During the early years of the virtual event business, the publishing industry dominated the space and to a large degree were the only clients of this growing market. Publishers used virtual events as a revenue generating solution to substitute lost revenue from their declining physical event business. Within this framework, virtual events were used as a platform to launch industry specific tradeshows that showcased multiple companies.

As with any industry, you find advocates and detractors, and the publishing space is no exception. Several publishers (specifically in the technology space) very quickly saw the myriad benefits and potential of the virtual events solution, found innovative ways to monetize the event and embraced it whole-heartedly. While some were too concerned about cannibalizing their physical event business, and started to explore the virtual space only after observing a steady decline in the traditional events model.

Virtual Events can be a great way for publishers to create new revenue streams but executing correctly requires planning and a holistic approach.

CGS with its VirtualEvents365 offering can benefit the publishing business in multiple ways:
1: Provide the necessary consulting services to jumpstart the virtual initiative and make the transition from physical to virtual as smooth as possible

2: Train your sales force on how to sell sponsorship packages for this unique offering

3: Outsource the sponsorship selling function to CGS; we have multiple global call centers to execute this task for you

4: The best and most robust platform in the industry to deliver your next successful event.

That’s it for now folks. We’ll be back again next week, with more insight on the exciting world of virtual events.

To find out more about VirtualEvents365 please visit us at www.virtualevents365.com

Welcome back to the blog and our ongoing discussion on elearning, as it relates to virtual events. Last week, I shared some of the key strategies on how to deliver an effective training event for a hypothetical scenario-‘Implementing Office 2007 into an enterprise.’ and now this week, I’d like to expatiate on that topic:

4. Show Me the Money
Utilize live break out sessions where experts can demonstrate techniques that will make the users job more productive. (i.e. Pivot Tables, Lists, and Scenarios from Excel)

5. Man the Stations
Each of the technologies being implemented should have their own learning booth. Staff the booths with the most knowledgeable technical resources who can address any questions the employees might have about the technology. Ensure the booths have premium content such as demonstrations, FAQs, and white papers to add value to each user’s visit.

6. Build the Community
The immediacy of an event will draw your employees, however it’s the community that will create added value. Ensure all of the presentations are recorded and posted in the community and the learning materials in the booths are updated on a timely basis. Use chat cafés and meeting rooms for collaboration.

7. Monitor Feedback
Survey your users and implement their recommendation on what aspect of the technologies they want more training on (Ribbons, Transitions, etc.)

I hope the strategies that I outlined, using the hypothetical example provided good insight on how efficient and cost effective it can be to use a virtual event solution for your elearning and training needs.

To find out more about VirtualEvents365 please visit us at www.virtualevents365.com

We all know the different solutions that a virtual event platform can be used for: Lead gen, career/job fairs, virtual tradeshows, corporate events etc. This week, I would like to talk in depth about elearning & training, as it relates to a virtual event.

Needless to say, instructor- led training is both costly and time consuming. Perhaps more than ever before, companies need to improve the way they package and disseminate knowledge in order to train their teams, customers and partners. A virtual event can help you save time and cost when it comes to training your highly dispersed audience. If planned properly, a virtual event can be one of the most effective mediums to deliver organization-wide training.

CGS has formidable elearning background (over 10 years developing and delivering elearning), which makes VirtualEvents365, one of the best solutions in the marketplace.

To provide more clarity around how virtual events can be used effectively to deliver roll-out training, I will outline a strategy that will demonstrate an effective training event. Hypothetical scenario-‘Implementing Office 2007 into an enterprise.’

1. Follow the Leader
Ensure top management (in this case, the CTO) is the keynote speaker. The need for complete adoption of this technology by the organization, the value to the company and the benefits of the technology must be stressed and they will only seem credible when they come from upper management.

2. Divide and Conquer
Since different parts of the technology will appeal to different audiences, divide your training tracks into groups, daily users, power users and administrators. This way the relevant message is delivered to the right audience only.

3. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
Each one of the training sessions should be delivered every few hrs over a course of a few days to ensure participation is at its maximum level. To do this effectively, it might be a good idea to prerecord the presentations, with the exception of having a live Q&A segment after each session.

To find out more, please visit us at www.virtualevents365.com and come back to this blog for part 2 of the discussion.

In all of the excitement and frenzy surrounding event preparation, it’s fairly easy to forget about a basic yet powerful event component – ‘feedback mechanism’. Feedback is one of the best ways to find out what your target audience truly thinks about your products and services, your company, and your event! This is also an excellent vehicle to get suggestions on how to make the event better next time. Also, an indirect benefit of feedback is that it can be used to measure event success.

As we’ve mentioned in some of our past blog postings, service operations are often the key component that set a well established virtual events provider apart from another. In scenarios such as this, that is where an event manager comes into the picture and ensures that you are aware of the different functionality that can impact your event and your business.

Some of the different options that VirtualEvents365 provides to collect attendee feedback are:

1. An event evaluation form, where specific questions are asked about elements such as booth content, webcast attendance, along with general event impressions and feedback.
2. Booth-level surveys cover attendee booth visit experience, and may delve into product or service related questions as well.
3. Webcast surveys provide insight into how your attendees gauge your conference content and rate your presenters. All of the survey information is provided as part of the post-event reporting data.

If you found the content in this posting useful, please leave us a comment. We would love to hear from you. To find out more, please visit us at www.virtualevents365.com and come back to this blog for more exciting discussions on virtual events.

Hello and wish everyone a very happy new year.

This week, I’d like to talk about the different criteria for measuring event success.

How do you determine if an event is successful?
All things being equal, a successful event in one that achieves a set of pre-determined goals or metrics – YOUR goals or metrics.

Defining the event success criteria is a step that is often overlooked by first-time event organizers. Ideally, your event manager will walk you through the process by helping you understand the importance of the criteria, review the criteria and provide any suggestions. Generally, the criteria is defined at the onset of the project. It might be a good idea to know how many registrants and event-day attendees you are looking to attract, as this will impact a number of event aspects, including marketing. These numbers may be revised during the event preparation process as you start seeing the results of the event promotion.

Standard event success criteria generally include metrics such as:
• Total number of event registrants
• Number of event-day attendees
• Registrant to attendee conversion rate
• If your event has feedback mechanisms in place, then receiving a certain percentage of positive responses may be relevant to your success definition.
• Attendee stay (duration) in event, and in specific locations visited, such as webcasts and booths
• Attendee type may be important, for events that are trying to attract a very specific audience

Many events will also include additional unique success criteria, based on their event purpose and requirements.

If you found the content in this posting useful, please leave us a comment. We would love to hear from you. To find out more, please visit us at www.virtualevents365.com and come back to this blog for more exciting discussion on virtual events.

In the last few years, the main focus of virtual events has primarily been as a marketing lead generation and demand generation solution. However, virtual events can also be an excellent solution to conduct elearning and educational events.

Companies of all sizes, are all going through the same conundrum for training their internal staff: How do you train and distribute knowledge within your organization without incurring the costly expenses associated with traveling and without losing productivity?

Elearning can be the solution that companies, if used in conjunction with the virtual events platform.

So what is elearning?
Elearning, as the name implies is learning conducted through an electronic medium (online via the web). In principle, eLearning takes raw content and converts it into self-paced self tutoring and progressive learning modules.

ELearning is a very effective way to educate target communities; however as a standalone service it lacks the live interactive element of physical classes. But, when it is integrated within a virtual environment, it provides an unparalled learning experience.

The virtual event framework provides the necessary “blended” learning approach were students can assimilate content across multiple experiences:
• Seeing a presentation and having the ability to address questions to the presenter
• Visiting a booth and having the ability to interact one-on-one with an expert
• Having the ability to interact with other students and learn from their experiences
• Enriching the experience with downloadable materials at the resource center
• Interacting through with other students in the collaboration room

For those organizations that seek “hands-on” experience, CGS incorporates one of its flagship offering; the eLabs. eLabs allow attendees to experience applications without the need to install it on their desktops. CGS has over 12 yrs experience in this space.

