Lessons Learned — Virtual Outsell Signature Event 2020
Well, it’s done now. Last week, we held the Outsell Signature Event, co-produced with JEGI digitally this year. Instead of being at The Langham Hotel in London, we sat in our living rooms and home offices along with 325 executives who joined us. The reviews are in, and we’ve earned solid marks for our first virtual effort.
One of our clients asked us to share our lessons learned. What was it like for Outsell this year, and what takeaways do we have from our own experience that will benefit our clients? We are of the industry we serve, and what you experience, we experience. So, in no particular order, here are our key takeaways.
It Helps to Get an Early Start
We decided back in April that we would host the event digitally this year. While some of our clients were planning for live events in the second half of the year, we knew in our bones that the pandemic wasn’t disappearing any time soon. So, we called it early and decided that we’d be digital this year.
How in the heck would we do it? Well, just like everyone else, we didn’t know. All we knew was that we had no choice.
Get Buy-in from Sponsors
We spoke to our sponsors straight away to get their input. We went into our discussions thinking we’d not get a lot of new sponsors but that we wanted to protect the sponsorships we had. We approached each discussion from the point of view that we wanted to apply 50% of their 2020 F2F investment to this year’s event, and we got buy-in across the board that the approach worked. We had the benefit of a new platform to host them in throughout the year, so there were some new benefits that helped keep them visible. We also amped up promotion in Outsell Headlines so that visibility was more about the year-round experience and less about the specific event.
Expect Lower Registration Revenue
This year, we wanted to promote access to the event for our clients to deliver more value, keep them closer to us, and make sure attendance was robust. We have CEO clients with exec team access to our services so this year, so we invited the exec teams as part of their memberships. There are no variable costs to expanding membership, other than internal labor costs to manage, and it saved CEOs from having to go back to their teams and translate the experience. They could delegate exec team members to attend specific sessions germane to their functions or have the whole team join certain topics so they could talk about implications afterward. This was a win for our clients and a win for us. We doubled senior-level executive participation and had double the overall attendance of our physical events.
Spend Time on Picking the Right Platform
EventTech solutions are proliferating like bamboo, and there were dozens to wade through. We relied on our analysts who cover the sector to weigh in and made sure our CTO knew that the right platform was a key priority once we launched our community. They needed to integrate, and the solution needed to be au currant — we had to embody best practice, so picking was important. No solution meets all of the market’s needs yet, and you can tell that a lot of EventTech platforms were built by techies and not event people. There are holes in a lot of solutions, so getting as close as you can to the right solution takes time. Plan accordingly, and don’t give platform selection short shrift.
Amp Up Programming
Our event covered three time zones with over 30 sessions, when we are normally in one time zone with a day of sessions. We held the event over two and a half days and could double the length and ensure there was something for everyone.
This takes time and a lot of prep. Speakers need coaching on how to present from a home environment and coordination about whether they are hosting their presentations or we are. There are a lot of logistics for a more robust program, but expanding the program is essential. Make sure there is common time across the time zones, so every region can participate, then make sure there are region-specific activities.
Leverage On-Demand
In 2013, we spoke about events living 24/7/365, and this year that particularly came true. We recorded every session and made them all available on our platform for on-demand access to our clients year-round. We also leveraged our platform so prospects who attended the event could review presos and experience Outsell for three weeks after the event. This made it somewhat of an “Outsell trial” that we could then leverage to convert new business. Having the ability to go on-demand while ensuring that the event is live all year and integrated with your core offerings is important.
Put as Much Time into Networking as Programming
The amount of time we put into the program is how much we should have put into the networking component of the experience. We put more emphasis this year on the program, and next year — whether we are digital or hybrid — we will ensure that we put equal time and attention on the networking. The tools will have caught up (they’re not there yet), and it takes the team’s time and energy, but it has to be done. If we learned anything about this year’s experience, it’s that networking takes equal time and attention. Give it the time it deserves, especially since we are all missing the F2F factor.
It’s a Company-Wide Endeavor
Digital events, done right, are time-intensive. They require lots of planning, lots of logistics, lots of back-end coordination, and lots of backups. Moderators have an alternate, someone is watching the technology, the reg process is smooth, and logging on is seamless. The best event is so well run that no one knows all the details happening to keep things flowing smoothly. You need one person in charge — in this case, Jeannine, our head of events — but everyone else was paddling alongside her and behind her, from me, to our key staff who did programming, to our tech team, to our finance team to process registrations, to moderators around the globe. Don’t underestimate the time it will take to produce a great event, and ensure that everyone is on board and behind it. The adage that it takes a village is never more true than in producing a key event.
Get Feedback
Surveys are golden, and comments coming in are even better. Leverage the responses, and ultimately the analytics, to understand what’s working and what needs improvement. Measure, measure, measure.
Have Fun!
A digital event is like hosting a conference in a F2F setting or even a big wedding: If you’re not having fun, something is wrong. It’s tense. It’s stressful. It’s demanding. But ultimately, it has to be fun.
It was awesome to see our clients, meet new people, and deliver great programming. Even if it was from our living rooms, our home offices, or somewhere else new.
Make sure your event is supporting financial goals as well as marketing ones and realize that it’s a new frontier and something is bound to go wrong. I was joking with our key sponsor who I was about to interview that of course our internet wouldn’t go out, we didn’t need the phone as a backup, and he laughed and agreed — no backups necessary. And 30 minutes in, wouldn’t that be the time that Comcast cut the cord in our neighborhood. Whoops. If it can go wrong, it will so improvise. My backup stepped in, and I drove to the office — where I hadn’t been in seven months — to finish the last two sessions of the conference. The office was empty, I had a new backdrop, and we all had a good laugh at the irony of the internet going out on my digital event as I was interviewing our EventTech partner. It happens.