presenters like Kerry Washington, Bob Iger, and John Legend. It doesn’t get more star-studded than that. 

The event blended live sessions with on-demand recordings. Additionally, during the event, both audiences could connect and speak and mingle, which was one of the aims of the event.

In conclusion…

As can be seen, hybrid events offer companies a myriad of ways to leverage the blend of virtual and in-person to their advantage. Whether broadening your reach like in the case of Empower 21 or attracting more star power to bolster your brand like in the case of INBOUND, the unique attributes of a hybrid event lets you work towards your business goals in creative ways.

If you have any questions about how to host a hybrid event of your own, and how to drive the best business outcomes from it, we’re happy to help! Let’s talk.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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To quote every article published in the last year, these are unprecedented times.  

The whole world pivoted quickly to meet the demands of a new reality, accelerating digital transformation that would normally have taken 10 years to accomplish.  Of course, everyone has known the importance of digital and virtual platforms for years, but no one assumed that it would become the center point for our lives almost overnight.

And the pace of change keeps accelerating. There are always new technological advancements just around the corner, especially in the events industry. And you risk losing a competitive edge if your event seems outdated. To quote George Stalk, Jr. in the Harvard Business Review, “The best competitors, the most successful ones, know how to keep moving and always stay on the cutting edge.”

So to help you stay a step ahead of the competition, these are the latest virtual event tech and virtual event trends.

Trend 1: Facial recognition

Most people have seen facial recognition used in movies and TV shows for decades - in Star Trek, Robocop, James Bond for instance; Batman had facial recognition software way back in 1966.

Today, facial recognition is becoming an increasingly common element at virtual and hybrid events. Here’s why:

1. Better analytics
   Facial recognition technology can help in identifying the emotional responses of attendees. At virtual event booths, for instance, facial recognition software can help you track how long attendees visited,  and how they felt learning about your products and services. This is incredibly valuable information that can help you create more targeted lead generation campaigns post-event.
   

2. Increased security
   You can't forge a face, not yet anyway. Using biometric data for entering guests at your event will ensure that you have a high-security level because it ensures that really only authorized attendees are allowed to enter the event. (Here’s hoping no one from Netflix is reading this piece and gets any ideas).
   

3. Shortened queue times at registration
   Giving attendees the ability to check-in at your event via facial recognition is a simple way to smoothen the registration process. If you’ve ever spent time at a high-traffic trade show, you’ll know what an advantage this is. 
   

Now, keep in mind that not everyone will be okay with their face being scanned and analyzed as they might find this an invasion of privacy. So, you will need to be as clear and transparent as you can be. Put information about using facial recognition throughout the event, on your landing page, and in your post-registration emails as well. Attendees should be able to easily access guidance on specifics like who will have access to the submitted photos, where you will be storing the information, and for how long.

Trend 2: Event Apps

Apps make everything easier - and the same goes for virtual and hybrid events. With a powerful event app that acts as an extension of your virtual and hybrid event platform, you’ll be able to deliver a seamless and integrated experience for your attendees.

Using the app, your attendees can easily register for the event, access the schedule, explore speaker profiles, and send notifications before, during and after the event. It’s a great tool to keep event activities top of mind, and drive engagement. 

Especially in the case of hybrid events, your app is what will keep your in-person and virtual attendees on the same page. Regardless of whether they are on-site or 1000 miles away from your location, they will be able to consume the same content, network with other attendees, ask questions to speakers, etc.

And of course, using an event app makes it more likely that you’ll have more attendees tuning into the event, especially the virtual ones who can join sessions whether they’re at home, or in transit. 

Trend 3: Projection mapping

With projection mapping, you’re definitely levelling up your event. 

Think of it as painting with light. You can use it to create exciting indoor stage effects, manipulating lighting to turn common objects into 3D interactive displays. You can add as many colors and textures to your environment. You can project anything - from cinema-style narratives to sponsor branding.

Furthermore, you can also use holograms to create lifelike images of keynote speakers who are not at your in-person venue. Brushing aside the travel and accommodation expenses you’ll save on, this allows you to make attendees at different venue hubs feel like they’re all having exactly the same event experience. How impressive is that?

Trend 4: AR & VR 

As many people confuse the two terms, let’s first distinguish between AR & VR. 

Augmented Reality (AR) is defined an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information - like with Pokemon Go.  Virtual Reality (VR) on the other hand, is a simulated experience that can be similar to or completely different from the real world - like in Ready Player One.

Both enable you to create extra layers of experiences for your event. In fact, according to the PwC's Future Forecast report, XR (Extended Reality) will add £1.39 trillion to the global economy by 2030. Many big brands like KFC, Hilton, Deutsche Bahn, and others are currently working with XR experts to unlock the power of AR and VR technology to organize virtual events. Here’s why adapting it into your event strategy can pay off:

1. Expand your physical events
   ‍With XR solutions, you will be able to create exciting, interactive real-world spaces that your audience can explore and interact within. For immersive VR experiences, you would need to send attendees VR headsets, or you can opt for interactive web-based 3D experience platforms like Zuddl. Either way, this means that you are no longer dependent on one in-person venue, meaning that you can boost your event reach x 1000.
   

2. Truly immersive experiences
   ‍There are plenty of creative ways you can use AR for your events. With AR, you can give your attendees a try-before-you-buy experience. For instance, you can give attendees the ability to virtually ‘place’ different pieces of furniture or home decor in the houses. And you can also show attendees your services and products as interactive 3D experiences during your event. This works well for products like automobiles or travel. 
   

With so many distractions online, now is the time to leverage new technologies to create experiences that thrill attendees and have them coming back for more. AR and VR is a great way to accomplish this.

Trend 5: Language translation

When you organize an event attended by attendees from different countries, you may find that language can become a barrier. Even though English is the most common language used for events,  ideas will be better communicated if your attendees have the option to understand the content that is shared at your event in their native language.

With Language Translation, you can make your event more accessible and inclusive. Platforms like Zuddl provide live captioning and live audio translation in multiple languages in Stages. With this feature, each attendee will be able to engage with content in a language that they're proficient in. It’s a small but significant way to make sure that everyone has a good experience at your event.

Additionally, because your content is now more accessible to everyone, you can invite speakers and attendees from all corners of the world, boosting your prestige and reach. 

Trend 6: New event industry roles

The popularity of hybrid and virtual events has caused the creation of new specialist roles in the industry.  Here are a few you’ll need to factor in and budget for:

a. Chat and engagement features moderator 

Virtual and hybrid event software  like Zuddl have Chat features that can be Stage-specific and event-wide as well, which means that you’ll need team members to moderate the chat. People can get rowdy online and fearless behind a screen - not the best combination.

Your moderators will need to screen the messages on Chat, helping attendees follow guidelines, delete, inappropriate content, and keeping everything going smoothly. 

You’ll also need moderators for other engagement features. Zuddl, for instance, has a feature called ‘Raise Hand’ which attendees can use to ask organizers if they can ask Speakers on stage to ask them questions. In this case, your moderator will first need to connect 1:1 with attendees to screen their questions first before approving their request. 

This role is more important than you think. A great moderator nurtures that social and community feeling by making a chat feel comfortable and inclusive enough for attendees to confidently engage with fellow attendees, speakers and organizers as well. 

b. Virtual event hosts and emcees
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Your host or emcee is the one steering the event so to speak, so they’ll need to be someone comfortable with your platform, event goals, and with engaging with in-person and virtual attendees. 

c. Technical producer
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This is the person who will advise you on whether you should be recording or live streaming your event, etc. They are responsible for the production of the entire event. They will have to work with your A/V team or tech support to ensure that the cameras and mics are functioning properly and have to arrange the sets and lighting for your speakers at your in-person venue.

d. Tech support
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There are A/V technicians and tech support for in-person events. But at virtual events, they play a more prominent role. They handle your event's technical aspects like protecting the event from cyberattacks, creating a response plan for any incident, and ensuring internet connectivity. Some technical glitches are expected in a virtual event but you need someone who will ensure that it doesn't disrupt the flow of your event.

