Best Practices for Your Hybrid Annual Event

It’s time! The moment your staff and community has been waiting for: your annual event.

What's awesome about a 365 year-round platform? When it's time for that breathtaking event experience, your digital location is already waiting for you to lift off. There is no more hassle of finding another platform that meets your needs.

When it comes to building out your annual event from your 365 platform, what are the best ways to keep people engaged and excited about your brand new hybrid experience?

‍

Here are five things to consider as you build out your Annual Event in a 365 setting.

‍

‍

Strategy and Goals

‍

Your first step to any event planning is starting with a strategy and the why. When hybrid and digital experiences swerved the industry off course, finding a digital strategy felt impossible because things were so unknown and new.

‍

Let’s go back to your why. What will people be learning? What’s in it for your community members? Why are you holding the event in the first place? Now the how. Is your event hybrid or digital? If your event is hybrid how are you going to connect your in-person members with your digital to create Intersections of Connectivity?

‍

Make sure your event strategy and goals are crystal clear to all of your team members. Make your goals S.M.A.R.T, and as your platform begins to feel familiar to both you and your members, you can start to pinpoint how best to distribute your resources and create a confident plan of attack. Remember that this process may take time. Be patient, keep tracking progress and don’t be afraid to try new things.

‍

Having this Single Destination Platform is brand new territory for many associations which is sure to challenge the strategy and event goals many have had previously. This makes strategy and keeping focus more important than ever.

‍

Marketing and Registration

‍

With a year-round digital community, marketing strategies will need to evolve also. With your community all in one place, communication of event details is easy. During the event, global notifications within the platform make highlighting a live Main Stage event or Opening Session even easier.

‍

However, when it comes to outside your 365 closed community, market strategies will still need to be evaluated accordingly. Get the word out on social media and be sure to streamline an easy registration process for those not already part of the community.

‍

Upon registering for the event, associations can offer membership packages that gain them access to community-driven content within the 365 platform. Use this time to attract new community members and not just annual event attendees.

‍

You can still offer early bird registration and incorporate membership-driven promo codes for being a 365 community member. However you shape your registration process, there is some flexibility on what and how you can offer content.    

‍

Themes and Customization

‍

It's time to get creative, redesign your logo, and learn new ways to customize your digital event space. Powerful front-end tools that allow control over themes and branding customizations are a great way to connect with your audience using familiar branding elements.

‍

It's important to understand that the virtual component is going to look and feel different. Trying to recreate your in-person experience digitally won’t always cut it. This is a great opportunity to reconsider your digital theme and refine that new digital adoption and maximize it for success.

‍

Don’t think about this as your website and don’t be afraid to try new looks or ideas. Your 365 digital community will continue to morph and be updated as more members join.

‍

Attendee Experience

‍

In this day and age, you have to be thinking about the attendee experience. Your consumers are Spotify and Amazon users. They are craving seamless experiences from your product too. When your annual event is housed on a customizable 365 platform, you don’t have to learn and teach your members how to access all of your event features every time there is an event.

‍

Throughout your members' attendee journeys attending webinars, participating in roundtable discussions, as well as engaging in one-off networking experiences, they will be comfortable to navigate throughout the platform and ready to go on event day. PLUS, the platform is constantly learning about your members and serving up AI-driven content and connection recommendations for a seamless, curated experience waiting for your attendees on event day.

‍

Feedback

‍

Remember those goals? Now that the event is over, you need to be sure you can track them so your organization can re-evaluate, adjust and ultimately grow. A Single Destination Platform that tracks analytics in one place for you all year-round is invaluable in this era of uncertainty. Not only can post-event feedback help you update and tweak your annual event for next time, it allows you to share that feedback with the JUNO team so we can tweak and update your platform to fit those needs.

‍

‍