RainFocus Blog

Blog

  • Post-Event Engagement: Six Steps for Converting Virtual Attendees into Qualified Prospects

    Post-Event Engagement: Six Steps for Converting Virtual Attendees into Qualified Prospects

    It’s time to stop thinking of the virtual attendee experience within the bounds of your event. This year, events and marketing are converging in a way that no one could have anticipated. Instead of working independently, these teams are combining to extend attendee engagement long after the event has ended. This prolonged engagement enables cross-functional teams to obtain their objectives of sourcing new prospects, driving prospect conversion, and ensuring client retention.

    All of these objectives are best met when you plan your post-event experience as well as you do your event. The following six steps will help you get started:

    Step 1: Follow Up Immediately

    The most common form of post-event follow up is a survey. Post-event surveys are ideal because they allow you to understand attendee’s feedback on your event while the experience is still fresh on their minds however, getting attendees to complete surveys is no easy task. Think about what you could offer to incentivize them. Do you need to make surveys shorter, easier to fill out, or more visible?

    Other forms of immediate follow up might include an executive thank you letter, a key learnings email, or even a wrap-up video.

    Step 2: Direct Attendees to Your On-Demand Content

    If you are delivering your event virtually or even as a hybrid, be sure to set up an online library to give attendees access to on-demand content post-event. Video libraries such as RainFocus’ Content 365 allow you to easily transition your content and event experience to a more permanent location where attendees can continue to engage year-round. Even if your event is in-person, an online content library will enable you to turn your physical attendees into longer-engaging virtual attendees or enable you to market/sell to new audiences.

    In addition to providing extended value to attendees, an on-demand content library also provides value to sponsors through continued exposure with sponsored content.

    Step 3: Analyze Your Data

    Once you’ve sent out an immediate follow-up email to all of your attendees, you can start focusing on personalization. Analyze your data to discover which prospects are most likely to convert into buyers. Determine which content was most popular and how you can build on that content. Analyzing your data will help you boost post-event engagement by helping you generate more meaningful and impactful messages for prospects.

    Step 4: Tailor Your Messaging

    As you analyze your session data and attendee records, start brainstorming the messaging you will use to drive further brand engagement. For larger audiences, consider your session topics. Which attracted the most views? For individual marketing, analyze attendee records to gather ideas. RainFocus’ Global Attendee Records allow you to look at attendees’ interests across multiple events, enabling you to craft unique messages that add to the things they have already learned.

    Step 5: Make Recommendations

    With your messaging planned and your online library set up for on-demand content, you’re ready to start making recommendations. Recommend content that attendees may have missed and/or enable them to curate their own playlist to reference. Other post-event recommendations might include more typical marketing materials, invitations to demos or virtual tech tours, and more.

    Step 6: Invite Again

    The final and most important step to boosting post-event engagement is inviting your attendees to join your next event. Continue the process of virtual attendee conversion by giving your attendees another event—or in other words, another touchpoint with your brand—to look forward to whether that is your annual conference, a roadshow, or a small meeting.

    Learn how RainFocus further optimizes the post-event engagement for marketing and event success by requesting a demo here.


  • 21 Ideas for Generating and Proving Virtual Event ROI

    21 Ideas for Generating and Proving Virtual Event ROI

    Events represent the largest spend within marketing budgets (averaging 24% for major enterprises) and are universally touted as the most effective marketing channel, yet they also represent the least measured and quantifiable marketing effort. As virtual events still incite a high level of uncertainty, it has never been more important for marketing and events teams to work together to generate and prove ROI for their events.

    ROI is best achieved when teams successfully combine virtual event monetization and measurement strategies. We’ve compiled this list of 21 ideas to help you determine the best combination for your organization.

