Why virtual events are here to stay

With things slowly starting to open back up, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the future of virtual events. Are they going away? Now what?

Many of my clients are CMOs and event marketers, so it’s been a really interesting topic to explore with them. The overwhelming consensus I’m hearing is that virtual events are not only here to stay but getting better and better by the day. They’re not just “the next best thing” to IRL (in real life). Why? A lot of it boils down to convenience, audience, engagement, and habits.

Let’s dive in!

Convenience

Virtual events are super efficient and cost effective. For event marketers, they take a lot less time to plan and can be templatized (rinse & repeat!). For attendees, you can log in from anywhere in the world. You don’t have to travel and block off an entire day or more. Most purple cork events last 1 hour on the dot, which we find is just right and lets people get back to their day or evening.

Virtual events are also cost effective since you’re saving on travel/accommodation costs and other venue expenses. Because of this ability to stretch the budget, companies can host smaller-scale events more frequently—at least once a month where IRL is usually quarterly at best.

The right people

When you host a virtual event, you’re in the driver’s seat with who attends. Most importantly, you get face time with the key decision-makers from your top accounts, often more senior executives. In the past, the C-suite might only have been available for a rushed breakfast or cocktail. When all you need is a Zoom login, and you’ve sent everyone hard-to-find wines, you get curious CEOs and executives to join for an hour with their undivided attention.

Also, due to the relaxed nature of a virtual event like a wine tasting, your audience won’t feel like they’re being pitched to in the traditional sense. We all love some good “social selling”!

Because of this more focused targeting, virtual events are high ROI. We’ve seen firsthand with purple cork that our wine tastings help fill the pipeline and close deals, almost immediately after the event.

More meaningful interactions

Technologies like Zoom have made virtual events more engaging than IRL, with features like polling, show of hands, chat, breakout rooms, and a whole heck of lot less “death by powerpoint.” Phew!

Breakout rooms are especially helpful to create engagement and get conversation going. Not only do you have a more senior audience, you slice and dice breakout room groupings to get the right discussions going with peers and your team. You might put prospects and customers together with a similar problem/challenge, or similar titles, similar industries, etc. At a physical conference, networking tends to be a lot more haphazard.

New habits

We’ve all picked up a few (or more) pandemic habits. I was chatting with a friend about our Whole Foods delivery habit and how it’s just too easy to go back. We’ve similarly all gotten so used to Zoom and other virtual platforms. I even Zoom often with a friend who lives only 30 minutes away! It’s easy, it’s fun, it keeps us connected.

Another habit that has fundamentally changed is business travel. People will take fewer corporate trips going forward. McKinsey estimates that corporate travel will only recover to around 80 percent of prepandemic levels by 2024.

Salesforce has been especially vocal about their new “Success From Anywhere” mantra. Their Chief People Officer says, “New ways of working, new ways of connecting, new ways of advancing our culture by helping our customers, taking care of our employees, serving all of our stakeholders and creating success from anywhere.” It’s a new world.

A few closing thoughts on the future of physical events…

The term “hybrid” is getting thrown around a lot these days. I’m personally not bullish on this format given the complexity. Event marketers know how to run successful physical events. Many now know how to run successful virtual ones too, or they bring in a turnkey platform like purple cork. Hybrid is a different animal. I can see virtual speakers, like a winemaker in Sonoma, broadcasting to in-person attendees, but I don’t easily see a mix of virtual and in-person attendees fostering the right level of engagement.

Physical events are absolutely coming back. That said, it will be trickier with a slew of new health risk mitigation factors for event marketers to navigate, and participants may still be cautious to attend well into 2022.

To wrap up, virtual events aren’t going away! Neither are physical. Hybrid—we’ll see. With all of these channels and ways to reach target audiences, it’s an exciting time and bright future for field marketing. See you soon in the vineyards, virtually or IRL!