TheWith the ongoing covid-19 vaccinations and ease of restrictions, hybrid events are gaining popularity. Hybrid events seem to be the safest option with global outreach. The event organizers, sponsors, and attendees prefer to attend hybrid events for their immense benefits over in-person and virtual events.
Firstly, we will understand the mechanism of the hybrid event platform, then the advantages followed by its examples.
What are the Hybrid Events?
The Hybrid events enable you to host the event live with the speaker and add a virtual component to it to increase the reach globally, so your audience can engage remotely from anywhere.
The way how your audience is engaging makes the hybrid event different from the live events. The participants of the hybrid events can interact face-to-face or virtually from their desktop/mobile phones.
The internal hybrid events focus on the employees, stakeholders, staff, etc. For large companies, it becomes difficult to gather all the internal stakeholders at the same place. To organize an internal hybrid event, you can choose your headquarters to Livestream and invite the people to attend the event.
The external hybrid events focus on its customers, clients, and prospects. The external hybrid event includes video conferences, product demonstrations, trade shows, and workshops that draw more virtual and in-person attendees to your event.
Hybrid Event Platform: Definition
The Hybrid event platform offers two different experiences in a single event for onsite and virtual attendees. It opens up the ways for both kinds of attendees; one who cannot travel and desires to attend the entire event online, and another who yearns to be at the physical venue and attend the event with real-time experience. The hybrid event platform aims to bridge the gap between both types of attendees to have similar experiences.
Major Features to look for in the Hybrid Event Platform
The major features that your hybrid event platform must have:
Customized Branding
Get branding with colors, logos, etc., on your registration page and other web pages. The colorful pages with a brand embossed on them entice the audience. Also, the audience will remember the brand whenever they log in to your event.
Livestream and Broadcast of Pre-recorded content
The hybrid event platform must provide multiple options to broadcast content such as Livestream, pre-recorded content, and making content available on-demand. As per the requirements of exhibitors, content can be made available to the audience. The creative and unique content can keep the audience engaged for a longer duration which is difficult when sitting in front of a desktop. Your high-quality content and the better features of the platform will engage your audience in the best possible way.
Networking and Engagement features
The interaction among the attendees, speakers, and exhibitors is a must to make an event successful. The hybrid event platform provides some great tools to make virtual interaction easier.
Some of the networking and engagement features are:
Q & A Session: Mostly in hybrid events, the speaker delivers the content physically and makes it available to the audience via the platform. During the session, plenty of questions might arise in the mind of the attendees. They can post their questions on the hybrid event platform virtually to get the answers. Q & A Sessions should be held at regular intervals to enable the attendees to interact with the speakers and clear their doubts.
Live Chats: Live Chats feature enables the participants to have real-time conversations with the attendees and speakers. The audience can live chat with the help desk and tech desk if they face any issues.
Live Polls: Engage the audience in the live polls to make the event more interactive. Ask Multiple-choice questions to get responses from the audience instantly through the live polls. Or ask Analytical questions to determine what kind of experience the attendee had in the event.
Taking Feedback from Audience
The hybrid event platform should provide the audience a feedback option to allow them to share their experiences. The event organizers should analyze the feedback from the audience to know what the audience feels about their event. They should identify their weak points to work on further improvements if needed to be made in the next event.
Accurate Data Analytics
The role of a hybrid event platform is not over post-event. The platform needs to provide accurate data analytics of the audience navigation throughout the event. This Data analysis involves the engagement of users about what they liked and disliked in the event. The event organizers could gain valuable insights from the data and understand the participants and their behaviors.
Hybrid Event Platform: Advantages
Let us begin with the advantages of hosting a hybrid event:
Broader reach and increased attendance
The hybrid event platform enables the hosts to gather more attendees from different parts of the world as anybody can attend the event remotely. Attendees who were never interested in joining the in-person event can also come up to join the event.
Higher engagement with the audience
It is easier to engage the audience at live events. But to keep them engaged virtually, you need to involve them in certain activities. Organize a Q & A session where the audience can ask their questions with the live speaker.
Create a live poll that involves both types of attendees- onsite and online.
Sometimes onsite attendees do not feel comfortable expressing their views and feedback. But online attendees are engaged more by giving comments and feedback.
More opportunities for sponsorship
As stated earlier, hybrid events have a wider reach and increased attendees. So the sponsors can double their exposure by showcasing themselves in front of in-person and virtual attendees. Hosting a hybrid event brings more opportunities and lead generation for the event. So, it is beneficial for sponsors to gain and grow more through a single event.
Reduction in travel and F&B costs
With the option of virtual events, more people are shifting towards it and thus leads to a reduction in travel costs. Also, it is saving our environment from carbon emissions. The hosts used to offer food & beverage in the traditional events that led to a lot of expenditure and wastage. Hybrid events save you from all these costs as most of the attendees are virtual.
Better ROI (Return on investment)
By organizing the hybrid events, you may get a better return on investment. Due to the increase in attendees and better global reach, you draw the attention of more sponsors to your event.
You get reliable data analytics for the evaluation and processing of data.
For the live events, you need to spend money on renting a larger space. On the other hand, for virtual events, you need a virtual space to host the event. And this space can be used several times in the future with minimal expenditure.
You can enhance your online presence at a large scale without compromising your budget.
With the ongoing trend, you will have to adapt yourself and move on with the world. With the changing requirements of the audience, you cannot stay in the market just by hosting in-person events. Thus, with the hybrid events, you can cater to both types of attendees- online and offline.
Hybrid Event Platform Examples
Dreamcast
Dreamcast hosts a virtual and hybrid event for its audience with innovative features like live polls, gamification, AI-powered matchmaking tool, live chat, easy networking, live audio/video chat, Q & A sessions, and so on. All these interactive features allow the users to engage and grow more. Dreamcast offers 24×7 customer support to the audience to resolve their queries immediately. They hold expertise in hosting conferences, trade shows, fests, expos, exhibitions, fairs, etc.
Splash
Splash hosts virtual, in-person, and hybrid events by leveraging the creative experiences for the audience. The Splash works for the event organizers to get more business, draw more attendees to an event, and build a better relationship with the customers. Through the innovative designs and data, Splash keeps on making efforts to scale their events, engage and network with the audience and create memorable experiences for them.
Accelevent
Accelevent is a hybrid event platform that offers user-friendly features with customization. They focus on events like educational seminars, summits, fundraisers, hybrid conferences, and more. Engaging with workshops, networking with the exhibitors, virtual interaction with the individuals, live chat with the help desk/tech desk are the few features that empower the event organizers to host a successful event.
Airmeet
Airmeet aims to host conferences, small meetups, summits, fairs, and webinars to connect and collaborate more and more. With the engagement features, Airmeet focuses on creating immersive experiences for the audience. Every event on Airmeet is customized in design, seating arrangement, and appearance to entice the participants.
Bizzabo
Bizzabo is an event management software that offers online solutions to medium to large enterprises. The Bizzabo offers various tools and helps out in the easy-going management of hybrid and virtual events. Bizzabo aims to elevate the participants’ experiences by promoting peer-to-peer networking. Their technology is scalable and adaptable to the environment.
Wrapping Up
Do you want to host a hybrid event?
It is the perfect time to access the technology and leverage the right tools to host a hybrid event.
Have you ever hosted a hybrid event?
If not, then get in touch with Dreamcast. With the proper planning and guidance, organize a hybrid event that focuses on building trusted human connections and drive sustainable growth.