Trend 7: Breakout rooms

Breakout rooms are no longer a ‘nice to have’ but a ‘must have’ because of the value they add to the attendee experience. As breakout rooms allow attendees to interact in smaller groups, they facilitate more focused discussions and interactions and help attendees to get to know each other just a little better.

Breakout rooms that also let attendees in the room view what’s happening live on a Stage are extremely useful. Instead of just listening to Speakers, within the room, attendees can express their thoughts about what is being spoken about, listen to the opinions of other attendees and just have a great conversation. On Zuddl, you can ‘tag’ Rooms based on the industry and topic, to help like-minded attendees connect better.

Organizers can use breakout rooms in a variety of ways - for discussions, for simple socializing or for quiz rooms, trivia rooms, etc. You can be as creative as you like.

Trend 8: Gamification

Gamification is a fun and interactive way for you to drive attendee actions while simultaneously creating value for them, for yourself, and for your sponsors. By simply assigning points to actions like answering a Poll, visiting an Expo Booth (thereby driving traffic for a sponsor or partner), and asking questions during sessions, organizers can encourage attendees to get more involved, especially if the top three attendees on the Leaderboard win a prize! 

Here are a few ways to use gamification:

• Drive interaction with speakers
• Boost posting on social media about the event
• Photo contests
• Scavenger hunts
  

Keeping attendees engaged during your event can be challenging, especially with the many other distractions easily available online. Gamification is a great way to address this.

In conclusion...

Knowing the latest trends and tech will help you to not fall behind, but keep in mind that digital and technological acceleration is a continuous cycle, so event organizers will need to continually evolve their event strategies and production to meet changing expectations. 

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

If you didn’t post about your event on social media, did it even happen?

It almost goes without saying that in our digital world built on attention and visibility, social media has become an indispensable, irreplaceable way for businesses to cut through the noise, and be seen, be heard, and be memorable.

This is especially true when it comes to virtual events, because consumer attention online is a scarce commodity.

Remember, your event is not only competing with the many other virtual events out there, but Netflix, Amazon, Twitch and Youtube as well. 

So, how do you get people away from Netflix and to your event?

For your virtual event to stand out in this sea of online distractions, social media can be the ace up your sleeve. 

As most event marketers already know, sharing UGC - all the activity, conversations, and reactions by attendees during your event - is one of the most powerful ways to grab attention and stoke FOMO. Retweeting and resharing their tweets and posts is a simple but effective way to showcase your speakers and content. This, in turn, will help drive attendance, hype, and engagement up. 

That’s why we’re excited to announce our latest app integration: Taggbox Display!

Zuddl x Taggbox Display!

With Taggbox Display, you now can add social media walls to virtual events hosted on Zuddl. 

The app collects content from 15+ social platforms into a stream of user-generated content in real-time, making it easier to amplify moments that matter from your virtual event.

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How does this partnership help your virtual event?

1. Amplify your virtual event’s reach

Putting up a social wall at your virtual event is a simple way to encourage attendees to talk about your event in real-time, because it highlights their participation and makes them feel valued. And after all, it’s only natural for attendees to be motivated to post more, when they see their posts appearing immediately on the social wall. 

And with every tweet, retweet, like, share, and comment from the social wall, you increase your event’s reach, making it more visible and stronger than your competitors - and thereby making it more likely that prospective attendees will want to join in.

2. Boost visibility for event sponsors

Zuddl already gives virtual event organizers plenty of creative ways to showcase event sponsors. For instance, organizers can put up sponsor logos in their virtual lobby, or put up a partner’s branding at a Stage that has been sponsored. 

Additionally, organizers can enable sponsors to put up Booths in the Expo Zone. As each Expo Booth can be customized, a sponsor can make full use of image and video widgets to showcase their brand and products.

Now, with a social wall, boosting visibility for your sponsors becomes even easier. Sponsors can use the wall to post tweets or Instagram updates during the event so that their logos and social handles can be seen by everyone at the event. 

Bonus: you can add these stats to your event sponsorship packet.

3. Build a sense of community and camaraderie

Using specific event hashtags that attendees can use when sharing their content to the social wall is a simple way to connect people at the event with each other, and to those who are not present but are following your updates online. By doing so, you also help to create a sense of collective buy-in. 

Instead of your event attendees feeling like they’ve just spent time at your event, the social wall, displaying their updates, can help them feel like they’ve actively contributed to it; instead of merely attendees, they become valued collaborators with the brand.

How to integrate the Taggbox Display at your virtual event on Zuddl

Here’s what you need to do:

Step 1: Signup, or log into your Taggbox Display Account (14-days free trial available)

Step 2: After logging in, you’ll be taken to the Taggbox Display dashboard. Click on ‘Start Now’.

Step 3: You'll see a pop-up stating 'Choosing Your Source Network'. 

Choose a source for your social wall from 15+ social media platform options.

For instance, let’s say you want to choose Instagram.

• Choose the tools provided: Hashtag, Handle, Stories, Mentions, Tags and Personal Account to collect content from Instagram
  

• Click on ‘Create Feed’. A preview for your social wall will appear on the Taggbox Display dashboard.
  

• Click on the Display icon at the bottom-left corner in the dashboard.
  

• Choose ‘Virtual Events’ from the options to generate the embed code.
  

Step 4: Login to your Zuddl account. 

Step 5: Go to 'Zone Setup' and click on 'Lobby'.

Step 6: Choose 'Lobby Widgets' from the header menu.  Now click on ‘'iFrame'.

Step 7: Name your widget, and past the copied social wall URL there.

Step 8: Click on 'Create Widget'

And that’s it! You’re done! Your social wall should appear populated by the content pulled from your platforms.

In conclusion...

Happy and engaged attendees are the best advertisement for your virtual event  so letting them post about their experience and submit authentic UGC via Zuddl x Taggbox Display can fill your event with participants, reinforce credibility and trust in your brand, and influence purchasing decisions too.

Talk to us about how we can help level up your next virtual event.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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Imagine you have to address a crowd. After preparing long and hard for this speech, you’re ready with everything you wish to share with the audience — knowledge that you’ve been curating and practicing talking about for a while now. But as soon as you near the speaking session, you end up in a sweat, and fear delivering a boring and ineffectual speech. 

You’re not alone.

Whether  you’re meeting with a group of investors, leading a discussion with your  team, or presenting at a conference, speaking your mind clearly and  confidently can be challenging for anyone.

But how exactly can you build your speaking skills and make it second nature to you?

Speaking well essentially comes from listening well. Listening to other speeches and lessons from great speakers across different fields can help you transition into a naturally effective speaker. 

By looking at their body language, the words they use, how they weave words into a story, and their impact on the audience, you can understand a lot about what it takes to be an impactful and memorable Speaker.

Deepak Pareek, the CEO of Career Keeda and a 5-time TedX speaker says:

“Being a public speaker is difficult. Every speaker who steps up on stage is scared, nervous, excited and all other emotions combined. But what matters is you take the first step, walk up on stage and embarrass yourself because that’s the only way you learn. You learn from making mistakes on stage, some irreversible ones, but all that’s a part of the journey.

One tip from my side: go ahead and expose yourself, face your fear and you’ll thank me later when you see yourself overcome stage fright and come out as a confident public speaker.”

