Virtual event ideas are a dime a dozen these days The shift from in-person road shows and trade shows to online programming has presented several challenges for event management professionals:

Another key hurdle is how to stand out in a sea of online content. 

By now, everyone has become accustomed to daily Zoom calls and Google hangouts, but that just means the bar is higher for creating an online event that stands out from all the other digital interactions people are having on a daily basis. 

How can you create an experience people will remember and talk about?

We’ve put together this list of virtual event ideas to make your online event memorable. 

Getting people to register for your event is part of the battle; getting them to attend and stay engaged is also crucial to success. Video can help create interest in the content you will be presenting during your event, and it can also help get people amped up right before a presentation:

Many of us have been to expert panels where all the speakers share similar viewpoints or provide the same general advice. Attendee focus can waiver in these cases – particularly if there are a lot of panelists – but one thing that’s sure to capture attention is debate. 

If you can get one or more experts to show their passion for a subject by (civilly) disagreeing about it, you’re far more likely to get attendees to participate in the live chat to take sides and to have people discussing what they saw after the event is over. 

Pick a moderator who knows about the topic enough to ask hard-hitting questions, and who’s able to keep the action going with challenging follow-ups. 

One of the main reasons many professionals attend events is to network. Unfortunately, online events are not usually set up to allow the kind of one-on-one or group chats that lead to new connections. Fortunately, there are tools you can use before, during and after your online events to help attendees get to know each other: 

Before Your Event

Facebook and Slack groups are a great way to get registrants talking to each other (and to you) before your event begins. You can include a link to your event group on the registration page or thank you page and in confirmation emails. 

During Your Event

Day-long or multi-day events can get monotonous; baking socialization sessions into the agenda is a great way to inject some energy into the online event experience. 

One great tool for getting attendees bonding is icebreaker.video – it allows for group chats and randomized one on one video sessions so attendees can meet and greet each other while recapturing some of the surprise aspects of learning who’s in the room. 

After Your Event

As a bonus for attending your online event, you can offer people the chance to connect with each other individually or in a group using Braindate Virtual – a video platform that enables conversations around shared topics of interest. 

In-person events usually include some kind of refreshments, and they often incorporate other physical elements like swag, a photo booth or takeaway bags from sponsors that attendees can experience or bring home with them. 

With a little advanced planning and creativity, there’s no reason you can’t replicate these tangible event experiences and create lasting memories for attendees. 

Refreshments

Hanging out by the food table is a tradition many attendees miss, now that they’re stuck with what’s in the kitchen fridge. Consider surprising and delighting your online event registrants by mailing them a snack pack or a promo code for one when they register so they have the fuel to stay focused on your presentations. 

Swag

Just because you don’t have a booth, that doesn’t mean you can’t give attendees something to remember you by long after they’ve attended your virtual event. 

Now that everyone’s in loungewear, swag items like soft t-shirts, hoodies and slippers are in high demand. You could also send registrants useful household items like a branded mug, candle, hand soap or tote bag. 

Digital Takeaways

If you want to keep the gifting digital, you can offer feel-good items like local business gift cards or charitable donations. 

Sponsors and partners can get in on the action, too, by offering attendees virtual goodies as a thank you. 

Event-specific promo codes, exclusive downloads and free consultations are all popular options.

Most event organizers provide registrants and attendees with on-demand recordings… and that’s the end of the interaction until the next online event. 

If you have other, related content that your new audience would find interesting, don’t be afraid to follow up and share it as a post-event email nurture campaign. Staying top of mind is a long game, after all. 

If you have other virtual event ideas, leave them in the comments below.

If you’re like most of the event management professionals we work with, odds are that your plan for 2023 has been completely derailed by the pandemic.  Over the past few months, everyone’s had to scramble to turn a calendar of in-person events into a series of virtual programs.   

Now that the reactive phase is out of the way, how can you proactively plan your events and make sure that no surprises come your way? Taking advantage of the flexibility and convenience of a hybrid event platform can help you future-proof your events, so you are ready to quickly adapt to new demands.   

The future demands flexibility and adaptability: while things are uncertain, it’s better to be safe rather than sorry. Re-evaluating your current systems, processes, and tools will be key to those who want to thrive in this ever-changing scenario.  

Attendease can support your needs by providing a hybrid event platform where you can manage your entire event portfolio, whether in-person or online, and you can easily update components as needed.

Some of our customers were able to completely pivot their 10,000+ attendee conference from in-person to online within a week timeframe.  If you want to gain some more insights in what the future holds and how to prepare yourself for uncertainties, join us for a free webinar on July 23rd, as we will discuss how planners can future-proof their events and be ready to adapt fast when needed.  Here are some things we will discuss: 

If you didn’t attend the webinar, you can still watch the recording to help you with your virtual and hybrid events. Register here to watch the recording.

COVID-19 has definitely changed the event’s industry in an unprecedented way, but changes will stick way longer than post-quarantine and social isolation times. A few regions are slowly opening their doors again, with more relaxed “stay home” rules and commerce slowly starting to reopen. While events are still not happening, we are already thinking about what the future of events will be like once things go back to “normal”. 

With the businesses that are getting ready to reopen, we can observe that things are not going back to what they used to be. It may be temporary or it may be long term, but you should expect caution for at least the next one to two years to come. Businesses are ensuring their spaces are safe and clean, designing spaces that avoid crowds and improve walking traffic flow, and measures are being taken to provide a safer space to all: employees and consumers. In this new scenario, it’s tough to imagine how events will occur, since one of the main selling points of events is exactly to get people together. So what will change and how we, as event professionals, can plan for the future of events post COVID-19?

