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Virtual Events Are Different, so Sponsor Packages Should Be as Well

by Media
With publishers and media organizations still wary of charging too much for their virtual events—and some like this week’s Atlantic Festival charging nothing at all—sponsorships become that much more important to financial success. But should we be approaching sponsorships in the same way that we have for in-person events?
Two groups, Ricochet Advice and Bruce Rosenthal Associates, have partnered on a white paper to say no. Titled The New Sponsorship Model for Virtual Events, the report offers a new blueprint for recruiting your virtual event sponsors.
“During the pandemic, the traditional benefits offerings repurposed for virtual events are not likely to be of interest. The old way of courting sponsors has likely come to an end for most events and [organizations],” states the report. “An enhanced sponsorship approach that takes advantage of the unique characteristics of digital events to create better engagement between [organization] members and event sponsors can deliver more value to sponsors.”
Let’s go through their ideas. They break the benefits up by categories.
For data and analytics, sponsors would be given access to:
• registrant information and permission to “add your advertising tags to our event web pages”;
• the virtual event platform tool with ability to collect and export select data to use in your own marketing and sales systems;
• poll answers: attendee responses to periodic event polls, including free text comments; polls are an excellent engagement tactic for virtual events.
For engagement, sponsors would get:
• alerts of event chats including ability to monitor conversation key words and phrases;
• one-to-one direct messaging capability that permits engagement with any attendees;
• option to supply company-branded prizes to be promoted through the event. (Is there such a thing as virtual cornhole? Trivia games translate well to virtual.)
• demo scheduling;
• a breakaway room, promoted often during the event, that allows attendees to “duck out” and join in informal sponsor conversations.
For content distribution, there would be:
• intermission interviews that sponsors can either be a part of as subject, moderator or presenter;
• session interstitials: live educational presentations, related to a substantive area, with sponsored content. (The industry has found that done right, sponsored content has a welcomed place in the information pantheon.)
• panel participation: as long as a sponsor can bring a subscriber/member partner they have worked with;
• discussion groups: advertised leadership/participation in a substantive topic.
For conference advertising, there would be:
• logos and recognition on event promotions and registrant emails. “Underwriters” are all over the Atlantic Festival communications and website. For BVR’s Virtual Divorce Conference, a sponsor page allows visitors to download a marketing guide and video.
• pre- and post-event promotions. Even though the gist of BVR’s conference was Sept. 9-11, they are providing value-add sessions for Sept. 17, 24 and 30. No reason why sponsors can’t remain involved for those, in addition to the on-demand requests.
• online advertisements.
• sponsored sessions. This could be as simple as maybe speakers using coffee mugs of the sponsor.
• sponsored awards. Many emerging leader and “20 Under 35” awards are given out at events. Sponsorships for those could be attractive.
Associations Now, which wrote about the report, also emphasized the need to better adapt digital marketing tactics for sponsors. “While you may not be able to re-create the impact of an in-person appearance, digital events put different tools at your disposal—whether it’s short interstitials between virtual sessions, email marketing campaigns, or sponsored chat messages during livestreams. With a little bit of workshopping or the right links to the right places, these can be effective messages for trustworthy voices.
“That said, virtual events differ greatly from physical ones, and that should inform how you roll out these messages. ‘Treat virtual events as something new. You have the framework of what you are used to doing, but think outside the box and reimagine as you go,’ Cvent’s Madison Layman writes.”
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Keys From Pro Farmer’s Successful Crop Tour Event Pivot

by Media
In a just-released events survey, Sophie Holt, global strategy director, Explori, said: “Online and hybrid seem to have a complementary role to play alongside [in-person] events. Not only will they give reassurance to visitors who are concerned about safety in the short term, but still want to connect with their community, but they may also have an important role to play in bringing new audiences to established events.”
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That was exactly the case for Pro Farmer’s first-ever virtual Crop Tour held last month, Joe May, their marketing and sales director, told me yesterday.

“It went really well. We went into it with no idea how well it would be received and were very pleased. We’re lucky enough to be part of Farm Journal, so their TV crew produced a really professional looking broadcast for us each of the four nights. We never had a live broadcast component before.”
