Ideas For Hosting A Virtual Partner Event

Events are one of the best ways to get to know your partners on a personal level and make them feel valued. While it’s common to hold these events in-person, virtual events can provide just as much value and allow for unique opportunities.

Run a virtual event that isn't terrible with the event planning workbook.

No matter what you choose, your goal for any partner event should be to have fun and make your guests leave feeling even better about your brand than they did before. Here are some of our favorite ideas for virtual partner events that attendees will love.

Let Your Partners Do The Talking

Give your partners and customers the opportunity to express how your company has helped them by inviting people to give a brief presentation or share a story. Allowing people to be a part of the event and share their experience is an impactful way to showcase how your solution helps to improve lives.

Make It a Cinematic Experience

One of our favorite virtual event ideas is to turn your partner event into more of a premiere. There are so many unique ways you could go with this. From writing your own movie script, creating funny product videos, and even showing a favorite film, the possibilities are endless. Have a movie or something already filmed and ready to go allows you to focus on other important event planning tasks.

Get Crafty

With so many of us stuck at a computer for our jobs all day, getting to work with our hands is a privilege. Plan a fun craft project that your attendees can do at home, with the plan on sending them the materials needed ahead of time. This is great for not only encouraging teamwork but also showing off your brand’s fun personality.

Consider a Virtual Happy Hour

You don’t have to opt-out of serving any food just because your event is virtual. For large events, send your attendees something delicious, like a box of cookies from a local bakeshop to enjoy during your event. For intimate gatherings, opt for something more impressive, such as food delivery or a box of prepped meals.

TIP: The best part about virtual events is that you are able to host people from all over the world. If your company or other presenters are located in various countries and regions around the world, send your guests something from those places. Examples include candy, tea and coffee, cookies, and more.

TIP #2: If you do plan to offer a treat, make sure to ask your guests about any allergy information.

Make It Social

Take advantage of the many different social streaming sites, such as Facebook Live, in order to stream your event to a larger audience.

Tip: Getting attendee information when live streaming through various platforms can be difficult. If you find yourself in this situation, considering only live-streaming the first 10 minutes or even one guest speaker. By doing this, you not only open your potential viewership but are also able to show off your skills, enticing those to register who otherwise needed an extra push.

Host A Virtual Music Party

Sometimes the experience doesn’t need to be about selling to your prospects. Your focus should be on enhancing their lives—and there’s no better medicine than music. Take advantage of apps like Spotify or Pandora that allow you to create playlists to share with others. Encourage your guests to add their favorites too.

One of the best parts about this idea is how many options for the actual event you could have.

• Release a new feature or content piece and have the playlist come out at the same time as listening material.
• Hold a working session and let the music play the in background.
• Make it a networking hour. With the music playing, encourage your guests to ask questions and engage with everyone. Questions about favorite artists or concert memories are great ice-breakers.

Tip: Live music can still happen in a virtual space. Plan for your event to feature a live virtual concert from a favorite artist.

Get Active

While learning and improving skills is always important, many people want to attend events to get away from the typical hustle and bustle of their daily work. Consider incorporating some time for meditating, hold a yoga session, a dance party, or some other physical activity that can be done from the comfort of your viewer’s homes.

Gamify It

It’s no secret that people are obsessed with playing games online. Take your virtual event to the next level by creating a virtual game for your guests to explore throughout the event. Have your attendees navigate a land to find special speaking sessions and earn badges for their engagement. You can even make it personal by allowing guests to create avatars and add company logos to brand parts of the game.

Scavenger Hunt

Create a virtual scavenger hunt spanning across your website and other social channels. The hunt can be your main event, or you can use it as something to build excitement leading up to the big day. Scavenger hunts are great for social sharing and encouraging engagement with your brand.

Explore Our World’s Wonders

One of the best parts about working at Banzai is that we get to work with awesome people who live all over the world. We share what we’re cooking on a Slack channel and have the unique opportunity to learn about different cultures every day. It’s always really exciting when someone shares a look into their community. Many of us may never see these places in real life, but virtual work makes it possible.

If you have it available to you, take advantage of a great office view or remote employees who work in beautiful places and make your backdrop a part of the experience.

Tip: Consider hosting your event during sunset.