How Virtual Event Technology Will Bring Us Closer

Hubilo is a Business Reporter client.

If you’re waiting for things to return to pre-pandemic normal, we have bad news: It’s not happening soon. With new Covid variants cropping up and people increasingly accustomed to working from anywhere, virtual solutions are trends that every organization needs to have in their long-term strategy.

Two-thirds of U.S. company leaders polled in late August 2021 reported that they have delayed company plans to return to the office. U.S. airlines’ “shoulder season”—the period between Labor Day and Thanksgiving—typically sees a business travel boom; last year, airlines canceled flights that never filled. 

Virtual event technology is no longer the short-term fix many businesses believed they’d need for only a few weeks in March of 2020, and it is catalyzing a new way of working, learning, entertaining, communicating and marketing that will continue long after we’ve moved past the Covid crisis. The global virtual events market was valued at $114 billion in 2021 and is expected to achieve a compound annual growth rate of 23.2% from 2020 to 2027.

We are living in an age of virtual as well as physical connection. We seamlessly move from sending a text to the group chat before posting on social media and then meeting friends in person. But many event planners and marketers stumble when they try to squish real life into a digital box. 

At Hubilo, we don’t believe in replacing traditional events. Rather, we believe that people need more than one way to engage and connect, in the same way that you can watch your favorite sport live on TV, in a pub or on your phone.

When you begin thinking about virtual events as a new channel, rather than just a replacement for traditional in-person events, it’s easy to understand the massive potential. In much the same way that, 20 years ago, we couldn’t imagine how a company selling books online would redefine how we shop, we are just beginning to see how virtual event technologies can and will impact how we live and work.

Imagine if sales kickoffs didn’t have to be compressed into one week once a year, with a huge expense attached, but instead could be a continuous virtual sales training and engagement hub that launches events as frequently as a company desires.

Imagine how many more employees could be engaged and inspired in a town hall-style virtual forum, and how meetings could be more inclusive because everyone could attend and engage.

Imagine the carbon emissions that could be reduced if fewer people had to travel to company destinations and could engage as effectively from home.

Imagine meeting your favorite musician backstage in a virtual room after hosting a watch party from your house.

And imagine the treasure trove of data and insights for event organizers that comes from being able to track an audience’s engagement levels, what they looked at, whom they spoke to and what was most responded to during presentations. This data can be used to personalize event experiences at scale, making every event more relevant and engaging than before.

We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what virtual event technology can do for all of us, but what matters most is that connection isn’t necessarily dependent on physical proximity. People find love online; they order shoes and perfumes online; they watch TV and movies online, exercise online and so much more. Hubilo-hosted medical conferences have shared live surgeries to demonstrate the latest medical innovations to other doctors, as well as product launches with drag queen hosts who made people get out of their seats and dance—and these all happened virtually. It’s not necessarily being there that makes an experience memorable, but the engagement with others; that’s what blows an audience away.

That’s what makes Hubilo so special. Our team helps event planners incentivize engagement by gamifying the experience and adding personal notifications with the industry’s largest suite of engagement features. While other platforms don’t allow for photos or emojis in the chat window, Hubilo has an abundance of them; other tools are still text-only in an era where Gen Z kids send memes to their grandparents with a heart emoji—and Grandma sends back a digital avatar. 

For marketers used to measuring event success through half-filled-out attendee experience surveys, a virtual event presents a bonanza of data and insights that can accelerate pipelines and drive revenue. In addition, virtual events produce a ton of multi-use content: The transcript from any event can generate blogs, e-books, social media content, online videos, quotes for the annual report and so much more. By analyzing that transcript further and leveraging insights, marketers can quickly generate and execute new campaign ideas.

Although many may dread the uncertain times ahead and the “virtual fatigue” that comes with it, there is some good news: We may not go back to the way things were, but that may not necessarily be a bad thing, either. Does anyone really want to go back to the days when the selection of what you could buy was limited to what your local stores carried? Do we want to risk late fees rather than just watching movies online? Do we only want to connect with people like us, or do we value the ability to connect with a more diverse and wider audience?

Virtual event technology is going to make staying at home way more productive and less of a grind than it ever was before—whether you’re watching surgeons or drag queens. If it helps us understand the true value of connection despite our distance from one another, isn’t that a transformation worth celebrating?

Reimagine your next event by requesting a demo.

— Cathy Song Novelli, SVP, Marketing and Communications, Hubilo

This article originally appeared in Business Reporter. Image credit: iStock id1291113157