Historically, the typical audience to attend the in-person meetings across the four days and seven Midwest locations has ranged between 2,000 and 3,000. For the four online, 90-minute broadcasts, more than 18,000 total viewers watched—coming from all 50 states and 12 countries. (Crop Tour has always had a good global following, May said.) A total of 340,000 minutes were streamed, a number that even May sounded surprised to hear himself say.
“You can’t get that kind of reach in person,” said May, indicating that, as the above-mentioned survey predicted, Pro Farmer will most likely keep some of that digital component in future Crop Tours. “We would consider combining the two for next year. The farm audience has a reputation for being slower in participating with newer technologies for the most part. But our audience is also business people not just farmers. Adopting [new things] is part of their business strategy.”
For the post-COVID future, hybrid models make sense. If farmers are tuning in, then audiences that are in offices—home or business—all day probably would as well, if the content is good. Speaking of that, 52% of virtual event attendees surveyed in that report felt online-only events are as good, if not better than live events with respect to the content offered. And almost 80% have at least some interest in attending a hybrid event online in the future.
In the past, the decision not to stream an event live came partly from a worry that it would discourage people to attend in person—and publishers were reluctant to charge as much virtually. But given that content is proving to be just as strong virtually, that reluctance might dissipate.
Of course, the survey also reported that attendees cherish the in-person networking and virtual does not replicate that—though hopefully technology will continue to improve there. So May said that they really didn’t try to replicate any networking features.
“Pioneer has been a premium sponsor for 10 years, hosting a big meal and networking social before the meeting,” May said. “We were able to get them to still sponsor the digital broadcast with content items published and promotional items. In fact, we kept all the sponsors except maybe one—and they pulled out for a different reason—and added a couple new ones. And again, it was really well received.”
Having the experienced Farm Journal TV crew proved to be a huge benefit. They had been sending a crew for Crop Tour for many years, getting interviews and footage to use, and doing live setups. So setting up the live broadcast came naturally.
“We would have 15-20 minute segments, then maybe a commercial break, and then live questions from the audience, all highly produced and planned,” May said. “We kept it to 90 minutes, which is still a long time for a virtual broadcast, but people watched. There was just one technical glitch over the four nights that affected maybe five minutes. Some viewers reached out to tell us”—which may be a good thing because it means they are watching and they care.
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Another advantage was that Pro Farmer could put their leaders from both the Western and Eastern tours on camera, and then patch in studio hosts from South Bend, Ind. Another reporter took questions from Twitter and Facebook with the Crop Tour hashtag, breaking in with live questions and screen questions too.
“We had [ample] questions every night,” May said. “It’s not like they were just sitting there. Sometimes people are intimidated in person to ask questions. Can be easier sitting behind a computer.
“We learned a lot—it really was continuous learning. You never know for sure [how something will turn out]. But this gave us the best of both worlds.”
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‘Here Are Your 29 Tips, Jane’; 7 Keys to Getting Better Email Opens

by Media
What do the following words have in common? 100%. Congratulations. Don’t. Get started. Innovate. Problem. Quickest. Success. Vacation. Volunteer. According to CoSchedule, they trigger spam alerts.
For what works well, a recent GetResponse survey revealed that the top words for inducing opens in a subject line are “pdf,” “newsletter” and “ebook.” “If you’re promoting a piece of content or a valuable resource, you’re probably better off if you mention it in the subject line.” But for click-to-open rates, “infographic” scored huge at 35.1%—very easy to digest—followed by newsletter at 31.4%. “Sale” and “free” also fared well—the latter drawing this comment: “This phrase, previously believed to cause deliverability issues, seems to work well for quite a few marketers… People still enjoy receiving free things.” Amen.
What can we do to improve engagement and deliverability of our email? Let us count some content-oriented ways here.
The Hubspot blog lists 29 ways to ways to avoid spam and improve your email deliverability. Here are three.
1. Don’t use all caps anywhere in your email or its subject line. “Don’t yell at people. It’s not nice. Using all caps in your subject line might get the recipients’ attention, but probably not in a good way. Using all caps can really rub people the wrong way. It’s annoying and can seem spammy.” They suggest “personalizing your emails, establishing relevancy, and using catchy and delightful language.”
2. Don’t use exclamation points. They are “unprofessional and spammy”—especially a whole bunch of them in a row. “And when 69% of email recipients report email as spam based solely on the subject line, you’ll want to stay away from triggers like this as much as you can.”
