5 Strategic Ways to Use Online Events

By now, we have all attended an online event of some description. Whether it’s on how to protect your investments during the C-19 fallout or whether it’s to gain insight into whether your industry is a winner or loser in the post C-19 world. After testing out a few platforms and experiences, we have identified 5 ways to leverage digital event-tech for strategic gains.

Our main take-out when considering this was testing and experimentation.

Test communication

• Online events present a great opportunity to test call-to-action communication.
• A/B test all channels and ensure your tracking is in place. 
• Most online event platforms allow for a recording which can then form part of your post event communication assets for further testing. 

Test your audience development funnels

• Similar to communication testing, test which channels are performing well for mobilising audiences to converge on taking an action. 
• Some channels may also have better integration features with your chosen online event platform and current tech stack, this makes the user journey mapping much easier. 

Test topics

• Online events can be produced on a far quicker cadence than traditional live events.
• This allows event organisers to rapidly test which topics resonate with audiences and which don’t.
• The same goes for speakers.

Stimulate attendee chatter and Q&A

• Some online event platforms allow for the downloading of the comments and Q&A thread.
• This information can be a gold mine for data analysis and querying, especially when some comment threads run into the thousands of lines.

Use VR events for industry round tables 

• VR event environments have always been a bit mythical, but now they are coming on stream fast.
• Whilst it’s tempting to imagine whole real world events becoming virtual the reality is that VR is currently mostly suited for audiences below 25 participants in an environment. For participants over that, extra rooms can be added.
• VR is extremely immersive and dynamic. It’s also super fun when well-hosted and can delight audiences like no other digital experience can.

It’s clear that online events will be around for a while and if the innovations and releases we have seen just over the last month are anything to go by the space is going to become increasingly exciting and brands, agencies and event managers that embrace the strategic opportunities these platforms have to offer will be C-19 winners.