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  • 3 Ways that RainFocus Integrations Can Enhance the Success of Your Event

    3 Ways that RainFocus Integrations Can Enhance the Success of Your Event

    When hosting events, it is important that you provide an excellent experience for your attendees. With the way that we unify events and marketing teams at RainFocus, we make it possible to connect and customize your event with integrations. In fact, according to the Forrester Wave™: B2B Marketing Events Management Solutions, Q1 2021 Report, “RainFocus boasts among the broadest list of out-of-the-box technology integrations.” These integrations give you the opportunity to incorporate and communicate data efficiently, personalize best-in-class experiences for your attendees, and streamline the production processes for virtual and hybrid events. At RainFocus, we use integrations in three ways — to connect event data, amplify the attendee experience, and for streaming and production.

     

    1. Connect Event Data

    An open architecture and robust APIs provide integration opportunities for marketing technology platforms and business systems to form a two-way channel for communicating data efficiently. RainFocus integrations can be used to connect event data through salesforce automation and marketing automation platforms. Benefits include enhanced analytics, payment options, and robust security through single-sign-on. RainFocus has partnered with leading companies such as Salesforce, Adobe Marketo, Pardot, Google Analytics, Spreedly, and GitHub, as well as many others.

    2. Amplify the Attendee Experience

    With our end-to-end event management and marketing capabilities, RainFocus allows you to personalize and extend your attendee experience with integrations made to engage audiences through games, networking, photobooths, and rewards to name a few. Captivating your audience through these types of integrations can help to enhance the attendee experience. Functions of these integrations include:

    • Attendee-to-attendee networking

    • Q&A chat polling

    • Meeting automation

    • Virtual photo booth

    • In-person photo booth, games, and social walls

    • Rewards platform

    • Mobile app

    • Virtual meetings

    Some vendors that have partnered with RainFocus in their efforts to amplify the attendee experience are Braindate, Pigeonhole, RainFocus Meetings, Ubersnap, Look Mister, Tremendous, Eventbase, Zoom Meetings, and many more.

    3. Streaming and Production

    At RainFocus, we have the flexibility to pivot between virtual, hybrid, and in-person events with top notch security and scalability. To help you engage attendees in your events, RainFocus utilizes production integrations to create high-quality streaming content for hybrid and virtual sessions. The functions of these integrations include:

    • Event venue and hotel sourcing for physical audiences,

    • DIY media production for live and recorded content

    • Automatic conversion of media into closed captioning, and

    • Full service media production companies for both virtual and physical production live, simu-live, and ondemand media streaming.

    Partners that assist RainFocus in bringing these types of integrations to their clients include Groups360, Socialive, 3Play Media, D3G Productions, Brightcove, and others.

    Additional Integrations

    To help make your events successful, RainFocus helps you to drive better engagement, connect your sales and marketing efforts, and securely conduct business with a single platform. Whether you need to connect your sales and marketing tech stack, offer SSO authentication, process payments, or provide virtual streaming we’ve got you covered. Using the RainFocus Platform, you can host events that will help drive your business and be remembered for years to come.

    See our integration partners and learn more here.

  • Enabling a Safe Return to In-Person Events

    Enabling a Safe Return to In-Person Events

    As things begin to return to normal in a post-Covid world, we at RainFocus are determined to provide a safe and engaging onsite experience.  Returning to a physical venue and expanding content to a virtual audience will require strategic use of onsite hardware to maximize hybrid experiences.  With the growing excitement around hybrid events, we’re leveling up our in-person experience for attendees, staff, exhibitors, and speakers through RainFocus Onsite.

    What is RainFocus Onsite?

    RainFocus Onsite is the event industry’s premier onsite as a service (OaaS) solution. RainFocus Onsite offers superior service, technology, and processes to facilitate a safe, smooth, and engaging in-person experience for attendees — whether in-person or hybrid.

    What are My Choices?

    RainFocus offers two onsite packages, Onsite Suite and Onsite in a Box, to ensure events and marketing teams have the right amount of hardware and software to support their different audiences.  Onsite Suite is best suited for larger and more complex events whereas, Onsite in a Box is an excellent fit for smaller meetings and events.