And with this stellar advice, we have compiled ten lessons you can learn about speaking confidently from some of the best speeches out there.

Lesson 1: Explore and cultivate a confident mindset

Speaking in public can trigger anxiety for many. It’s natural to fear the prospect of speaking to a crowd when you suffer from stage paralysis.

But the best antidote to this is to find confidence within.

A University of Wolverhampton study concluded that confident speakers are considered more knowledgeable, accurate, and credible.

So, your journey to becoming a good speaker begins with confronting your fear of public speaking. Break down the nervousness that holds you back, and nurture inner confidence in your ability to communicate.

Watch and learn: Caroline Goyder’s Ted Talk

An accomplished voice coach, Caroline Goyder, presents the perfect path to transition from an under-confident, fearful speaker to an expressive one in her TED talk. She shows how you can use your voice as a prop to deliver better speeches and speak with greater confidence.

Lesson 2: Learn active listening

Active listening hones your thought process. It helps you better understand and interpret what is being asked of you, making it easier to provide an answer. When you listen with concentration, your mind is able to process every piece of information more comprehensively, thereby allowing you to speak with more clarity and precision.

Watch and learn: Brian Chesky’s interview

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky’s interview with Fortune magazine demonstrates the practice of active listening and responding thoughtfully to questions.

Lesson 3: Hook your audience through storytelling

If there’s one practice you can always rely on for speaking effectively, it’s storytelling.

Creating a narrative about your experiences is a great way to gain your audience’s attention. Whether you’re talking numbers at a stakeholder meet or delivering a valedictorian speech, weaving storytelling into your speech will create an impact.

Great speakers excel at storytelling because through stories, you can show your message instead of just telling it.  

Watch and learn: Arnold Schwarzenegger speech

In this speech, Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about his life and shares the lessons he’s found on the journey. He weaves multiple life stories into his speech to make it more hard-hitting. There’s a clear narrative flow, starting from his life in Austria to that of an actor.

Lesson 4: Speak candidly about your personal experiences

Delivering a speech or addressing a crowd becomes a lot simpler when you’re sharing your story. The best speakers always hit a chord with their audience by sharing their personal experiences. Instead of complicating your talk with industry jargon, just share what you have learned, and your experience in doing so.

This will be more relatable for the audience you’re addressing. Talk like you’re one of them, offering the knowledge and ideas you’ve learned so far.  

Watch and learn: Barack Obama’s convention speech

Barack Obama’s speech at the DNC Convention 2004 exemplifies how you can share personal experiences. His story is inspirational for many and shows him as a human being rather than a presidential candidate.

Lesson 5: Learn the art of making presentations 

Fact: 91% of speakers feel more confident speaking with a slide deck.

Presentations can be the best resource to help you deliver a great speech. However, a bad presentation can also break your flow.

Designing good presentations is a skill in itself:

• Create an outline for your speech and divide it into multiple slides.
• Include a mix of textual and visual content in each slide to add more context to your speech. 
• Practice with the slide deck multiple times to become familiar and comfortable with the presentation. 

Watch and learn: Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone

The iPhone launch event perfectly shows how you can use presentations to your advantage. Jobs uses his presentation to add a visual dimension to his speech, which significantly helps the audience understand and follow along with what he is saying.

Lesson 6: Maintain a calm and composed body posture

What you speak is equally important as how you say it.

The way you present yourself to the audience can make a huge difference. Your body posture and gestures convey your conviction and confidence. Even if you are not instinctively confident while speaking, your poses and body movement can make your audience believe otherwise.

Watch and learn: Amy Cuddy’s Ted Talk
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Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist at Harvard, talks about the pivotal role of the body in speaking confidently in this TED talk. She sheds light on how power posing can help speakers grow while showcasing postures of a confident speaker—a great attribute to include in your speaking skills.

Lesson 7: Vocal delivery matters

Perhaps the most significant lesson to speak effectively is the delivery.

To become a good speaker, you have to hone your ability for vocal delivery. The process involves a few crucial aspects like:

• Articulation: How precisely you enunciate the words, like "going to" vs. "gonna."
  

• Pronunciation: How correctly you pronounce every word.
  

• Pitch: Your ability to speak about different ideas in different tones.
  

• Rate of speech: Your ability to find the right balance for speaking to the audience.

Watch and learn: Donovan Livingston’s convocation speech

In his graduation speech at the Harvard Business School, a poet and spoken word artist, Donovan Livingston presents an excellent example for this lesson. He delivers a speech with precision on all fronts—right from the tone and speed of his speech to diction and expression.

Lesson 8: Structure your speech for the layman

Good speakers know how to capture and keep their audience's attention. The best way to accomplish this is by speaking their language.

You can speak effectively and actually be heard when you are talking to and for the audience.

Here's what you can do to practice this:

• Identify your target audience, their pain points, and their needs. 
  

• Shape your speech around these ideas and talk from their perspective. 
  

• Serve your thoughts in a digestible platter and simplify the process of connecting the dots. 
  

• Add humor and relatable context for your listeners.

Watch and learn: Tim Urban’s Ted Talk

Tim Urban, a blogger and illustrator, talks about procrastination in the most relatable manner in this speech. Peppering it with examples and scenarios, he creates very realistic and relatable scenarios for his audience.

Lesson 9: Speak with emotion and empathy

An essential yet often overlooked aspect of speaking well is an emotional appeal.

Build a level of understanding and empathy with your audience. Connect with them on a deeper level and convey a moving story to influence their senses.

Here are few ways in which you can become more empathetic as a speaker:

• Identify what your listeners want to hear from you.

• Listen to your audience to gain more clarity about their concerns.

• Speak from their perspective.

Watch and learn: Simon Sinek’s speech

Simon Sinek, an author and motivational speaker, displays the perfect blend of emotion and information in his speech on understanding empathy. 

Lesson 10: Share actionable ideas

The show, don't tell writing technique works well for speaking effectively.

Don’t just share ideas without giving your listeners a basis to implement them. It’s always better to share examples and ways to help the audience use your information.

If you aim to make your communication more actionable, identify the problem you're addressing and make it crystal clear from the beginning. Offer potential solutions for the same and explain with examples.

Watch and learn: Mark Cuban’s speech

Mark Cuban's interview video shows how entrepreneurs can make the best of their businesses through actionable insights and examples. He uses the example of Dirk Nowitzki early on to explain how discipline and dedication can outweigh talent — among other examples that support and add more clarity to his statements.

Conclusion

Effective communication is one of the most sought-after skills today, so use the lessons detailed in this article to upskill and enhance your ability to communicate.

If you are a complete rookie, start by building confidence and a fast thought process. Then you can work towards the content and delivery of your speeches. As a more experienced speaker, pay attention to how you're talking to your audience.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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While it appeared as though virtual events were a temporary fix to in-person event cancellations a year ago, the success businesses have gained through them have ensured that virtual events are now here to stay. 

What this means is that businesses who previously approached virtual events as an interim solution, cannot afford to do so anymore. With virtual events now a critical element in marketing strategies, it’s imperative to get better at successfully conducting them. 

How your attendees can help you improve your virtual event

The best source of information on how to improve is, of course, people who attended your event(s). Getting data on their experience and accordingly tweaking and optimizing your event strategy is key to continuously hosting great events online. 

And to get this data, virtual event surveys are your best option.  

It’s not as simple as creating a form and sending it out en masse via email, however. Your virtual event surveys will have to be engaging so as to entice attendees to answer your questions, and secondly, you’ll need to carefully think out exactly what information you need, and frame your questions accordingly.

