exceeded SQL target
exceeded MQL target
digital experiences over 6 live days as part of one digital experience series
attendees and 4,669 ON24 Virtual Conference booth visits
Products: ON24 Webcast Elite, ON24 Virtual Conference
Use cases: Customer and product marketing, event marketing, HCP engagement
Industry: Life sciences
Number of employees: 10,001+
Thermo Fisher Scientific is the world leader in serving science. The company’s mission is to enable its customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer by accelerating life sciences research, solving complex analytical challenges, improving patient diagnostics, delivering medicines to market and increasing laboratory productivity.
Thermo Fisher Scientific offers an unmatched combination of innovative technologies, purchasing convenience and customer support. The company’s 2030 vision centers around a commitment to leadership in digital science. This plays out in examples such as manufacturing instruments used in COVID-19 vaccine research.
Within Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Analytical Instruments Group, the goal of the Marketing team is to deliver an exceptional customer experience by leveraging digital capabilities. The company is dedicated to sharing knowledge that will help its customers keep up with the fast paced world of science and technology. Digital experiences are a critical tool for Thermo Fisher Scientific to maintain these customer relationships.
A need for a new strategy to quickly reach customers around the globe
When more than 70 of Thermo Fisher Scientific’s in-person events were cancelled or postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the company needed to implement a virtual event strategy. The organization formed a team to take an innovative approach to digital experiences and set a new goal to create a company-owned virtual event for potential and existing customers, called Reveal 2020.
The team had only six weeks to bring the Reveal 2020 event to life, which was a challenge because virtual events are labor intensive. Both subject matter experts and marketing professionals are required, since running a digital experience is an entirely different way of trying to reach customers.
To make the event a success, Thermo Fisher Scientific needed a platform to showcase and accelerate customer engagement, as well as feature excellent content that attendees would look forward to consuming, since there were so many other offerings available online at the time. In addition, because of privacy and consent issues, the company needed to have its own platform for Reveal 2020, rather than participating in a third-party event.
“We needed a vendor that would be a collaborative partner and create the type of experience we had our minds set on, which we found in ON24.”
Thelma Pichel
Senior Event Specialist
A fully branded, immersive and customer-centric digital experience
Thermo Fisher Scientific purchased ON24 Webcast Elite and ON24 Virtual Conference. “We needed a vendor that would be a collaborative partner and create the type of experience we had our minds set on, which we found in ON24,” said Thelma Pichel, Senior Events Specialist at Thermo Fisher Scientific.
The company defined a theme, messaging and promotion for the Reveal 2020 event, trained 150 staff on the ON24 platform and engaged in regular communication with the ON24 team to pull it all off. Once launched, the digital experience featured two live events per week as well as on-demand options for attendees to watch webinars and visit virtual booths.
The Reveal 2020 series gave Thermo Fisher Scientific the opportunity to help address the challenges that had increased for the company’s customers due to the pandemic. The event also served as part of the organization’s nurturing program. “We did everything necessary to build a very strong base for the future,” Pichel said.
In addition to Reveal 2020, Thermo Fisher Scientific also leveraged the ON24 platform to run the Ignite Surface Analysis conference for an audience that was used to having in-person meetings every year. The company used ON24 Virtual Conference to create an environment that resembled a true event location and offered a complete customer experience with a lobby, networking lounge, exhibit hall with virtual booths and auditorium.
“One of the key takeaways we got from working with ON24 is the way you’re able to customize the whole virtual environment to have it branded in every way possible. We’ve worked with several other platforms, and this was a real stand-out in the crowd,” Pichel said.
With the ON24 platform, Thermo Fisher Scientific ran 36 live digital experiences over six days as part of its Reveal 2020 event, as well as repeat webinars for different time zones. The digital experience garnered 9,507 registrations, 3,800 attendees, 4,669 Virtual Conference booth visits and 472 customer chats. Customers enjoyed having the opportunity to look around and gather information at their leisure.
“We were very happy with what we managed in those six weeks with the ON24 platform—to get the series off the ground from zero to 36 webinars with 3,800 attendees,” Pichel said.
Thermo Fisher Scientific also exceeded its MQL target by 150% and its SQL target by 200% for the Ignite Surface Analysis conference.
The company has found an efficient new channel with global reach in the ON24 platform, which offers both time and cost savings, and is useful for hybrid events. Going forward, even when in-person events start up again, Thermo Fisher Scientific plans to continue to set budget aside for digital experiences.
“We were very happy with what we managed in six weeks with the ON24 platform—to get the Reveal 2020 series off the ground from zero to 36 webinars with 3,800 attendees.”
Thelma Pichel
Senior Event Specialist
