Less schmooze, extra substance: 3 key insights for planning digital occasions

This article was contributed by Nohar Zmora, VP Brand Marketing, Kaltura

When COVID-19 first reared its head, many expected that the shift to online-only events would be temporary. Two years later, nonetheless, it’s abundantly clear that even after the pandemic fades, digital occasions are right here to remain.

Even as some organizations start internet hosting in-person conferences once more, many are ramping up their on-line occasions in parallel, unwilling to move up the comfort, engagement, and precious viewers insights now out there.

This elementary shift is about excess of occasion codecs. As extra conferences have gone digital, there’s been a marked change in how attendees and marketers derive value from events. Having labored with dozens of world enterprises to create a whole bunch of digital occasions of assorted sizes, and having hosted a number of of our personal on-line occasions, my group has seen the affect of this shift firsthand. What’s extra, we will quantify it — not solely from our impartial analysis and surveys, however from proprietary knowledge gathered by internet hosting these occasions.

Here are three most important takeaways from our analysis that spotlight what entrepreneurs want to think about when planning their subsequent digital occasion.

1. Networking no extra — content material is king

While entrepreneurs, attendees, and armchair observers have been discussing the professionals and cons of digital vs. in-person occasions over the previous two years, in fact, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparability.

Case in level: take into account the considerably totally different causes somebody would attend an in-person convention or a digital occasion. A 39% plurality of in-person attendees go to an event to build relationships. The high objectives for digital occasions are studying about an organization or product and advancing one’s skilled schooling, in line with 36% of on-line occasion attendees.

Among digital event-goers, nonetheless, building new relationships is a decrease precedence than it’s for his or her in-person counterparts, rating third with 15% of attendees’ votes. Meanwhile, 28% of digital attendees opted for chats and collaboration as key promoting factors, however solely 9% reported making a number of connections whereas attending.

In mild of such outcomes, it turns into clear that the first driver of on-line occasion attendance is the content material of the occasion itself. As such, occasion organizers want to make sure that their programming is much less about schmoozing, and extra about substance.

As digital attendees emphasize content material over camaraderie, they’ve additionally shed their hesitance to take part in one-day occasions. Pre-pandemic, many one-day occasions had been shunned because of the time dedication, however now, they’re outperforming longer occasions by way of attendee engagement.

We discovered that engagement is larger throughout shorter occasions. Users spent a median of 126 minutes engaged throughout one-day occasions — 10.5% extra time than the 114 minutes of engagement averaged throughout occasions lasting two to 3 days. This suggests that individuals desire hyper-focused, one-day digital occasions over extra generalized occasions that they’ll peruse over an extended interval.

In the courageous new world of on-line occasions, an increasing number of persons are prepared to attend an occasion only for one session that’s particularly related to them. Because prices are low and attendance is feasible from anyplace, there’s no disgrace or awkwardness in heading for the exits early. Over time, this development could intensify, with attendees exhibiting up for the content material they’re concerned about however nothing extra. And that is the place it turns into important for organizers to find out what is going to really interact their audiences.

2. New methods to gauge engagement throughout digital occasions

Back when in-person occasions had been the default, measuring viewers engagement largely got here all the way down to counting the quantity of people that attended every session or monitoring the enterprise leads that resulted straight from an occasion.

That’s not the case with digital occasions. Thanks to video, occasion organizers can entry behavioral knowledge that’s routinely recorded and time-stamped, making it doable to investigate engagement in a approach that’s extremely highly effective for entrepreneurs.

By themselves, registration and attendance aren’t indicative of a lot. But as soon as individuals present up for an occasion, they’re much likelier to return for future occasions or engagements and convert into paying clients. Our knowledge additionally reveals that 56% of registrants attended the digital occasions they signed up for, 43% participated, and 42% engaged. In different phrases, the most important drop got here between registration to precise attendance and the smallest between participation to engagement. Therefore, of the individuals who attended and took part in digital occasions, engagement was excessive.

Engagement knowledge is extremely illuminating quantitative materials, however following up with the viewers is crucial to acquire the qualitative knowledge wanted to spherical out their findings. Sure, entrepreneurs can see when somebody logged off from an occasion — however to be able to know why, they should ask attendees. The identical goes for individuals who completely devoured the content material: organizers ought to discover out why individuals had been enthusiastic in regards to the content material they loved, decide what the highlights had been, and take these gleanings to design future occasions that can hold individuals engaged and coming again for extra.

The backside line? Data from digital occasions is richer and yields extra precious insights than is feasible with most in-person occasions, with more than a quarter of organizations seeing larger ROI and engagement from digital occasions. Those new advantages are key explanation why 94% of organizers and entrepreneurs plan to proceed internet hosting digital occasions for the foreseeable future.

3. Timing isn’t every thing — however it nonetheless issues

In the period of recorded occasions and video on demand, there’s an unprecedented quantity of content material at our fingertips 24/7. But organizers shouldn’t take from this that timing is irrelevant. In truth, it could be the sheer overload of VOD that makes reside content material all of the extra particular. Live content material is what makes an occasion, properly, an occasion, and never only a lecture.

Our knowledge backs this up: amongst these we sampled, 60% of the total hours of content material they considered had been reside classes, not VOD. This underscores audiences’ ongoing want for connective experiences — even when connection is now not the first objective behind their attendance — and the necessity for organizers to make audiences really feel as in the event that they’re a part of one thing bigger.

With that in thoughts, organizers ought to take into account the worldwide urge for food for the content material they’re presenting and make sure that they’re nonetheless staging reside classes that can resonate with attendees.

To conclude, each paradigm shift brings each challenges and alternatives. But, luckily for entrepreneurs, the transfer to digital occasions is replete with alternatives to attach with extra individuals.  And with a wise, data-driven method to content material creation, they’ll overcome their largest challenges.