The events world has made a complete U-turn over the past few months. After witnessing thousands of organisations cancel their plans we decided to jump into the realm of digital events, with a helping hand from Victoria Pawsey at EI Advisory and a member of our Women’s Development Board, and Mark Buller from Financial Times Live.
Our digital event was a conversation focused on (yes, you guessed it) digital events. Here are our main takeaways:
Whilst many of you are probably reading this on your laptop or phone and are used to scrolling through the internet both in and outside of work, there are lots of people who are joining the digital world for the first time. Make the most of these new audiences and engage with them online as much as possible.
Although virtual events are more convenient there’s so many happening. How are we supposed to know which ones to attend? If you’re planning replacement events for the coming months, podcasts or a good old fashioned marketing email could be a great alternative. Just remember, the tech you use is essentially your virtual venue. Put in the same amount of research as you would if you were hunting for the perfect event location.
Supporter retention is something we all aspire to be pros at. Collecting the right data from those who attend events can be instrumental in ensuring your audiences continue to engage with your work. Use this data to invite people to smaller events or encourage them to sign-up to a newsletter.
Many have found attending virtual events far more convenient than face to face. There’s no travel costs and no rushing around to arrive on time. You can fit far more people in a zoom call than in a small venue. Perhaps we should all consider hosing more digital events post-social distancing and give ourselves some well deserved downtime by taking a break from the travel.
Having learnt a lot, and raised enough to support 106 women start their own business, we’d like to think our first digital event has been a success. So much so that we’ve decided to host another one!
Join us on June 23rd for an interactive panel event celebrating sustainability and gender equality, generously sponsored by Salesforce. More information and tickets are available here.
Published on: 22/06/2020