Taking Your In-Person Events Digital

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CREATE ENGAGING DIGITAL EVENTS THAT SCALEAs any marketer can tell you, few things are as effective in the sales process as human-

to-human engagement. Which is why, even in the world of digital marketing, in-person

events rank as the No. 1 demand gen tactic. But, with increased travel restrictions and

budgets requiring data-backed ROI, event marketers are looking to digital alternatives to

maximize event experiences.

Whether you’re hosting intimate events, like roadshows, or large-scale industry

conferences, ON24 can help deliver on event ROI. With the ON24 Platform, you can scale

events to reach broader audiences, enable seamless content access, create personalized

promotions and collect data insights that are difficult to capture in person.

Most successful Top-of-the-Funnel B2B Demand Generation Tactics

In-Person Events 76%

Lead Nurturing Campaigns

58%Webinars

58%

Case Studies 40%

Videos 38%

Content Syndication 30%

Infographics 23%

Content Bundles 21%

Assessments / Quizzes 16%

Buying Guides 13%

Checklists 11%

ROI Calculators 8%

Source: Demand Gen Report

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PHYSICAL EVENTS ARE LIMITED IN THEIR REACH AND EXPENSIVE TO PRODUCE

What are The Limitations of In-Person Events?

• In-person events are costly in time, resources and money

• Attendance is unpredictable and there are risks are out of an

event manager’s control (e.g., weather, world events)

• Data from physical event is limited or costly to acquire

• Attendees want event content (i.e., handouts and slide

presentations), but distribution is challenging

• Measuring the success of an in-person event is hard to

standardize, making accurate return-on-investment

estimations difficult

• In-person conferences, trade shows and field events aren’t

recession proof, and all dependent on market conditions

How Digital Solutions Can Help

• Digital solutions can help you recover ROI from sunk costs

like branding and speakers

• They can also insulate your event from uncontrollable

events, like severe weather, travel restrictions and more

• With surveys, polls and engagement tools, you can get a

better idea of your event’s most popular sessions, speaker

performance and overall audience engagement

• Finally, always-on content hubs provide attendees—both

digital and physical—a convenient resource for recorded

sessions and content

READ THE STORY

PWC saves 97% of event cost by going digitaL

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TWO APPROACHES TO DIGITAL EVENTSWhen creating a digital event strategy, there are two approaches: creating a hybrid digital and in-person event, or going all in with a digital

approach. Here are some items to consider when assessing whether you should complement your in-person event with digital experiences

or replace it outright.

Hybrid In Person + Digital Strategy

Hybrid events allow you to mix both in-person and digital

experiences, giving your gathering a sense of immediateness

both online and off. With a hybrid event, you’ll need to identify

the speakers and sessions you want to highlight digitally or

broadcast live. You’ll also want to consider how you can engage

and communicate with your virtual audiences during sessions,

much like you might in an in-person event. It’s relatively

simple to have speakers respond to Q&A sessions from digital

audiences. They can also push polls and surveys. Both options

allow you to easily capture engagement information.

Also consider offering downloadable resources in your virtual

event. Both online and in-person audiences will want copies of

the slides, reports, whitepapers and case studies that a

speaker presents.

If you go a hybrid route, make sure you maintain your event’s

branding experience. This way, both in-person and virtual

attendees get a similar experience—and, if an in-person

attendee visits your on-demand virtual event, they get the same

branded experience as they did in-person.

On that note: make sure your in-person attendees are aware of

your virtual event. Coworkers and peers who couldn’t attend

may want to tune in. And if you’re making your event available

on demand, in-person attendees can refer to your digital library

of other sessions they may have missed.

Increase the value for your sponsors by giving them dedicated

areas to promote their content or participate in conversations.

Virtual chat rooms are a great option. So are targeted landing

pages created specifically for an event or presentation.

Creating a Fully Digital Conference

Running a fully digital conference or trade show means taking

a creative approach to how you run a physical event. You

need to organize sponsors and partners and decide how to

split up leads, promote sponsors and more during a virtual

conference. Here, using a variety of digital tools, such as special

landing pages, dedicated content hubs and commercial breaks

throughout the course of your virtual event, can help.

Consider how to break up your event’s content into separate

experiences. Content hubs targeted landing pages can also

connect audiences with topics and tracks by industry, position

or interest.

Plan ahead and use simulive features as often as you can. Since

your speakers will be distributed across various networks,

there’ll be more opportunities for things to go wrong. Have your

speakers record special virtual presentations ahead of time and

save yourself from last-minute catastrophes.

As a side note: If you decide to take advantage of simulive, make

sure you educate your speakers on how to engage a virtual

audience throughout a webinar with polls, surveys, social and

Q&A tools. This helps draw virtual audiences in, provides a more

engaging experience and generates engagement data.

Decide if you’ll use broadcast video for your keynote speakers

ahead of time. This brings HD-quality video to your experiences,

but it does require a good deal of planning between you, your

speakers, your venue and your webinar provider.

To add another layer of engagement for your virtual audiences,

gamify events and presentations by offering contests and

rewards for attending specific presentations. At the end of each

session, easily lead each attendee to another, review related

material or contact you with call-to-action (CTA) tools.

