Five Reasons to Run Your Own Virtual Conferences

Conferencing has changed. Gone are the days when prospects and customers were willing to travel significant distances. That's why, last December, Kaltura ran its first Virtual Summit, dedicated to online video in education, learning, and training.

The results exceeded our expectations so we have scheduled two further summits in June. It's also helped us identify the reasons why you should consider running your own Virtual Conference.

Accelerate pipeline deals

The Virtual Summit significantly accelerated the speed at which deals in our new business pipeline were signed. Those institutions that were already evaluating us said that the accessibility of the virtual conference made it a very easy way for them to learn more about our offerings and to connect with our existing clients, resulting in a faster decision.

Reach more prospects and clients

Registrations were much higher than for a traditional vendor conference because travel was taken out of the equation. We had over 2,600 people worldwide registering for the event and over 1,300 actual attendees. This gave us more than 900 new leads.

Gain more insight

You can get a much better understanding of what attendees are interested in because you can see which presentations they opted to attend, which virtual exhibitor ‘booths’ they decided to visit, and whom they requested to speak with. This allows you to tailor follow-up communications more effectively.     

Highly targeted networking

With a virtual conference, a genuinely interactive dimension can be added so that attendees can easily identify othes to whom they would like to chat (by institution name/job title/etc.). In contrast, at a traditional conference people have to scour the room looking at name badges - a much less efficient process. 

Easy booth visitor capture

Virtual booths mean exhibitors don’t need to worry about recording visitor details or scanning badges, because anyone who clicks to enter the booth is automatically recorded and added to a database. Exhibitors can also search attendees by job title/company name/country, and invite relevant attendees to chat or to visit the virtual booth, making it much easier to target and meet potential partners and customers.

As marketers, we constantly work hard to generate leads, while staying within our budget constraints. It’s all about our ability to track the ROI of our marketing activities and understand what’s working and what’s not. Despite some scepticism from a few team members, the virtual event definitely paid off, and everyone was in favour of conducting another one this year, and on a bigger scale too.

To get a taster of what is possible with virtual conferences, why not register for the Kaltura Video Summit 2013.

Photo (cc) Kalexanderson

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