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Ideas to Pump Up Your Virtual Event Volume and Encourage People to Attend

by Media
I wrote last week that there can be a lot to like about virtual events—global reach, access to more speakers, expanded Q&As. But one virtual events problem that’s not discussed as much—as say, the networking issue—that we don’t have for in-person events is getting registrants to actually attend. I mean, who isn’t going to Florida or California or Vegas after signing up and booking flights?
But getting on another Zoom-like event in the middle of a busy day takes some coaxing.
“Keep focusing on the what’s-in-it-for-me [angle],” said Matthew Cibellis of Cibellis Solutions. “Remind them on what they signed up for in the first place. It’s a lot of retargeting. You want them there live. You’ve promised sponsors certain types of personas. Send email and text reminders.” Make it easy for them to sign on. “And use testimonials: ‘Here’s why I’m going to the show.’”
When I sign up to attend an online event, the more draws that the organizer can program the better. Interesting topic, check. Q&A check. Some type of networking, check. Some gamification, check. Wine tasting, check.

 

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But there’s always room for newer and more fun ideas. Believe it or not, Goat-2- Meeting will bring a farm animal to mingle in your Zoom boxes. “Need a fresh face to brighten up your video conference meetings?” they ask. “The Sweet Farm Animal Ambassadors are here for you.”

“It’s hard to find fun things to incorporate into our virtual events right now. It’s like, how many wine tastings can we do?” said Katrina Kent, head of events for TD Ameritrade, in an article on Successful Meetings.
Here are a few ideas from that article and others I’ve seen:
Add a musical component. Since March, SongDivision has put on more than 400 digital events, with attendance ranging from 15 people to 15,000. TD Ameritrade hired them to write a custom song, “Invested Forever,” to honor the company’s 40-year history and highlighted major accomplishments from over the years. (That brings up another recent article I wrote here about celebrating company anniversaries.) The song kicked off the one-hour event. “People were completely blown away. It was totally unexpected and everyone wanted the MP3 of the song right away,” said Kent.
Add trivia or fun quiz questions or a giveaway. “There’s always been this big separation of church and state in the meetings industry. So, we have content and learning over here and engagement and fun over there, and don’t let them get anywhere near each other,” said Sharon Fisher, CEO of Play with a Purpose. “…the meetings that we’ve seen that are really, really successful blend the two and put engagement and content together.”
Add virtual photo elements. “There’s usually a line at the photo booth at every in-person event” writes Samantha Whitehorne in Associations Now. “And while you may think this is one element that has to go by the wayside in the virtual environment, think again. There are plenty of options out there that will allow participants to create and share fun photos and animated GIFs.” Donna Jefferson of Chesapeake Family has enjoyed success with her magazine photo contests—pets, kids, scenery. There could be a virtual contest during an event if it’s done in an expedient way.
Do a Digital Dine Around. I’ve missed my share of meals to take part in virtual events. In their Influence 2020 conference, the National Speakers Association made sure you ate well: “Have you ever wished you could share a meal with one of NSA luminaries?” they wrote in August. “This year, you can! We’re hosting Digital Dine Arounds where you can sit down for a casual ‘meal time conversation’ with NSA’s Board Members, Past Presidents, Cavett Award Recipients, CPAE winners, and more.”
Come up with an intriguing interview pairing. I saw another great example of this yesterday when Politics and Prose, an incredible independent bookstore in Washington, hosted a reading of author Tim Weiner (The Folly and the Glory) being interviewed by Asha Rangappa, CNN analyst, Yale lecturer and former FBI special agent. It proved to be a must-see-and-hear conversation. I was also sure to tune in last week to an interview with Nataki Garrett, artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. One big reason was the interviewer: 67 year-old Scottish director John Doyle who reimagined The Color Purple to Broadway success a couple years ago. The juxtaposition of the backgrounds of the two made for must-see Zooming. Often the interviewer can be just as important as the speaker.
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SIPA Member News

by Media

Welcome New Members

We are excited to welcome the following new member to the SIPA community:

Cibellis Solutions is an all-service marcom, content marketing consultancy deeply nested in subject-matter expert content development and audience engagement with that deep expertise.