    Proven Track Record

    Drawing upon years of experience delivering in-person and virtual events, RainFocus has developed RainFocus Onsite to offer best-in-class event services to support day-of-show experiences regardless of size or complexity. RainFocus Onsite consists of both hardware and software solutions for gathering, measuring, and guiding attendee engagement. Designed to unify events and marketing teams through actionable data, RainFocus Onsite includes everything organizations need to fuel sales pipelines, drive client engagement and retention, and prove event ROI.

    Key Features of RainFocus Onsite

    • A holistic insight dashboard for tracking all in-person and virtual event activity

    • A 100% fault-tolerant system

    • RainFocus Onsite software licenses

    • Contactless rapid check-in

    • Socially distanced lead scanning

    • Session access and capacity control

    • Dynamic full-color badge printers

    • Print on the fly custom badge identifiers

    • Premium support

    • Top-notch security

    Our Commitment

    “As we work with event organizers to plan their return to in-person venues whether that’s through an in-person or a hybrid event, safety, in all its forms, remains our top priority,” explains RainFocus CEO, JR Sherman. “Our RainFocus Onsite offering not only ensures the safety of individuals’ personal information, but it also safeguards them with innovative solutions for a true no-touch experience.”

    RainFocus understands the need to account for the safety of individuals. That’s why we’ve established an EventSafe Methodology to provide attendees with experiences that align with CDC guidelines. We also believe that face-to-face interaction creates valuable relationships that drive business results.  RainFocus Onsite is an innovative approach to building those relationships, driving results while maintaining attendees’ safety.

    To learn more about RainFocus’ Onsite Suite offering, click here.

  • Answers to Common Questions About Hybrid Events

    Answers to Common Questions About Hybrid Events

    If there is one thing that all event professionals can agree on right now, it’s that hybrid events are still somewhat of a mystery. Hybrid events have the potential to be the greatest drivers for maximum engagement, insights, and sponsorship value, yet everyone is still questioning how best to execute them. In helping our clients prepare for their hybrid events, we’ve come across several recurring questions. In this post, we’ll answer these questions and offer you our solutions for common hybrid concerns. 

    Q. How do you describe a hybrid event?

    Hybrid events are not new. Sporting events, for example, have been hosted both online and in-person for years. A hybrid event is a combination of online and offline event experiences. Many perceive the key challenge to solve is how to handle audiences virtually and physically for an event. In that challenge, organizations are only solving for event needs and not framing their experience around the customer. This is the event industry’s opportunity to run as an end-to-end event portfolio strategy. The right way to be thinking of hybrid is as a comprehensive and unified event strategy for your entire event portfolio. 

    Q. What are your recommended technical onsite requirements for hosting a hybrid event?

    To ensure a safe, smooth, and engaging experience for your hybrid event, you’ll need both hardware and software that offer you the ability to service attendees in a socially distanced and safe environment. Hardware includes check-in kiosks, badge printers, and scanners for sessions, exhibitors, and gift redemption. As for software, you’ll need segmented registration workflows, call for papers, call for demos, and all of the other software solutions you would need for a virtual or in-person event. Most importantly, you’ll want to have a holistic dashboard of onsite and online event activity with insights from on-the-spot registration check-in, sessions, and more.   

    Q. How would you approach live streaming an in-person event?

    Whether you offer sessions live, simulive, or on-demand to virtual attendees, you will need to ensure you have professional AV recording technology to record or stream sessions. One of the key factors to evaluate is the venue infrastructure and its ability to accommodate these technology requirements. If you choose to record and/or stream sessions, we recommend hiring an experienced production company to assist in the recording. With RainFocus, you can live stream RTMP feeds directly to a video player on attendees’ digital event portals to ensure everyone has access to the live video. 

    Q. How can you then ensure that the virtual attendees still feel like they are part of the live experience?

    We’ve seen event planners approach this in several ways. Some are sending physical SWAG boxes to connect virtual attendees to the live experience, and others have been maximizing the power of mobile networking to connect live and digital attendees. Another way to simulate the live experience is having live emcees who communicate with attendees online and offline. When setting up time with exhibitors, peers, or SMEs, RainFocus offers integrations with meeting providers as a valuable way to connect audiences and engage them in the conversation.