To this end, to get the maximum number of attendees to answer the survey, it’s best to inform them about the survey towards the end of the event. Now, we’re not saying that you can’t ask attendees questions before the event or during it - in fact, doing so will help you build a more comprehensive view of your event. 

For instance, pre-event, you can ask the audience which event they are most looking forward to, and if they have any specific requests. During the event, using Polls to ask if sessions have met their expectations can help you gain real-time data & insights, and make changes on the fly. Virtual event surveys can help you assess overall opinions and expectations. They can also let you better see whether changes you made during the event have resulted in favourable outcomes.

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So post-event, do send attendees a request to fill in your survey and a link via a push notification in-platform, or mail them right after the event is completed. This way, there’s a higher chance that they will commit to answering your virtual event survey right away

You also need to ensure that your respondents do not lose interest midway through the survey. For this, your virtual event survey questions have to be framed smartly, while getting you the details you require.  To help, we’ve put together 10 questions that you need to ask in your virtual post-event survey so that you can level up your virtual events game.

10 questions to ask in your post virtual event survey

When building your post-event survey, keep in mind that you can ask both quantitative and qualitative questions to get data and insight about your event.

Here are ten questions that you can use as a reference when making your own post virtual event survey.

Question 1: Please rate each aspect of our event as per your experience

Type: Rating

Rating different aspects of the event experience on a scale of 1-5, with being ‘unsatisfied’ and 5 being ‘very satisfied’ or using radio buttons, is a simple but effective way for you to understand which areas need the most improvement. 

Feel free to choose which areas you want to ask to be rated, but we would recommend that you include the following:

Event logistics - Ask the audience to rate their satisfaction with the ease of registration. It would be wise to put in a qualitative question below the rating scale as well, asking if there was any point of confusion regarding the landing page, credentials or any other details that they received before the event.

Accessibility - Ask your attendees to rate accessibility to the event as well as content in-platform. Your follow-up question can be more suggestions on ways to help you make your next event even more inclusive ((for instance, providing live captioning and live audio translation in multiple languages).

Engagement - No one has time for boring events these days, so ask your attendees how engaging they found your event. This can be further drilled down into how engaging they found the speakers and sessions, and also whether they found in-platform tools to interact with speakers and attendees sufficient.

Question 2: Please rate the speakers at the event based on the value you gained pertaining to the topic

Type: Rating

Ask attendees to rate individual speakers on a scale of how much they learnt from them. You can accordingly pick speakers for future sessions.

Question 3: Please rate the sessions at the event based on the value you gained pertaining to the topic 

Type: Rating

Similar to the previous question, ask your attendees to rate individual sessions based on how much they learnt from them. Take the responses to this question as a judgement of the content offered at the event, and factor this into your next event strategy.

For a follow-up question, you can ask attendees ‘which session was your favourite, and why?’ This is an excellent way to learn what those components that go into a great session are. 

Question 4: Did you find the event platform satisfactory?

Type: Rating

   Virtual Meets with Zuddl

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This is perhaps the most critical question to include in your survey, as the platform you use can make or break your event. From smooth login and seamless live sessions to amping up the fun factor, your event platform can be the deciding factor in audience experience.

Question 5: How likely are you to recommend this event to a friend or colleague with similar interests?

Type: Rating

Attendees can use ratings between ‘extremely likely’ and ‘extremely unlikely’ to answer this question. A majority of ‘extremely likely’ tells you that you’re on the right track, and suggests that you could even repurpose content from your event to reach a wider audience. 

A follow-up question would perhaps be to ask the attendees likely to recommend the event to others, to share the email addresses of friends who would find recordings of the event helpful - this way you can build your database.

Question 6: Please rate your overall experience with the event

Type: Rating

Again, asking attendees to rate your event between ‘extremely satisfied’ to ‘extremely unsatisfied’. You can use this as an objective metric to rate your event in total.

Just this metric won’t tell you where you need to improve or the changes you need to make. To understand these things better, having open ended questions where the audience can give their opinions is important. However, you can use this to see the percentage of your audience that was satisfied with the event, to compare with future events.

Question 7: What did you like most about the event?

Type: Open-ended

Positive feedback is not just congratulatory. It also serves the purpose of telling you what should not be discarded from future events, or shows you the areas that you can capitalize on. 

Question 8: What did you dislike about the event?

Type: Open-ended

Look at getting negative feedback as an opportunity to improve your performance. Take the feedback constructively and work on these aspects for future events.

Question 9: What changes can we make to improve future events?

Type: Open-ended

Question 8 will already give you an idea of what needs to be worked on, so use this question instead to gauge exactly what is expected by attendees at your events. 

For example, if in question 8, attendees mention that they found the sessions boring, it can be tough to narrow down exactly why. However, with this question, your attendees could suggest a variety of ways to make sessions more interesting that you might not have thought of.

Question 10: Please share any other thoughts or feedback you have about the event

Type: Open-ended

Although questions 1-9 cover most things you need to know from your attendees, keeping an open-ended question at the end of your survey, which lets them share anything they wish, can be a good addition to your virtual event survey.  This way, attendees can freely speak their minds about anything related to your event; the responses just might surprise you!

In conclusion

Understanding the audience's take on the event is the best and perhaps the only way to conduct better events in the future. Feel free to make use of the questions we’ve shared when building your own post virtual event survey. Once you collect your answers, it’s time to analyze your survey data and use it to plan your next event.

 Hrishikesh Pardeshi is the co-founder at Flexiple, a fully remote bootstrapped company with $2 million+ revenue. He's passionate about remote working and has also built Remote Tools & Buildd.co.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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The last year has been one of pivots and possibilities for organizations across sectors, and around the world, especially when it comes to driving new online revenue streams to supplement projected revenue from in-person events. And this has been particularly beneficial for companies whose fundraising efforts have been affected by COVID-19.

Virtual events are one of the most innovative ways nonprofits can fundraise today. In fact, a study on Fundraising Through a Pandemic indicates that 62% of businesses converted to a virtual fundraising event over the last year and that the majority of those who did, described the event as successful.

And with audiences having become accustomed to a digital and virtual-first world, a virtual fundraiser is a great way to leverage this medium to match (or even outdo) the best in-person fundraisers in terms of reach and donations raised.

In this article, we’ll tell you how to go about planning, promoting, and executing a successful virtual fundraising event.

1. Set a fundraising goal

What are your organization's current goals? Are you looking for more members, volunteers, or donors? For which projects are you raising money? It's important to keep all of these things in mind when setting your fundraising goal. Once you’ve done so, you can start planning sessions and activities at your virtual fundraiser that will help you reach your objectives.

2. Make a list of donors and keep them engaged pre-event

It's best to start your list of donors by compiling a database of all the people who have donated at past in-person events. These can be people, businesses, community members, etc. You'll want to make sure you note why they gave and what sparked their interest in doing so. But this list isn’t just of people who have donated to your cause, it’s also important to have an idea of people who are interested but may not yet be ready to donate. Make sure you keep everyone engaged before you host the virtual fundraiser using social media and email marketing. You’ll need to acknowledge and thank the efforts and money raised towards your cause thus far, and what you’re hoping to achieve with your upcoming event, so potential donors can feel aligned to its purpose.

3. Decide what type of event you will host

Part of the beauty of virtual events is that you can choose from or blend together different types of formats, for instance, a webinar, crowdfunding, live stream, or even a virtual race, which you can all host on a virtual event platform. Here are a few examples:

• Webinars or educational lectures: Organize interviews or panel discussions pertaining to your fundraising goal, with experts in the industry, volunteers out in the field, or even leadership at the organization. Skid Row Housing Trust did a Facebook Live video with the CEO of a nonprofit organization that provides 1,040 beds every night at different shelters and talked about how they can help end homelessness. A link and code were provided so attendees could watch the discussion happen and even donate or ask questions if they wished to do so.
  