    Generating Virtual Event ROI

    1. Upsell your exhibitors and sponsors. Virtual booths offer various new opportunities for exhibitors and sponsors, but why stop there? Grant your exhibitors the exposure they need by offering them different packages that include commercial slots, sponsored sessions, or even targeted advertising. Give exhibitors the option to pay to have their branded swag included in the welcome kit.
    2. Allow attendees to pick and choose. Entice attendees with an a la carte pricing structure in which there are both free and paid sessions. Set different prices for high-value sessions and allow attendees to determine how much they want to spend on your event.
    3. Charge a flat rate for session tracks/channels. Many event professionals are leveraging Netflix-style content tracks to motivate engagement. Why not get the most out of those tracks by charging for premium content tracks?
    4. Take advantage of networking opportunities. Access to networking groups has the potential to be your biggest money-maker. Attendees are eager to communicate with their peers and are happy to pay the extra money if it means making valuable connections.
    5. Leverage a tiers system. Tier systems are not uncommon for events. In a virtual tiers system, option A might include everything from elite access into live birds-of-a-feather meetings to general on-demand sessions, whereas option B might exclude more intimate meetings.
    6. Offer a BOGO deal. Promote your other events by allowing your attendees to pay half price for your next event alongside their payment for your current event. This structure is ideal when all of you host all of your events on the same event management and marketing platform.
    7. Sell access to insights. Virtual events are abundant in data. Offer sponsors access to session click-tracking and duration-tracking data as part of their gold or platinum-level sponsorship packages.
    8. Provide a referral discount. Give attendees discount codes to apply during registration for making a referral. Referrals encourage both the attendee who makes the referral and the one who receives the referral to attend.
    9. Suggest advantageous meetings. Seek future business by arranging opportunities for your sales team to meet with prospects. Set up 1:1 meetings with prospect attendees, build your own virtual booth, or organize a networking group to introduce prospects to loyal clients.
    10. The 5th one is free. On average virtual attendees go to 3.8 sessions. If you are charging for sessions, make the fifth or sixth session free to encourage attendees to pay for at least four sessions.
    11. Utilize gamification to drive upsell attendees. Virtual event gamification is a powerful motivator as it gives attendees direction as they navigate your digital experience. Entice your attendees to invest more in your event by promising them rewards for engaging with paid sessions.
    12. Advertise your virtual event as you would your physical events. Explore new ways to promote your event. Use ads, social media, direct sends, and other marketing tactics to drive event attendance.
    13. Promote team registration. Give a discounted price for registrants who are willing to register as a group. These group ticket packages might enable teams to bring a fourth or fifth attendee for free. This not only brings in a larger audience, but it also encourages external advocacy for your event.
    14. Analyze your attendee’s behavioral data. Determine what your attendees are most interested in and upsell them related sessions. For example, you might offer paid advanced training for your free training sessions.
    15. Get the most out of your speakers. Entice attendees to pay for keynote sessions by spotlighting your most influential speaker. Ask or pay your speakers to promote their sessions on their own social media feeds. Simple as it sounds, attendees are more likely to pay for sessions when they know and can relate to the speakers.
    16. Sell access to your event after it’s over. Boost post-event engagement and provide additional sponsorship opportunities by offering content post-event. RainFocus’ Content365 enables teams to sell annual subscriptions, extend exhibitor value, and convince attendees who missed out to attend future events.

    Proving Virtual Event ROI

    1. Show and tell with compelling visuals. Set up quick, colorful data visualizations, and make them accessible through workflows and dashboards.
    1. Compare cross-event data. Merge your virtual and physical event data to show how each delivery format impacted your event’s success. Use these cross-event insights to predict which virtual and physical tactics could be combined to create a superior hybrid experience in the future.
    1. Deliver results in real-time. Integrate with marketing and sales automation platforms like Eloqua, Marketo, and Salesforce to provide marketing and sales with actionable insights while attendees are still engaging with your event.
    1. Emphasize your re-sign process. Remind your sponsors to resign with a streamlined process. Include resigning as part of their task list for your event. With RainFocus, the completion of these task items can be included in your Insight Dashboard alongside other event insights to show exactly how many sponsors have resigned.
    2. Quantify and qualify. Illustrate the prospect conversion process by showing stakeholders just how many attendees progressed in their buyer’s journey (i.e., of those who registered for your event, how many scheduled sessions).

    By leveraging these strategies for generating and proving virtual event ROI, you’ll add immense value to your event. To see how RainFocus further simplifies each of these strategies click here.


  • How to Use Event Gamification to Drive Engagement and Predict Success

    How to Use Event Gamification to Drive Engagement and Predict Success

    Over the last eight months, event gamification has proven for many to be the secret to achieving virtual event success. Because it leads to increased engagement, gamification should be an essential part of your prospect journey. If you can entice your audience to engage at your event, you open multiple doors of opportunity for your marketing and sales teams to communicate your organization’s value. We’ve written up this post to help you get started.

