7 Amazing Ways To Boost Engagement During Virtual Events

It’s no secret that the key to holding a virtual event that drives value is audience engagement. As per a study by Markletic, 49% of events industry marketers say that audience engagement is the most significant contributing factor to a successful event. It has become even more crucial with virtual events, as it’s harder to keep people focused when they’re attending an event from their workplace or from home. Despite their best efforts to stay focused, they may have a lot of distractions to contend with. That means your online event engagement needs to be top-notch.

Today, event planners have an array of technologies available to enhance the attendee experience – mobile apps, social walls, virtual reality, augmented reality, and wearable technology, just to name a few. However, regardless of what technology you choose to increase engagement, it should enhance the attendee experience, and not be a distraction. For your attendees to be engaged, you need to provide interactive elements so that your audience feels incredibly involved in your virtual event. 

In this round-up, we have curated a list of 7 amazing ways to boost engagement during virtual events.

1. Live Polls

Audience engagement is a conclusive part of an event that is directly associated with the success of an event. Talking about virtual events engagement features, Live Polls functionality is one of the most preferred engagement tools used in Conference Halls, Workshops, Auditoriums etc. By incorporating live polls in your virtual or hybrid events you can gain insight into the audience and keep them engaged. It enables attendees to participate in the Poll in real-time, wherein the results of the poll are displayed live on the screen of the attendees. Engaging attendees at different events through live Polling is a great way to boost engagement.

2. Create Break Out Rooms

You can also consider creating breakout rooms within your webinars. Additionally, you can assign each attendee to a specific room. This will enhance networking opportunities, act as ice breakers, help your audience brainstorm industry topics, and so on. As needed, you can create break-out rooms at the beginning, during, or end of an event.

3. Photo Booth

Let the love for photos thrive! By including a virtual photo booth, attendees will have a lasting memory to take home as a souvenir. You provide your attendees with a sponsored virtual photo booth experience by collaborating with vendors like OutSnapped.

The virtual photo booth by OutSnapped allows your attendees to click, save and share photos, offering a unique keepsake from your event. The photo booth enables event attendees to get clicked virtually with the photo frame being branded into the event theme. The customized event branding done on the frame helps generate an event recall value for the attendees. The pictures clicked by the attendees can be downloaded by the attendee to be used for their personal postings across various social media channels and can also be used by the brand for branding purposes. 

4. Push Notifications

Attendees receive push notifications that let them know where to go or where to find a surprise snack. You can send push notifications that are fun and engaging for virtual events, too. Share interesting facts via push notifications to make attendees feel like they are a part of something bigger. Use push notifications to tell attendees there are five minutes until the start of the keynote so grab a cup of coffee and settle in. You can also send a notification to remind people about an ongoing poll, contest or giveaway.

Tip:  Don’t overdo it with push notifications. They can be super helpful but when overdone, they can be super annoying.

5. Q&A Sessions 

Adding a Q&A session to a virtual event is one of the best ideas to engage your attendees. Virtual event platforms like FLOOR enables you to incorporate Q&A sessions before, during, or after the event. It allows attendees to interact with the presenter in real-time via text/audio/video chats. FLOOR integrates the functionality of organizing multiple-choice Q&A format to magnify engagements and achieve phenomenal results. 

6. Create A Leaderboard

With the help of a leaderboard, you can easily incentivize your attendees’ behaviour by assigning them points. These points will be based on any activity they performed within the platform such as keynote sessions, webinars, sponsor booths/exhibitor stands, filling up a survey, chat conversion, and the list goes on.

7. Quiz

It is also effective to hold a quiz to keep the audience interested and engaged. Goodies and giveaways keep the audience engaged throughout the event. The quiz can be designed according to the event’s theme. The virtual event platforms allow users to customize all the features according to the needs of the event.

The events industry landscape is still evolving, and to succeed with event engagement you will need to think fresh and put your attendees, sponsors, and exhibitors first. With virtual and hybrid events becoming a staple for companies in 2022, engagement is no longer just the marketers’ and event organizers’ domain. Thinking out of the box and offering valuable engagement opportunities is your golden ticket to succeed in the virtual realm.