Few things are as fulfilling as seeing a packed house, sold-out tickets, rave reviews, outstanding speaking sessions and off-the-chart engagements when you work events.
But what if you want more? How can you scale events so they impact more audiences in more places without the extra work?
Let’s explore what hybrid events are, and how you can best plan them. We’ll also take a look at how best to integrate hybrid and physical event data, as well as how best to make sure both internal event teams are communicating well with each other. We will even look at tips for creating uniform branding between both hybrid and physical events. Let’s begin.
What is a Hybrid Event?
Hybrid events are centered around the attendee experience. According to EventMB’s Virtual Event Tech Guide, 31% of surveyed respondents reported that the biggest challenge in hosting virtual events was matching virtual engagement levels to that of live events. Unlike the standard online event, hybrid events take full advantage of the frictionless experience of operating on a digital platform without compromising attendee engagement.
A marriage of the best of both virtual and live events, a hybrid event is “an event type that will encompass both physical and digital tactics within an event container. Hybrid events allow marketers to scale up or scale down based on safety concerns for themselves, sponsors and audience members” as defined by Cheri Keith from ON24, leaders in optimizing digital experiences and CRM integration.
What does a Hybrid Event Look Like?
Hybrid events can take on a variety of formats to accommodate a remote audience while maximizing engagement. Examples of different hybrid event components include:
- Live broadcast with guest speakers
- On-demand presentations
- Real-time Q&A sessions/polling questions
- Customized console/Web-based casting platform/hybrid event platform
- Virtual Breakout Sessions
- Social Media integration
- Engagement Apps
- Physical Mail-in content
5 Things to Consider In Your Hybrid Event Planning
There are so many ways to design a hybrid event that caters to your audience. Here’s a quick rundown of the top five things marketers should consider in their hybrid event planning.
1) Take local behaviors into account
When hosting a hybrid event, you tend to attract audiences from different locations. For example, one attendee may travel to the in-person/onsite experience while another logs into the virtual experience from somewhere else, like the office or home.
We must acknowledge that both of these audiences will have different behaviors and expectations that we need to account for in our hybrid event planning.
For example, in-person audience members may be running late to the event due to various factors (traffic, public transportation, etc.). So, what do you do with your virtual audience while you wait to fill an empty room?
It’s essential to remember scenarios like this when planning hybrid events so you don’t disengage one audience while accommodating another. For virtual audiences, you can incorporate certain engagement tools within your platform, such as attendee chat, poll questions or even a temporary virtual host to keep the virtual audience engaged before the official presentation begins.
Always have a plan for your virtual audience when taking in-person local behaviors into account.
2) Anticipate Technical Issues As Best You Can
Technology — both virtual and physical — can be fickle. Be prepared with your virtual event vendor and the location before you run your hybrid event. If you can, try a few practice runs before the big day.
The best practice for, well, practice is to run the event as you would live — have hosts on stage and give presentations, test your streaming technology and have a teammate pose as a virtual attendee.
If a technical issue does pop up, work with your vendors to address it or have production staff on standby to address any problems. You’ll also want a hybrid event plan to communicate any snafus with your virtual audience.
Have a backup plan if something happens to your event’s virtual element. For example, record the live in-person presentation to make it available on-demand for everyone.
3) Have a plan to communicate/keep virtual audiences engaged if you run behind
In-person event experiences can start later than what’s often proposed in the agenda. It’s always important to keep the virtual audience informed and engaged, should that happen, so they don’t think there’s a technical issue on your end. In learning how to plan a hybrid event, it’s always about keeping this balance between the real and the digital.
Happily, you can keep virtual audiences engaged within the virtual experience in many ways! You can run a poll question to break the ice and get your audience thinking about the topic, or provide a breakout room so attendees can network and converse with peers before the event begins. You can also allow them to complete a survey to be entered into a raffle.
You can also provide conversation starters in the attendee chat by having an employee pose questions, make introductions, and encourage overall attendee networking and engagement. There are many ways to keep your virtual audience engaged in case you run behind, but be sure to have this engagement experience fully baked out just in case.
4) Engage Both Sides of the Hybrid Coin (But In Different Ways)
In hybrid event planning, you should always remember this: engagement is KEY to the success of any hybrid event. You need to build unique experiences for both audiences, but it should not feel like two separate events.
Still, engaging both sides differently is important because each audience has its own needs.