    Define Your Desired Outcome

    No amount of gamification is worth the effort if it does not help you meet or exceed your event goals. As you plan your gamification, focus on your desired outcome, whether that is building a more robust pipeline, upselling your current customers, or just building brand awareness. Before you begin setting up your game and deciding on awards, figure out which metrics you’ll need to have in order to show that you’ve met your goals.

    Choose an Event Gamification Format that Meets Your Goals

    Once you’ve figured out how you will measure your success, choosing your gamification format will be much easier. For example, suppose your goal is to drive sponsorship renewals, and you have determined you will measure the number of 1:1 meetings your exhibitors have hosted. In that case, you might consider a point-based game where attendees gain points by talking to exhibitors or attending sponsored sessions.

    Other examples of event gamification include:

    • Event Bingo—Attendees earn letters on a bingo card by taking action at the event.
    • Level Up—Attendees earn increasingly hard titles by frequency and amount of actions taken.
    • Secret Code—Attendees earn badges by providing the correct codes hidden in the event.
    • Event Trivia—Attendees earn points by correctly answering event questions.
    • Scavenger Hunt—Attendees complete the hunt by discovering actions through clues.

    Determine How You Will Motivate Attendees

    In addition to planning your goals and deciding on a game, you should also arrange some sort of visual to incentivize attendees to act. Consider adding a leaderboard, personal scorecards, or notifications to your digital attendee experience. For your physical events, you might consider incorporating different colored sashes for badges.

    Incorporate Networking Into Your Event Gamification

    Your best advocates for your brand are those who choose to attend your events. Fortunately, your attendees are likely eager to make connections. Offer points or rewards to those who invite friends, meet with exhibitors, or join smaller working groups.

    Consider What Your Awards Say About You

    If your awards are the only things that attendees will take away from your event, what do you want those awards to say about your organization? Many companies have been offering to donate money towards charity for those who complete play along with their game. Other companies are offering more traditional prizes like t-shirts and coffee mugs. The donation says, “we know you care, and so do we,” while the t-shirt/mug combo says something along the lines of, “you’re a part of our team.”

    Analyze The Game As It’s Happening

    Equally important to planning is real-time analysis. Think of your event as you would your marketing. Each action taken by an attendee is a conversion. The benefit of gamification is that you can easily monitor and influence that conversion process within just a few days. As your event is happening, pay attention to who is close to reaching a checkpoint or winning a prize. Have they stopped engaging? If they have, send them a notification to point out that success is within their reach. Through real-time analysis, you can make meaningful recommendations that will guide attendees to their next activity.

    Explore RainFocus Gamification

    RainFocus is continuously helping enterprise companies turn their event gamification into actionable insights. Earlier this year, we shared the story of how Splunk seamlessly delivered their Boss of the SOC and Boss of the NOC competitions. Read the story here. To learn how RainFocus can help you drive more value through gamification, request a demo here.

  • Quarterly Product Webinar Recap - Q4 2020

    Quarterly Product Webinar Recap – Q4 2020

    Each quarter, we conduct a product webinar to update our clients about the enhancements we’ve made to better serve their event needs. Here are a few of the product improvements that we’ve made this past quarter:

    Virtual Delivery Enhancements

    This past quarter, we made several enhancements to our platform to better accommodate your needs for your virtual events. Whether your sessions are live, simulive, or on-demand, the following product enhancements will enable you to provide more value to clients, attendees, and exhibitors:

    • Click tracking—Empowers you to track engagement from the catalog, calendar, targeted agendas, or virtual booths.
    • Moderated Q&A—Gives you the ability to assign session moderators to accept and respond to attendee questions.
    • Embedded session video—Keeps attendees on the same page as they engage with video content to provide a consistent experience.
    • Exhibitor chat—Allows attendees to connect and chat directly with exhibitors of their choice and enables exhibitors to easily manage these chats.
    • Enhanced lead capture—Provides exhibitors with more leads, thus increasing the value of your event.

    Virtual Event Benchmarks

    Additionally, RainFocus has provided virtual experiences for over 2 million attendees this year alone. With the data and trends we’ve gathered, we are partnering with Impact Point Group to conduct a State of Events 2021 study. The study will provide event professionals with best practices from industry leaders—and we could use your input. Click here to complete our State of Events 2021 survey.

