During the Coachella Music Festival in April 2012, Tupac Shukar, a hip-hop star who passed away in 1996, made a surprise appearance as a hologram, performing “live” along side hip-hop/rap stars Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre. You may be asking yourselves, why is this musical festival relevant to virtual trends, much less the meetings and events industry?

While virtual technology has progressed to become part of a larger strategy to engage audiences, I believe the holographic performance came closest to achieving the goal of this technology – seamless blending of “virtual and live” experiences.

Relevance

Coachella is a 3-day music festival known for its music – up and coming and legends, cutting and bleeding edge, folk/acoustic to rap and hip hop. Levering innovative technology to showcase a performance by a holographic Tupac was relevant to the nature of the festival and its audience.

It evoked an immediate response

Our industry is about evoking a response with our audience through engagement. Tupac’s performance not only evoked a response – initially shock that transitioned into elation, but also promoted conversation and engagement (between the festival and audience members and the general community) long after the festival concluded. That is the ultimate goal for our industry.

Blended well into the “live” aspect of the festival

The technology was used strategically as part of the festival’s penultimate performance that also included Snoop Dog, Dr. Dre, Eminem, and 50 Cent. The temptation to do a whole set by Tupac or have him “walk through” the crowd must have been high. Rather, the festival featured Tupac for two songs – achieving the desired result while blending well into the overall nature of the festival. Any more could have negatively impacted the event.

via Flickr by Karen Eliot

A common thought is that the existing physical event team can “add” virtual as an additional responsibility. But in a recent post, Dannette Veale of Cisco refuted this approach, advocating that a virtual team be in place to manage your virtual event. Another misconception is that your virtual event vendor will provide the necessary tools to smoothly proceed with your event.

Also, don’t estimate the amount of collaboration that will take place. Have a systematic approach to capture these conversations, collaborations and decisions is key to minimizing misunderstandings and mistakes for your event. Consider using a centralized location for this. If the vendor doesn’t have an intranet/extranet, consider using something like Google Docs (share documents) or PBWiki (share docs and track changes with wiki functionality).

In the second in a series of posts, here are questions to consider when working with your vendor:

1.  
   1. 1. Do you have a handbook outlining all the steps for planning my event?
   2. 2. What is the typical timeline and milestones that I need to be aware of for this event?
   3. 3. Do you have a project timeline that we can mark our progress against?
   4. 4. What is the process for collaborating and documenting changes/decisions for the virtual event?
   5. 5. Is there a central place for our respective teams to collaborate?
   6. 6. I have never done a virtual event before. What are the key differences between planning a similar event virtually versus in person?
   7. 7. What team are you putting in place to help me with my virtual event? What are their roles and responsibilities?
   8. 8. What is the ideal virtual team that I should have in place? What are the roles and responsibilities for each person?

Other Posts In the Series:

1. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 1: Event Support & Experience

While attending the Virtual Edge Summit 2011 last week, one question asked by attendees is “how do I create an engaging experience.” I would argue that the experience relies not on the platform you select but rather how involved you are in planning, designing, building and implementing the environment. However, many are new to going virtual and are unsure of how to proceed.

As such, I plan to write a series of posts to help meeting/event planners and marketers understand the process for going virtual.  Please feel free to forward me your questions.

First, there are many types of “virtual events.” Let me highlight three flavors of virtual events that include multiple locations, such as an exhibit hall and auditorium, chat functionality and presentations.

Virtual Event “Out-of-the-Box”

A couple of the vendors are touting that they can build an event in one day. This is possible as certain features have already been pre-selected for you, such as presentation window and chat. While you can add a logo and some other basic branding, there is not much more to this. What you see is what you get with this virtual event.

Pro: Quick and easy set up with minimal monetary outlay (estimate of $5,000-10,000). Once created, you can reuse over and over again as a central library for your archived content and future events.
Con: You get a standard “virtual” event as defined by the vendor with minimal customization. This may or may not work for your particular audience with regard to providing an “engaging” experience. If you plan to use more than once, there may be additional charges for each new “event/presentation” with in the environment.