    Q. How do you provide virtual attendees with the opportunity to engage with physical attendees at the live event?

    As mentioned above, many event planners are leveraging mobile apps to facilitate networking via chat and polls. In addition, you could incorporate gamification into your event and unite attendees with leaderboards, social media engagement, and other activities. Having a digital photo booth is another way you can build camaraderie — giving digital attendees an opportunity to show their faces and personalities.  

    Q. Our exhibitors have been pretty clear that they cannot manage a physical and virtual booth at the same time. How do you offer in-person exhibitors the same opportunities if half of your audience is online? 

    While in-person sponsors may not have the time or resources to manage both an online and an offline booth, you can offer them the opportunity for virtual commercial spots and non-interactive virtual booths where virtual attendees can view information and request email contact at a later date. Additionally, you could offer your in-person exhibitors the opportunity to sponsor their own sessions and gather virtual leads through virtual session attendance.  

    Q. How do you prevent having an empty exhibit hall at your live event? 

    Many worry that fewer exhibitors will want to exhibit live, or worse, that there won’t be enough live attendees to provide live exhibitors with the value they deserve. Let us not forget that human nature drives us to make face-to-face connections. While many exhibitors have gathered an abundance of leads online, they are still eager to return to onsite exhibitions. Likewise, attendees are excited to get back to the regular ebb and flow of live events. Promote exhibitors as you typically would by building exhibition time into attendees’ schedules, directing attendees to the right exhibitors through meaningful recommendations, and incorporating exhibitors into your event gamification. 

    Q. How do you measure the effectiveness of networking in a hybrid environment?

    Consider using the same tactics you would use to measure networking at any other type of event. Gather attendee feedback via surveys or polls, measure the number of times attendees clicked to schedule a meeting with an exhibitor, or request email feedback post-event. 

    With years of experience planning both in-person and virtual events, RainFocus is the ideal technology for planning and executing matchless hybrid experiences. RainFocus’ all-in-one event marketing and management platform offers the tools you need to support pre-, during, and post-event experiences—including staffing, support, hardware, software, data, and analytics—all in a safe, touchless environment in accordance with CDC recommendations.

    Learn more about our hybrid event solutions here.

  • How to Take Your Virtual Event Sponsorships to the Next Level

    How to Take Your Virtual Event Sponsorships to the Next Level

    While everyone is talking about planning for hybrid events, virtual events remain the prominent form of delivery for now. In a recent meeting our team had with event technology experts from around the world, we discussed the top concerns of modern event professionals. The leading concern was virtual event sponsorships — how do you drive value and how can your event technology provider help you?

    Before 2020, 64% of in-person attendees became leads. By the fall of 2020, that rate changed to 14%. While at first, it may seem to have been a loss for exhibitors, virtual events actually yielded 4-6x the number of attendees resulting in more leads than ever before. According to our platform data, 85% of exhibitors indicated that they would exhibit virtually again. Exhibitors who were once skeptical of virtual events are quickly realizing the potential of such events to further their business strategy. In this blog post, we’ll share forward-thinking ideas for sponsorship activation and share best practices from event teams worldwide.

    Include Exhibitors in Your Planning Process

    The bottom line is you’ll never reach your exhibitors’ goals until you know what they are. First, gather exhibitors’ expectations and then present them with a game plan of how you are going to help them meet those expectations. Communicating goals builds anticipation for the event and encourages exhibitors to return time and time again.

    Develop Year-Round Sponsorship Opportunities

    The concept of a 365 marketplace is gaining momentum. Exhibitors are excited to get prolonged exposure through virtual events. Consider different strategies for year-round exhibitor booths. Given that exhibitors likely won’t have the resources to man the booth year-round, offer self-serve booths with video demos, links to sponsored sessions on-demand, email request forms, 1:1 meeting requests, and readable content rather than instant chat.

    Give Exhibitors the Experience You Would Want for Yourself

    Put yourself in your exhibitors’ shoes. If you were exhibiting at another virtual event, what would you want for your money? You’d likely want lots of visibility, mentions in emails and on social, inclusion in sessions, and a way to communicate directly with specific attendees. Offering different packages with different forms of visibility can be an effective way to monetize your event, especially now that exhibitors are beginning to see the value of virtual sponsorship.