Finally, get audience feedback: Ask your attendees how the

event went before they log off, this way you can understand

where you succeeded and where you can improve on your

next iteration.

Once your event is over, push it to on-demand so attendees can

come back and reference your sessions or attend sessions that

may have overlapped in a live event. Virtual events are a great

way of providing attendees with the opportunity to view

every session.

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GIVE SPONSORS WHAT THEY NEEDIncorporating sponsors into your event is a great way to

demonstrate your brand’s inclusivity into a broader ecosystem.

And particularly with in-person events, it’s a great way to help

offset some of the expenses. So when event marketers are taking

their events digital, many ask the question “can I still plan for

sponsorship revenue?” Absolutely.

Here’s how you meet—or exceed—sponsor expectations:

• Showcase your sponsors by giving them a dedicated room

or page to share content, demos, sessions and connect with

attendees in real time using either ON24 Target or

Virtual Environment

• Entice sponsorship with the guarantee of powerful data

insights. Not only will they definitely know who visits their

booth (good-bye awkward lead scanners!), they’ll also know

which resources they consumed and for how long. Because

we never really know if those physical booth handouts

are consumed

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LEVERAGE THE ON24 PLATFORM TO EXECUTE ENGAGING DIGITAL EVENTS

Create and host keynotes, breakout sessions and sponsored tracks

Whether your event has 5, 20 or 100 sessions, the ON24 platform

allows you to easily turn sessions into webinars and host them virtually

for your audience.

Live stream in-person sessions

If you’re taking a hybrid approach to reach a broader audience, the

ON24 platform allows you to live stream in-person keynotes or panels

directly into a webinar console.

Engage each individual attendee

Engage and communicate with your virtual audiences during sessions

like you might at an in-person event through Q&A, polls and surveys,

networking breakout rooms and gamification features.

Capture registration, attendance, engagement and content insights

Just like your in-person event, hosting a digital event with ON24

allows you to easily capture registration and attendance data, plus the

added bones of capturing detailed audience engagement and content

performance insights.

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LEVERAGE WEBINARS TO STREAM AND PRODUCE ALL YOUR KEYNOTES AND EVENT SESSIONS

ON24 Webcast Elite

• Whether your event is hybrid or fully digital, you can deploy

a host of video options including broadcast quality video

streaming from a live in-person event or easily use webcams

to connect speakers to present their sessions

• Host your conference sessions Live, Simulive or On-demand!

» Live—host a live speaker or panel session

» Simulive—pre-record sessions and host them as live

sessions for the audience

» On-Demand—pre-record sessions for audiences to

access at any time

• Engage and communicate with your virtual audiences during

sessions like you might at an in-person event through Q&A,

polls, surveys, group chat and more

• Leverage CTAs in your webinars or at the end of a session to

promote your next session, send audience members back to

the main digital experience, or send them to contact a sales

rep or to a sponsors website/content

• Make your event highly accessible with automated

captioning. Scale programs globally with flexible, multi-

language captioning capabilities. The ON24 Platform

supports the ability to auto-translate captions into more

than 60 languages.

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HOST YOUR EVENT IN AN ON24 ENGAGEMENT HUB OR VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT

ON24 Engagement Hub

» Unlimited audience capacity ensures your event can

continue to scale

» Customizable layouts and branding allow your digital

event to be an immersive brand experience like an in-

person event

» Organize webinars and content by categories to align

conference tracks and make it easy for audience members

to filter and find relevant content

» Easily manage and track registration with one-time

registration to view all content and enable one-click

registration for ease of signing up for upcoming sessions

» Showcase additional, related content including videos,

PDFs, ebooks, blog posts and more

» Integrate your Drift chat bot instance to ensure audience

members can connect directly with your event team or

sales reps

» Great for regionalizing events, Engagement Hub supports

configuration in up to 26 languages

ON24 Virtual Environment

» Set up a lounge for audiences to network with each other

and your event speakers

» Provide sponsors with dedicated rooms to help them

ensure the greatest ROI in their investment, capturing

data on the attendees who enter and engage with

their content

» Add gamification features to further engage audiences

including activities, points tracking and leaderboards

» Schedule webcam chats with speakers or sales reps to

allow audiences to connect directly

» Provide attendees with a simple toggle to support

language translation

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CUSTOMIZE CONTENT LANDING PAGES TO PROMOTE EVENTS AND SHOWCASE KEY SESSIONS

ON24 Target

» Create a dedicated content landing page to promote

your event and capture registrants

» Showcase content related to your event including

promotional videos, PDFs, ebooks, blog posts and more

» Host related upcoming and on-demand event sessions

curated for a specific audience

» Create a unique page for keynotes or select tracks and

customize messages and CTAs to create an ongoing

engagement journey for your targeted audience

» Integrate your Drift chat bot instance to ensure audience

members can connect directly with your event team or

sales reps

CAPTURE ACTIONABLE AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT AND CONTENT PERFORMANCE INSIGHTS

ON24 Intelligence

» Capture detailed registration and attendance data

» Go beyond event registration to capture engagement

insights per individual attendee

» See the questions they ask during each

session attended

» Track interest and intent through resources viewed

and poll and survey responses

» Content Insights offer a view into which sessions are

most popular

» Easily share attendee data with sponsors, speakers

and panelist