“Template-Based” Virtual Events

The next level is adding some customization options in terms of the location look-and-feel (usually selecting from a vendor’s library of themes) and adding/taking away certain features such as group chat, locations (i.e. an exhibitor space) and social media with a click of the mouse.

Pro: You have more control over the look-and-feel and how attendees interact with the environment. Like the “virtual event out-of-the box,” once you’ve created it, you can reuse the set-up for future virtual events you hold.
Con: Increased price tag to about $30-60K depending on the features, limited to stock library of images or providing images that fit a specific criteria, and requires more time and effort to design and implement. Furthermore, if using the same format repeatedly, you have to consider additional charges to light-up the environment, as well as if the look-and-feel will become dated.

Fully Customized Virtual Event

The high-end is working with the vendor to develop a fully customized environment from a branded look-and-feel to adding features beyond chat and social media, such as games and quizzes.

Pro: You are intimately involved in the building of the virtual environment that is customized to your event, brand and audience. This provides you with the best option for engaging your audience. Once built, you can add new features to further customize the experience.
Con: This takes a lot of time (recommend at least 6 months to plan, design, build and implement) and can be six figures or more. If you decide to add onto the environment, the challenge is how to integrate any new functionality seamlessly into the overall experience.

Conclusion

In the end, you need to find the right partner based on your budget, expectations and overall experience requirements. In my next post, I’ll highlight the types of questions you should ask when evaluating a virtual events platform provider.

What other pros and cons are there with the above three virtual event scenarios?

I recently completed a webinar with MPI on “Dispelling the 5 Myths of Going Virtual.”  One of the questions asked was if I could provide a list of relevant case studies in this arena. I thought this would be a great resource to provide and I will add new case studies as I find them to this list.

For now, I purposely looked at case studies from 2009-2010. These were based on articles, blog postings and case studies from vendors, including Imaste and Unisfair. Unfortunately, 6Connex and Inxpo required registration, On24 and Ubivent case studies were outdated, and VisualMente didn’t provide full details regarding objectives and results. If there are relevant case studies, please include them in the comments below.

Corporate Virtual Events Case Studies

• * HP goes virtual – Technology – Event Marketer: Overview of HP’s use of virtual event technology
• * Physical to Virtual Event Transformation – An Interview with SAP’s …: Interview with Scott Schenker of SAP regarding SAPPHIRE – looks at strategy and results.
• * Cisco Blog ” Blog Archive ” Virtual Event Key Learnings – Part Two: Key stats regarding CiscoLive 2009
• * Event Marketer: Cisco GSX Goes Virtual: Overview of Cisco GSX in Event Marketer Magazine
• * Cisco GSX 2009 Case Study on Vimeo: Cisco GSX case study.
• * Cisco Blog ” Blog Archive ” Analysis of a Virtual Event: Cisco Live case study – provides details of post-event survey between physical and virtual audiences
• * Avatars Rising in the Enterprise: GE Healthcare’s virtual exhibit highlighted.
• * KPMG Job Fair Attracts 10,000: Case study overview 
• * Ariba Curbs Spending Virtually: Case study overview
• * CA’s Virtual Product Launch: Case study overview
• * Planview Grows Attendance at Virtual User Conference: Case study overview
• * ACS Drives Innovation with Virtual Training: Case study overview
• * Intuit Builds Community in the Virtual Classroom: Case study overview
• * Monster eDays: Case study overview
• * Virtual Job Fair in Brazil: Case study overview
• * Deloitte Spain Virtual Career Fair: Case study overview

Associations – Virtual Events Case Studies

• * Measuring and Maximizing the Impact of a Hybrid Event – The Virtual …: Case study on Virtual Edge Summit 2010 – look at physical and virtual attendees
• * American Payroll Association Trains Members Virtually: Case study overview
• * Grease, Gears, and Geo-location: IMTS Gets Its Social Media Groove On: IMTS case study on using social media

Publishing Virtual Events Case Studies

• * Hybrid Events: The Live/Virtual Combo – emedia and Technology …: UBM Studios discusses virtual for revenue
• * Virtual Events Come Into Their Own: Folio Magazine article that included information from Watt Publishing, Forbes, Nielsen, Futures nd Haymarket Media.