• A virtual silent auction: Try out a virtual silent auction where attendees are given access to an online catalog of items that are available for auction and then bid on items that interest them. Unlike in-person auctions, virtual silent auctions can happen for a longer period, like a week - just like on eBay. Usually, auction items that receive the most bid activity are ones that appeal to a donor’s needs or interests, are unique, and of course, are reasonably priced.
  

• Hold a virtual gala: This is a great way to connect with and thank your supporters when you can’t do that in person. With a virtual gala, you’re essentially inviting your supporters for an interactive program that showcases your mission and your program. Using the right virtual event platform, you can schedule a program of speakers, live appeals, videos, and even entertainment to keep your attendees engaged and enthused. In fact, you could even incorporate the virtual silent auction here if it suits the purpose.
  

• Virtual/hybrid tours: Whether a university or a museum, taking your supporter and donors on a guided tour through the space or exhibit can give them an insider’s view of the work that your company is doing, and help them feel more connected to your goals, and increases the chance that they will donate to your cause. And unlike hosting an only in-person event, there’s no limit to the number of attendees you can take on your tour.
  

• Crowdfunding via virtual activities: First, you need to set up a page with information about your cause. Then organize an activity for which participants can pay a registration fee and then take part in, like a virtual race. This event is best done as a peer-to-peer fundraiser where the participants can seek donations for how far they’ve run or the time they’ve been running for. Afterward, you can use a virtual event platform to hold an awards show, celebrate the participants, and give them the opportunity to connect with each other.
  

4. Pick the right event technology

You’ll want to make sure that your virtual event platform supports whichever virtual fundraiser event format you’re choosing to go with. And to that end, you’ll need a platform that gives you the ability to easily customize it to execute your vision.

Keep in mind that your event can have different components - a live presentation or discussion, an area where attendees can connect and chat, and an area where you can showcase your organization’s work. So on your event platform should be able to have a lobby area where attendees can wait before the event begins or interact with other attendees.Then there should be a Stages area where you can livestream sessions or play recorded videos, and pull together a real-time audience with whom you can communicate your fundraising goals. It’s also good to have breakaway rooms or networking areas where your attendees can mingle and chat. 

And in all areas of your event, it’s beneficial if your virtual event platform gives you the ability to use widgets or buttons that link to your website, landing page, or crowdfunding page, to promote in-the-moment donations.

5. Promote your virtual fundraiser

Go on social media, plan an email blast, advertise on public radio – whatever it takes to get the word out about your event. This will only encourage more donors to come forward You'll want to promote it at least one month in advance so that people are aware of the event dates and format, and can make space in their schedules.

6. Make the attendee experience a seamless and enjoyable one

This point might seem like it goes without saying, but what we mean to say is to leverage the advantages of a virtual platform to deliver an experience that is authentic and relevant for your attendees, and is high-impact for your business. This can be as simple as putting up images of your volunteers in the lobby, or playing a video of everything you’ve achieved for your cause so far.

Keep in mind that because you’re no longer hampered by geographical constraints, you can now invite Speakers to your virtual fundraiser who were out of your figurative and literal reach before. For example, if you are raising funds to build a park, you can invite a high-profile athlete to talk about how important outdoor activities are for children or if you’re raising money for wildlife conservation, you can try to recruit famous conservations to make a virtual appearance at your event - who knows, maybe even David Attenborough?

And a smart way to leverage high-profile speakers would be to set up private roundtable discussions or a 1:1 meet-and-greet that can be accessed by specific ticket tiers.

7. Prioritize audience interaction

Level up participation and engagement by leveraging the features and tools of your platform, such as a social media wall (that makes visible the posts and tweets about your event). This allows you to amplify the activities and energy of your attendees, thereby boosting your reach and interest in your cause.

Using interactivity tools will also go a long way. When hosting a live session with high-profile speakers, encouraging two-way dialogue via Polls or Chat is a way to make your attendees feel more involved and engaged. And you can have a virtual emcee to remind your donors why you’re raising money and give them an easy way to contribute by clicking on a donation button on the page.

Another  way to ‘level up’ your audience interactions is by introducing gamification  at your event. Simply put, gamification introduces game mechanics to a  setting, and can be used to   increase attendee engagement. So you can use it at your virtual  fundraiser to educate and entertain your audience. You can award points for  asking questions at a session, answering polls, or watching a video about  your project. You can even launch a virtual scavenger hunt, where attendees  need to visit different rooms or virtual expo booths to find clues that lead  to a prize.

In conclusion…

Virtual fundraising events give organizers great opportunities to drive better results, far more than what you can expect at in-person events. But it’s up to you to think of out-of-the box fun and unique ideas for your virtual fundraiser that make people want to attend. Once you’ve done that, the next major step is to then engage with all levels of donors during the event itself. And last but not least, make donating during your event, engaging, simple and easy. 

If you’re looking to explore the capabilities and benefits of virtual or hybrid virtual fundraiser – let’s talk! 

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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Everyone knows that our world of work has forever changed. The massive pivot to remote working a year ago has shown business owners that employees are as productive when they are working from home as when they were in an office. In fact, according to a Great Place to Work study, remote work productivity was stable or increased when working remotely from home, according to a 2-year study of 800,000 employees.

So it’s no surprise then, that according to a study by Enterprise Technology Research, the percentage of workers who are permanently working from home is expected to double this year. Clearly, remote work is here to stay, which means that platforms and tools that facilitate communication, collaboration, and community are more important than ever.

Now, with great platforms come great capabilities - but only if you know how best to leverage them towards supporting your remote workforce. So first, it’s important to identify the ways in which your employees need to be supported.

Research shows that working from home has its own set of challenges for workers. For instance, being always accessible by technology has led to the blurring of work and home life, which contributes to burnout. Or a lack of face-to-face interaction with colleagues can contribute to a feeling of isolation, which can negatively affect collaboration and motivation.

What’s needed to deal with these challenges are clear: empathy, support, communication, rapport . And to this end, virtual platforms can help. Here’s how:‍

Hold interactive sessions with employees‍

When you don’t have any in-person office parties, coffee breaks, watercooler hangouts to bring employees together, virtual event platforms can come to the rescue - in a way that tools like Slack cannot.

In a Medium post, software programmer Alicia Liu wrote last year about how the ease of using Slack can actually result in lower quality communication. She comments, “[it’s] far too easy for everyone to default to using Slack for communicating, even for all the myriad things that don’t make sense to use Slack to communicate…” So by defaulting to dropping a message onto Slack channels, and responding via emojis, all the work you would otherwise put into building cohesion and trust with your colleagues when you were in an office, disappears. 

That’s  why virtual platforms like Zuddl are so important. With platforms like these,  you can host virtual events, as well as create a virtual office space.  Within this virtual workspace, you can set up areas for different interactive  employee engagement activities, and build interpersonal relationships.

The best thing about Rooms is how versatile they are. You can use them to hold different sorts of fun, interactive activities with employees. For example:

• Virtual watercoolers
• Brainstorming sessions
• Project discussions
• Daily standups
• Movie nights
• Trivia nights
• Coffee-break hangouts
• Or even for karaoke session!

But remember, a helpful virtual event platform is only one part. It’ll take dedication from leaders in the organization to bring everyone together to overcome distance, both physical and figurative.‍

Recognize and appreciate a job well done‍

It feels great when your manager or colleagues appreciate your effort and hard work in reaching a target or goal, right?

Not only do you feel encouraged and motivated, but also more connected to your team. In fact, a lack of recognition at work can lead to increased stress and anxiety, and can lead employees to quit. 

