Organising an online conference: Get started with our 6 essential tips

Organ­is­ing online con­fer­ences is becom­ing increas­ing­ly easy thanks to the devel­op­ment of new tools that are avail­able to all. How­ev­er, it’s impor­tant that you ded­i­cate as much time to their prepa­ra­tion as you would for any oth­er event, in order to max­imise your chances of achiev­ing your objec­tives. Here are our tips for get­ting start­ed in organ­is­ing online con­fer­ences with all the odds in your favour.

Sum­ma­ry

1. Meet the pre­req­ui­sites
2. Man­age reg­is­tra­tions for your online con­fer­ence
3. Pro­pose pre­mi­um access
4. Explain the pro­ce­dure to fol­low on the day
5. Com­mu­ni­cate after the online con­fer­ence
6. Find new part­ners

1. Meet the prerequisites

Organ­is­ing an online con­fer­ence requires you to mas­ter cer­tain essen­tial tools, start­ing with a video­con­fer­ence plat­form. First of all, ask your­self what fea­tures you need depend­ing on the for­mat of your con­fer­ence, the num­ber of speak­ers and atten­dees, its dura­tion, etc. You will then be able to sort among the mul­ti­ple tools and their end­less fea­tures, includ­ing unlim­it­ed num­ber of atten­dees, ques­tion-and-answer win­dow, screen shar­ing, file send­ing, and so on. Zoom, YouTube, Google Meets, Skype… there’s cer­tain­ly no short­age of solu­tions. Some organ­is­ers even use What­sApp or Face­book Mes­sen­ger. The qual­i­ty of your inter­net con­nec­tion should also be con­sid­ered. Make sure it holds up!

In terms of con­tent, cre­ate a unique online con­fer­ence plan in order to dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self from all the oth­er forms of con­fer­ences that already exist. With the devel­op­ment of vir­tu­al events, you should high­light your added val­ue and what makes you dif­fer­ent. To do this, try to sched­ule speak­ers who wouldn’t have been able to phys­i­cal­ly trav­el to your loca­tion and thus nego­ti­ate a low­er fee.

2. Manage registrations for your online conference

Organ­is­ers who use a book­ing sys­tem for online con­fer­ences are win­ning on a num­ber of fronts. They sell access to their con­fer­ence pri­or to the event and there­fore know the pre­cise num­ber of atten­dees. They set dif­fer­ent prices accord­ing to the pro­ce­dure for their con­fer­ence and gath­er infor­ma­tion on each attendee, includ­ing sur­name, first name, posi­tion, com­pa­ny, etc. They mon­i­tor the pres­ence of those who have reg­is­tered with a ded­i­cat­ed fea­ture.

Weezevent’s solu­tions pro­pose all these intu­itive fea­tures for all con­fer­ence organ­is­ers. Man­age reg­is­tra­tions for your video­con­fer­ence by cre­at­ing an event, then pub­lish­ing your reg­is­tra­tion mod­ule on your web­site or your Weezevent mini-site. Gath­er valu­able infor­ma­tion on their pro­files with a cus­tomised reg­is­tra­tion form.

Tip: At the start of your online con­fer­ence, review each attendee on your Weezevent inter­face by fol­low­ing the path Appli­ca­tions > Access con­trol > Access lists > Actions [Name of your event] > Start tick­et val­i­da­tion. Tick the box­es that cor­re­spond to the reg­is­tered atten­dees and find out your atten­dance rate.

3. Propose premium access

Struc­tured pric­ing for your online con­fer­ence will make it eas­i­er for you to man­age pre­mi­um or VIP access. With a book­ing sys­tem for online con­fer­ences, offer addi­tion­al ser­vices to atten­dees who choose a pre­mi­um or VIP price. This can take the form of a small busi­ness meet­ing after the con­fer­ence or exclu­sive con­tent on the part of your keynote speak­er.  Use your imag­i­na­tion and boost your rev­enue!

4. Explain the procedure to follow on the day

Pro­vide guid­ance to those who have reg­is­tered up to your online con­fer­ence by includ­ing the link to the event in the con­fir­ma­tion email as well as all prac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion designed to reas­sure them. Not all your atten­dees will nec­es­sar­i­ly be big technophiles, so it’s up to you to do your utmost to ensure they’re all present on the day. To do this, remind them of this infor­ma­tion between 24 hours and 1 hour before the online con­fer­ence. With our email­ing and CRM solu­tion for online con­fer­ences, sched­ule the send­ing of this email in just a few clicks. Since all those who have reg­is­tered for your event are synced with the CRM, you can seg­ment and tar­get your cam­paigns as you wish.

5. Communicate after the online conference

Organ­is­ing an online con­fer­ence is not an end in itself. Once you’ve reached the dead­line, the adven­ture begins! Plan­ning anoth­er edi­tion, a face-to-face con­fer­ence, or any oth­er event would be a good way to fol­low up on what you suc­cess­ful­ly organ­ised the first time. Your com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy must there­fore be fine-tuned, espe­cial­ly if you decide to con­tin­ue hold­ing online con­fer­ences. The vir­tu­al link with your audi­ence must be nur­tured on a recur­ring and reg­u­lar basis, like an essen­tial meet­ing.

So, between each online con­fer­ence, launch a dis­cus­sion and ask your atten­dees why they enjoyed the pre­vi­ous con­fer­ence, which top­ics should be addressed at the next edi­tion, the speak­ers they’re impa­tient to hear from, and so on. With Weez­Tar­get, our CRM for online con­fer­ences, you can eas­i­ly seg­ment your audi­ences and hit the bulls­eye with attrac­tive emails accord­ing to each pro­file: reg­u­lar attendee, reg­is­tered but not attend­ed, speak­er, etc. Mon­i­tor the KPIs for each email cam­paign in real time, includ­ing con­ver­sion rates, num­ber of tick­ets pur­chased, turnover gen­er­at­ed, and so on. You can even track these indi­ca­tors for your pub­li­ca­tions on social net­works with our link track­ing tool.

6. Find new partners

The vir­tu­al nature of online con­fer­ences doesn’t mean you can’t look for new part­ners. You just need to envis­age dif­fer­ent forms of exchange. For instance, you could offer a tar­get­ed organ­i­sa­tion to pay you a cer­tain amount in order to cre­ate online pub­lic­i­ty on Insta­gram, YouTube or Face­book. For the organ­i­sa­tion, asso­ci­at­ing with a vir­tu­al event that’s in tune with the times will give them a mod­ern image and guar­an­tee a lev­el of vis­i­bil­i­ty. For you, this will ensure more reg­is­tra­tions if your tar­get­ing is suc­cess­ful. Envis­age your future part­ner­ships!

Are you ready to launch your online con­fer­ence? Man­ag­ing reg­is­tra­tions and pre­mi­um access, CRM, com­mu­ni­ca­tion… Take a look at all of our online solu­tions’ fea­tures by click­ing on the but­ton below:

Organ­is­ing a con­fer­ence

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