CGS provides all the 3 services, that is: VirtualEvents365, eLabs and eLearning to produce the most comprehensive learning experience.

If you found the content in this posting useful, please leave us a comment. We would love to hear from you. To find out more, please visit us at www.virtualevents365.com and come back to this blog for more exciting discussion on virtual events.

Welcome back to the ongoing discussion on key success factors for hosting a virtual event. This week, I would like to share a few more tips on this topic.

1. Not all vendors are equal; so do your homework: Focus on experience, reputation, system strength and solid service offering. If you need a lot of coaching and handholding for your first event, avoid vendors who offer deep discounts as their service operations will be highly limited.
»Attend a few virtual events held by various vendors: Even if the subject matter isn’t reflective of your industry, it will give you a fair understanding of what each vendor has to offer.
»Stability, Stability, Stability: If the platform isn’t stable, it won’t matter how appealing or engaging your content is. Therefore, it is paramount to pick a vendor who has a robust and field-tested platform.

2. Include funds from partners when setting a budget: When thinking about budget, don’t forget your ability to invite partners from your extended ecosystem that can help with monetization. This is a common practice observed by most event organizers.

3. Don’t forget about promotion: This is perhaps one of the most important elements to ensure a successful event. Promote a virtual event just like you would a physical event. Promoting it will undoubtedly increase the awareness of the event and maximize user attendance. Take the following tips into consideration when planning the promotion piece:
• Determine a reasonable cost per registration that encompasses all costs (promotion plus event execution).
• Get commitment from your sponsors to promote the event.
• Decide if you will you promote from your own database or buy media.

4. Be careful when you pick speakers: Finally, when it’s time to live up to the expectations that have been set for the event, it all boils down to 2 critical factors: Content and Delivery. No matter have thought provoking or high quality your content is, if it’s not delivered in an effective way that engages, captivates and grabs the audience’s attention, it will not create the impact that you might have envisioned. Therefore, it is absolutely critical to Train and coach your speakers, and enlist experienced professionals who are eloquent speakers and comfortable in front of the camera, to deliver the message and create the necessary impact with your target audience.

If you found the content in this posting useful, please leave us a comment. We would love to hear from you. To find out more, please visit us at www.virtualevents365.com and come back to this blog for more exciting discussion on virtual events.

When planning a virtual event, don’t forget everything that you learned about putting together a physical event. Even though the scope and dynamics vary greatly between a physical and a virtual event, the process essentially remains the same, and with a few minor modifications, your experience should continue to serve you well. Here are some of the key success factors:

1. Clearly define event goals and objectives: Thinking through the goals and objectives of the event gives you a baseline for objective measurement of the outcome. Some of the questions to ask during the planning stage: Is this a new event or one we are migrating from the physical to the virtual world? If migrating, what will we gain and what will we lose? What are we trying to achieve with our guests? How will we define and measure success?

2. Build a detailed profile of the target audience for your event: You want to maximize event registrations, attendance, interactivity and longevity with the right audience. So thoroughly define the attendee profiles you are seeking for the event and create a communications and promotional program around their needs, desires and expectations.

3. Develop and articulate a compelling value proposition: What’s your event’s unique selling proposition (USP)? You need to communicate this USP to prospective registrants and sponsors. You need to give them a set of tangible reasons for attending or sponsoring the event. Ensure that your promotional team can articulate and disseminate the USP in a way that grabs the target audience’s attention and compels them to action.

4. Create relevant and timely content for your audience and deliver it in a memorable way: Your virtual event audience has many distractions competing for their attention. Make sure you engage them by providing the highest caliber of relevant content and deliver it in the most compelling way. “Content is king,” as the old saying goes, but virtual platforms create unique opportunities for delivering that content in ways that are not possible with a physical event. In the end, the quality of your content and it’s unique delivery will be the critical drivers of success for your event.