    Let Attendees Decide How They Would Like to Connect

    One benefit of virtual events is that attendees don’t have to be seen if they don’t want to be. Allowing attendees to interact with exhibitors however they would like is crucial to increasing exhibitor engagement. Some attendees are happy to schedule a meeting while others would prefer a more tentative approach to learning about an exhibitor, such as attending a sponsored session or opting-in for email communications. Fortunately, nearly all attendee interactions can be accounted for with virtual events and reported back to your exhibitors.

    Leverage Registration Data to Pair Attendees with Sponsors

    As we enter a new era of virtual and hybrid events, pre-event matchmaking will be a key driver of exhibitors’ success. Through intelligent registration workflows, you can ensure attendees get in contact with the right exhibitors, whether they are attending online or in person. Matchmaking also guides attendees to the exhibitors that they would be most interested in. Targeted Agendas, personalized recommendations, and tailored gamification can all be effective strategies for matching attendees with sponsors. Brainstorm with your exhibitors to find out who they are targeting and let the matchmaking begin.

    To learn more about virtual event sponsorships and what RainFocus has to offer, click here.

  • Highlights from RainFocus’ Quarterly Product Webinar

    Highlights from RainFocus’ Quarterly Product Webinar

    This week, we hosted our quarterly product webinar during which RainFocus product owners demonstrated enhancements that will enable clients to deliver best-in-class virtual and hybrid experiences for their audiences. The primary focus areas of the webinar included event templates, our new Media Suite, and gamification enhancements.

    Event Templates

    Having delivered virtual experiences to over 3.5M attendees, our team has put together optimized event templates with predefined settings for common configurations. The templates were built with industry best practices in mind to enable teams to deliver personalized and premium attendee experiences with ease. Teams can switch out colors, logos, fonts, and imagery to make the event templates match the look and feel of their event brand. With new scheduling capabilities, event teams will save time with automated updates to page content.

    Media Suite

    With a growing number of virtual and hybrid events, RainFocus product teams have created a new Media Suite to manage all session and media content natively within RainFocus — whether live, simulive, or on-demand. The Media Suite gives event teams a holistic view of session metrics and enables teams to choose how and when they would like to display session content. Additionally, Media Suite offers teams the best security, data privacy, compliance, scalability, access control, SSO, reporting, integrations, user experience, and marketing automation while eliminating the need to jump from solution to solution to deliver content.

    Gamification Enhancements

    Updates to our superior and flexible Gamification enable event teams to align their engagement strategy with their overall event goals. With RainFocus, teams can build several games (sticker master, scavenger hunt, point leader, level up, and more) that can be fully customized to encourage and reward specified attendee behavior. Our Gamification allows admins to define the types of data, actions and behaviors used to power a game. They can specify awarding points, badges, and levels in any combination with all data captured in RainFocus in real-time. Teams can define, track and use just about any data point or action to award points, badges, exclusive access, gifts, and credits.

    Read our latest ebook to discover other impactful practices and tools for successful virtual event delivery.

  • How to Accommodate Growth in a Modernized Hybrid Event Ecosystem

    How to Accommodate Growth in a Modernized Hybrid Event Ecosystem

    Throughout 2020 and 2021, RainFocus has been working with the world’s largest and most innovative organizations to build the foundation for hybrid event scalability and success. By accomodating multiple audiences, we anticipate that hybrid events will have the potential to exceed the benchmarks set by virtual events. As organizations begin to plan for and implement hybrid events, we cannot help but reflect on the innovations that have led us to this point.

    Here’s how RainFocus has adapted to meet the needs of clients and attendees throughout 2020 and 2021:

    Thinking Holistically About the Data Strategy

    Before we begin implementation for an event, we identify which insights our customers want to get out of their events. With the introduction of virtual events, we took a more holistic approach to data strategy by asking clients which data points they wanted to measure and compare from virtual to physical and vice versa. As hybrid events emerge, we will continue to enable clients to view their data holistically to dial in the best attendee experiences possible.