    This study will help you evaluate the following:

    • Know how your event compares to the elite events in the industry
    • Track your performance over time
    • Maintain a core set of common metrics across events
    • Data definitions will be provided for each metric and normalized across all virtual events

    Page Builder Enhancements

    One of the bigger foundational projects that we discussed in the quarterly product webinar was a way for you to design branded portals and pages with ease—no coding required. Our enhanced Page Builder allows you to configure unique user experiences and smart recommendations that will encourage attendees, speakers, and exhibitors to interact with others and complete tasks.

    Working Report Enhancements

    Many clients are already able to manage working reports on their own. This quarter we’ve made it easier than ever to configure and edit working reports with a redesigned and streamlined user interface. The updated interface enables more users to utilize Report Builder reports instead of SQL, empowering them to create working reports from start to finish.

    Working report enhancements can be applied to:

    • Attendee nominations
    • Attendee package approvals
    • Call for papers
    • Speaker nominations
    • Session voting and approval
    • Copy editing
    • Exhibitor Approvals
    • And more!

    We are continually seeking to improve our user and attendee experiences. In the coming months, we will be adding several new features that will further simplify virtual event setup and registration. We will also be focusing on enhancing the virtual booth to deliver even more value to exhibitors. Because virtual events are growing so rapidly, we will continue to ensure that our platform can scale for large demand. To complete the virtual experience, we are seeking to make gamification less of a one-size-fits-all solution and incorporate more flexibility into game configuration.

    “I wouldn’t consider going virtual a pivot,” explained our Founder and President, Doug Baird. “Really, all we are doing is leveraging the existing flexibility of our platform to deliver a new, unique digital experience. It’s what we were built for, and it’s what we always do.”

  • Virtual Event Integrations 101

    Virtual Event Integrations 101

    With new virtual events, it’s more important than ever to use event data to analyze and prove ROI. Cobbling together siloed information that’s been extracted, transformed, and merged beyond recognition just won’t cut it. Having clean virtual event integrations set in place is crucial to your event success.

    Why Should You Set Up Virtual Event Integrations?

    Not only will your virtual event integrations save you time as you share the value of your new virtual event with stakeholders, but they will also ensure a seamless digital experience for attendees. When combined with an all-in-one event management and marketing platform integrations enable you to drive better engagement.

    Virtual event integrations come in all shapes and sizes. The following list explains the different types of integrations that you can leverage to enhance your virtual event.

    Marketing & Sales Integrations

    Integrating your marketing and sales technologies with your virtual event software will enable you to drive pipeline, accelerate marketing conversions, increase sales productivity, and boost customer retention. These integrations will empower you to demonstrate event ROI to executive stakeholders.

    Security & Payment Integrations

    Security and payment integrations are essential to processing payments, protecting attendees’ personal information, and adhering to security regulations. These integrations are more important now than ever before due to the rise in cybercrime that is a result of the global pandemic.

    Streaming Integrations

    Streaming integrations empower you to deliver your ideal digital experience, whatever it may be. These integrations allow you to keep your data and processes in place while adding unique streaming capabilities. Create engaging sessions by embedding streaming to keep attendees on one page during each session. These integrations provide your attendees and exhibitors new ways of connecting with each other throughout your event.

    Event-Specific Integrations

    Similar to streaming integrations, event-specific integrations allow you to build out your dream event. Event-specific integrations include meetings collaboration, mobile apps, and other forms of interactivity. With event-specific integrations, you can incorporate niche technologies without losing out on the value of an all-in-one event management and marketing platform.

    Drive better engagement, connect your sales and marketing efforts, and securely conduct business through RainFocus Integrations. Click here to discover RainFocus’ latest integration partners.

  • Introducing RainFocus Academy: A Self-Paced Training and Certification Program

    Introducing RainFocus Academy: A Self-Paced Training and Certification Program

    At RainFocus, we care about and invest in the success of our clients. To help our clients learn the ins and outs of our platform, we’ve created the RainFocus Academy. With so many new and exciting product launches, the RainFocus Academy will become a valuable training resource to help clients get the most out of the RainFocus Platform.

    What exactly is the RainFocus Academy?