Fantini Research Launches New Gaming Indices
Recognizing the dramatic changes in the structure of the gaming industry, Fantini Research has launched a new set of stock indices to measure industry performance. “These indices are an important tool for investors to track and measure gaming stocks in comparison to the overall market and the dynamics within the gaming industry itself,” Fantini Research CEO Frank Fantini said.
The indices designed by Fantini’s Gaming Report editor Blake Weishaar have been backdated to January 2, 2018. In that relatively brief time, the indices show investor enthusiasm over sports betting, which stands at 175.97 points from a base of 100.
The lowest performing of the indices, North American, stands at 100.72 showing that gaming stocks have held up even in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic that has devastated leisure and hospitality stocks this year.

Copyrightlaws.com Offers Tips for Developing a Copyright Policy

Copyrightlaws.com offers tips for developing a copyright policy in a very useful blog post this month.
“Copyright policies exist in a variety of forms, styles and lengths. Writing one may seem like a daunting task. Where do you begin? First, read copyright policies from other organizations.
“Next, prepare an outline of the important copyright and licensing issues to include in your policy. What are they? Only you can answer that question. What issues arise in your organization? Common issues include:
  • Posting content online;
  • Using articles from licensed databases;
  • Reproducing articles for internal or external seminars”
See the full article here.
Industry Dive Design Team Named ‘Design Team of the Year’ by Folio
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Industry Dive’s design team was named 2020’s “Design Team of the Year” by Folio. The team also won four other Ozzie and Special Recognition awards, including “Overall Design Excellence.”
Started over 25 years ago, Folio’s Eddie and Ozzie award competition seeks to “recognize excellence in engaging content and gorgeous design across all sectors of the publishing industry.” The 2020 competition saw thousands of entries across more than 60 categories. This was the first year Industry Dive’s design team submitted entries.
Diversified Communications Introduces Seafood Expo Asia Reconnect
Seafood Expo Asia, produced by Diversified Communications, announced the launch of Seafood Expo Asia Reconnect, a digital solution to connect seafood buyers throughout Asia with suppliers from around the world. Seafood Expo Asia Reconnect will be hosted online Nov. 17-19, 2020.
“In these unprecedented times, we understand that the need for the industry to stay connected and conduct business is more important than ever,” said Liz Plizga, group VP, Diversified Communications. “Until we meet again, face to face, we are pleased to bring a new business opportunity for seafood suppliers from around the world to reconnect with seafood buyers located in Asia, without leaving their office.”

Eidelman Blogs for Thrive Global

Stephanie Eidelman, CEO of insideARM, has recently written two excellent blogs for Thrive Global. The latest one is titled This New Pandemic Habit Has Expanded My Universe, about her new walking habit.
“Because I am not also checking email or focusing on the latest task at hand, my walks—even while I’m listening or talking—help me to work through big questions and develop new perspectives. It’s nearly impossible to find time for this kind of thinking during other parts of the day, but during my walks, things become clear to me at a much higher level.”

 

RonnAre you subscribed to the SIPAlert Daily?
If not, you’re missing out on daily strategies, tips, profiles and case studies that can build your audience and increase revenue. To sign up, please contact Nevena Jovanovic.Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 and SIIA in 2013 as editorial director…
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Global Attendance, Better Feedback and New Speakers Can Boost Events

by Media
As much as we are Zoomed out and miss seeing our colleagues at in-person events, there are advantages to virtual events that we need to take advantage of. I was listening to a webinar today and while describing an event pivot they made for their farming audience, one organizer said that “farmers from Guatemala joined us and that couldn’t have happened any other way.”
Here are more ways we can take better advantage of virtual events:
Go global. As I just described, there should be no barrier besides time difference why you can’t have a bigger global audience. Some organizations have staggered sessions so there’s something for every time zone. Of course, content from virtual events can also be easily put on-demand. “At Microsoft, we publish event recordings to Stream and Yammer for people to watch when it works for them,” said Bob Bejan, a Microsoft corporate VP. “Leverage digital conferencing platforms… that enable live captioning and translation for speaker remarks so audience members can view subtitles in their local language.”
Use the events to promote memberships or upsells. One group is recommending that you lower the barriers for non-members or non-subscribers to attend your events because of the extended relationships that can emerge at this time. “Get them to register and attend and then deliver unbelievable value to them by putting on a heck of a show: on demand content, live entertainment, concurrent sessions, and more,” wrote JP Moery of The Moery Company. “Showcase your vendors and suppliers in a compelling way… Set up short sessions for non-members (where you can talk member value) and promote them prior to the event.”
Offer sponsors what they need. “How can you best help sponsors?” asks Charity Huff of January Spring. “What kind of voice are you giving them [during the event]? What will their access be to registrants so they can be in front of those folks? Can they introduce sessions, host one-on-one chats? After the event what can you do to help them?” She recommends highlighting their participation in the materials you send out and any groups you create.