Case in point: a whopping 44% of employees switched jobs because they didn’t receive any recognition or reward, according to this Achievers study. And in another study, it was found that 40% of employees said they would put more energy into their work if they were appreciated more often.

That’s where a virtual engagement platform comes in. Virtual appreciation makes your remote workers feel seen, and valued - and you can do this in a variety of ways on a platform:

• Host a virtual party to celebrate birthdays or work anniversaries
• Plan an employee appreciation day, and use the virtual event platform to make the celebration special, by for instance setting up an Expo Booth celebrating Employees of the Month, or creating small videos thanking an employee for their effort.
  

A little appreciation can go a long way!

Make your employee onboarding amazing

Employee engagement platforms can make the onboarding process an easy and fun one. Instead of walking an employee around the office and introducing them to countless people as you would pre-pandemic, you can now host a mass onboarding event. This may sound impersonal, but it’s actually not. 

With a virtual event platform, you can 

• Easily set up a meeting Room for new joinees and hold an intro and Q&A session for them.
• Direct them to meetings with their teams held in adjacent Rooms.
• Set up a branded expo booth that presents the company’s story, values, norms, and team achievements 
• Set up another expo booth that acts as a repository for information or documents that are important to new and current employees alike, and can be downloaded, such as a holiday list, procedure documents, reimbursement format sheets etc.
• Or set up a photo gallery booth to give employees a trip down memory lane with videos of photos of events, team building activities, conferences, CSR activities, etc. conducted throughout the year
  

Don’t squander the opportunity to make a great impression that will stay with new employees for the duration of their careers.

Use gamification to make even mundane meetings fun 

Remember pre-pandemic meetings? We’re guessing that half of your colleagues felt that the meetings held were a waste of time, while the other half felt that they were anxiety-inducing. Remote working has helped a little on this front. Now, asynchronous and synchronous communication has cut down the need for many, many meetings, and people who do attend meetings can do so with their mics and videos off, speaking only when they need to. 

While that’s all well and good, it does raise the question of how effective virtual meetings held among remote workforces are. With everyone now hiding behind their screens, it makes it difficult to know whether or not they’re actually “attending” the meeting.

With virtual engagement platforms like Zuddl, you can use Gamification to make meetings actually fun to participate in. Gamification lets you add game mechanics to the virtual meeting, allowing you to award points to colleagues for completing tasks, such as asking questions, answering a team poll, doing quick research tasks, ie. actively participating in the meeting. You can award the top three on the virtual leader board with gift coupons or something of the sort. After all, everyone is happy to have their efforts recognized.

Make it easy for employees to get to know each other

Using AI-powered matchmaking, companies can organize inter-company smart networking events. This is a fun and easy way for employees to meet colleagues they normally would have not had the opportunity to meet in person. And it helps every one to get to know each other just a little bit better beyond just their work roles. This can help build trust amongst teams, and across the organization. Win-win.

And what’s work without a little play

Everyone needs to take a break in between tasks, so give your remote workforce ways to relax and re-energize.

For instance, you can set up a gaming zone on your virtual meeting platform. Employees can let off some steam by playing games before refocusing on tasks.

Or keep energy high by using Stages to host a variety of entertainment, whether that’s performances by musicians, speeches by leaders in the field, quiz nights, movie nights, and more.

In conclusion…

As  the workplace itself continues to be redefined, companies need to be a  support system for their remote workforce as they navigate uncertainty. To  this end, employers and managers can use virtual platforms like Zuddl to keep  remote employees in sync and motivated. Talk to one of our experts  today on how you can use our platform to improve employee well-being, improve attendee engagement and  perform better as team members and collaborators.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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In a world where change is the only constant, coming together (despite distance keeping us apart) to (re) affirm purpose, align leadership, strengthen collaboration across an organization, or build a resilient future has never been more important. And to this end, when executed well, summits play an indispensable role.

This is why over the last year when lockdowns and social distancing prevented in-person gatherings, the need for virtual meetings skyrocketed. In fact, the number of search impressions for web and video calling software massively increased by 500% in just the first 4 months. 

However, while the need today for virtual summits is clear, many organizers lack the know-how to capitalize on the benefits that only virtual meetings offer. Without an awareness of how to leverage a virtual platform effectively, organizers can end up with a summit that fails to achieve its goals.

But first, let’s explore the many benefits that you can achieve with a virtual summit before we discuss the steps that will help you reach them.‍

Why a virtual summit is no longer a ‘nice to have’ but a ‘must-have’

More people, more ideas, more collaboration‍

One of the primary benefits of holding a virtual summit is that you’re able to reach far more people than if you were holding an in-person event. This means that people from all over the country and the world will be able to attend. Take, for example, the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly.  When it was held in 2019, 16,200 participants attended the event. However, when held virtually in 2020, more than 26,000 individuals from 134 countries attended the summit. ‍

‍Less travel, space, and marketing costs‍

The second main advantage of holding a virtual summit is the reduction in expenses. It’s around 75% cheaper than in-person meetings given that you no longer have to pay for travel or venue costs. And the bonus is that virtual summits still allow businesses or campaigns to generate a lot of revenue through either virtual ticket sales, donations, or the purchase of products. ‍

Steps to hosting a successful virtual summit‍

When you’re planning and executing a virtual summit, you can’t simply copy-paste your previous approach to in-person meetings. Keep the following steps in mind to maximize the benefits of using a virtual medium for your summit.

1. Look for ways to leverage the benefits of virtual into your logistics
   
   There’s plenty to consider when planning your virtual event - for instance, will you have live sessions as well as recorded ones, or how to ensure a seamless experience for attendees joining in from different time zones. But it’s important to think about ways you can use the fact that your meeting place is a virtual one to your advantage. 
   
   For example, you can combine synchronous and asynchronous activities during your event so that no matter when someone is tuning in, they will be able to have an interesting, immersive experience. At the recent international congress hosted by the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, organizers planned live presentations and some pre-recorded workshops into the schedule. That way an attendee from London and from Australia could both join at different times, but have access to important content - something that would be impossible at an in-person event.
   
   Another benefit of hosting virtual events is that you are no longer hampered by geographical or travel constraints when recruiting Speakers. This means that you can approach more speakers, as well as more exclusive ones to speak at your summit.

2. Choose the right tech for your virtual summit
   
   The online event platform you choose to host your virtual summit will make or break your event, so it’s important to pick one that enables you to host your event exactly as you envision it.
   
   So choosing a platform that is completely customizable will make your life a lot easier. You should be able to use the platform to easily set up everything you need at your virtual event venue, from Stages to Networking areas.
   
   Secondly, it’ll be really helpful if your platform has all the tools you need to facilitate a seamless experience for speakers and attendees, by which we mean that it should not require your participants to have to install or download any software to attend sessions or interact with each other. It’s a lot easier to centralize your efforts instead of switching between tools, which is both time-consuming and confusing.
   
   Finally, you also need a platform that enables two-way communication and engagement - keep in mind that your summit may be the only time in the year when many attendees see one another.
   

3. Set up informative and easy-to-use landing pages
   
   If you have a simple website, you can make do with a single landing page for your virtual summit, but it’s also worth the effort to have a dedicated website to the virtual summit with its own domain. Keep in mind that the website or landing pages should be designed to drive attendance. You can also create individual landing pages for each speaker so they can drive traffic to those pages. 
   
   To get people to opt-in to your virtual summit, you’ll first need to make your page as informative and attractive as possible. Don’t be afraid to get creative - you want your landing page visitors to be wowed. The virtual event platform you choose can really help you out here. Zuddl has a landing page customization feature where you can use ready-made templates. You can customize it to clearly explain the purpose of your summit, highlight who the speakers are, and set out the different sessions and activities that will take place.
   