    The RainFocus Academy is a self-paced training program that empowers you by teaching

    you the technical skills needed to become a configuration expert of the RainFocus Platform. The academy includes over 60 training courses and certifications on RainFocus’ key modules—10 of which were added just this last quarter. Each course provides you with in-depth instruction and module-specific best practices. With automatic updates, you’ll always have access to teachings about the latest improvements to the RainFocus Platform.

    Why Should I Enroll?

    Along with gaining new skills, enrolling in the academy will enable you to increase the efficiency of your configurations and event setup. Spend less time communicating back and forth with RainFocus and start feeling confident in your own ability to build, manage, and optimize your event. RainFocus Academy has been put together by our industry-leading experts to include everything you need to know from ideation up to post-event analysis.

    How Do I Become Certified?

    Becoming certified is as simple as choosing a RainFocus module you would like to become certified in and completing guided instructions. For every module certification, you will be given a sandbox environment to successfully complete the module setup. When you are finished, a RainFocus expert will review your work, provide feedback, and certify you. Upon completion, you will be awarded the RainFocus Certification and given badges for LinkedIn recognition.

    If you are a client or partner and would like to learn more about RainFocus Academy, click here. If you are not a current client or partner but are interested in learning more, request a demo here.

  • How to Avoid Extra Work When Planning Your Strategic Meetings and Events

    How to Avoid Extra Work When Planning Your Strategic Meetings and Events

    Imagine having to purchase new CRM software each time you needed to launch a marketing campaign. Not only would you have to spend weeks getting the technology vetted, but you’d have to rebuild your customer database, set up new reports, and reconnect your tech stack. The whole idea is ludicrous! Yet, some marketing and events teams do this by investing in different technologies to support their meetings and events. As a result, they create a disconnected experience for attendees and more work for themselves. The best way to avoid extra work when planning your strategic meetings and events is to consolidate all of your events into one fully-featured platform.

    Merge your event data

    With the right platform, you can trade digging through multiple spreadsheets for a quick and easy-to-digest dashboard that combines your cross-event data for you. Having just one platform will help you eliminate silos by sharing data and attendee preferences across your entire event portfolio—and with the right stakeholders. With combined insights, you’ll be able to pivot and improve your strategic meetings and events in real-time.

    Integrate once

    The problem with having multiple technologies is that valuable behavioral data often gets lost in the transition from events to marketing. With just one integration, you’ll seamlessly blend event activity with your digital marketing tech stack to better understand customers, create meaningful communications, and tailor experiences to each individual’s unique needs and preferences. Having fewer integrations means you’ll also minimize potential threats.

    Duplicate and deliver

    Having one platform for all of your strategic meetings and events facilitates a quicker setup and approval. Don’t waste time vetting new technologies for each event. Save your time and effort by investing in an event management platform that has a guided event setup, reusable templates, automated processes, and a simple user interface that will allow your team to focus on strategy and growth.

    Retain your branding

    Control the look and feel of your attendee-facing digital interfaces, including mobile, by building out branding elements in a single place. With one platform to store all of your branding elements, you’ll be able to spin up beautifully-branded events quicker and provide your attendees with a consistent look and feel each time. Branded elements might include webpage templates, emails, form, and more.

    Align stakeholders

    Get all of your stakeholders on the same page with one place to manage meeting budgets, requests, and approvals. You’ll save hours of communicating via email by simply streamlining the process of requesting new meetings. Not every platform will have this functionality, so be sure to look out for those that do.

    Click here to learn more about RainFocus’ Strategic Events Program, which brings together all events—regardless of size for one consistent user and attendee experience.

  • A New Ecosystem: The Future of Physical and Hybrid Events

    A New Ecosystem: The Future of Physical and Hybrid Events

    Events have been evolving and improving over the last eight months in ways nobody could have imagined possible. In that time, virtual events have proven incredibly valuable. It’s time to stop imagining the return to physical events as a full-on pivot and embrace the possibilities of a new hybrid event ecosystem.

    What does a hybrid event ecosystem look like?

    When you think of hybrid events you likely imagine having some virtual sessions and some physical sessions, but these events can be so much more. In an ecosystem, everything grows and interacts together in an interconnected environment—the same can be said of the ideal hybrid event.