Higher Education/Government Virtual Events Case Studies

• * Virtual Environment Lab for Universidad Politécnica Madrid: Case study overview
• * On Campus Job Fair for Madrid regional government: Case study overview
• * Tour del Empleo Virtual: Case study overview of 25 Spanish Universities

Every Friday, I try to interview an industry expert to provide insight on their industry. This week on PRMM Interview, I interview Scott Kellner, CMO of 6Connex, regarding what the future holds for virtual events and the best way to keep people engaged virtually.

As CMO of 6Connex, Scott is responsible for all communications activities and initiatives for 6Connex, including corporate, product, and channel marketing. He also supervises the 6Connex Service and Support group. Scott brings more than 20 years of marketing leadership to 6Connex. He has established branding and positioning strategies for a variety of companies, both as an agency executive and as senior, corporate marketer. Scott has also implemented the development and training of international reseller networks, managed direct sales organizations, and developed go-to-market, alliance marketing, advertising and PR strategies for companies in industries ranging from entertainment to professional services to consumer packaged goods.

Can you provide a quick intro to 6Connex?

One of the questions we often get is where our name comes from. I think it’s important to cover this because our name underscores our view of the virtual experience industry. The name comes from a combination of: the six degrees of separation connected at a nexus point. As such, our core mission is to connect people with each other, and with relevant content. 

While we formally launched in February of 2009, our beginnings can be traced back to the first, and still the largest, virtual event every produced: AMD’s Virtual Experience (or AVE), which was run on 6Connex technology in 2006, and again in 2007. With just under 1 million unique registrants and statistics like 330,000 video views and more than 600,000 document downloads, it was truly a monumental undertaking. That experience, and the software that powered it, launched the company, though we stayed in stealth mode for two years.

Webinars have become a common lead generation tool for marketers. Can you provide 2-3 reasons why marketers should consider virtual events?

Given the way we’ve architected our platform, we believe marketers should consider virtual experiences for more than just events. That said, webinars are a tremendous tool, but they are usually effective for just a moment in time. While there are varying technologies, their efficacy is brief, and they don’t offer the level of flexibility, measurement, rich media content distribution or social networking that solid virtual platforms do. 

We counsel our customers to use webinars as a key part of virtual experiences, but to also to take advantage of the ongoing presence afforded by virtual platforms to continually reach out to target audiences, refresh content, encourage interaction and create networks of professionals that can benefit from one another’s expertise. 

Some of the best examples of this go beyond mere “events”. We encourage our customers to think in terms of both short and long term objectives, and to utilize the flexibility of virtual technology systems to continually engage their target constituencies. Cisco’s Data Center of the Future, and Siemens’ Navigating Healthcare virtual experiences are great examples of this. Simply put, webinars can do that.

As virtual events become more prevalent, there is a risk of attendee fatigue. What recommendations do you have to keep the experience fresh for attendees?

As many in your audience know, our heritage is not only in software development, but also award-winning interactive strategy and design. 6Connex has created virtual environments and critically acclaimed Web-based gaming programs for Disney, Universal Pictures and ABC, for example, so we understand, at a deep level, things like how to use video effectively, how to create a user experience that’s engaging and meets business objectives, and how to walk the fine line between attendee length of stay and the ease of finding relevant content.

To avoid fatigue, a virtual environment must be both pleasing and intuitive. It must have best in class information architecture, user interface design and be quick to load. But it must also be designed to allow attendees to chart their own path if they want. We believe you avoid weariness by making a virtual experience pleasing to the eye, by enabling people to connect with one another easily and by allowing attendees to encounter content on their own terms.

