Why Mayo Clinic selected the ON24 webcasting platform for their Transform thought leadership event

Situation

Transforming Health Care

Mayo Clinic’s Transform symposium is the only healthcare thought leadership event that combines design thinking, innovation and world-class medical expertise. Mayo Clinic needed to create a content delivery system to reach people anywhere, a growing trend in health care. Because of the challenges associated with delivering Transform past the “four walls” of the physical meeting space, Mayo Clinic also recognized the necessity of securing a virtual event partner with an easy-to-use webcasting platform to deliver global reach and scale, as well as the ability to weave social media into the fabric of the event.

Solution

A Unique Thought Leadership Event, Delivered via ON24

The Transform thought leadership event traditionally offers a powerful live agenda. However, Mayo Clinic also knew from previous Transform events that there would be a substantial online audience tuning in to watch, learn and share. For these reasons, they ultimately ended up selecting the ON24 platform to create a “hybrid” Transform, with a free web stream of the virtual event available to the public for the first time.

ON24 became Mayo Clinic’s partner of choice due to the convenience and rich feature set of the ON24 webcasting solution. A key factor included ON24’s robust, scalable global delivery infrastructure, for both live and on-demand webcasts. In addition, viewers can seamlessly view webcasts on most devices, including laptops, tablets and smartphones.

The social media integration in the ON24 platform was another key point, as Mayo Clinic was looking to drive deep social engagement across all of the Transform sessions and to leverage a lasting online presence in order to sustain audience enthusiasm for Transform’s long-term agenda and secure interest in future events. The collaboration was exciting for both organizations because it enabled the Transform symposium to have strong social integration on-site and virtually while creating a unique experience for the innovative virtual attendees.

Results

Record-Breaking Attendance and 20 Million Twitter Impressions

A substantial amount of pre-event marketing, including regular tweets, direct email and LinkedIn promotions, meant that Mayo Clinic secured a large number of RSVPs for the event. On the event days, Mayo Clinic had more than 64 speakers lined up, and more than 200 users viewed part or all of the event via the ON24 platform. Engagement was strong, with an average viewing time of more than 25 minutes and a great number of comments and shares via social media. The sessions are now available on demand.

Twitter generated the following results:

  • 19,970,641 impressions
  • 4,920 tweets
  • 665 participants
  • 3 average tweets per hour
  • 7 average tweets per participant

According to Mayo Clinic event producers, this active Twitter stream was due in part to virtual event participation.

Mayo Clinic also obtained viewers for the Transform thought leadership event who tuned in via the legacy streaming solution, as well as the Second Life virtual event platform. Overwhelmingly, user feedback for the ON24 experience was positive, while the internal solution experienced service interruptions and other performance issues.

Mayo Clinic considers the Transform thought leadership event a huge success, having generated the largest in-person and online audiences in the event’s history and significant Twitter activity. As a result of careful planning and execution, Mayo Clinic was empowered to truly bridge the live and virtual event, achieving a high level of audience engagement. They were also able to incorporate live input from the web – such as tweets and Facebook posts – into the live event sessions as they occurred. What’s more, the Transform thought leadership event morphed into a year-long online event, called Transforum, which has become a key avenue for Mayo Clinic to drive engagement, facilitate an ongoing dialog with those who attended Transform and encourage their participation in future events.

Content from the virtual event has gone viral, having been picked up by media outlets such as National Public Radio. Social media has amplified the interest in Transform and enabled the Mayo Clinic to connect far beyond the “four walls” of their event venue to reach a larger audience than they ever thought possible.