To kick off 2023 as an organization, Cvent returned to a hybrid event format for our 2023 Cvent Annual Kick off Week. In the past several years due to the pandemic, we hosted these events virtually via the Attendee Hub, but this year, we held a series of hybrid events, with over 2,600 employees from North America and Europe attending in person and tuning in virtually.
There are several events that make up our Annual Kick Off Week, including our Companywide meeting, Event Divisional All Hands, Hospitality Divisional All Hands, and Sales Kick Off. For the ~1,750+ who were attending the events in person, the excitement of seeing and catching up with colleagues in person was palpable and the virtual audience was equally as lively throughout the events as well!
For those of you who are planning and managing hybrid events or have made the full return to in-person events, follow along as we highlight the different Cvent solutions that were used to execute these successful hybrid events, so you can get some inspiration for your future events!
Event Website and Registration
Our event planning team utilized the event website and registration process to have attendees register for these events and stay informed leading up to them. Invitation emails were sent out linking to the registration process for employees to register for the events and receive a custom registration experience with different information based on how they were attending the events (ex: if they were local to an office, traveling to an office, or remote, and then the attendee types were also segmented by region.)
Once registered, there was an FAQ page available to let attendees know what to expect and travel information for those traveling in from out of town. Confirmation emails and custom “Know Before You Go” emails by the audience were sent with necessary event information, FAQs, links to access the Attendee Hub, and a QR code to be used for check-in for those attending in-person or at a regional office watch party.
Attendee Hub
Attendee Hub was truly at the core of delivering the hybrid event experiences. Virtual attendees were able to tune into the Attendee Hub website to view live streams of the sessions from the venues, use the reactions feature to share their impressions of the session content in real-time, engage in the session chat (which was a steady stream of engagement throughout all of the events), answer polls, and submit questions for Q&A. In-person attendees used the Attendee Hub event app to view their personalized schedule onsite, view the venue floor plans, and answer polls and submit questions for Q&A throughout the events.
Speakers used the Live Display feature to display questions submitted via live Q&A and responses submitted via Live Polling for both audiences to see in real time during the event. In addition to using the engagement features that Attendee Hub has to offer, both audiences were able to connect with fellow Cventers and share thoughts, pictures, and excitement throughout the week in a featured Activity Feed text discussion, as well as utilize the 1:1 messaging feature to communicate and network with other attendees. Push notifications were used to communicate updates and reminders during the event and the on-demand catalog was enabled to allow attendees to view the content on-demand post-event.
OnArrival
For those in-person attendees, OnArrival was used for on-demand badge printing and check-in. Attendees utilized kiosk mode in OnArrival to check in and print their badges on demand. In addition to name, title, and department, the name badges included a QR code for session scanning, venue, and Wi-Fi information, as well as QR codes to download the event app on an Apple or Android device. We also used the “Tap and Go” kiosks for attendees to check into the various events throughout the week once they had their badges to track participation. In addition to those attending the events in person, we had attendees in regional offices across North America and in Europe and Canada check in with OnArrival for watch parties for these events throughout the week.
Surveys
Event and session-level surveys were used to gather feedback from attendees about what they thought about the events, content, speakers, suggestions for next year’s events, and more. Attendees could take these surveys from within the Attendee Hub web or app or via a link in post-event emails.
In Conclusion
Overall, there are a plethora Cvent solutions that you can employ to plan and manage any type of event (virtual, in-person, hybrid, or webinars) and these are just a few examples of how these solutions came to life to make a week of hybrid events possible for our own organization. The best part is that all these solutions are a part of one single platform, automating your entire event planning and management process and ensuring that all your necessary event data and reporting is available in one place.
Say goodbye to those manual processes and decentralized and disconnected data and reporting and say hello to your all-in-one platform for every event! We’d love to hear how your organization has used Cvent solutions to execute your events. Please share your tips, tricks, and any questions you may have for other Cvent users within the Open Forum in the newly redesigned Cvent Community! If you’ve hosted a great virtual, hybrid, or in-person event powered by Cvent solutions, we want to share your success and would love to have you showcase your achievements.