3. Avoid spam trigger words. You saw a few of them up top. “A good rule of thumb is this: If it sounds like something a used car salesman would say, it’s probably a spam trigger word. Think ‘guarantee,’ ‘no obligation’ and so on.” Instead, they encourage creativity and being informative—without giving too much away.
Here are three from Campaign Monitor.
4. Include a number in your subject line. A recent study looking at 115 million emails surmised that email open and reply rates go up when there’s a number in the subject line. “Numbers and data get your emails noticed, demonstrate a clear and straightforward message about your offer, and set the right expectations for your readers, helping draw them in.” Some I’m seeing today: 20% off new kitchen designs; 5 ways to win back lost customers; ViacomCBS to sell CNET for $500 million.
5. Utilize preheader text to boost subject line open rates. Preheaders summarize the content in your email for added explanation and enticement. Your readers gets an opportunity to preview the email, even while it sits unopened in their inbox. I just started doing this for another newsletter I send out. When done right, the subject line and the preheader complement each other. One example: “Innovative event ideas – Coffee mugs for speakers, drive-in meetings and year-round platforms highlight new twists for the virtual age.”
6. Keep your email subject lines relatively short. Here, as is often the case, it’s best to know your audience. If the majority are opening your emails on their phone, then go short. iPhones show about 35-38 characters in portrait mode, and Galaxy phones show roughly 33 characters in portrait mode. CM’s best practice suggests that “subject lines that are 17-24 characters long are most likely to boost your email open rates.” But that can really feel short sometimes. The main lesson in that is to be direct. Language cuteness has its place, but subject lines need to make an immediate impact.
And finally…
7. Emails with video still generate the highest email engagement rates. But only around 8% of the emails in a recent study from GetResponse contained links to videos. “For now, the best workaround is to use an image (maybe even a GIF) that looks like a video player and links to your page,” they suggest. “That way, you’ll boost your click-throughs and enhance your contacts’ experience as they’ll watch the content in their default browser or video player.”
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Hybrid Model of Remote and Flexible Working Might Be Plan C

by Media
“It is time to re-imagine what the workplace is for,” writes Sue Unerman, chief transformation officer at MediaCom, on Haymarket Media’s Campaign site. “If you took someone who might have known Charles Dickens and, through the power of time-travel, transported them to an office in 2019, undoubtedly they would be shocked and surprised by mobile phones, computers and the number of women around. They would be less shocked by the overall look of the place: lots of people with their heads down at desks working away, with some managers walking around occasionally to see what they were up to.”
Up until now, most of what we have read takes the form of, “when offices reopen…,” “people going back to normal…,” etc. But as spring turns to summer turns to fall, new conversations are taking place, more focused on the realities of the new normal—where people are not returning to offices until at least next summer and as some do, many others will continue to work from home.
I spoke to Erin Hallstrom last week, an incredible, do-everything person for Putman Media—SEO, podcasts, she created their groundbreaking Influential Women in Manufacturing program—and she told me that half of their staff had been working remotely before this, including her. And she’s always felt more productive.
“For 12 years, I’ve always had a digital job; at 10 o’clock at night I might have an idea [to write down]. If there’s a huge fire at a factory [at any time], someone needs to write about it. Why do I have to go into the office?”
Hallstrom believes, however, that there will still be a need for in-person collaboration. “I used to go in two days a week, with digital folks similar to me. On one of those days, three or four of us would sit down and put our heads together. The people I’ve been closest to, we haven’t seen each other, but, of course, we still have conversations. I miss you guys.”
I remember a couple years ago interviewing Cassandra Farrington, CEO of Marijuana Business Daily. They figured out quickly that some face-to-face communication was needed from their remote team and decided to require people coming in for about 20-25 hours a week. “The rest of the time, as I tell my team, I couldn’t care if you are working from the surface of the moon, so long as the work is getting done to high effectiveness.”
I think you’ll see some of that in the new normal, with even less hours required in the office, but still some hopes to get people in for a day or two a week—while also finding better, more participatory technology for those working remotely. Back in October, Dan Fink, managing director of Money-Media, who was already embracing working from home, said that they had “installed some large screens in conference rooms [to accommodate remote staff]. There’s a marked difference in how that person participates. And how the people feel; it feels like that person was in the meeting room. It really does make a significant difference.”
But as Unerman relates, having people come in to just put their head down and work won’t make sense anymore.