For example, if you have a gamification concept or raffle for the in-person component, you should introduce a similar experience in the virtual event. Suppose there is a lot of organic networking as part of the onsite experience. In that case, you should provide virtual attendees with similar options, like providing them with breakout events or networking lounges powered by ON24 Breakouts. Other networking opportunities include:
- Attendee chats
- Panel forums
- Q&As
Just make sure to have an idea and conversation starters on hand within the virtual experience so audiences can more easily engage and network. And don’t forget: you can also host session-specific networking experiences — even host-driven networking sessions — through tools like ON24 Forums.
These are just a few examples of engaging both sides of the hybrid coin, but overall the experience should feel cohesive and inclusive for both audiences!
5) Be Aware of Time Zones
With many folks now working remotely, make sure you consider time zones when planning your event. Time zones are too often overlooked in hybrid event planning, when they can shape the entire format and attendance of your event.
When we’re putting on our own hybrid events, we ensure that the timings are the best as can be for various time zones in North America. Typically, we like to begin most of our hybrid event presentations at 12 p.m. Eastern, as this will capture folks on the West Coast at 9 a.m. Pacific.
We’ve also noticed that starting at this time allows the in-person audience to attend at a decent time. Overall, we have noticed this time is a happy medium for different local regions. When planning your next hybrid event, ensure that you address the time zones of your local and virtual audiences to get higher attendee conversion and engagement.
You’ll also want to create a consistent experience that showcases the best of your brand for both physical and digital audiences. Here are some quick brand tips:
Tip #1: When it comes to hybrid events, Think Digital-First
Hybrid, digital, in-person… no matter what your event type is, branding will almost always begin with digital components in your promotional strategy.
When working with your creative team to develop the look and feel, think through the channels where your event will be promoted, as well as what other events are being advertised to the same audience.
Pay attention to ads that you’re being served and build an event brand that can stand out against those on mobile ads, email banners and on social media to help drive registrations from the right audiences.
This means creating a look and feel with clear messaging, CTAs and a distinct and memorable look and feel that can be elevated beyond just promotional assets.
Tip #2: Brand Your Physical (Hybrid event) Space
Once the look and feel for your event has been established and you’re driving registrations, you will want to think through the branding of your physical space first.
Why physical? The physical space typically has a lot more variables of decision-making that need to occur depending on your event production.
Start with the presenting location: will this be a ballroom stage, a studio, a conference room? If you have the budget, consider adding custom lighting and backdrops that will sit behind your presenters as this will reach your digital audience as well as in-person through your broadcast.
Beyond the presenting location, think about all of the other areas your in-person audience will wander at your venue, like registration, lunch areas, the tables within the presenting space, even restrooms!
Depending on the venue and budget, you can add signage throughout as needed to bring your event to life while continuing to connect your brand to your audience.
Tip #3: Consider Your Physical Branding When Building the Digital Branding
Once your physical event branding is locked, you can begin to think through what the digital experience will look like within your hybrid event platform.
We recommend evaluating digital branding after you’ve established the physical components so that any branding that has been added into the presenter production at the venue can be considered.
Let’s start with your digital event console.
You want to treat the branding for this much like you are treating the “room” that your in-person attendees are in. Ask yourself:
- What is the base look and feel that is on the signage or walls?
- What do they have at their tables?
- Is there anything for them to read or interact with?
Take those same considerations for your digital audience by extending the same branding to the background of your console and adding a Call-to-Action or two or supporting documents into the Related Content tools.
Tip #4: Look for Opportunities to Connect Hybrid Experiences
Finally, once you have planned out the branding of your physical and digital environments, think through other ways to connect your dispersed audience. For example, swag.
Swag has been a staple of in-person events for a long time and is a great way to leave your audience with a physical reminder of the event that occurred.
Try extending this same takeaway to your digital audience by adding a redemption link to your digital event for post-event shipping, or even better, send it pre-event to get your audience excited and remind them to attend.
So, we’ve gone over what a hybrid event is, how best to plan and execute it, and we’ve explored branding tips. Of course, one of the great things about a hybrid event is the data it produces — data that can help you learn about your attendees and what they need. Here’s how to handle post-event data:
The Power Behind Combining Digital and Physical Event Data
Event data integration is the key advantage of integrated experiences. In the past, in-person events were leveraged as a key strategic activity to reach large audiences but provided minimal engagement tracking and metrics.
