Hybrid Events

Hybrid Event Planning: Five Tips to a Successful Journey

Eventually Learning Team

03 February 2022

Read time 4 minutes 45 seconds

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela

According to the recent forecasts released by event organizations, the future of events is hybrid conferences. For example, Meeting Spotlight’s statistics reveal that 73% of event planners believe they will see more hybrid events as we advance. As the popularity of hybrid events increases, do you know why people will opt for a hybrid model? The experience of face-to-face interactions and meetings is irreplaceable. The advantage of an in-person and a virtual component in a hybrid event is much liked by attendees. Are you interested in planning a hybrid event? Let’s look at the five best hybrid event planning tips for organizers.

Create a Set of SMART Goals

The first step towards event planning is deciding on specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound goals. Once you set an objective for your hybrid event, you can proceed with the activities needed to execute your event to perfection! To determine the further course, you can ask yourself questions like:

What is success for your event?
How many attendees would you want at your hybrid conference?
What do you want to establish or say through your event?
Will you need volunteers and new team members to prepare for the event?

As soon as you have a team in place and you agree upon common goals, you can start measuring the metrics as you progress with your activities to track achievements and success.

Leverage an Event Management Platform for Efficiency

First of all, you will need a fantastic and handy event management platform to host and promote your hybrid event. Just to tell you, there are exciting event management platforms out there that popular event companies and organizers trust to host events. So, if you have not acquired an event platform till now, it’s time to do so! For a hybrid conference, you must find a platform that allows you to:

Register attendees
Integrate with multiple tools
Allow attendees to check-in once at the venue
Enables engagement activities
Tracks attendee data and activity

Here are some options for a hybrid event management platform:

Define Your Attendees and Invite Them Personally

When do you start the invitation process for attendees? Well, once you are set with a date, time and venue for your hybrid event, you can go ahead with the event invites! The most crucial part is defining the set of audience you want at your event, so sit down with your teams and identify the kind of prospects you would want at your hybrid conference. To make the selection process easier, you can ask yourself questions like:

Do you want established industry leaders at your event?
Do you want to invite subject matter experts?
Do you want attendees who have attended some of your past events?
Would you like to invite professionals who are looking for upskilling?

Once you are done shortlisting attendees for your event, you can dive straight into your CRM to segment profiles. Next, you can now use your list to send out personalized invites and ask them to attend your event in-person, virtually or both.

Make Sure to Optimize Experiences

What is the key to making audiences happy at a hybrid event? First, you have to optimize experiences and activities equally for in-person and virtual audiences to ensure no one feels left out! The best event planning tip here is to let both types of attendees have a similar experience. How can you confirm that you tend to all your attendees without bias?

You can test your event software equipment and tools to see if it works for both audiences.
Create a standard checklist to see if you have items like event swag bags, engagement activities, networking sessions, food and beverages, etc., for both sets of attendees.
Reach out to an event planning expert for consultation, guidance or tips.

Unleash Your Magic with Majestic Marketing Campaigns

One of the most critical aspects of hybrid event planning is to create targeted campaigns for wooing your attendees. A few components that must be included during your event promotion activities are – the details of your event, how to sign up, what value you are offering to the attendees. Secondly, your marketing campaign must involve:

Sending emails and customized invites to previous attendees, new audiences, speakers, sponsors, etc. to increase the number of registrations
Be active and create social media posts to engage attendees
Share event details on your website
Promote your landing page
Share press releases about your hybrid conference
Partner with a media organization for broader reach
Write a piece about your event in your corporate newsletter
Let your speakers and sponsors share important anecdotes about your event

Conclusion

Your work with an event is never over! As an event marketer or a planner, you can customize spectacular hybrid event experiences for your attendees. Keeping in mind a few simple tips like defining event goals, finding an event platform, sending personalized invites and creating thoughtful marketing campaigns can scale your hybrid event to an incredible level. So step into the world of hybrid event possibilities now!

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are hybrid events popular?

There are incredible benefits of hybrid events and that is why organizers are venturing into it. Take a look at the reasons why hybrid events are popular.

Attendees have the option to attend the event in person or virtually
All attendees have access to similar content and engagement activities
Networking with stakeholders becomes exciting
The scope for inviting more sponsors and speakers increases
The opportunities for extracting a higher ROI are ample

How do you run a hybrid event?

Five essential steps to follow, to run a hybrid event are:

Define a goal
Get into event budgeting and allocation
Create event buzz through marketing mediums
Invite hosts on-site to deliver impactful sessions
Plan communication, networking and engagement activities to merge both audiences

What is an example of a hybrid event?

Social Media Marketing World is an exciting example of a hybrid event hosted at San Diego. It is available for audiences to attend in-person and access sessions virtually. It converges excellent strategists and social media marketing experts who have moved online audiences, in proven ways. The event is scheduled to happen around March 14-16, 2022.