    Expanding Integrations

    Along with the need for holistic data, event teams need to harness the multitude of insights that come from digital interactions. Immediately, our team began enhancing our large list of integrations to enable clients to share their virtual event data with their various stakeholders while delivering live, simulive, and on-demand sessions from one modern, fully optimized platform.

    According to the 2021 Forrester Wave Report on B2B Marketing Events Management, “RainFocus boasts among the broadest list of out-of-the-box technology integrations, training, and support services, and native onsite production and rentals services, making it an all-in-one contender for hybrid events leadership when in-person returns.”

    Executing Load Testing

    After receiving 4x the number of registrations for the first virtual conference of 2020, we decided it would be wise to perform routine load testing for every event. Taking the time to ensure that every event could handle a significantly larger audience than they had in previous years really paid off as RainFocus clients experienced flawless registration processes. ServiceNow’s Senior Director of Strategic Events explained, “RainFocus did a ton of performance testing for us to make sure our event could scale for the highest demand, and it did.”

    By completing load testing for each event, we were also able to ensure the security of registrants’ data. Clients need not fear losing any of their data as we have proven that our pre-established best-of-class security procedures will support all physical, virtual, and hybrid events.

    Developing a Virtual Waiting Room

    In tandem with load testing, our team set a new standard of having a virtual waiting room for registrants. Traditionally for in-person events, registrations could be queued to process overnight. But, with thousands of attendees registering at all hours worldwide, a waiting room holds registration data so as not to overload any of a client’s backend systems — creating a smooth registration experience for attendees.

    Becoming Cloud-Agnostic

    With holistic, secure, and reliable data in check, the final element needed to accommodate growth was the ability to operate on any cloud. Working with IBM, our team developed the RainFocus platform to be cloud-agnostic, making it ideal for teams who hope to share and store data on their own cloud. In their recent case study titled, “Re-Thinking Marketing Events,” IBM explained, “[Having] a scalable platform using IBM Cloud capabilities not only made a speedy transition to a virtual format possible but also provided novel opportunities for innovation.”

    Though our team accomplished a lot in the last two years, we are committed to working alongside customers to better the events industry. Read the complete story of IBM Think to learn more about the partnership between RainFocus and IBM and how the two companies are working together to establish the future of event success.

    From RainFocus’ Perspective:https://learning.rainfocus.com/one-solution-for-every-event

    From IBM’s Perspective: https://www.ibm.com/case-studies/rainfocus/

  • 5 Essential Elements of Successful Video Streaming for Events

    5 Essential Elements of Successful Video Streaming for Events

    Video streaming has taken on a whole new role in the production of events in 2021. As teams ramp up for a future filled with hybrid audiences, they are exploring new ways to stream and market their video content. With so many options available, finding a video streaming provider can be both exciting and nerve-wracking. In honor of our newest product release, RainFocus Media Suite, we’ve put together this blog post to outline the key components of a successful video streaming solution.

    1. Extensive Data Collection and Insights

    It’s no secret that virtual events yield more data than physical events. Having a video streaming tool that can capture every single interaction during a session is an absolute must. Along with having a clear picture of who has attended each session, look for a solution that can provide you the following insights:

    • Number of times a video is displayed
    • Number of times a video is played
    • The percentage of the video that is watched
    • The average time a video is watched
    • Devices a video is watched on (to help you determine whether mobile is more effective)
    • What brand of devices are being used to watch videos
    • Current viewers

    Having this information readily available will enable you to qualify prospects, gauge customer interest, determine which sessions are most popular, and help you prepare better for your upcoming events.

    1. Ease of Integration

    Consider what you’ll do with all of your session data once you have collected it. If you plan to share your data with your Sales and Marketing teams, you’ll need a solution that will integrate seamlessly to provide real-time insights. Some solutions are easier to integrate than others. Search for a solution that can provide a transparent experience for your different stakeholders.

    1. Real-Time Updates

    Many streaming solutions fall short in real-time analysis. Unfortunately, we’ve heard horror stories from teams who did not get their session data as quickly as they had hoped and were unable to make changes when they mattered most. Insights are like puzzle pieces; having all of your insights in place in a tidy dashboard will enable you to make real-time decisions based on the bigger picture.

