[Webinar Recap] Keys to Virtual Event Success with Banzai

Banzai’s recent webinar, Keys to Virtual Event Success with Banzai featured tips and tricks for making sure your events run successfully. Banzai’s Director of Customer Adoption, Rachel Stanley, shared learnings that we’ve picked up over time as virtual events have become increasingly more common. 

Event details

What formats are most successful? 

• Live webinars that are 60 minutes or less typically are more successful than longer events. Remember that Banzai is usually reaching out to net new leads, so the shorter the better especially if you’re concerned about attendance. 
• Full day or half day events should have flexibility on attendance throughout the event, and it’s great if you can offer breakout options. This allows attendees to pick and choose which parts of the event that are most relevant to them. 
• Offering On Demand as an option is really helpful as people are used to viewing content when it’s convenient for them, and they may not be available at the exact time of the live event.
  

What content is most engaging? 

• Content that is relevant to your audience is obviously crucial to an event’s success, but we also see that tying in current events and seasonal themes can help increase interest.
• Recognizable speakers are definitely a draw - we’ve seen some big celebrities involved in virtual events, which can be expensive. Industry experts or speakers from well-known brands can also make your event something that people won’t want to miss.
• Thought leadership in general is always going to go over well for net new leads who might not yet be shopping for your product or realize that they need your product, but they want to learn information about the industry they’re in. 
  

What incentives drive attendance? 

• Gift cards - you can host an event over lunchtime and send registrants a gift card to have a meal delivered. 
• Prize drawings - doing a drawing for one larger item at the end of your event.
• Items related to your event, for example sending a cocktail kit for a happy hour event or sending ingredients for a cooking class.
• CPE Credits 
  

Creating your event in Banzai

Successful events have a 3 week lead time

• The #1 contributing factor to an unsuccessful event is having less than 2 weeks lead time. If we have less than two weeks, we’ll need to condense the email schedule and will have less time for phone outreach.
• Enter your event into Banzai 3-4 weeks in advance.  
• 15 business days is the sweet spot for total days of outreach, which means 18 business days prior to your event, you need to entire your event details into Banzai.
  

Compelling descriptions are important

• Be specific: When you add your event description, keep in mind this is what leads see on the Banzai registration page.  Clearly describe what they’ll learn by attending your event. If you’re hosting a longer event, include your agenda with timestamps so that leads can see when you’ll be covering the most relevant topics to them.
• Keep it short: Try to find the sweet spot between including all of the important content, but also keeping your description concise and ideally not so long that you have to scroll down the registration page to read it. 
• Include Highlights: What makes your event unique? Mention featured speakers so that leads know who they’ll get to hear from.
  

Always be Sure to add a cover photo

• This is a really important step that sometimes gets overlooked. Having a cover image on your registration page makes it much more engaging and also allows you to brand the page. 
• Branded graphics are great, and it’s helpful to include speaker photos too, especially if they are recognizable. Remember to use colorful, crisp images. 
  

Additional best practices

• Offering a recording
• Allowing the use of all Banzai outreach channels
• Sender Profile is a VP or C-Level title
• Using your own subdomain
• Providing your own email copy
• Opt-Ins that are optional, not required
  

Building your audience

Helpful audience profile traits

• Broad Audience: This ideally means that you choose seniority + job function(s) without target or suppression accounts. Keywords are great if you really need us to pull only exact titles, but they will decrease your audience as well so that’s something to keep in mind.
• Target Contact List: If you have a list of ideal target contacts, we can email and call those contacts on your behalf.
• Aligned to Content: Making sure that your audience profile is aligned with your content will make it more likely that leads will want to attend.
• Multi-Country Campaigns: With virtual events, you can expand your target audience to include areas from all over the world.  We are seeing really great success with events that are targeted to EMEA and APAC, and other regions throughout!
  

Challenging audience profile traits

• Narrow Audience Profile: Example would be limiting your audience to VP level and up only, and/or using keywords.
• Target Accounts Only: Totally fine to use target accounts, just want to keep in mind that this limits Banzai outreach to only leads at those companies.  
  

Post-Event

• It’s always important to do a post-event assessment after your event to see what can be learned, what should be changed moving forward and how we can improve.  During onboarding, your Customer Adoption Manager will always offer an Event Review after your first events where we go over key takeaways.  You can absolutely do the same with your CSM if you’re an existing customer - we want you to stay engaged with us so that insights can be shared, and so that we can get your feedback as well!
  
  

You can reach the Customer Success team at any time if you’re looking for insight and advice on your events and campaigns in Banzai by emailing customersuccess@banzai.io.  The Banzai team is here to help you succeed!

Check out the webinar Keys to Virtual Event Success with Banzai on-demand.

Related help center resources: 

Guide to Different Virtual Event Types

Pre-Launch Checklist

Tips to Increase Target Audience Size