Closed Loop Marketing (CLM) has become a mantra in some quarters of the healthcare industry and it’s easy to see why.

In the past, it was hard to track an initial customer contact, evaluate its journey through the marketing& sales evaluation and service process, and quantify the value to the organization. Often times, very little actionable information was percolating to the top of existing CRM systems. Marketing and sales management were well aware that opportunities, time, and money were being wasted, but they didn’t have the mindset or tools to evaluate and refocus their investments and efforts.

What they did have were a lot more questions than answers… Are the correct initiatives being deployed? Are we investing in the appropriate areas? Is my messaging correctly matched to the audience? How can I identify and eliminate the waste? Are our systems flexible enough to quickly react to the market and re-set strategies and tactics? How can we communicate better internally and work together to achieve the organization’s goals?

It comes down to a common point of reference (The Need!). CLM enables both sides to see the bigger picture, and empowers sales and marketing to work together more efficiently and effectively. Also, CLM provides two types of insights (The Feed!). The first shows how their marketing tactics are being executed. The second indicates what customers are thinking and what actions they’re taking. From these insights a unified perspective arises that is not dependent on long-term research or anecdotal information.

So, how do virtual events figure into healthcare CLM? Based on some of the fundamental aspects of virtual events, they are a perfect fit for CLM. Data collection opportunities and customer feedback are continuous, and can be delivered in real time. This allows for the evaluation of the receptivity of the content being delivered and digested, the tracking of ongoing interactions with KOLs, peers, and marketers, and the inquiries generated.

The bottom line is: organizations have a need to better understand their audiences, as well as their marketing and sales efforts – and they must continually feed themselves actionable data to achieve their goals.

The formal starting point of every project is the kickoff meeting wherein the VirtualEvents365 and organizer teams meet to review the project scope. A number of essential meetings are then scheduled, namely best practices, platform orientation, timeline review, and, of course, a weekly status meeting. The best practices blog can be viewed here: Part 1 and Part 2. Today I’ll be discussing the importance of orientation.

“Orient” is defined by Merriam Webster as 2 a : to set right by adjusting to facts or principles b : to acquaint with the existing situation or environment and this is exactly what’s required at the start of your event project. While the organizer’s business sponsor, having sat through sales demos, is usually familiar with the events platform, often the core events team – the people responsible for the event operations – are not. To this end, a “platform orientation” meeting is booked at the end of the kickoff meeting and the full events team is encouraged to attend. The sales team often participates as well.

The orientation meeting provides an introduction to the client-side platform by looking at the event features and functions from an attendee’s perspective. We review the registration page and microsite pages, the event navigation, branding and sponsorship opportunities, halls, webcasts, and booths, design, chat, and all of the functionality that will help make this event unique and appealing to visitors. The goal of this discussion is to ensure that all of the key organizer stakeholders have a firm understanding of how the platform looks and works. It gives them the knowledge they’ll need to reply to vendors, speakers and other stakeholders’ questions and helps to maintain uniform terminology which avoids confusion. In short, the orientation meeting is the first step in ensuring a cohesive working relationship between the event service provider and the organizer’s team, and an essential preliminary project component.

The term Edutainment has been around for a long time (thought to be coined by The Walt Disney Company in 1948.) And Edutainment as a form of teaching has been around since time immemorial. (Fables incorporating morals are an obvious example of teaching blended with story-telling). What makes edutainment a highly effective means of educating is the context of the message, the receptiveness of the audience, and the long-term retention of the shared information.

Principles relative to Edutainment include:

1) Relevance: Learning is more likely when people can see the usefulness of the knowledge they are given.
2) Incremental Learning: Learning is most effective when people can learn at their own pace.
3) Distributed Learning: Different people learn in different ways over different periods of time. It is important to present information differently so that people can absorb it.

In the professional setting, it would seem much of edutainment has to do with Adult Learning Principles.
In 1970 Malcolm Knowles theorized that adults learn differently than children and the process of teaching must satisfy a deep-seated set of motivations.

He encapsulated those motivations in a set of six characteristics of adult learners:

1) Autonomous and self-directed
2) Accumulated a foundation of experiences and knowledge
3) Goal oriented
4) Relevancy oriented
5) Practical
6) Need to be shown respect

Considering the power and effectiveness of virtual events for the healthcare industry, they are the perfect environment for Edutainment and Adult Learning Principles to work in concert to maximize the learning experience of the attendees. These learners are educated, motivated, focused, and want to be in command of their learning experience. What makes virtual events so successful for the attendees, as well as the event organizers, is its ability to address each of the principles and characteristics listed above.

So, the moral of the story is: while virtual events utilize some of the most cutting-edge technologies in interactive communications, we really haven’t strayed far from story-telling around the campfire.

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As healthcare industry stakeholders embrace new technologies they are empowering themselves to expand their connection to, improve their communications with, and better serve their employees, constituents, customers, and peers.

Not only are digital interface and ongoing interactions with their audience(s) important, behavioral tracking, data capture, in-depth reporting, and extended engagements are of increasing relevance to their overall communications strategy.

The challenges of the times are growing:
- Access to healthcare providers is becoming more challenging.
- Time and financial constraints are making travel – and time away from the office – more difficult.
- We live in an increasingly On-Demand world.
- Breaking through the increasing clutter and noise is key to success.
- The need for more meaningful data capture and useful reporting is top-of-mind.
- Adherence to regulatory protocols and guidelines must be followed.
- Reducing the amount of time needed for education and training is necessary.

