this podcast episode is made possible by wowd digital.com your trusted partner for nonprofit and charity website and design in today's episode we dive deep into the shifting landscape of event management exploring how digital marketing and communication strategies are revolutionizing the way that we engage audiences and maximize profitability we're joined today by Elias prunin a Vanguard in the digital event space allias is the founder of tractus events and author of memorable profitable virtual
how to run virtual conferences conventions and trade shows that create meaning value and Lasting connections as an early Pioneer of digital experiences Elias has chartered the essential musthaves and must not for successful virtual event Elias thank you so much for joining on today's episode I am excited to be here thank you for having me my pleasure my pleasure and I hope everybody listening to this is going to get something really great out of this virtual events feel like they certainly come
into the forfront during covid right people weren't really getting together if they were then you know they were kind of quiet about it but virtual events typically kind of a boring type of thing uh people are trying to recreate inperson events why should we consider adding them to an event portfolio there's two ideas that I want to unpack here first is should we do virtual events we saw what they're cap capable of or what we think they're capable of during the early 2020s and maybe they have a
reputation for being not as good as the real thing and the other idea being replicating an in-person experience online and those are two very important ideas plus the idea of having an event portfolio which I think is the second idea having an event portfolio it's a very different way to think about running events not just as a not for-profit but any organization that wants to bring their people together let's talk about virtual Events first why should you consider having them let's think back
to an era before virtual events when meeting in real life was the only way to physically meet somebody so think about maybe back in the 1980s 1990s might take a little bit to think that far back for some people and some people they might have been negative 10 years old around that time but back in that era if you had say Executives or contacts in your industry that were on the west coast and you were located on the East Coast going to that conference or that trade show on the west coast might ha
ve been your one opportunity in the year to talk face Toof face with that person and it wasn't that long ago that we paid for longdistance charges when we called somebody on the phone so yeah you could call somebody on the phone but it wasn't a guarantee that you had long-distance calling with the adoption of Technologies like zoom and these online platforms we now have opportunities to communicate with our audience and to engage with them on a two-way dialogue more than once a year and I think
that's something that a lot of organizations are starting to become aware of especially with social media social media gave us the opportunity to talk to our audiences daily sometimes hourly I mean if you see some of the trending hashtags the post volume is incredible and I'm sure you see it with your own clients the kind of reach and visibility that they can get with social media with virtual events we're starting to see a Shi in the way that we're delivering content and bringing people togethe
r so in the old days you hosted an event it was a no-brainer if you wanted to meet the movers and the Shakers you wanted to get your name out there in the industry you went to that physical event and it might be the only event that you put on each year for some organizations that was their main fundraiser maybe they had a Gala of some sort and that was how they raised the majority of their funds for that year now think about how fast the world moves a couple years ago AI was just something that
us super nerds were into now my dad uses chat GPT to help him write his emails AI has gone mainstream and that has only happened in the span of really a year if you think back to a year ago today when we're recording this Podcast chat GPT was really on the fringes and now everybody's using it and if you don't have some sort of AI in your software you're just falling behind that's a lot of progress in 365 days and so if your only touch point with your audience as a not for-profit is getting every
body excited for your one main in-person event and that maybe lasts a day or two you're leaving another 363 days on the table where your audience is not engaged with you they're not excited about what you've got coming up what I've seen in my experience a lot of companies a lot of organizations wait until a few weeks before the event to Pub things up because well that's when they have all their speakers confirm this when they have their sponsors confirmed and they can announce a venue and Keyno
tes there's not a whole whole lot to announce beforehand but with virtual events we have a reason to reach our audiences well in advance of our Cornerstone inperson event one of the reasons I suggest considering virtual events as well it gives you a chance to test out new content it's a lowcost way to deliver your educational content it's a way to Hype up your upcoming portfolio events whether it's webinars special trainings other virtual events and of course your big Cornerstone in-person event
where at a point where it's no longer a matter of either or either we do virtual or we do in person it's a question of where does it fit into the portfolio I think that's a really great Point organizations need to be thinking how can they reach further not everybody can afford to fly not everybody has the time to necessarily drive hours or hours or hours I know myself I can accomplish a lot more in a day because I don't have to travel to each client and go and meet with them right there's techn
ology here here it's here to stay let's figure out the right way that we can embrace it where it makes sense for what we do and we can still get the same or similar output coming from it sure and here's something to think about too the let's call them the pandemic era events the pandemic era virtual events where we replicated what we did in person and tried to do it online those are not coming back and thank God for that right like just sitting in front of your computer for 5 days solid 12 hours
a day while the presenter was talking into their laptop which was 12 ft away from them you could hear the room Echo and the neighbor with their leaf blower and the dog barking in the background those are done those were never great and the idea that oh it's online is just like in person now I talk about this in my book by the way the online versus inperson thing is online can never be as good as in person I don't 100% believe in that I think the pandemic era events oversold that but we needed s