   Additionally, remember to make registration really easy for attendees.
   

4. Create a marketing and sales funnel
   
   Don't make the virtual event registration procedure super-complicated. All you need to do is set up a basic automated email sequence that is triggered when a prospective attendee opts into the event on the registration page. 
   
   Marketing integrations enable organizers to send attendees successful registration emails along with follow-up emails about the event. This is especially useful when combined with analytics from the event. Platforms with Zuddl will give you details about your attendees’ micro-movements throughout the event, giving you insight about what sessions they found most interesting, what questions were most upvoted, etc. 
   
   You can use this information when your event is over to create targeted campaigns and communication.
   

5. Promote your virtual summit
   
   Around 65% of marketers say you need more than 6 weeks if you want to drive the desired amount of registrations, so make sure that you plan in social media and email marketing ahead of time.
   
   And don’t stop there. You can use podcast interviews and guest blogging to also promote the event. Ask your sponsors and speakers to spread the word. Giveaways and paid ads are other ways to promote your virtual event if your budget allows. This is a great way to reach people that you would otherwise not be able to reach. 
   
   Ads are fairly simple to purchase on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram but you’ll need to create an advertisement concept that is eye-catching and memorable. 
   

6. Host your virtual summit!
   
   On the day of your summit, you and your team are going to have to keep everyone in sync - but you can use your virtual event platform to pull this off. Tools like event tickers will let you share important information with attendees at your summit, such as upcoming sessions or surprise activities. And you can use in-platform tool reminders to alert Speakers about session timings. 
   
   And with an arsenal of tools and zones at your fingertips, you’ll be able to host a series of structured discussions designed to generate ideas and alignment, keep conversations lively and interactive, and facilitate collaboration.‍‍‍

Tips for after the virtual summit‍

Keep the momentum from your virtual summit going even after it officially ends, to optimize performance. For instance, you can make recordings and other material from the summit available for access to attendees, and repurpose the content in your post-event emails and social media campaigns. And you could also send out a survey to see if attendees felt the summit goals were achieved, and to get their opinion on what worked and what could be improved for next year’s summit. ‍

In conclusion…‍

Virtual summits take careful planning and execution but if done right, they can help you drive far greater value than you achieved at previous in-person summits. But keep in mind that with this new medium, comes new opportunities as well as challenges. Talk to our experts about how you can use a platform like Zuddl to get the results you want and need from your virtual summit. Let’s talk.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

There is no disputing that the pivot to digital and virtual, so tenuous over the last year, is now firmly here to stay. And in this new normal, marketers are increasingly appreciating the value that virtual mediums, such as virtual events, offer today. 

Virtual events are an effective way to reach new prospects, engage (and re-engage) existing ones, increase conversions, and track results. They're also easier to organize, are less expensive, and are more accessible to attendees than traditional in-person events. All this means that virtual events are also the perfect vehicle for brand marketing.

How so? Read on to learn how you can effectively leverage virtual events to effectively market your brand.

A quick recap - what is brand marketing?

Brand marketing is the process of promoting your products or services in a way that draws attention to your overall brand. Its purpose is to connect your identity, beliefs, and personality to your target audience through successful targeted brand communication.

It’s more than just slapping your logo and company name on as many surfaces as possible and hoping for sales. It entails representing your company's identity from who you are, what you do, the level of quality you offer, and your reputation.

So why are virtual events are brand marketing’s new BFF?

While the advantages of virtual events are fairly obvious, the ways in which marketers can creatively use events for brand marketing are less. So here's how you can drive better awareness and impact via virtual branding

1. Express your brand identity throughout the event

Virtual events give you unlimited opportunities for creating touchpoints between attendees and your brand.In other words, you can use every event asset, from your event landing page to your stage backdrop to bring customers and prospects closer to your brand.

Take, for instance, event branding. To get customers and prospects to feel excited about your brand, a generic image with your logo slapped on it just won’t do. Instead, markers can use branding creatively, such as through a visually spectacular welcome video, to reflect a distinctive look and feel, that attendees instantly recognize and remember afterward. Here's an example of a great welcome video by Razorpay for their FTX 2020 event, hosted on Zuddl.

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2. Relationship marketing via a micro-virtual events strategy

Micro virtual events are a series of smaller virtual events that eventually feed into a larger marquee event. These events give marketers an opportunity to nurture brand intimacy ie kindle a personal relationship between them and the brand.

For instance, you can give attendees the opportunity to participate in activities like a Digital Round Table or a Panel Discussion at a virtual event. Rather than talking about yourself throughout your event, you can give your attendees opportunities to express themselves and ask questions.

3. Boost brand loyalty by leveraging the advantages of a virtual event platform

According to a recent study by Invesp about returning customers – those loyal to your brand- are 50% likelier to try more of your products and spend, on average, 31% more than newly acquired clients; yes, brand loyalty is essential.

You can increase brand loyalty at your event in a variety of ways, thanks to how you utilize the features and tools of your virtual event platform. For instance, why not invite your customers to be speakers at your event? Not only does this show existing customers that you value them, but it’s also a great way to show other attendees who are potential customers why they should try your products or services.

Another way to build brand loyalty is by setting up networking sessions for attendees at your virtual events. Enabling current customers to talk to prospective ones is an indirect but positive way to drive brand awareness. Furthermore, it’s a simple way to add value to your customers’ lives. Helping them match with professionals who can add value to their businesses will earn you a lot of goodwill.

Finally, you can also drive loyalty by rewarding loyal customers with exclusive in-event experiences. This could be anything from arranging 1:1 virtual meet-and-greets with your brand’s ambassadors or enabling exclusive access to specific Stages at your event. 

4. Use giveaways to promote brand recall

Everyone loves free goodies - but it’s good for business as well. Just look at these figures in a report by The ODM Group: 

• 85% of clients enjoy receiving marketing products
• 58% retain these products for up to four years
• Eight out of 10 attendees remember the promoted brand
• Approximately 21% of the attendees buy products after receiving promotional items
  

You can send giveaways - both physical or virtual - to your attendees immediately after the event is over. This can be made easier by using virtual event platforms like Zuddl that have integrated ticketing, so that you have a complete list of attendee details such as email or office addresses to which you can send the mementos. 

5. Extended brand coverage through social media and other channels

It’s a no-brainer that social media can drive more business for your brand, which is why marketers put in time and effort in planning campaigns, reposting testimonials, and curating good-looking Instagram pages. 

Virtual events can contribute to amplifying your brand on social media, through the use of in-platform tools like an integrated Social Wall . This would be a simple, fun way to encourage attendees to share posts about the event (without requiring them to download and install anything) that will appear on-screen within seconds.

For example, using hashtags can help you gain reach, putting your brand awareness virtual event in front of people who might not have heard of it before. Or you can also get your attendees to share photos and videos of the event using the same hashtags so that you can reshare user-generated content. This will help bring your brand to life.

Continue sharing memorable moments from the event and ask attendees to share their favorite discussions and experience. This will keep them excited about attending your events, and keep your brand in the spotlight.

The social wall will also let you drive more visibility and awareness long after the event is over. 

6. Leverage event analytics to drive better value for customers

One of the best things about virtual event platforms is that they are a data gold mine. At in-person events, it can be extremely difficult to source feedback and opinions from your attendees. Virtual event platforms make this a breeze.

Marketers can use Polls, for instance, to gain insight into the needs and wants of your attendees about a variety of things - preferences and complaints about products and services in your industry or topics that attendees want to know more about. This information can then be used to tailor your brand’s offerings down the line. And needless to say, asking your customers and attendees their opinion is a simple but significant way to tell them that their voices and opinions are important thereby fuelling brand loyalty.