There seems to be a lot of developments with virtual events. Where do you see the industry going in 2-3 years?

Well, I have to be careful here. I don’t want to tip my hand in terms of what 6Connex has in alpha and beta stages now, though our customers are all in the loop. I will say this: I think better collaborative tools are on the immediate horizon. Improving the effectiveness of virtual platforms will require that providers enable secure, collaborative workspaces for their customers to use.

Another area of innovation centers on video conferencing, for sure. Creating more lifelike environments that complement physical events will continue to be necessary.

Also, integration with physical event technologies will become more important. One great example of this is “pushing” virtual content into a physical space via digital signage. We’re all familiar with “hybrid” events that take in live feeds from physical venue keynote addresses, for example. But we see no reason it cannot work the other way around.

Last, mobile is an obvious area for innovation. The increasing adoption of tablets and personal consoles like the iPad will drive some of this, but the most innovative virtual software providers will seek to push some envelopes in this arena on their own. Stay tuned!

I recently presented a webinar on “Dispelling the 5 Myths of Going Virtual.” My presentation slides are included below and an archived version of the webinar will be available on the MPI website shortly. Free to MPI webinars, the on-demand will be available for $20.  The webinar covered these top myths, accompanying case studies and relevant industry stats:

1. Virtual Will Cannibalize My Audience: Case study of American Payroll Association

2. Virtual Will Cannibalize My Exhibitors/Sponsors: Case study of GE Healthcare

3. Co$t$ Too Much: Case study of IMTS

4. Only for the Technically Savvy: Look at technology pace of technology adoption

5. Not as Good as F2F: Case study of CiscoLive Virtual

6. BONUS Myth: No One is Doing It

I have the pleasure of presenting two webinars for the MPI: Dispelling the Myths about “Going Virtual” on November 17 and Making Virtual Profitable: Steal These Business Ideason December 9, 2010. Free to MPI members, the webinars are $20 for non members. If you can’t make it to the live webinar, they will also be available on-demand and I will post the slides after each webinar. Hope you can join me and please forward me any questions or comments.

Dispelling the Myths about “Going Virtual”

WHEN: Wednesday, November 17^th, 11am – 12pm CDT

WHAT: The recent economic situation has provided a catalyst for companies to look at cost-effective alternatives to scheduling and executing face-to-face meetings and events.  This situation combined with reduced travel and marketing budgets, has given rise to virtual events. A successful virtual strategy reduces costs, increases productivity, extends reach, provides rich data intelligence, and benefits the environment. Yet, meeting professionals are hesitant to incorporate virtual elements into their meetings and event portfolios. Leveraging real-world case studies, this session will dispel several myths about “going virtual”.  Get answers to your theories like:

• Virtual will cannibalize my physical audience.
• Virtual will be a costly element for me to include in my budget.
• Virtual will only be used by my most technically savvy members.
• Virtual is only for larger corporations.

Making Virtual Profitable: Steal These Business Ideas

WHEN: Thursday, December 9^th, 11am – 12pm CDT

WHAT: According to FutureWatch 2010, 12% of meeting professionals are expecting virtual meetings to be a continuing trend.  The question meeting professionals have now is how do they create a virtual strategy that serves their audience’s educational and networking needs while expanding their own revenue opportunities. This session with explore four business models for virtual options:

• Freemium Registration: Free registration for basic content vs. charging for premium content

• Exhibitor Driven: Tiered programs and services for exhibitors

• Sponsorship: Advertising and brand awareness associated with the virtual component

• Hybrid Opportunities: Prizes, games and sponsorships that span the physical and virtual event.