    Here’s the breakdown:

    1. Everything is interconnected. A hybrid event ecosystem is not limited to one event. The ecosystem we propose is one in which attendees’ experiences are built upon their history at other events for one cohesive journey.
    2. Everything interacts. In a hybrid event ecosystem, attendees and others can choose their preferred experience while maintaining the opportunity to network and meet with others. Whether they are in the comfort of their home or gathering in a conference hall, attendees enjoy all the experiences of 1:1 meetings, working groups, and more.
    3. Everything grows. One of the greatest advantages of cultivating a hybrid event ecosystem is that you are able to expand your event offering to a larger audience for a longer period of time. When you combine your virtual and physical event data you’ll also grow your understanding of what your attendees’ needs are and be able to make quick decisions in real-time.

    How to create a safe hybrid ecosystem

    In this new world of hybrid delivery, we still have safety concerns to address. Beyond offering virtual engagement as part of your event, you’ll need to strategically plan your onsite experience to ensure attendees are able to socially distance throughout the entire event. The following suggestions will enable you to provide attendees with the safest onsite experience:

    1. Use QR codes to scan attendee badges from further away. QR codes can be distributed virtually or printed on attendee badges which are sent out in advance.
    2. Refer to a scheduling grid to manage flow and ensure that attendees are moving in and out of sessions at different times.
    3. Ask your attendees where they are coming from during registration to determine whether or not they may be at risk.
    4. Schedule cleaning sessions between each session. Consider posting a sign to let attendees know when cleaning is in process.
    5. Use session scanning to track attendees so that you can inform them later if they may have been in contact with someone who was sick.
    6. Eliminate the need for your exhibitors to share devices by requiring them to bring their own devices for lead retrieval.
    7. Autopopulate sessions for attendees to guide them to rooms that have not reached their capacity.
    8. Replace long session lines with waitlisting capabilities and alert attendees when openings are available.

    Whether you have 50 or 150,000 attendees, cultivating a hybrid event ecosystem will ensure that attendees are both safe and able to have their ideal experience. For more information regarding hybrid events visit our hybrid delivery page here.

  • Seven Reasons for Unifying Your 2021 Events with One Platform

    Seven Reasons for Unifying Your 2021 Events with One Platform

    Traditionally conferences, strategic meetings, sales kickoffs, and other types of events have all been run by different departments on varying technologies. This fragmentation greatly limits the number of insights that marketing, events, and sales teams could be utilizing to build pipeline or retain clients. To make matters worse, these teams are now further separating their event data by adopting new technologies to deliver their virtual and hybrid events.

    As you plan your future virtual and hybrid events, consider these key benefits of using one platform for every event in your organization:

    Optimize cross-event insights to guide engagement

    The number one benefit of consolidating every event into one platform is the ability to cross-examine events easily. With all of your attendee info in one place, you will be able to dial in the right types of engagement for each event, whether virtual, physical, or hybrid.

    Demonstrate year-over-year growth and progress

    Downloading, uploading, and updating spreadsheets over and over again to share year-over-year insights with stakeholders takes time, organization, and leaves room for error. With all of your events in one platform, you can easily send one cross-event report without having to copy and paste any information.

    One connection for marketing and sales technology

    Having one platform means you’ll only need one integration with your sales and marketing technologies. By consolidating all of your technologies, you eliminate potential security breaches, simplify measurement, and enhance reporting.

    Upload once and update everywhere

    One of the greatest advantages of having just one platform is the ability to upload spreadsheets once and then use that data anywhere. For example, with RainFocus, data is updated across all of your events the moment you upload a file—ensuring that you have the most relevant information regarding every aspect of your event for each event setup.

    Processes that carry over from event to event

    Online event setup can be the most time-consuming task of planning an event—but with the right platform, you can cut the work in half. A truly unified event platform will enable you to reuse processes for registration, speaker management, exhibitor management, and much more.

    Consistent value despite the format

    Virtual events have opened new opportunities for event professionals to reach a bigger audience and experiment with new forms of engagement. While this experimentation is fun, it will all be for naught if you don’t take what you’ve learned this year and apply it to your future events (whether they are virtual, physical, or hybrid). Virtual engagement has proved too valuable to lay to waste. When it comes time to pivot back to physical events, having one platform that can deliver any type of experience will remain of utmost importance for attendees who prefer to engage online or who cannot attend in person.