    1. Security and Reliability

    Without the assurance of complete security, even the most impressive streaming solutions can fall short. When selecting a video streaming tool, seek a solution that meets the latest GDPR and CCPA requirements and is ISO 27001:2013 certified. Additionally, your video streaming tool should scale to meet the demand of a larger audience with ease, given virtual events typically have 4-6x the number of attendees that in-person events do.

    1. Flexible Branding

    Last but not least, seek out a solution that can be branded to match the look and feel of your event. Can the video player be embedded into your event webpage? Do the colors coordinate with your event’s theme? Even the smallest details can make the video experience feel disjointed from your event.

    In addition to having all of the qualities listed above, our new Media Suite pairs perfectly with our data and analytics offering to ensure that event teams have easy access to all of the streaming data they need for any event. Because it’s housed in the RainFocus platform, Media Suite is managed alongside all other aspects of your event for a quicker and easier planning process. Powered by the latest and greatest video technology, this solution empowers event teams to harness streaming in all forms — live, simulive, or on-demand — to create the ultimate attendee experience and ramp up engagement.

    Learn more about RainFocus’ Media Suite by requesting a demo here.

  • Six Simple Ways to Ensure Virtual Event Attendance

    Six Simple Ways to Ensure Virtual Event Attendance

    Event organizers often see a large discrepancy between the number of attendees who register for an event and those that actually attend. Virtual events have proven to attract 4-6x the number of physical attendees, however on average, only 63% of those registered actually turn up to the virtual event. Why is this so common? Put yourself in your attendees’ shoes:

    First, you receive an email about a seemingly interesting event and you register for the event. Then your workload starts piling up. Meetings get scheduled for the day and time of the event. You don’t want to let your team down, so you accept those meetings thinking you can still attend sessions in between meetings. Before you know it, you’ve planned too many meetings to make time for the event.

    Sound familiar? The odds are you know exactly what this feels like because you have been in this same situation yourself. So, how do you ensure that your event is your attendees’ top priority? This blog post will walk you through a few helpful tips for ensuring attendees turn up and stay engaged at your virtual event.

    Step 1: Charge for Your Event

    While many saw increased brand awareness benefit with offering virtual events for free, there is a case to be made to charge. Charging virtual attendees not only generates event ROI, but doing so ensures attendees are invested in your event. A registration fee tells attendees that the content they are about to access has value. Consider adjusting your packaging and pricing to allow attendees access to only those sessions or videos they’ve paid for, similar to Amazon Prime video.

    Step 2: Hold a Time Slot on Attendees’ Calendars

    Look for an event management solution that will enable attendees to add sessions to their work calendar at the conclusion of their registration process. Calendar notifications increase the likelihood of attendance tenfold.

    Step 3:Instantly Redirect Attendees to Experiences

    Most virtual event marketers will attempt to keep an attendee hooked after registration by adding them to the event update email list. While emails serve as great reminders, they often get lost in a barrage of ads and meeting invites. Attendees need a way to engage in the event immediately after they register. An event portal is a great way to engage attendees prior to an event. Once attendees have filled out your registration form, direct them to a portal where they can build their agenda, complete pre-event surveys, visit exhibitor booths, or engage in other event activities. This helps build anticipation for the event and ensures attendees are engaged from the beginning.

    Step 4: Get the Whole Team Onboard

    Encourage group registration when possible. Registrants are more likely to tune into sessions if they fear they are missing out. Furthermore, if an entire team is registered for your event, odds are higher that they won’t plan meetings that conflict with your sessions.

    Step 5: Play the Influencer Game

    Identify key influencers to promote your event. Whether it’s a big name actor or a well-established CEO, having a couple renowned influencers at your event can make a world of difference. In many instances, influencers may be members of your own organization. People attend events to socialize and learn, so the promise of one-on-one time with a product owner or a solution expert can be just as enticing as a keynote session with a celebrity.

    Step 6: Send a SWAG Kit

    Last but not least, consider sending attendees a SWAG kit to create a physical experience to go along with your digital event. SWAG can build anticipation for the event, encourage participation, and drive a deeper connection with your virtual audience. To learn best practices for virtual event SWAG sends click here.

