In a post on Skift’s Event Manager Blog today, Julius Solaris writes that we need a better business model for virtual events. “[These events] need to help brands keep the conversation alive while bringing in revenue. We risk losing track of the endgame if we get sucked into the vortex of free events without a solid business proposition for what we are doing.”   He gives six suggestions: 1. Decide whether you are a conference or a tradeshow. 2. Use a subscription model for ticketed events. 3. Build a community. 4. Reward live attendance. 5. Offer better content on demand. 6. Offer one-to-one meetings and networking.   Number two intrigues me. “One of the best ideas for ticketed events that happen regularly is to bundle them and offer subscriptions," Solaris writes. "As Netflix does with shows, planners should deal with events. Bundling creates more value than selling tickets for individual events.”   This strat ...

I wrote last week that there can be a lot to like about virtual events—global reach, access to more speakers, expanded Q&As. But one virtual events problem that’s not discussed as much—as say, the networking issue—that we don’t have for in-person events is getting registrants to actually attend. I mean, who isn’t going to Florida or California or Vegas after signing up and booking flights? 

Look at your data. "[Data] value is in the eye of the beholder," said Michael Marrale, CEO, M Science, in an informative Alternative Data 101 session with Meg Hargreaves, COO, Industry Dive. "You'll find value in surprising places. Typically, we've partnered with companies that don't fully realize the value of their data. They can be surprised" when told their data has value and content licensing potential. "Don't think that size of the company is the main factor. It's really about the data. You can have relatively small revenue but big data capabilities." 

Offer content—video, gamification, polling—and then bring people together around that. Speaking at the ongoing-through-May CES Deconstructed Jesse Serventi, founding partner, Renovus Capital, said (in a virtual discussion) today that we're really just starting to learn how to "have a keen understanding of how to engage an audience virtually. A lot of it is asynchronous. You're on an island. You're going through it by yourself. It's tough to engage. But then it's also synchronous where you might be watching many hours of content. That's tough too. The companies doing the best job are bringing in both. They might be starting off with prerecorded asynchronous content, watching video, doing a multiple choice quiz, and then coming together to do a group exercise around that and developing relationships—reaching you through multiple modalities. That's just a great way to engage the customer or get customers hooked in an even better way than live in-person training ...

I peeked into Education Week's Online Summit last week and was very impressed. Halfway through they already had almost 1,000 live attendees and 550 comments! It took place on a platform called Brazen, that's usually associated more with virtual career fairs. But it works very well for their summits which are centered around text-based chats with editorial staff—and experts in the K-12 world—and entering various "reporter" or "sponsor" rooms.   "Brazen has been with us since the beginning of our online summits," Matthew Cibellis, director of programming for live and virtual events for Education Week, wrote to me today. "That's because we were already using them for our online job fairs. The price tag back then was too high, and we didn't have sufficient job fair sponsorship to merit keeping them. But my production director asked me to meet with them to discuss how versatile it could be for more content-driven meet-ups. Brazen only convinced me when I st ...

As Education Week gears up for another Online Summit this afternoon—with more than 2000 registrants signed on—it is clear now that, knowingly or not, the publisher was amazingly prescient in starting these in 2018.

Two weeks ago I wrote about Copyrightlaws.com's Zoom On In, a 20-minute virtual lunchtime session they do to focus on a specific topic. Last week, I'm told that they got 250 listeners signed on! Lesley Ellen Harris also co-presented a SIPA webinar about Zoom On In on Jan. 16. (Watch it here.)

I recall a test from a couple years ago where the subscriptions marketing team at Conde Nast in London wanted to promote cross-sell subscriptions for the magazine WIRED so they tested three titles:

At a SIPA Annual 2018 session last June on Creating a High-Performance Culture Across Your Company, Brian Crotty, CEO of OPIS, spoke about identifying star potential in your employees.

Restate the key value proposition of your webinar in reminders, writes Ken Molay on The Webinar Blog. Never send reminder emails that just say, "Your webinar is tomorrow." Add a sentence that reinforces why they were interested in the first place: "'Just a reminder that tomorrow is your chance to learn ways to improve the efficiency of your operations.'"