Virtual Events: Drive More Attendance on Purpose
Remote work is the new normal, and organizations have pivoted their conferences and trade shows to the virtual sphere. It’s a new frontier for most marketing directors and event planners. Attracting guests to virtual events requires thinking of new ways to drive attendance.
A Shared Purpose Aligned with your Virtual Event
Companies are aligning their core-values with social causes now more than ever. At TisBest, we believe the key to a successful #pivottovirtual is grounded in this values-based process.
Your target audience is likely to be busier than ever. They may be working on staggered schedules, homeschooling children, and dealing with other distractions. This means you’ll need to really stand out to entice people to engage. Connecting your virtual event to a cause that aligns with your brand and your audience’s heartstrings will make a big difference.
The ultimate win is to create a cause-supported engagement program that intersects with your event’s core theme.
The element that professionals are missing most these days is opportunities for personal connections made at in-person events like conferences. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being in a room of people all compelled by the same new customer insight or industry trend. But sharing the experience with new and old colleagues is what makes the event memorable. So it’s at the event after the presentation where we remember forging meaningful personal connections.
Cause-Related Ideas that Intersect and Help Attendees Connect
There are options in the virtual event realm that help build even stronger connections! For an industry event, help attendees cross the physical divide by reinforcing a common purpose from afar.
- Clear-the-Air: Send all your registered attendees a living, breathing plant via Bloomscape! This idea could bolster a sustainability or healthy living theme. Bonus points for impact if you can find a vendor to send trees to be planted outdoors!
- Food-based: Work directly with a meal provider like Seamless to provide a handful of options, and let registrants opt in for their breakout meal prep session! It’s a self-selecting way to unite the omnivore, paleo, vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and the list goes on! Dietary + Professional connections are priceless!
- Honor Service: Write to veterans at the VA! Coordinate with a VA chapter to channel written messages from participants to hospital patients who have served.
- Build-a-Hand – Thanks to Entire Productions, it’s possible to ship a kit to each participant that provides everything they need to build a prosthetic hand! If you have a bunch of engineers who have maxed out their screen time, imagine the meaningful impact this activity could have!
- Trivia – Have teams choose a charitable organization and then compete on its behalf with “iQuiz for a Cause” questions offered by Corporate Event Interactive.
When you begin to brainstorm and build your programming in alignment with any purpose, make sure you Start with Why. We’re totally doing this at TisBest!
Collaborative CSR Opportunity for Employees
For an internal employee-focused event, take the opportunity to build your CSR culture.
- Design a breakout session where teams brainstorm/develop/pitch cause-oriented programs for your organization.
- Then bring everyone together to vote on a winner.
This programming gives employees an outlet to be creative and impactful while giving the organization insight into where its employees’ hearts are.
Individual Do-Good Currency at Your Virtual Event
Finally, provide attendees with Charity Gift Cards so that each of them can share in a collective impact and give to their own choice from over 1 million charities that matter most to them. This solution combines the power of registration gifts and charity to drive sign-ups for virtual events.
Charity Gift Card Demo: Experience it for Yourself
Giving attendees this Collective + Individual impact is the best of both worlds. You might call this the holy grail of virtual events!
Our team has worked with events for years. But no two are the same, so we would be happy to talk with at any point in the creative planning process. Contact businesssales@TisBest.org to work with us directly.