    To read how the leading event brands are using RainFocus to sustain and report on session attendance click here.

  • How to Overcome Virtual Event Fatigue

    How to Overcome Virtual Event Fatigue

    After a year of constant webinars, on-demand videos, and virtual chatting, attendees are anxious to get back to in-person meetings and events. Likewise, event professionals are beginning to feel a sweeping sense of virtual fatigue as they struggle to keep attendees’ attention. Results of our most recent State of Events survey show that fewer than 40% of event teams feel that virtual events had exceeded their expectations. So how can you overcome virtual fatigue? Here are a few suggestions from our Virtual Success Playbook.

    Set Goals for Success

    Goal setting has never been more important. Virtual events bring in 4-6x the audience size of physical events. With so many new attendees, event professionals are adapting their strategies to focus more on education and brand awareness than they had previously. Consider adjusting your goals to reflect new digital success metrics.

    Outline Attendee Journeys

    Because virtual fatigue is so common, attendees are not likely to schedule their own sessions or scroll through virtual exhibitor booths. To combat virtual fatigue you have to suggest interesting and meaningful content to your attendees. Whether it is in the form of gamification or a recommended session schedule, provide every attendee with a personalized outline of activities for your event. 

    Plan the Right Amount of Time for Content

    Many event professionals are finding that shorter session lengths are ideal for virtual events. Plan general sessions and breakout content to be 10-30 minutes in length. Hands-on workshops and keynote sessions tend to perform best as longer form digital content.

    It’s Your Job to Tell Attendees What to Do

    Along with presenting a personalized agenda to attendees, it is important to remind attendees each day how they can get the most out of their event experience. Send daily emails to attendees reminding them of what’s happening. Having live emcees has also proven to be an effective way to motivate attendees to tune into sessions and activities.

    Exhibitors Exhibit for One Reason Alone — To Gain Leads

    No one feels virtual fatigue quite like exhibitors. Unfortunately, for many exhibitors sponsoring a booth online has not been all that they hoped it would be. While many have gained a higher quantity of leads, the quality tends to be lacking. Helping exhibitors gather quality leads should be a top priority as you are planning your event. Consider opening more time slots for sponsored sessions, looking into a more interactive exhibitor catalog, or incorporating exhibitors into your event game. For more ideas read 10 Ways to Market Virtual Booths.

    Act Immediately on Your Event Data

    Make strategic and tactical changes informed by real-time insights to keep attendees engaged throughout your whole event. Enable sales and marketing to communicate with client and prospect attendees when it will have the most impact with a streamlined CRM integration. By setting up a campaign in your CRM to capture how many leads and opportunities are generated as a direct result of your event marketing efforts you’ll be better able to demonstrate event ROI.

    Read the rest of our Virtual Success Playbook to gather more best practices for virtual events.

  • An Event Tech Team’s Guide to Replatforming

    An Event Tech Team’s Guide to Replatforming

    In today’s environment, you need a flexible platform to power event success and often that entails ditching antiquated technology for a more modern, SaaS-based end-to-end event solution. Replatforming is arguably one of the most difficult endeavors you can tackle, especially in the midst of a busy events season, but in working with the most innovative brands who have made the switch, here are some best practices and tips to make it less daunting.

    Before we jump into it, let’s level set on a few of the basics:

    What Is Event Replatforming?

    Event replatforming is the process of migrating off an existing event platform to take advantage of modern technologies, environments, and architectures.

    Why You Might Consider Replatforming?

    There are a few reasons to consider replatforming:

    • Going Hybrid: Over the past year, organizations rushed to bolt on virtual-only solutions to their existing event platforms, which has left them managing multiple vendors and disparate systems. As organizations plan for hybrid, they will need a flexible all-in-one platform that handles virtual, physical, and hybrid experiences seamlessly in order to streamline operations and ensure the best experience for their audiences.
    • Being Migrated to a New Product: Other organizations may be forced to switch products within their legacy provider, essentially forcing them to replatform, which creates massive headaches and limited upside.

    Why Is Replatforming Difficult?

