Introduction: The current state of in-person conferences
Are we experiencing the “new normal” yet? Many associations are optimistic about the future as attendance for in-person conferences exceeds pre-pandemic numbers. While this good news may tempt your association to abandon virtual conferences, warning signs suggest keeping them in your education portfolio.
In-person attendance faces challenges from employers’ budget constraints, workplace staffing shortages, increased comfort with online experiences, and safety concerns arising from exclusionary state legislation. Plus, event planners must deal with escalating catering and venue costs, staffing issues, and declining association negotiating power.
Advantages of virtual conferences
Industry professionals and their employers question whether in-person conferences are worth the time and money invested. The hassle of getting to and from the host city is another factor, especially when it’s more convenient and less expensive to enjoy the same content online.
Virtual conferences are more inclusive for people who can’t or won’t attend in-person events because of:
- Budget restraints or lack of financial support from their employer
- Scheduling conflicts or the inability to take time off from work
- Parenting or caretaking responsibilities
- Social anxiety
- Visa issues for international attendees
When you work with a user experience (UX) team like Fíonta’s, virtual conferences become more accessible to attendees with disabilities.
Easily scale the virtual experience without worrying about contracting for more hotel and meeting rooms, on-site service providers, and food and beverage.
Virtual conferences deliver a bonus: event and attendee data. In real-time, you can learn about individual preferences, hot topics, and what’s happening in each “room.”
Understand your audience’s reasons for attending virtual conferences
The people watching online are different from those who travel to conferences. Don’t think of or treat them the same. Design an online experience that aligns with the goals of online attendees, which vary by position, career stage, and membership tenure. Ask members and attendees why they attend virtual conferences and what they want to get from the experience.
The Freeman Trends Report: 2024 Attendee Intent and Behavior found that people attend online events for unique content and convenient, on-demand access. A virtual conference cannot be a clone of an in-person conference. Intentionally design the experience for the online format.
Freeman uncovered other virtual attendee desires:
- Smaller niche events focused on a topic or aimed at an audience segment
- Curated agendas and persona-based wayfinding
- Interest-driven meetups
- Substance, not celebrity—attendees want to hear from industry leaders and experts, not big-name speakers
Identify the learning and connection needs of different audience segments. Member and customer data help you understand their interests and behavior. Personalize their experience by guiding them to the right sessions, people, and activities.
Capture attendee attention and minimize virtual fatigue
Your program design must address the most significant challenges to online engagement: virtual fatigue, distractions, and limited attention spans.
Don’t make attendees sit passively in front of their screens for hours. Instead, help attendees achieve their conference goals by helping them understand the basics of adult learning science. If you let these principles guide your program design, you will hold the attendees’ attention, help them retain what they’re learning, and help them connect with others in the “room.”
Limit the number of consecutive hours attendees spend in front of their screens. We’re seeing a trend away from all-day agendas—instead, schedule sessions from mid-morning to mid-afternoon. Give people time to take care of work responsibilities before and after sessions and schedule 30-minute breaks every few hours.
If you design sessions for attendees with limited attention spans, you’ll help them retain knowledge. Limit sessions to 45 minutes. Intersperse longer sessions with shorter ones and other program formats.
Engage attendees every five minutes.
- Ask them to do something in the chat box
- Solicit questions, votes, or responses
- Conduct a poll
Every 15 minutes, change the format by adding:
- Breakout room discussions or exercises
- Short videos
- Solo reflection time
- Q&A
- Surprise guest appearance
Design an engaging online experience for attendees
People who are looking solely for content or CE credits don’t want to spend extra time and money on an in-person event. They’re happy to participate in a virtual experience.
But content is a commodity these days. Content is available everywhere from non- and for-profit competitors. You must differentiate your online conference experience. Why should people spend time and money with you?
Start by building practice and social time into every session. New information sticks when people can recall, apply, and practice it alone or in small groups. Plus, they enjoy interacting with others. For those who don’t, allow them to opt out of group activities and do solo exercises instead.
Teach presenters how to teach. Require speakers to watch a video about effective instruction and presentation, like the Presenting for Impact video from Tagoras/Leading Learning.
If you finalize sessions far in advance of the conference, schedule time for crowdsourced sessions about emerging issues. Invite attendees to post ideas for the topics they want to see and ask for volunteers to lead those discussion sessions.
Add the surprise element to your program
- Recruit members or industry “celebrities” to serve as emcees who appear before, in between, and after sessions.
- Keep attendees guessing with unannounced guests or a surprise video tour.
- Let attendees in on association or industry news before anyone else.
If attendees expect the unexpected, they won’t be tempted to multitask. Plus, you’ll earn a reputation for offering something extra, instilling a little FOMO for next time.
Facilitate connections and networking
Attendees want to meet and talk with their peers—people in the same line of work or career stage who face similar challenges, work on similar projects, and have the same interests and aspirations.
They also want to meet mentor types who are a few or many years ahead on the career ladder—people who have jobs they aspire to and who can provide advice and introduce them to others.
Industry suppliers and consultants want to meet potential leads and become better known and trusted as experts and industry partners.
In-person events aren’t usually that great at facilitating connections. Attendees are thrown together and left to find each other. Provide structure to online networking with “birds of a feather” meetups and hot topic discussions.
Keep virtual hallways or lounges open throughout the conference so attendees can “run into” each other and talk shop. Offer a match-making tool for individual meetups and a meeting scheduler tool for industry partners.
Host pre-conference virtual meetups focused on industry issues, positions, or career stages where attendees break the ice.
Reimagine your relationships with sponsors
Most pandemic-era virtual conferences didn’t work for exhibitors or sponsors. Banner ads and sponsor videos are forgettable, and sponsors prefer to use their expertise to teach rather than just sell.
- Encourage sponsors to partner with members to share case studies and success stories.
- Ask them to report on industry trends.
- Recruit skilled practitioners from sponsoring companies to present soft and technical skills training sessions.
- Let them be facilitators and moderators for panels, Q&A sessions, discussions, and other virtual meetups.
Leverage event data to improve program design and marketing
Event data tells you which content and speakers resonated most with your audience (views and chat engagement) and which didn’t (abandons). This intel guides decisions about topics for future email marketing campaigns and educational programming.
Chat room data reveals hot topics, common questions, and active participants. Engagement data is an indicator of attendee and member interests.
Share topic and trend information with sponsors, members, and attendees who are interested in event data findings.
Engage attendees and encourage community building after your virtual conference
Don’t ghost your attendees at the end of your virtual conference. Gather them all together for a strong close. Reveal your plan for helping them apply the skills and ideas they’re taking away and deepen relationships with the people they’ve met.
Invite attendees to join accountability groups and schedule reminder emails. Four to six weeks after the conference, send a second event evaluation focused on applying what they’ve learned or connected with others.
Automate email nurture campaigns based on session attendance, in which you promote related webinars, online courses, and virtual discussion meetups. Bring segments of the virtual conference community back together for replays of popular sessions with speakers in attendance, book club meetings, and sponsored webinars and online discussions.
A virtual conference shouldn’t be a stand-alone event. Make it part of a larger online event ecosystem that continues to nurture the attendee’s sense of belonging and desire for learning.
Event industry keynote Julius Solaris said, “A strong community decreases reliance on FOMO and transactional [marketing] tactics.” Many members only start feeling like part of a community while attending a virtual conference where they gather and learn from and with each other.
Ready to take your virtual events to the next level with Salesforce? Contact Fíonta today to discover how this powerful platform can revolutionize your online conferences and drive organizational success.