Successful Hybrid Events

A hybrid event extends the reach of your event beyond geographic, time and travel constraints for attendees, speakers and sponsors and, of course, insulates your event against Covid related issues. Quantifying a successful event depends on your priorities; it could be footfall or viewership, audience feedback, ticket sales, sponsor numbers or revenue or a combination of all and more. We explore the key areas to ensure successful hybrid events.Our aim is to ensure all attendees have a great experience of your event regardless of location. The key is to produce the event on one platform so attendees can interact easily with one another, speakers and sponsors, watch the sessions and network, regardless of location.

Better Networking

Quality networking is hard for attendees - how to overcome natural reticence and how does someone know who they should talk to from the sea of faces around them or on a screen? There might be people online who are better to connect with and those online might want to connect with in person attendees. Our hybrid event technology makes it incredibly easy to network regardless of location. Searchable attendee profiles and smart recommendations are provided by mobile app for in person attendees and our desktop app for the online audience. Connections can be made via messaging with meeting bookings handled in the app, the meeting can be hosted easily by video call as well.

Engage with Audience Response

Enabling the audience to comment, ask questions and vote during sessions is the norm now. Just because there are 2 audiences at a hybrid event should not mean the online audience is excluded from interacting with the in person audience, or the speakers. Using technology we provide the tools for the audience to

• chat with reply and reactions
• ask questions with up voting thereby delivering a prioritised list of questions to the speaker or session host and
• respond to polls and surveys.

The audience response tools are accessed by mobile app for in person audience and the online audience using the desktop version of the same app. So the whole audience can contribute, interact and collaborate together.

AV, Live Streaming and Remote Guest Speakers

Delivering quality content has always been important to in person events and it remains the case for hybrid events. Delivering reliable broadcast TV-like live streaming with titles, lower third graphics and transitions helps elevate your session content and keep the audience interested.

The speakers and their content need to be seen and heard both in room and online. Verbal questions and contributions from the audience need to be heard clearly in room and by the online audience. It would be even better if online attendees can ask questions verbally of the speakers.

Speakers cannot always attend events in person and hybrid offers flexibility and the facility for a speaker to present online from wherever they are, the speaker appears on the main screen in the room and is also live streamed. Remote guest speakers can interact with the host and audience as they would if in person.

By streaming all, or some, of your event sessions they are recorded by default and can be made available for catching up or watching again by your audience - this extends the lifetime of your event.

Exhibitors and Sponsors

The several key benefits of a hybrid event to sponsors or exhibitors

• A larger number of attendees and potential leads
• Access to the attendee profile list well in advance of the event starting
• 2 booths to engage the entire audience. In addition to their physical booth, they sponsors have a virtual booth where they can market their organisation, products and services and meet leads. In person attendees browse the virtual exhibition area and use the interactive way-finding map to locate the physical booth, or connect with the booth team via the app.
• Integrated lead scanning and retrieval with lead scoring and notes

Ease of Access

So many virtual and hybrid events are complicated experiences for the attendees, this is due to poor communications and, sometimes, tricky technology. A difficult onboarding experience for attendees is like a long line at the door - frustrating!

For all attendees we send sufficient email communications in advance with the right information to make accessing the event a breeze. We tailor the communications to make them relevant for the 2 different audiences.

For online attendees our platform sends a secure, personalised magic link which makes access to the intuitive platform a single click from the email.

For in person attendees we send additional information for example about the event location, Covid recommendations and digital check in and badging.

When working on hybrid events we focus on 4 Ps

Priorities - what are your objectives for your event(s)?

Platform - we recommend the platform best suited to your audience needs and which will help deliver your priorities.

Planning - we manage the event platform setup, agenda advice, graphics, attendee/ speaker and exhibitor communications, advice and support.

Production - we run speaker and sponsor orientations, we arrange the in room AV, attendee check in, live streaming and attendees, exhibitors and speaker support throughout the event.