    The primary concern of teams who switch platforms is ensuring that all of the right integrations are set up and functioning as they should. Many teams avoid switching platforms out of fear that doing so will disrupt their user experience as well as the sunk cost of integrations or customizations that they think are too expensive to recreate in another platform. As with any new tool, adopting a new platform may require a bit of a learning curve. It is likely your team will have to undergo training to completely understand how to use the new platform’s capabilities.

    Another challenge of switching platforms is transferring data. Downloading and uploading attendee info can be monotonous and time-consuming. That being said, transferring your data to a new platform may also open up new opportunities for improved cross-event data analysis, increased visibility for stakeholders, and the ability to create consistent attendee experiences.

    One might ask, “if replatforming is so difficult, why do so many organizations do it?” There are many reasons why organizations choose to change platforms. The following are reasons why companies have decided to make the switch to RainFocus:

    What Are the Benefits of Replatforming?

    1. Improved scalability. RainFocus clients are able to deliver their large complex event portfolios without error.
    2. An enhanced user experience. Teams looking to ditch complex processes take comfort in RainFocus’ simplified and streamlined event management.
    3. Top-notch security. Events enable teams to gather and process large amounts of data, RainFocus ensures that data remains safe as it is shared with stakeholders through secure integrations.
    4. Increased profitability. RainFocus empowers events and marketing teams to realize event value with instant access to event-qualified prospect data, insight dashboards, and more.
    5. All-in-one event management. With RainFocus, event teams have the flexibility to seamlessly manage multiple events, whether virtual, physical, or hybrid, with one centralized end-to-end platform.
    6. Ease of data clean up and import. RainFocus makes it easy to import all of your previous data (drag-and-drop field mapping, acceptance of common event file types, unlimited storage, and more) into the platform.
    7. Expanded configuration and integration options. Modern platforms like RainFocus are designed to accommodate with ease all of the costly customizations clients may have spent in the past through our flexible configuration. Our rules engine and workflow builder make recreating and improving these customizations a breeze. Integrations can be just as simple and cost-effective with our large library of standard integrations and robust APIs.
    8. Better support. Your current tech stack may be outdated and too much time wasted just to try and keep it afloat. Moving to a more modern codebase can mean fewer bug fixes or time spent talking to customer support.
    9. Expand on best practices. Replatforming is a great time to take what you have loved or/are familiar with on your old platform and build upon it. It’s time to rethink what is valuable, what you would do differently, and what you need for future growth, which can help drive massive efficiencies and set your team and events up for greater success.
    10. Industry-leading innovation. Working with the largest and most innovative brands with the most complex event needs, RainFocus’ roadmap is driven by customer feedback to fuel continued improvement for deploying immersive and integrated virtual, hybrid, and on-demand experiences with ease.

    Is It Worth It? Our Recommendations for Replatforming

    Despite the effort it takes to transfer data, set up integrations, and familiarize yourself with a new platform, replatforming can be extremely beneficial. The following are our recommendations for replatforming:

    1. Consider the size and complexity of your events portfolio. As you begin your replatforming journey, look for a platform that will scale to meet high demand and enable you to pivot easily between virtual, physical, and hybrid events and support your large down to your small recurring meetings.
    2. Determine how you will share data across your entire tech stack. Evaluate whether or not the platform you are considering can integrate with the tools you need before switching.
    3. Look for a platform that is backed by world-class customer support. Seek a partner who will conduct load testing, meet often, and provide resources without charging you hidden fees.

    How RainFocus Helps

    Demonstrating return on investment is critical to quantify the benefits of switching, but success may look different for each organization. For some, the focus is cost reduction and time savings, while for others it’s increased revenue. While these may look different for each customer, the results are clear. With RainFocus, customers save time, increase engagement, and maximize event value at every touchpoint.

    RainFocus is equipped to adapt, flex, and make your job easier as your audiences expect more. As one integrated events platform, it brings companies and customers together with the right experience aligned to your goals and gives stakeholders a single, shared view of event success. In addition to the cost savings and results, our customers also save considerable costs by eliminating redundant expenses and hidden service fees—inclusive of integrations, reporting tools, troubleshooting, security breaches, testing, and more.

    Explore how switching to RainFocus might ultimately save you time and money by requesting a demo.