Reach for tough-to-get speakers. “For event planners, booking speakers becomes more flexible as well,” writes David Meerman Scott, who once keynoted a SIPA Conference. “Speakers (like myself) find ourselves booked out for events all across the globe, making it hard to squeeze in last-minute requests or adjust our schedules. With virtual events, we can deliver our content from a home studio. While speakers need to tailor their keynotes to create a unique experience specifically for the online medium, the added time of travel does not need to be a part of pre-speech preparation anymore.”

Get better feedback—including during the event. We all struggle with the best ways to get feedback during and after our in-person events—I still think paper ballots right after a session worked best. We also physically count how many people are in a session room.  “Attendees don’t want to be busy with their phones or checking their inbox—they want to be engaged by great speakers, entertainers and like-minded peers,” wrote Meerman Scott. “With the right event management software, you can send in-event engagement surveys and collect feedback immediately after an event. You can also very easily see how many people attended certain online sessions and which speakers seemed to get the most engagement from the audience beyond the old crowd volume test.” I would also suggest getting feedback after Day 1 of a multi-day event. Then perhaps you can adjust something on the fly.
Add value. An in-person event is pretty much confined to those days. There should be no limit to a virtual event. Eric Shanfelt, founding partner of Nearview Media, suggests a series of sessions to comprise an event. “We’ll just do a live webcast every Friday at 1 pm Eastern. We’ll record it and put it in the members only section, and then in a podcast. Sponsors will like it because they get multiple mentions in email, the webcast, on-demand and the podcast. People can then come in when they want and view what they want.” BVR’s Virtual Divorce Conference added sessions a week before and a week and two after to their main three-day virtual event. Why not?
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Storytelling Through Video, Data and Content Features Can Drive Big Engagement

by Media

“I don’t ever take for granted what it is I get to do every day. That at any given moment, if I’m having a rough day, I can go jump on a roller coaster or I can go eat a funnel cake.”

That comes from Sharon Parker, communications manager for Six Flags Over Texas and Hurricane Harbor, speaking on one of three videos for the IAAPA Expo 2019 Return Attendee Promotion. IAAPA is the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions.

The videos represented three personas: an exhibitor, a repeat attendee and a first-time attendee. The repeat attendee video was launched with registration and received 12,000 views, 7 shares and 51 responses. It was then edited to serve in their video pre-roll advertisement campaign on YouTube. The video’s VTR (view thru rate) was a strong 71%. The first-time attendee video debuted on social media prior to the early-bird deadline and received 21,000 views.
The Food Marketing Institute opened its virtual meeting with footage of members talking about the importance of grocery stores and communities during the pandemic, the role they played, and how they gave back to their communities. “Opening the event with the stories was so powerful,” said Margaret Core, VP of marketing and industry relations. “That’s engagement: We let the actions of our members tell our story.”
These are two great storytelling examples using video, but, of course, stories can be driven in other ways. At SIPA 2019, Emily Laermer, managing editor for Ignites at Money-Media, presented an excellent session titled Numbers Drive Engagement: Telling Compelling Stories Using Data.

“At Money Media we recognize engagement by how many times stories are forwarded or saved,” Laermer began. “Even if a story doesn’t get a lot of clicks, if it does get a lot of forwards and saves, then we consider that to be a highly successful and engaged story.

“Data and visual stories are pretty consistently among our most saved and forwarded content,” she continued. “In the most basic sense, data stories are ones that just have a ton of information. So they can be generated from a huge spreadsheet or Excel file. But they don’t necessarily have to be numbers driven. They can be stories that have a lot of facts. So for example, new rules and regulations are great data stories. The first story I worked on at Ignites required that I read a 400-page rule on mutual fund regulation and how the funds were going to have to change their reporting. That’s a data story.”

