How to make your hybrid event sing!

Despite thinking everyone would joyously rush back to face-to-face events after the Covid restrictions were lifted, it hasn’t been so.

According to the Statista Research Department, 17% of US employees worked from home five days a week before Covid, and now, in 2023 – that’s risen to 44%. And Australia isn’t much different. On top of that, Statista reports that while 57% prefer in-person events, 33% would rather go virtual. The last 10% have no preference; they are happy to go with the flow. 

All of this makes it clear that hybrid events that successfully combine in-person and virtual attendance are here to stay.

The trick for marketers and event managers is to make a virtual event experience as engaging and compelling as the simultaneous in-person one. After all, what works for one audience doesn’t always translate well for the other.

Think big, with good reason

Hybrid events allow you to scale – big time – without the anxiety about providing adequate physical facilities.

From conferences to user conferences, trade shows to sales kick-offs, large team meetings to product launches or demonstrations, and global town halls – a hybrid event enables you to invite more and more attendees without fear of running out of canapes or car parking.

With thought and planning, you can deliver a consistently excellent experience for everyone on the other side of a screen.

Helpful hybrid event tips and tricks

Here are some of our essential tips for ensuring your hybrid event experience is excellent for all attendees!

1. Make it the best it can be for everyone. While you’re probably an old hand at finding wonderful physical venues, ensuring your virtual venue is equally as great is also important. If it’s a small event, there are plenty of streaming apps to choose from, but if you’re going all out, consider a more sophisticated platform that offers richer attendee interaction and engagement features – so your virtual attendees don’t feel like the poor cousins at the event.
   
   
2. Make sure your agenda covers everyone. With 49% of marketers citing audience engagement as the biggest contributing factor to having a successful event, you can’t afford to miss a trick.If your event includes in-person time out or networking opportunities (think coffee breaks, lunch, drinks, or dinner) before the next ‘session’ – then make sure you have separate agendas on the registration page. With the right platform, you can ‘fill’ those gaps with surveys, polls, gamification, competitions, live chat, videos and more. Or get inspired by some of the large US companies who have streamed an online concert experience for virtual guests while cocktail hour and gala dinners are on!
    
   
3. Take time to consider your attendees’ needs. Two hours at an interesting in-person event can fly! But those same two hours sitting in front of a screen can be tedious – virtual attendees have myriad distractions as business emails come in, and they try to resist responding to Facebook alerts. To hold their attention, it’s important that all audience members can interact and network with their fellow attendees and engage with speakers and sponsors regardless of how they attend your event.
   
   
4. Don’t make it a matter of out of sight, out of mind! Inclusion is the key to a successful hybrid event. So, incorporate live polls into your event (71% of marketers say polling plays an essential role in keeping online audience attention) and share on screen to show the difference between your virtual and live attendee responses if appropriate. Otherwise, virtual attendees won’t feel as though their opinions or feedback matters. Or offer the opportunity to submit topics or questions for keynote speakers or subject matter experts during Q&A sessions – and make sure they are included along with the name of the attendees (for example, ‘Next we have a question from Amanda, who is joining us virtually from ABC Company in the UK…’).
   
   
5. Focus on visibility. Video the live event from various angles and cut between them so your virtual audience doesn’t have such a one-dimensional experience. Put up a large screen behind speakers to enhance not only the in-person experience but also the online one. Make sure presenter content translates to a wide range of devices – for example, over-packed PowerPoint slides may be fine for an in-house audience reading it on a huge back screen but not those watching on their laptop.
   
   
6. Keep your event sticky for virtual attendees. The general rule of thumb for no-shows at virtual events is 35% - which is slightly higher than for in-person events. So, it’s important to send reminders and keep the excitement and engagement high in the lead-up to the event – just as you would for your on-the-ground attendees. Also, give attendees every reason to stay the distance – budget and geographical spread permitting, send grazing boxes so they too can enjoy some catering, and reward those who remain to the end with goodie boxes and branded event t-shirts.
   
   
7. Don’t bug out with bad tech. Sadly, 38% of marketers say they run into technical problems when hosting hybrid and virtual events. From no audio to a disconnect between what live and virtual audiences are seeing and hearing, insufficient bandwidth, or not enough time spent configuring a virtual event platform for peak performance – it’s not difficult to see why and how an event can become a virtual flop.

Practice (and professionalism) makes perfect

Whatever else you do, take the time to do a trial run to ensure that your virtual attendees don’t get the short end of the event stick. Make sure everything works as intended, so you can deliver the impact and engagement needed to impress your attendees during and after the event to keep them returning for more.

Better still, use audio-visual professionals with a strong reputation for getting it right, sharing great ideas, and delivering the hybrid event magic you have in mind.