In the past, data collected at in-person events usually fell into four categories:
- Badge swipes
- In-person polls
- In-session survey feedback
- Conversations with either salespeople or presenters
With hybrid, audiences can engage and interact with you digitally or in person. It provides the ability to take a digital-first approach to engagement — measuring engagement before, during and after an event and, crucially, integrated data for event analysis.
As attendees engage with interactivity tools both online and in-person, you can see how to improve your event experience. For example, with virtual events, you’re able to collect data and insights based on:
- Attendee chats
- Polling
- Resources downloaded
- Q&A’s
- Surveys
- On-demand content consumption
- 1:1 networking
- Social media engagement
And more.
Hybrid, however, combines the data of digital and in-person, empowering marketers and salespeople to compare metrics and see a more complete view of the event buyer’s journey.
A virtual platform built for hybrid events and engagement can help. Planners can unify their data across each experience and provide a detailed analysis on each attendee whether in-person or digital by looking at time spent watching an event, questions asked, resources downloaded – all while building a prospect profile on behaviors and intent.
Integrating Event Data to Drive Your Business
Hybrid events are big data generators, which puts them at a major advantage. Connect the data you gain by integrating your hybrid tools with your business systems and build a consistent customer profile. These systems can include:
- Marketing automation tools
- CRM
- Business intelligence
This data can help align marketing and sales teams to improve lead scoring and account profiling. It also can be a way to prove your event impact across your business and maximize your return on engagement. It can also help make the business case for more investment and optimize your event marketing efforts for the future.
Want to learn how ON24 helps make hybrid events possible? Check out our approach to hybrid when you click this link.
Team Players: How to Bridge the Gap Between Physical and Digital Event Teams
Making sure that both physical and digital event teams are communicating, strategically, together is just as important as integrating data. Here’s some tips to keep in mind to optimize communication.
Tip 1: Set Common goals.
At the end of the day, the best way to unite teams is to align on common metrics and KPIs. For hybrid events, it is important to unite around core categories for measurement. Just know that, depending on the format, the way to get to those metrics will change.
For example, the conversion is an essential metric that can be measured for physical, digital or hybrid events. For hybrid events, you can evaluate physical vs. digital, as well as overall conversion.
Tip 2: Set Content ROI Goals.
One thing that digital and event marketers can agree on is that they’re trying to get more out of the content that they have. Finding ways for both sets of marketers to leverage and reuse content from hybrid events is critical.
Setting up brainstorms to make sure that content can be amplified through all event types is critical. The first steps would include content repurposing across event types.
Tip 3: Evaluate Technology.
One of the core differentiators of those teams are the marketing and sales technologies that they use and have integrations into based on past experiences. This is an emerging area of focus for these teams.
To make things more complicated, each set of vendors are trying to push into the other category. The important area of focus here is to focus on the use cases you have for hybrid events, and not get caught up in vendor spin.
Tip 4: Acknowledge the differences.
A key to success is understanding that, while both marketing disciplines, there are different strengths and areas of focus for both teams. From this, there is a lot that both teams can learn from each other.
For example, digital marketers tend to have more access and familiarity in working with data and the associated analysis, whereas event marketers are experts in logistics and creative ways to draw audiences in.
Lastly, here are a few parting thoughts to keep in mind while going forth in the world of hybrid events. Particularly when it comes to what to do after the event concludes:
Post-Event Follow-up
So your registrants turned into attendees and attendees turned into participants. Now what? Well, based on the engagement data you gathered, you need to work with your sales to keep conversations going after your event ends.
That’s why marketers often send post-event follow-up emails.
But you should take those emails a strategic step further. Don’t just ask participants to book a meeting, ask them what they thought and if they’d be willing to fill out a survey. Use these digital touchpoints to boost NPS, understand how your content is connected and plan out future events.
Finally, depending on the audience or purpose of the event, go the extra mile by sending swag bags or gift cards as a thank you for attendees taking the time to engage.
Sales Outreach
To solidify a successful hybrid event engagement amongst your attendees, after leads are qualified, sales can reach out to them and have 1:1 conversations with those individuals. We can also add some type of incentive to encourage attendees to continue engaging with our sales team.
Want to learn more? Join the conversation!
Interested in hearing what marketing leaders and experts have to say about strategically driving growth with hybrid events?
Tune in to a recorded webinar Activate Your Hybrid Event Strategy: Scale Events for Strong ROI with our very own Matt Heinz (President of Heinz Marketing) and Cheri Keith (Head of Strategy at ON24) where they discuss strategy and practical tips to creating impactful, scalable and engaging hybrid events that maximize ROI.