As part of the PRMM Interview series, I am interviewing thought leaders in PR, marketing, social media, and virtual events to hear about innovations, trends and technologies impacting our industry. This week, I asked virtual events vetaran, John Grosshandler is Director of Virtual Engagement with Maritz, to provide insight on the evolution of virtual events, challenges facing the industry and future trends. Here is a brief bio (Note: I was previously employed by Inxpo):

 In 2004, John launched a first of its kind virtual trade show called eComXpo which became the highest-grossing, longest-running virtual trade show ever held.  In 2005, after initially being their first customer, John joined InXpo, the virtual event platform provider that powered eComXpo.   While there, he was the Virtual Event Strategist on hundreds of virtual events for associations (e.g. HIMSS, National Association of Realtors), corporations (e.g. Cisco, ATT) and publishers (e.g. UBM, Ziff Davis).  While at InXpo, John authored the virtual event industry’s first Best Practices Guide.  In his role at Maritz, John is responsible for their virtual event offerings, including supporting their channel partner Freeman.

Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got into virtual events?

My background has been in sales and marketing roles for cutting edge technology solutions.  After a successful 8 year run at a software firm pre/during/post the tech bubble, I had the opportunity  to start my own business.  In 2004, I launched a start-up around the idea of a virtual trade show aimed at eCommerce marketers.  While there had been a number of attempts at virtual trade shows before mine, most of them were quite boring and I thought a business could be built around a more engaging type of virtual event. 

How has the industry changed since you’ve started?

The evolution in this space has been extraordinary on many fronts.  First has been the realization that the technology is only one component of a successful event, and that you need to spend at least as much time on the strategy, content and marketing.   As a result, agencies like Maritz, Freeman and others are building practices to help event organizers put on higher quality events with less effort.  Another evolution has been around the types of events held.  From 2004-2008, almost all the action was publishers putting on virtual trade shows to replace lost revenue from their declining print ad sales and subscriber base.  In 2009, you started to see associations more effectively creating hybrid extensions to their physical conventions.   2009 is also when more and more corporations starting leveraging virtual for a variety of events, ranging from sales meetings to user groups. A welcome change has been the technology platforms themselves, which increasingly have very robust functionality and can handle ever-increasing numbers of virtual attendees.  Finally, there’s less talk these days about purely virtual events, and more about hybrid and blended events which I believe is the future.

Adoption of virtual events & meetings technology has increased significantly due to the recession. What challenges do you see for mainstream adoption of this technology?

Although the adoption has increased significantly, we’re still only scratching the surface.  One report suggests the virtual event space will grow to $18 billion in five years, so we’re still in the “early adopter” phase.  To cross the chasm to mass adoption, I think three things need to happen a) the technology needs to become more self-service and less expensive; b) virtual event platforms need to be effectively ported to mobile devices and c) events funded by virtual exhibitors need to deliver more value to those sponsors.

2011 is just around the corner and it’s the time of year for future predictions. What do you see happening for the industry in 2011?

I see 2011 as the “Year of the Hybrid”.  The idea that more and more physical events will have virtual extensions, either as pre, during or post the physical event.  Whether those virtual extensions are focused on driving more attendees to the physical event, or helping you reach others who weren’t able to make it to the physical event, these extensions are the “killer app” for virtual technology.

Any additional thoughts that you would like to share?

An exciting new use of the technology allows corporations to create virtual extensions to their physical trade show booths.  Even if the show organizer doesn’t have a virtual extension to the event as a whole, top tier sponsors are realizing that their own virtual extension can help build buzz, drive attendance to their physical booth and provide a more effective follow-up mechanism for booth visitors, as well as those that didn’t make it to the physical event.

Technorati verification: 9ZGN6GBWBMAT

As I believe virtual events will or have already become an integral part of a marketing strategy, my goal is to highlight how to leverage this technology most effectively to achieve your communications and marketing objectives. In the essence of full disclosure, I was previously employed by two vendors in this space (Inxpo and On24) and am currently assisting Virtual Edge Institute for their January Summit in Las Vegas. I hope to engage key vendors and thought leaders in the space with more Q&A’s to follow. To kick off the series, I interviewed Miguel Arias of Imaste, a leading provider of virtual job fairs and tradeshow platforms based in Europe, via Skype and over email.

