A virtual event without technology is like a car without wheels because, without it, you’re not going to get anywhere.
Now to put it into perspective for you. Event promotion requires a website builder and an email marketing tool. Broadcasting requires a webinar platform and live streaming software. Attendee engagement requires live chat and a polling platform. You get where we’re going with this.
With all of the technology on offer, it can become very easy to feel overwhelmed. What technologies should I use? How do these integrate together? Are they all compatible with each other? How is this going to affect the attendee experience?
Here, we’re going to answer each of these questions to help you better understand the options out there when it comes to virtual event technology.
Virtual event technologies
Running an event from A to Z requires multiple technologies, below are the most important pieces to delivering virtual events.
Website builders: Your website sets the tone for your event and provides potential attendees with the first glimpse of your event. For this reason, it needs to be well-made and professional. Every event website needs to include logistics and communicate the value of the event.
Registration software: To ensure a seamless registration, you’ll want to find a tool that allows attendees to register, submit personal information, and provide payment (if necessary). This process needs to be user-friendly and intuitive without any complications.
Email marketing tools: To promote your event and communicate with contacts, you’ll want to use an email marketing tool. By sending branded and personalized emails, you will have a lot more control both in terms of outreach and with tracking key metrics.
Live streaming software: Keynotes, Q&As, and all your other ‘one-to-many’ sessions will need to be broadcast to your attendees via live-streaming platforms. For your attendees, this is more about absorbing content and less about interacting.
Webinar platforms: For the more collaborative and interactive sessions such as breakouts, workshops and interviews, use a webinar platform that can offer visual elements like slide sharing, surveys, and whiteboards.
Engagement tools: To keep attendees engaged throughout the event you’ll want to add engagement tools such as live polling and quizzes. Here, it’s worth considering the setup and whether attendees need to download anything prior to the event.
Event planning software: This integrates all of the different technologies that we just mentioned, providing you with one platform where you can track data, streamline planning, and offer attendees a smoother guest experience.
How do I approach this?
So as you can see each of the technologies that we mentioned represents the many components of a virtual event. Whether that’s website builders or live streaming software and chat tools, the technology behind each feature is what makes virtual events happen.
For this reason, if you want to have a well-run event there’s no picking and choosing – you’ll want to have every one of these technologies integrated into your virtual event tech stack.
Now, to consider how to approach this, we’re going to talk about the two different options that you have.
Option 1: Building your virtual event from scratch
Option 1 refers to building your event from the bottom up, which means partnering up with multiple providers across each stage of the virtual event life-cycle. As you probably guessed, this is definitely an approach for more experienced marketers who want to create their own custom-made events tailored specifically to their needs.
To give you an idea of what technologies you’ll want to use, the first step in this approach should always be to microdissect the event so that you can map it out. Once you’ve done this, you’ll need to identify your providers for each component of the event, making sure that they’re fully compatible and integrate with each other.
This requires you to manage the multiple accounts for each technology and makes it much tougher to thread each individual piece together into a seamlessly run event. It’s also worth noting that if one provider or application fails you, then this is likely to disrupt the event.
Option 2: Using an all-in-one virtual event platform
The more straightforward option is to use an all-in-one virtual event platform, like Eventtia. This will give your virtual event much-needed consistency as it provides a place where all of the different technologies can be integrated into one platform.
Not only this but it’s also going to save you a lot of time, especially if you’re managing multiple events. No longer will you have to map out the event, create multiple accounts, and make sure that they work, because an all-in-one platform does all of this for you.
By providing your virtual events with much-needed structure, planning becomes a lot more straightforward. Having a centralized dashboard puts all of your information into one place, giving you more control over your event as you can track and measure key metrics.
Finally, by integrating all of the event technologies into one platform, you’ll be able to centralize all of the planning processes and workflows. Not only does this limit the margin for error, but it also provides your attendees with a much more well-rounded and smooth event.
Final thoughts
We hope that this made things clearer for you. Technology plays such a big role in virtual events, and it can’t be done without any picking or choosing. To provide attendees with a smoother experience try using an all-in-one platform that integrates all of these components into one place.