To find out more, please visit us at www.virtualevents365.com and come back to this blog for part 2 of the best practices discussion.

Last week, I had highlighted some of the key capabilities of our VirtualEvents365℠ Version 3 solution. This week, I would like to delve further into this topic and talk specifically about how we’ve tried to increase the ‘stickiness’ of the virtual booth.

What is stickiness? Stickiness is trying to hold the attention of the visitor in order to engage them in a productive exchange of information.

In the context of the virtual booth, it’s ideal to make it “sticky” so that visitors stay longer, absorb the sponsor’s message and interact with a booth representative. With most virtual event platforms, this is accomplished by providing a collection of content to review and a representative with whom you can chat. Video/flash content is usually the most engaging for visitors, however most of the times it is buried in a pick list where it is not easy to find, and only one video message plays in the booth. In Version 3 we gave sponsors the option to place front and center in the booth easily accessible video clips (taken from longer videos). Since visitors can view several different video/flash clips, they are more likely stay longer.

Another way to make the booth sticky is to deliver an engaging and exciting environment. We know from our e-learning business that games can be a great tool for engaging learners and delivering/ reinforcing a message. In Version 3 we gave sponsors the option to create and offer games, including crosswords, jeopardy-style contests, word matches, and more, which can be displayed directly in their booth. Furthermore, offering prizes is another way to make the games—and the overall experience—more engaging, so visitors now have additional reasons to stay longer.

Taking chat to the next level: using text chat as the primary medium of communication in a virtual booth can be very challenging for both the booth representative and the visitors. Booth representatives can only type so fast and there is a natural tendency to respond with full sentences, proper grammar and no typos. The lengthy answers at times make this process even more cumbersome and frustrating for both parties. VirtualEvents365 Version 3 has taken chat capabilities to the next level by providing the booth representative with the option to answer visitor questions with a voice response. The representative can address their voice to either one visitor or to all visitors at the booth. This capability gives booth representatives a way to engage more effectively with visitors. Stay tuned to learn more ways in which we are making the virtual event experience more compelling and productive for event hosts, sponsors and attendees.

To find out more, please visit us at www.virtualevents365.com and come back to this blog for more interesting discussions on virtual solutions.

We recently announced Version 3 of our VirtualEvents365 platform, which includes many new capabilities. Enhancements to the virtual booths, which event organizers create or offer to sponsors as part of the virtual exhibit hall, meaningfully improve lead capture and qualification.

Every marketer wants to generate booth traffic… but what happens when you have too much concurrent traffic? This can be a major roadblock, especially when a speaker does a good job encouraging participants to drop by their company’s booth after the presentation ends. In the physical world, booth attendees can easily see whether a booth representative is available to speak and can decide whether to wait or leave. However, in most virtual event platforms, the attendee who asks a question at a booth has no idea how long they will have to wait for an answer if the booth representative does not reply immediately. So, instead of it being a blessing – lots of booth traffic – it can quickly turn into a curse –frustrated attendees with unfulfilled expectations.

Version 3 of VirtualEvents365 addresses this by providing a queuing system that informs booth visitors if there is a wait and how long the wait will be. Furthermore, booth visitors are given the option to leave a message, which would be answered as soon as the booth representative became available.

Another way Version 3 helps drive the effectiveness of marketers is by providing multiple booth representatives with tools to manage and direct booth traffic. The booth representatives’ “cockpit” allows them to see a profile of visitors at the booth and then assign the most appropriate representative to engage with each unique visitor. Think about the impact you can have by pairing up the right subject matter expert with a booth visitor… consistently exceed expectations by surprising and delighting your guests!

These are just a few of the ways we have improved Version 3. With VirtualEvents365 for Demand Generation, we are committed to helping our clients turn passive booth visitors into engaged prospects. To find out more please visit us at www.virtualevents365.com and come back to this blog for an ongoing discussion on all the new capabilities available on Version 3.