“A hybrid model of remote and flexible working, with offices re-imagined for the better is likely,” she writes. “These experiments are under way, and they do raise another question—what is office culture without everyone in the office?”
Here’s how she finishes. “In a great culture each person enhances each other’s performance. Helping the collective is rewarded. Without everyone in the office most of the time, leadership of a good culture is even more crucial. And in a good culture there are cultural leaders and advocates in every single seat, wherever that seat is located.”
In April, Steve Cody, founder and CEO of PR and marketing firm Peppercomm, spoke with Ragan’s Diane Schwartz, who credited him with building a team culture, steeped in tactical communications that especially helps in these precarious times.
“It will be a foreign experience; how do we ease that transition [back to the office]?” he asked then. “This idea of re-boarding—not onboarding, but bringing them back—we’re working on that now.”
Odds are he’s now working on Plan C.
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Getting Your Event Price Right May Take Some Experimenting and Adding or Shedding a Few Tiers

by Media
There was a famous play in 1924 titled What Price Glory by Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings (made into a 1952 film). Almost 100 years later, the title of a popular play in the publishing world might be What Price Virtual Events.
Up until now, pricing for these pivoted affairs has varied from free to $25 to $75 to half to full price and tiers. ASAE—after starting with a fee to attend—and The Atlantic both made their major annual events free, but with several sponsors. I saw a big 25% off sale for one publisher’s annual event last week. (It started at around $495.)
Here are some of the variations I’ve seen.
Charge low, hope registrations are high. Christine Weiser, content/brand director, Tech & Learning, a Future plc division, said they charged just $25 for a big virtual event they put on, but more than 1,300 people signed on, a number they were very pleased with. “We had no idea,” she said. “Will they pay more? For education they do have professional development budgets.” She said if you do price low be ready for late signups.
Give options but offer a relatively small discount. The American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians (ACOFP) already had 1,800+ people registered for their main event before they had to pivot to virtual. But what they then offered could still be a blueprint for planning a virtual event—a 25% discount for staying registered. More than 50% of the registrants took that deal. Just over 44% asked for and received a full refund. And 100 people deferred their registration to the 2021 conference. If you can provide similar value to your attendees from the in-person event, then don’t be shy about pricing it that way, they advised. Remember, attendees are saving huge dollars on travel costs.
Use pricing tiers. For their FT Live event in October, the Financial Times is offering three tiers: The Knowledge Pass ($299) gives you access to the live talks and the Q&A and polls. The Professional Pass ($599) adds meet-the-journalist sessions, networking and video on demand. And the Group Pass ($3,000) multiplies everything by six people. For its NAB Show in October, the National Association of Broadcasters is offering a $75 Marketplace Pass. There are then content passes that vary in number of days and in pricing–$149 to $499.
Keep pricing similar but you need to deliver similar value. “There had been, at least back in March, a sense that virtual should be cheaper,” Heather Farley, COO of Access Intelligence, said at SIPA 2020 in June. “But people are starting to appreciate the value of what we bring [virtually]. It still has the value of live, and [brings] the experience to connect buyers and sellers. The connections that you’re bringing aren’t all of a sudden cheaper. And the same amount of time that goes into [putting together] live events goes into virtual events. We have to make sure we don’t give deep discounts.”
Keep pricing close to half but provide add-ons. “We feel that people are getting a lot more value [this year],” Jared Waters, training director for BVR, said about their recent Virtual Divorce Conference. “We can do a lot of things to add value to an event. So we figure a price point—[they are charging about half of what they charged last year]—and then throw a lot of value on it. It really is a great deal for our attendees.” That value included pre- and post-conference bonus sessions and a $200 credit on their registration to a future in-person event.
Cut prices in half but get more sponsors. TechCrunch’s Disrupt 2020, taking place this week, cut ticket and exhibition prices this year roughly in half, reports Digiday. Individual ticket prices start at $350, down from $695 last year, while exhibition passes cost $445, down from over $1,000 in 2019. There’s also a Disrupt Digital Pass for $45 that offers access to one stage of programming, but does not include CrunchMatch. (It’s amazing how many names there are for virtual networking now.) TechCrunch expects between 10,000 and 15,000 attendees, close to last year’s attendance figures. However, sponsorship revenue will be up YoY, thanks to more expensive packages (by about 6%).