In a hybrid event, attendees have the option to choose to attend the live event or to watch the sessions online. Many large conferences already offered this option pre COVID-19 as a way to provide more affordable ticket options for those who couldn’t afford the high ticket price for the full event, or could not travel to the event destination. We expect this to become a bigger trend, as people may still avoid large crowds for at least another year (or more) to come. 

Busy tradeshow and conferences filled with people are no longer synonymous with a successful event, this can in fact make people uncomfortable or even detract people from joining the event. Showing that your event is implementing measures to ensure everyone’s safety can help to get more buy-in from prospects, sponsors, and exhibitors. More than ever, planning the use of space and crowd management will become an extremely important part of the job of event planners. For example:

If you haven’t done so yet, going digital can help your events to stay safer in many ways by avoiding the exchange of materials, handouts, swag bags, cash and more. Here are some ideas to replace physical materials to digital options (and you can check this blog post for a few more ideas on this topic!):

For event planners with a large portfolio of events, it may be time to re-evaluate the technologies supporting their efforts. Having a hybrid platform at this time will help planners to manage all event components from one platform, whether online, in-person, or hybrid. Using event technology software like Attendease will allow planners to host in-person events with online components while giving better flexibility to manage fully online and fully in-person events as well. Using cloning features, which allows planners to duplicate previous events to create a new one, is yet another form to make the job more efficient, especially when working with a large event team.

As we see this new reality unfold, it’s important that we keep learning and thinking about ways to pivot and adapt our events to this new world we are living in. If you’d like to gain new insights in this regard, watch this webinar on-demand with guests from HubSpot, MPI Group/ PCMA, and Attendease, discussing how to pivot from in-person to online events. 

With the disruption of the events’ industry due to COVID-19, many event managers are now pivoting their in-person events into online meetings. While hosting a single-session webinar may be a breeze, hosting a multi-session online conference can seem like a daunting task for event professionals planning events in the online space for the first time. Knowing this is a big challenge even for experienced planners, we put together an implementation guide to help you manage your next multi-session online event. You can read the implementation guide here. Now, if you want to learn how other event leaders are managing this challenge, don’t miss our next webinar: an Online Panel with top-notch specialists who will share how they are transitioning from in-person to online events.  Some of the topics discussed will include:

Hosted by: Sureena Parmar, Account Executive at AttendeasePanelists: Kerry Sheehan: Partner Event & Community Manager at HubSpotShawn Cheng: Project Manager, Conferences at MCI Group Canada, and President of PCMA Canada – WestTroy Kasting: Customer Success Manager at Attendease 

Join us to learn how you can smoothly transition into the online space and how to ensure your corporate events keep running and your employee and customer engagement remain high. Register here to watch the.

While the number of confirmed cases of the COVID-19 is increasing by the day, event producers around the globe are faced with the tough decision whether or not to proceed with their in-person events, to cancel it, or to shift the event into an online or virtual event. 

While shifting in-person events online may not be how you envisioned your event, it is a great way to keep the event happening and keep people connected. In times where governments are pushing for social isolation and limiting large gatherings as a measure for precaution, virtual events and meetings provide an efficient solution to keep people together.

Attendease, an all-in-one event management platform for all event types, has a robust set of tools to host and manage online events, from webinars and livestream broadcasts to virtual meetings and conferences.  This upcoming Thursday, March 19, the team at Attendease is putting together a webinar to showcase how event managers and planners can use online event management software to shift their in-person meetings into online events.

Register today to save your spot! 

With many global events being canceled due to the spread of the novel coronavirus, event managers are looking for solutions like Attendease as an alternative to bring in-person events online

The World Health Organization have declared the novel Coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency, and the fear of spreading the COVID-19 is presenting businesses in the events and travel industries with an unprecedented global challenge. Governments are imposing event bans and new regulations to ensure safety, airlines are cutting down the number of flights to and from Asia, and companies are restricting employee travel in an effort to protect their welfare. 

“The current business environment is uncertain, with COVID-19 causing concerns with day-to-day business operations running as usual,” Attendease CEO Todd Heintz said, “With this uncertainty, the need for staying connected and able to collaborate with others is even more critical, and the Attendease Platform is ideal to enable the event teams from being able to support their events, even as public interactions are temporarily on hold.”

While the number of confirmed cases of the COVID-19 in North America are much smaller when compared to Europe and Asia, that number keeps growing by the day. To date, according to the Channel News Asia, a transmedia company owned by Mediacorp, there are over 80,000 confirmed cases in China, compared to 91 in the United States. With that, some large scale American-based events have decided to proceed with their agenda and are seeing sponsors dropping and/or a significant number of attendance drop as well. With so much fear and uncertainty around, many event producers are considering alternatives to running in-person events.

Leading collaboration technologies like Attendease, a versatile enterprise event management  platform, can fill that demand. Having an event system in place that allows the flexibility to manage events of all types and sizes can be the solution event managers have been looking for to temporarily migrate live events into online events. 

The core differentiating feature of Attendease is the versatility to empower events of all types and sizes, meaning in times of uncertainty around in-person events, large global organizations can still maintain connections and collaboration for employees and customers through online and private internal events. The Attendease Platform supports both online streaming and recorded sessions, giving attendees from different timezones the opportunity to watch replays at a time that is most convenient to them. The recordings can be available for the public or it can be private with users required to  register in order to watch a session online. One advantage of using such a versatile platform, is that it can provide accurate attendance metrics, incorporate online surveys, and integrate with other corporate systems. 

Are you thinking about bringing your events online? Talk to our team to see how Attendease can help!