Miguel Arias is co-founder and COO of IMASTE. Miguel is also a proactive start up mentor, integrated in the Instituto de Empresa Business School Venture Lab programme. Miguel holds a MSc Degree in Civil Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, and a Professional MBA from the Instituto de Empresa Business School, and is fluent in 4 languages. You can read his thoughts about the industry on his blog or follow him on twitter (@imasteips or @mike_arias).

 Tell me about Imaste and how you began 


 Imaste is Europe’s leading specialist in virtual events, fairs and trade shows. Since its launch, we have delivered more the 100 virtual experiences in more than 15 countries. Imaste has strong partnerships with some of the major job boards across the globe, as well as with global corporations and interactive agencies, with a strong focus in the European and South American markets.

We started with physical job fairs and then moved to virtual, starting our work in Spain, and expanding afterward in the main European markets. We started by managing all the aspects of a physical event from organization, conception, logistics, sales, marketing to execution. We saw the real needs of our customers to go virtual and how they could benefit from technological platforms to obtain better results. 30 percent of our business is still physical with 70 percent virtual. 


One of our first international clients was Monster, which provided us more awareness and an opportunity to work in many regions in a short period of time and also cooperate with other leading job boards, like curriculum.com.br in Brazil, Dridco in Argentina, Venezuela, etc.

Our market to date is 60-70% virtual job fairs and 30% mainstream tradeshows, with little demand for corporate events at this time. We’re strongly diversifying our reach; delivering more and more generic virtual trade shows (MBA trade shows, entrepreneur virtual events, franchising events, automotive industry trade shows…) 



Does your physical background provide you an advantage? 


We believe delivering a great virtual event is not just about the number of features or backend capabilities. It’s more about delivering a live experience that is equivalent to real life, and we’re experts in that.

Our solutions have an engaging look & feel and interface design, compared to other applications. Our attendees experience the feeling of taking part in a real event, where they can interact with others, learn, share and network. While other American competing platforms may have more reporting or data mining tools, we are focused on the user experience and real results gathering.

Is this all custom work? 


Actually not. We completely customize the look and feel of our virtual events, and we also offer a great array of customization possibilities in the platform configuration and 3D environment set up. But we offer each exhibitor a complete backend to manage their content, leads and live interactions.

We will organize about 70 events this year in more than 18 countries. Therefore we have gathered a lot of experience in language customization, adaptation to cultural differences in many regions and server and data integration with various systems and infrastructures.

What is your webinar technology?

We have our own webinar application, but we have seen great apps being developed out there. Therefore we integrate our platform with other solutions. We also integrate with other type of applications such as Ustream and dimdim.

We believe that most of the virtual event platforms will be able to integrate with many of the existing webinar solutions in the future, therefore webinars are going to be a commodity in the market.

Tell me about a typical event? 


We usually deliver main stream events that are open 7-10 days with 40-80 exhibitors for an event. We have an average of 100,000 unique visitors per event with a maximum of over 300,000 unique users and peaks of 80,000 users a day in Argentina. We’ve had simultaneous chats up of 1,000 attendees.

The landing page, interfaces look & feel and even 3D environments are customized on a case by case basis. For each client work, we work as an agency, offering training and continuous technical and operations support, which helps the client.

We also offer orientation tests, which is a compatibility test that matches an attendee with prospective exhibitors that match his or her profile. This is used for all kind of trade shows, not just virtual job fairs. We narrow down the best prospects and affinity based on the responses. The exhibitors then also provide their responses which is how the matching works. 


This information is stored in the attendee’s  profile. The companies can also view the matches for follow up for sales and recruitment pre-screening.

What is the cost for your events? 


We deliver low-end, basic solutions with look and feeling customization, but no registration or feature customization. Using one of our templates with basic functionality and 25 exhibitor booths the cost is about US$12,000.

High-end, standard solutions with complete functionality (registration tool, real time written and video interaction, orientation tests, etc), some degree of customization and around 40 customers is about US$30,0000.