Okay, suggesting you read 400 pages of rules during a pandemic is not the best way to encourage data stories, but there are easier ways to do it. Timelines can be very effective. In reporting on a company that had been acquiring other companies, Laermer went through annual reports, press releases, etc., and built out a timeline that proved very engaging.
A third way to tell stories is through content features. MedLearn Media rolled out three new weekly segments on topics that they don’t traditionally write about, “which are more lifestyle pieces then our traditional news on healthcare rules and regulations,” Angela Kornegor, their executive director, said earlier this year. The segments are Frontline Friday, Stay at Home Kids and The Saturday Post. “These have driven our traffic up by 40% during the pandemic, and we are developing additional sponsor and advertising opportunities within these new segments and laying the ground work for a new subscription model.”
Last but not least, Haymarket Media’s PR Week started three regular features that focus on people in their community telling their stories: Lockdown Life, Coffee Break and A Day in the PR Life.
Haymarket also launched another kind of story: a coronavirus briefing “where we took content from all of our brands and put it out as an email newsletter,” said Steve Barrett, VP, editorial director, PRWeek & Campaign US at Haymarket Media US. “Whereas B2B is usually about going deep in a vertical, this was a horizontal slice across one topic and presenting it out. That was really interesting—I could see that happening on other issues like the future of work, or diversity would be an interesting thing for B2B publishers to look into.”
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Value Propositions, Innovation and Engagement Get People to Join/Renew

by Media
In my Q&A with Matt Bailey last week, I mentioned the exercise he had us all doing at BIMS one year: state your company’s definition—what-it’s-primarily-about—in six words. It really made you get rid of the excess language we tend to use, and think about your main revenue driver.
I recall that because in Marketing General’s 2020 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report (download here), they say the following: “The first and most noteworthy condition for membership success is understanding and building the value proposition for your membership. The data shows that members join for networking with others in the field, continuing education, accessing specialized information, and learning best practices in their profession.”

They also say that “only about half of [organizations] consider their value proposition to be very compelling or compelling (48%). On the other hand, 42% find their organization’s value proposition to be only somewhat compelling.

That’s a bit staggering and in need of change. They add that the organizations gaining members are the ones who say that they do have a compelling or very compelling value proposition—obvious but still worth noting.
Here are more highlights from the report.
Even now—or maybe especially now—it’s important to encourage innovation. “Our data shows that a culture of innovation is the critical driver for creating member value. “Try something new or you’ll plateau and decline,” one respondent said. Again, those who have seen member gains “are significantly more likely to have a process in place for innovation and new ideas” and vice versa.

Amplify these areas. We all talk about wanting greater interaction with our audience/members/community. Here are four areas where respondents are seeing it:

– the use of an organization’s mobile app;
– participation in social networks;
– webinar attendance; and
– participation in their young professionals programs.

Have a plan to engage. This is not a surprising one, but respondents have been consistent in sharing why they do not renew—a lack of engagement with the organization. “However, when associations establish an active program to engage members and increase their usage of benefits, membership retention increases. Almost 80% that have seen an improvement in renewals state that they have a tactical plan to increase engagement.”
Get people talking. By quite a large margin, word-of-mouth recommendations is the best channel for acquiring new members. Email is second but its numbers have gone slightly down. Events/meetings came in next but this was pre-pandemic.
Still have to try to facilitate networking. When asked for the top three reasons members join, 61% said “networking with others in the field.” Even on Zoom calls—as much as we all know that Zoom fatigue is real—you can see faces light up when they see people they haven’t seen in a while. And you can see the engagement they get from hearing colleagues talk about their experiences.
Stand for something. In that same category, 25% said “supporting the mission of the organization.” And another 21% said supporting advocacy. Learning best practices in the field is also a common denominator of those organizations that have experienced recent growth.
Offer toolkits. This came from one respondent: “Our largest source of new members comes from current members referring non-members to our organization. We provide toolkits, complete with links to resources, for our membership annually and encourage them to keep up the good work!”
Reach out and touch. One respondent wrote: “Personal touches make the most difference. The challenge is freeing staff from other tactics to make the calls and reach the members.”
Use your data. “We’ve modeled our prospects, scoring them with the likelihood to obtain our certification. This has allowed us significant savings on marketing costs after test results showed drastically higher response rates for the top scored prospects. There are so many fingerprints within data that people can use to identify the most likely to help meet the organization’s goals. Everyone should be tapping into this.”
Again, download the report here.