Virtual events have tremendous utility for the healthcare industry. The dissemination of information via a virtual event is greatly enhanced by the immersive experience enjoyed by the participants. For example:

• Medical societies can employ a virtual event to reach and serve members who do not traditionally attend physical meetings. In this case, a virtual event would not replace a physical event. Instead it will augment the outreach and member service efforts by providing a high-value interactive experience.

• Pharmaceutical, Biotech, and Medical Device companies can use a virtual events platform for new product launches, ongoing sales training, and audience (professional and consumer) engagement.

• HMOs can inform and educate their members and participating healthcare providers via virtual events to keep them apprised of changes in plans and services.

But what makes virtual events so powerful and effective is the experience they provide. In short, they are attractive, engaging, comprehensive, satisfying – and well, entertaining. And if your audience is enjoying the experience you provide, they will gain affinity for your organization and its products and services, and retain the information you have disseminated. And that’s the crucial “human element” of virtual events.

Frank Iorio is the Director of Health Sciences at CGS/VirtualEvents365

Virtual Events Demystified- Tom Wieser video

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VE365 provides a suite of reports to give you a comprehensive picture of activities that took place before, during and after the event date. The event reports are an essential component in gauging the success of your event and determining the return on investment (ROI).

There are 4 phases of reporting for a virtual event:
• Pre-event
• Day of event summary
• Day of event detailed
• Post-event

Pre-eventreporting lets you track the effectiveness of your event promotion to ensure you’re reaching out to the right audience with the right message. These reports consist primarily of registration lists that include full registrant demographics. You may also find it helpful to track registrant origin to determine the most valuable – and least valuable – promotional vehicles, so you can fine-tune your campaign accordingly to reach your registrant goals.

Event day summary reporting gives a live insight into the event day, so you’ll be able to keep track of what’s going on, where. You’ll see where it’s busy and where it’s quiet – and encourage your audience to check out these less-visited venues.

Once the effort and excitement of the event day are over it’s time to dive into the detailed event day reports. The reports will provide you with the in-depth information your stakeholders are clamouring for – statistics on booth attendance, webcast participants, booth representative-to-visitor dialogues, viewed resources, survey results, visit time, number of sessions, and plenty more. From your sponsors and exhibitors, to presenters, to marketing team, sales team, business sponsor and executives, everyone’s going to want to see this data.

During the on-demand period, post-event reports allow you to track attendee activities. Continuing to promote the on-demand event is essential to encourage new registrants, the return of past attendees, and continue to increase the event ROI.

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 everyone, today I would like to talk about the importance of choosing and coaching your event day speakers.

Event content is often the most important component of your event. The agenda, presentation content, and speaker list are the top criteria for attracting attendees. Never underestimate the power of highly recognized speakers to your event.

The delivery of the presentation content is just as important as the message. No matter how thought-provoking or high quality your content is, it will not create the impact that you desire if it is not delivered in an effective way that engages, captivates and holds the attention of the audience. Therefore, it is critical that you train and coach your speakers. To insure proper delivery, we recommend that you enlist experienced, eloquent professionals that are comfortable in front of the camera to deliver the message and create the necessary impact with your target audience.

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 its unique delivery will be the critical drivers of success for your event.

We at VirtualEvents365, share these and other best practices with each and everyone of our customers, which helps make the event experience second to none for our clients and their target base as well.

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.

On February 22nd and 23rd, the Virtual Events industry conducted its second annual summit in Santa Clara, CA. Organized by VirtualEdge, it was a great opportunity for vendors, prospects and clients to pause and assess the current and future state of this industry.

The strong showing, the messages, new developments, the brand names and the very active sessions all sent a strong message that virtual events is here to stay as a growing marketing and educational solution.

CGS with its brand offering VirtualEvents365 was one of the platinum sponsors of this event. We participated in multiple keynote sessions and moderated panels. The attendees had tremendous interest in our offering and the market took notice of our key differentiators. In addition, our clients were represented in multiple sessions and openly endorsed CGS VirtualEvents365 as their preferred vendor (example: Intel). The uniqueness of this event was the deployment of the hybrid (simultaneous) concept; most sessions were streamed live so in addition to the physical crowd we had thousands of attendees joining virtually.

This event featured the growing popularity of 365 solutions and self service. While we at CGS, welcome and embrace these changes, we also recognize that self-service is not a model that suits all and actually presents many challenges. We plan to release a detailed document that will guide our prospects and clients.

Overall it was an exciting event and CGS VirtualEvents365 was a big part of the success.

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.

As part of our mandate to ensure our event organizers and stakeholders have a clear understanding of online event best practices, we provide a number of support sessions to our customers, such as:

1. Event orientation : This is an in-depth introduction to the VirtualEvents365 platform for the organizer events team. This is an important meeting as it helps clarify the online event concept in the minds of the extended team members.

2. Marketing best practices: In this session we cover some of the best practices in marketing and easy to implement strategies.

3. Booth Builder orientation: This session aims to acquaint the exhibitors with the booth builder tool, We also go through the suggested process and production timeline.

4. Presenter training: We provide an overview of the presenter interface, event day live (Q&A) process, and share best practices. Our goal is to ensure that the presenters are confident in their event day tasks and comfortable with the event platform.

5. Booth representative training: This session helps to ensure that all booths are staffed on the event day and that booth reps understand how to use the platform and the best methods of interacting with booth attendees.

6. Reports overview: Understanding how to use the event reporting data is critical. In this discussion, we review the standard event reports with the VirtualEvents365 reporting experts, to ensure that reports meet organizers’ needs.

These are just examples of the basic training that every customer receives. We also provide custom training depending on the complexity of the event.

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.