If we incorporate video production and complete customization, then this can be up to US$60-80,000. 


What is the timeline for an event?

We can develop an event in one month and the bottleneck normally is on the client side, in their sales process. Normally we provide marketing training, sales training and logistics training to communicate the work load and the expectations. A virtual event is not just a fancy website. The partner needs to understand how dynamic the event is. 

Sometimes in Spain, we even do the sales and logistics.

 We are a partner throughout the whole process, providing timelines, documentation, control, etc.

What are your future plans? 


We go where the client needs us. We have created corporate environments and believe there is more need for all kinds of virtual trade shows, not just virtual job fairs.

Till now, Europe doesn’t have much business in virtual events, but this is rapidly changing. We will face the challenge to remain leaders when the market consolidates and the American players start their operations here. But Europe is a difficult market, with many particularities, and we have the experience, contacts and resources to grow in our own playground.

We plan to deliver some events in the US by the end of the year, but our main market is Europe and South America.

Where do you see the industry going? 


 A definite trend is that most physical events are going hybrid event, as physical want to go virtual with tighter integration. As an attendee, you’ll go to a physical exhibit and shout your experience in Facebook, while you favorite some content virtually and gather physical samples.  You’ll have networking in virtual and meet in physical.

We are continuously developing our platform; in the next weeks we will announce the new version, with many exciting new features. We are moving into full screen mode with more smooth video integration and much more.

We do not believe in avatar based immersive technologies for virtual trade show purposes, As users lose so much time learning how to set up their avatar and walking around, and the event is about getting information and interaction as soon as possible.

There will be an increase in networking, in 3D experience, physical virtual connection, and interaction (better chat, 1:1, etc.). 


In the end it’s all about online collaboration with real time interaction and communication tools in 3D alike intuitive environments, having a sense of being there, then.

Many virtual events vendors and companies have touted that they have held the “largest” virtual event. Cisco GSX in 2009 with 19,000 attendees and AMD with 672,000 attendees in 2006 (Forrester Report, Market Overview: Virtual Event Platforms for B2B Marketers) are just a couple of examples. A quick search on the term “largest virtual event” yields over 40,000 results on Google – some referring to vendors with others referencing events.

But does size really matter?

While an important indicator of a platform’s scalability, I think the focus on size overlooks other key factors when determing the value of virtual for your marketing and communications campaigns.

Metrics

The largest event may not necessarily yield the right results for your company. Many of the platform providers have detailed metrics regarding the number of attendees, length of stay, number of downloads and more. The challenge is how developed is their analytics engine to provide a layer of intelligence to interpret that data.

Questions to consider: What type of metrics are provided? What format are these metrics provided to me – excel data sheets or graphs? Are there lead scoring capabilities to identify A, B and C leads? If so, how does it work? Does the vendor help me to calculate ROI? A discussion on Focus, a resource for business professionals, provides more discussion about the ROI of virtual events.

User Engagement

Developing an experience that is unique to your company, ties back to your brand, and is engaging requires thoughtful planning. With hundreds and thousands of potential attendees, how do you structure the environment to intuitively create a flow within your virtual event. A critical element is mapping out how you want people to engage with one another, exhibitors and speakers within the event.

Questions to consider: Can I use a cookie cutter template or do I need something more custom? Will the vendor work with me or do I have to provide this? Do I have to use an agency in addition to the platform provider? How much time do I need to accomplish the desired experience? How do I create the right attendee flow within my virtual event?

Learning

The main component of any event is the content. Driving people to the virtual event is one aspect, while delivering content in a way that imparts learning is another element.

Questions to consider: Beyond how long somebody attends my event, what ways are there to measure short-term and long-term retention? Can you test or quiz the audience before, during and after an event? Will this cost more? What delivery method works best (video, audio, text, combo) and why?

Conclusion

While you host or build the largest event, a truly successful virtual event goes beyond size. It provides the right metrics with an engaging experience that delivers real learning to you audience.

What other factors are there to consider?