With the rise of virtual events came a slew of new challenges for event organizers—namely, how in the world to keep online attendees as engaged as they once were sitting in the crowd at previous live events. Attendee engagement for virtual events has continued to be top-of-mind for many planners, especially for multiday meetings. After all, how do you consider an event successful if you couldn’t even hold the attention of your attendee for more than 20 minutes?
With a shift in focus to attendee engagement since hybrid events are clearly here to stay, planners have put the attendee experience at the forefront of online and hybrid events—ensuring that guests are not only able to but want to interact with the event and network with other attendees. Of course, it’s easier said than done. At-home attendees face a seemingly endless number of distractions, from kids to pets to computer and cell phone notifications to that random thought of “Did I press start on the laundry?”
The undeniable reality is that event producers are working against many outside, unstoppable factors—including unstable internet connections—when it comes to holding the attention of their guests online. However, that’s never stopped an event producer before, and it sure won’t stop them now. To aid in ensuring your attendees’ eyes stay on the prize, consider this checklist of metrics your go-to resource for gauging your event’s engagement levels:
❏ New Users vs. Active Users While seeing the number of new users for an online event spike is exciting, it’s even more rewarding to see the number of active users increase and remain at a steady level. This shows your event’s content is holding their attention and keeping them interacting with the platform, which can ultimately help organizers create an even more personalized experience for their audience in the future. Assuming your most active attendees were who your team was looking to engage the most, who were those attendees? What engaged those active users the most? How did they engage with the content or platform?
❏ Instances of Engagement on Social Feed Outside your event’s platform, it’s important to keep up with how your attendees are engaging with the event on social media. How many posts have been made mentioning the event or the event’s hashtag? How many polls has your audience participated in on social media? What are your attendees talking about on social media?
❏ Instances of Networking Before, During, and After the Event A key reason event-goers enjoy doing just that—attending events—is for networking purposes, so it’s important to keep track of how well your event offers attendees the ability to do so. How many messages in total were exchanged between attendees on the event’s platform? What was the meeting-accepted to meeting-rejected ratio if you’re offering one-on-one networking opportunities? How many lounge meetings were completed by attendees and exhibitors? It’s also important to remember that networking doesn't just happen during an event, but before and after as well. To really hone in on networking, ensure your event allows the opportunity for attendees to connect pre-and post-event.
❏ Instances of Engagement During Event Sessions A huge benefit of virtual events and what makes hybrid events so attractive is the ability to collect data in real-time to better your event’s content down the road. To do so, though, you have to take note of how attendees interacted with your event’s programming. How many people bookmarked, viewed, rated, or downloaded something during the event? Which session had the most chats? Which sessions had the most interaction during the Q&A portion? By answering these questions, you hold the key to unlocking an even high level of engagement at your next event.
❏ Instances of Engagement at Virtual Booths Of course, while keeping attendees happy is the main goal of event organizers, keeping exhibitors and sponsors happy is also a top priority. What was the total number of business cards exchanged? How many connections were made per booth? How many ‘call to action’ clicks were made and at which booths? By learning the data behind these questions, event organizers will be able to partner with exhibitors and sponsors that they know connect well with their target audience—leaving no room for disappointment on either end.
The key player in increasing attendee engagement is—to no one’s surprise—choosing the right technology platform that enables and encourages attendees to interact with its features and each other, as well as one that allows the organizer to track these metrics easily. Without a platform that enables event organizers to track and consume such robust data that can be viewed by segmented audiences, a virtual or hybrid event could fall flat.
Thankfully, such a platform exists. Hubilo Technologies Inc. (Hubilo, for short) was designed with attendee engagement in mind, meaning each of its features add up to a virtual and hybrid event platform that seamlessly creates an environment that event-goers want to interact with. (It helps that Hubilo has the industry's largest suite of engagement and gamification features.)
Hubilo’s platform offers ample opportunities for attendees to connect with each other, from one-on-one private chats, an all-inclusive event feed and interactive polls, Q&As and leaderboard functions to breakout rooms and lounges that promote casual conversation and networking—and that’s just scratching the surface.
The platform has been trusted and utilized by brands such as TikTok, Coca-Cola, American Express, Johnson & Johnson—the list goes on. But don’t just take our word for it: Event organizers interested in learning more about Hubilo can quickly request a demo or conduct some research of their own.