    Familiar support and people

    Along with all of these benefits, having one platform means you’ll be working with one team who knows exactly what your requirements are, how your team is structured, and how you can improve upon previous events.

    RainFocus has all of these benefits and more allowing teams to plan long-term but act short-term. In addition to offering the next-generation platform for virtual, physical, and hybrid events, RainFocus is structured to deliver any of the following types of events:

    Annual Conference

    Virtual Events

    International Events

    Sales Kickoffs

    Strategic Meetings

    Roadshows

    Trade Shows

    Click any of the links above to learn how RainFocus optimizes each experience or request a demo to find out how you can combine your cross-departmental event efforts.

  • How to Recreate the Onsite Experience Online

    How to Recreate the Onsite Experience Online

    The question on every event leader’s mind right now seems to be, “How do I engage my virtual attendees?” While virtual events will never truly be a physical experience, there are some clever ways to make them feel as though they are. To recreate a physical experience, it should be tangible, interpersonal, fun, and memorable. We’ve put together ideas around each of these characteristics to help you create the most engaging virtual experience for your attendees.

    Make Your Event Tangible

    A good place to start is by sending your attendees something physical for each day of the event. Whether you package the items up as one big gift box with smaller boxes inside, or you deliver the boxes one by one, giving attendees something tangible is one of the first steps towards recreating an onsite experience. Gift boxes may include badges, treats, workbooks, gift cards (so that your attendees can still ‘dine’ with you), personalized letters, company SWAG, or even cocktail kits.

    Make Your Event Interpersonal

    Above all, to recreate the onsite experience you need to provide your attendees with ways to connect with others. 1:1 meetings, virtual booths, and networking meetings are all great mediums for interpersonal engagement. Attendees are eager to network––all that you have to do is let them know how, when, and where.

    Consider the following ideas for sparking interpersonal engagement:

    • Start conversations well before your event begins by asking questions and highlighting activities on social media.
    • Place CTA buttons such as “schedule meeting,” “visit booth,” and “contact me” on every page of your event website.
    • Send recommendations via email, or better yet, place personalized recommendations on each attendees’ homepage.
    • Organize and market smaller meetings to segmented groups of attendees so that all they have to do is click to join the meeting.
    • Charge money for smaller group sessions. As crazy as it sounds, we’ve found that when organizations charge for their sessions, their attendees are much more likely to actually attend the sessions.

    Make Your Event Fun

    Include gamification in your strategy to increase engagement. The average session attendance for a virtual event is 3.8 sessions. However, over the last few months, we’ve seen companies increase that number by implementing gamification. To entice people to play, offer rewards such as a donation to a charity of the attendee’s choice, gift cards, free services, or keep the game going with virtual raffle tickets/prizes.

    Let’s be realistic though, virtual attendees don’t want to feel confined to their desk. Work breaks into your event as well that will get attendees out of their seats and doing something in their own home for a change.

    Fun breaks to add to your agenda:

    • Offer at-home workout videos
    • Teach a hair-cutting/coloring/styling class
    • Provide cooking classes
    • Send your attendees Bingo cards and then host a live game
    • Arrange a storybook reading for parents and children
    • Host a virtual pet show

    Make Your Event Memorable

    Right now the business world is being oversaturated with virtual experiences. In order to stand out, your event needs to create a lasting impression. Don’t become so overwhelmed by the event setup that you forget to include a little bit of ingenuity. Consider your target audience and what they might enjoy.

    Ways to make your event memorable:

    • A strong slogan – Always seek to have a short powerful theme or statement that can be repeated throughout your event and tied into session content.
    • Surprises – Surprise your attendees with gifts, celebrity speakers/performances, donations, or large announcements.
    • Awards – People long to be recognized for their achievements. Plus, awards can be a physical reminder of your event. Give awards to those who are excellent users of your product, gamification winners, or to respected partners.
    • Take screenshots – Capture photos of your attendees and share them on social media to remind attendees of their experience.
    • Engage the senses – Oftentimes we associate certain songs or scents with memories. Help your attendees remember your event by incorporating music into your videos. Consider the option of hosting a concert. If you offer products that have a scent, send out a uniquely scented product that attendees can always attribute to your event.

    To learn what other companies are doing to create engaging and memorable experiences for their virtual attendees click here