What To Look For When Choosing a Virtual Event Platform
With a surge in the demand for virtual events in 2020, new event platform companies were popping up every day, and live event companies were pivoting as fast as they could to snag part of the market share. This made vetting and selecting the right platform a big job for any corporate event planner trying to pull off a successful virtual event last year.
As we did our due diligence analyzing and evaluating dozens of platform providers for our partners and clients, it became clear that the vetting and selection process was overwhelming, daunting, and confusing. We were eager to wrap our heads around and distill this process in a digestible way for our corporate event planning partners. As we reflect back on the many platform comparisons we managed last year, there were five key features that stood out in helping our clients narrow in on selecting the best platform for each show. Below we’ll talk through each of them and hopefully make the path to corporate virtual event planning a touch easier for you in 2021.
Guest Experience
It’s important to meet your guests where they are in their appetite for technology and remove any barriers to attend. Look for platforms that allow a seamless and easy guest experience from start to finish and do not require extensive pre-work. Try to keep all activities on the platform to minimize losing guests at any particular point throughout the event lifecycle. Consider platforms that provide a one-stop-shop for registration, guest communications, event website, and hosting the main event content.
Reporting & Analytics
Virtual events allow for far more data collection than many live events. Get a good understanding of what analytics are included in the platform package and what might be available as add-on reporting. Know what information your stakeholders want to see before beginning conversations with platforms. Think beyond just registration numbers and consider tracking how many guests participate in each session, how long each guest participates in each session,, and overall guest behavior analytics. These numbers will play a key role in planning future events that meet and exceed your KPIs.
Technical Support
Depending on your team’s bandwidth and level of comfort managing the virtual event, we often suggest creating a robust technical support plan to allow for the platform experts to help manage what they know best...the platform! Having 24-hour support access in the event leadup, a dedicated show day point of contact and a guest help desk or chatbot are important considerations when selecting the right platform to make sure you and your guests are covered for any technical issues that might arise.
Privacy & Security
Keeping guests’ information secure is an important consideration for most planners and it’s worth taking the time to understand what privacy and security policies each platform provides. We always recommend asking for the platform policies on privacy settings, security, and data collection/sharing early in the platform discussions. If your event has any paid components, it’s also critical to understand where and how all payment information is encrypted, stored and deleted. Based on your company’s guidelines, look for a platform that mirrors (as much as possible) your company’s overall philosophy with regard to keeping your guests’ data safe.
Customization
Customization can take your event to a higher level. At a minimum, customization features for email communications and the event website should be included in the contract and easy to access and modify by your planning team. Beyond the primary communication customizations, your goals and budget will help dictate what types of customizations are most important for your event. Branding capabilities, picture in picture, custom registration pages, event layout and sponsor options are all ways that you can customize your event to stand out.
In addition to the 5 areas mentioned above, we wouldn’t be doing our job as event planners if we didn’t point you back to our blog post on 5 Learnings From Our First Virtual Event to aid in your virtual event success. While we hope using the key features above helps create a clear path to platform selection, we couldn’t leave you without reiterating the importance of creating clear event goals. Those goals should remain the north star in all of your event planning! Want help in choosing a platform and finding the way? Say Hello today!
Bash Creative is an event planning company that specializes in incredible gatherings that go beyond just great design. We’re known for teasing out smart goals for your event and serve up a stylish execution that will keep your guests buzzing. Located in San Francisco, but often found in New York, Austin, Chicago, Seattle, and beyond.