In conclusion…

It’s clear that there is plenty of opportunity in using virtual events to market your brand - they offer unlimited opportunities to create touchpoints between your brand and attendees. All it requires is for marketers to be inventive and creative in the way they use virtual event platforms to meet their goals. 

Need any advice? Our team is full of ideas. Just connect with us for a quick conversation on how to deliver better virtual event branding - we’re happy to chat! Let’s talk.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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Did you know that around 77% of people in business use virtual events and conferences to connect with remote employees and around 78% of businesses use video conferences to hold team meetings? Given these stats, it’s quite clear that virtual events are becoming the new normal. They’re here to stay.

But what point is it holding a virtual event, if it fails to make any impact whatsoever?

The  key to holding a virtual event that drives value isattendee  engagement. 49% of marketers believe to be the  largest contributing factor to running a successful virtual event - but many  organizers do not know how to effectively engage their attendees. Indeed,  according to Meetings in America, around 91% of people in businesses admitted  to daydreaming during meetings while 39% admitted they fell asleep at some  point.

Why is engagement such a challenge? 

Many organizers think that virtual event engagement issues can be solved by simply inviting famous speakers to the event, and having them present or lecture on a given topic - but this is a mistake.

Keep in mind that virtual events can be interactive spaces - where attendees can learn and connect with experts and thought leaders, as well as chat and network with other professionals. The differentiator between a flat event and a memorable one is having active attendees instead of passive participants.

If you’re a business that’s struggling to increase engagement at your virtual events, don’t worry, we’ve put together 9 ways you can make sure your next event is interactive, interesting, and impactful.‍

‍1. Define what good engagement means to you and how it can deliver ROI‍

Boosting virtual event engagement can lead to better business outcomes in terms of quality lead generation, increased brand awareness, and much more.

So, before you host a virtual event, set your event goals, and then understand how good engagement can help you meet them. For instance, if one of your goals is to drive leads for your business or that of your sponsors, then encouraging attendees to watch a product demo, or consume marketing material can help you run effective and targeted post-event nurtures.

Or let’s say your goal is to drive awareness around a product launch during the event. You can run a social media contest for your attendees, encouraging them to post about the product and event, for a prize. This should help to boost your reach. Of course, the virtual event platform you choose should have the functionality to link from within your event to social media platforms.

It’s also important to choose a virtual event platform that lets you easily track and view the impact of engagement on your ROI. For instance, begin able to see which session topics had the most engagement, and the questions attendees had at those sessions, can help you plan your post-event marketing strategies and campaign messaging more effectively.

Also read: Event trends in 2023

2. Choose a virtual event platform with customization capabilities‍

Customizing your virtual event with intuitive tools is a parameter you cannot ignore if you’re looking to increase engagement. 

A platform that offers a customizable interface, different types of widgets, and interactive tools will allow you to leverage interactivity and participation in creative ways, offering your attendees so much more than a set of speakers on a stage

Don’t get us wrong. Having great speakers is definitely important, but it’s not the solution to engagement in itself. Your platform should have in-built tools to encourage your attendees to ask questions and take part in conversations, such as Q&A or a Chat at the least. Without this, the discussion will be one-sided - and nobody likes that.

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Additionally, keep in mind that even the best of us have limited attention spans. Give your attendees a variety of ways to stay engaged at your event. When they want a break from Stages, give them other spaces to connect and interact with others at the event. Customization will enable you to create breakaway rooms for example, and limit the number of attendees per room so that smaller group discussions can take place. ‍

3. Create Polls‍

One of the best ways to drive engagement from your audience is through the use of polls. It’s also the easiest way to find out what your attendees think of your event, product, and brand

When you are managing a virtual event, you can share different types of polls about the event or about anything specific that happened during the event. The attendees can share their opinions, evaluate the virtual event, and provide feedback if any. Understanding what your audience thinks of your event can help you set up the next event to be bigger and better. For example, if a poll result showed that attendees like a certain track or session topic than others, you can include them in your next virtual event, which will likely increase the engagement for that event.

4. Hire entertainment 

Listening to a lecture or a presentation hour after hour can be too reminiscent of sitting in school or university, so schedule in some entertainment to keep things interesting and fun. 

For example, at the virtual summit, the organizers of (Almost) HYBRID brought in NYC’s Premiere hip-hop improv team North Coast for a live performance. And North Coast made their performance even more interactive and personalized by asking the audience questions about their favorite parts of the event. Even before the act started, attendees were already reminiscing about the best moments from the event in the Chat.

Afterwards, North Coast delivered a customized improv hip-hop sketch that was pulled from the unique experiences that the attendees had shared.

Just like North Coat, book entertainment acts that will keep your attendees attentive and active. Bringing on comedians, creative videos, sketch artists, and even magicians is sure to keep everyone riveted.

5. Leverage gamification‍

Gamification refers to the application of mechanics that are traditionally associated with video games in a non-game scenario - such as in a virtual event. Incorporating gamification adds a competitive but fun element to your events, and it’s a proven way to promote higher virtual event engagement levels as 59% of organizers use gamification as a way to improve engagement.

For example, for visiting a virtual booth, an attendee can receive some points. After gaining enough points, they can win a prize. You can even have smaller contests at each virtual booth so the attendees have to interact with the sponsors, leading to a win for you, your sponsors, and your attendees. 

Or, you could award points based on interaction as well, like taking part in a poll or asking a question. This way, your audience knows they need to pay attention to the session as a poll could come at any moment, as well as listening to the content in order to ask a relevant question.

There are many ways to use gamification strategies to improve virtual event engagement but you need to remember to track participation and clearly communicate the rules.

6. Use translators to make your content more accessible‍

One way to substantially increase virtual event engagement is to improve inclusivity and accessibility. One simple way to do this is to have your content translated into different languages. Unless the event was specific to the locality that you’re in, you can assume people from different countries will attend your event, considering the event is online.

If the content is translated, your attendees will feel more comfortable participating. It’s reported that around 65% of non-native English speakers prefer content to be in their native tongue although they are proficient in English.After all, simply translating your website for the United States, China, Germany and Japan can give you access to 50% of worldwide sales potential.‍

7. Schedule breaks during your virtual events‍

It’s been proven that planning breaks can increase attentiveness, prevent fatigue and improve motivation. You can use a push notification to inform attendees of breaks, and even encourage them to grab a cup of coffee in the interval, which everyone is sure to appreciate.‍

8. Use a mobile app‍

Mobile phones are used 58% more than computers and laptops, which means that when you make your virtual event accessible by mobile, you make it so much easier for your audience to access it quickly, no matter where they are.

Now, we know phones can be a great source of distraction during any virtual conference or meeting, but you can counteract this by making engagement via mobile simple and seamless. 

Moreover, mobile apps can offer businesses further insight into their event and brand. Do people interact with sessions differently when they are on mobile for instance? Do they have more conversations with attendees? These are all interesting points to consider.‍

9. Promote interactive real-time sessions

A lack of real-time conversations ruins the momentum of an event. By introducing opportunities for real-time interaction with your online attendees, you can help develop a sense of community within your event.

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Just like how impromptu conversations take place at offline events, you can also help your attendees forge new relationships and connections if you create spaces for real-time socialization. Enabling networking is an important part of this.

Conclusion

With the right platform, you can increase virtual event engagement, and make it truly valuable and memorable for everyone involved. Keep in mind the tips mentioned in this piece, and choose a customizable platform that can execute all of them.  With a little creativity and customizability, you can create an amazing, engaging virtual event experience that everyone will be talking and writing about for years to come. 

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.