omething in those dark days we needed some sort of Hope to cling on to but the reality is that a lot of of organizations are getting back to doing in-person events and the math just isn't working out the American Astronomical Society they are in the midst of figuring out what they're going to do for 2024 their events they went hybrid for 2023 and what they've said is look we're spending 1.6 million just to put this conference on and that is not sustainable for us you we're spending a lot on the
venue to have Wi-Fi $147,000 our audiovisual costs are close to half a million dollars like this is not sustainable we have to take a new look at how we host these conferences and how we host our events in 2023 I saw it with a number of organizations they went back to quote unquote business as usual and business as usual is incurring a high price tag and it's not unique anymore and in some cases they're not doing anything that you couldn't do on Zoom today I.E delivering content if the primary a
ttraction for the attendees is oh I can sit and watch some presenters no offense the presenter's Torso does not add anything valuable to the presentation it certainly doesn't spice up their PowerPoint slides you can deliver that online for a fraction of the cost and make it much more engaging so in 24 and Beyond one of the reasons we need to look at doing virtual events and where they fit into our event portfolio is inperson is now the premium experience and organizations can capitalize on the f
act that iners is the premium experience if you give people a solid reason to attend your event to spend money and their time on your event and they get a return that they could not see otherwise without going to that in-person event they're going to be back for your virtual events they're going to be back next year one of the trends I see is the effects of your 2023 event will be felt in 2024 so if you deliver an awesome experience in 23 people will want to come back in 24 if you deliver a terr
ible experience you're going to have a a harder time selling tickets to 24 as well with going back to that event portfolio idea with an event portfolio you have more monetization opportunities as well so while you may have your Gala or you may have a main conference and you have sponsorship opportunities there so I want to put a a pin on that for one quick second what I got from what you just said is we also need to think about being fiscally responsible and accountable right as nonprofits as Ch
arities we have to go back and we have to tell the board why is it that we need to spend $1.4 million or $5,000 or $200 depending on the size of your organization on doing X Y and Z that is money that can be used for programs for services for helping for supplies for staff for recognition for grants for scholarships for whatever it is that your organization wants to do that's a lot of money that is a lot of money and that's and every dollar that is spent on something other than your not for-prof
it or your Charity's mission is is a dollar that cannot be used to help further that mission so and as not for profits and Charities you can't run a loss and in a lot of cases there is sticker shock that is hitting with increased venue prices with increased food costs with Transportation flights are not getting cheaper not to mention the environmental impact and many individuals and organizations becoming a lot more sensitive to sustainability there's a fair degree of hypocrisy when you have an
environment mental conference where everybody has to fly in there is C there is a certain level of credibility that goes into those events too so if you say that you have a sustainability pledge but then everybody is required to fly in do you really have a sustainability pledge are you being true to that goes back to the core values I think of your organization really understanding what where are you going to you know draw the line in the sand where are you going to be like this is acceptable th
is isn't is n acceptable every organization has a different threshold so I think it's worth having conversations internally between your upper management your board your colleagues to uh to sort that out but I want to also talk about how can events or virtual events be leveraged to be more engaging or exciting or more palatable one of the best ways when it comes to content delivery to make something that is engaging because let's face it people will be sitting in front of their screens regardles
s so that is something that we need to address right off the bat is in today's modern world people are going to be sitting and looking at their screens anyway the question is are they going to be looking at your content or are they going to be looking at somebody else's content and by the way inperson is not immune to this effect either I'm sure you've been at a conference or some sort of in-person event where you were physically there but everybody was doing this they were scrolling on their ph
ones checking emails posting on social media texting with their loved ones back home it comes down to good content design and being intentional about curating for Quality this is a big bone of contention that many event organizers have is we want to have the best and the brightest mind speak but there's also this fear of well we need to let everybody speak we don't want to exclude anybody problem is you can also have speakers that are just completely unprepared don't respect timelines you know t
he they have busy productive lives that they need to go on with and speaking at your event might be a bit of an afterthought in some cases so if you're curating for Content quality I.E somebody that has delivered these sessions before that has invested in a half decent setup doesn't need to be a crazy Studio production quality setup but do they have a headset microphone do they have a professional microphone do they keep it close to their face is it obvious that they care about the content the q
uality of the content that they're they're delivering deling have they rehearsed their content so when you're designing your content for delivery you need to think about are we getting quality speakers through the door and not just the keynote speakers the people that will be delivering your breakout session content another item to think about is when it comes to these conferences let's talk about the conference style where maybe you've got a keynote and then you've got some breakout sessions wh
en it comes to that style of content interactivity is a huge component to people staying engaged if you want your attendees to be engaged you need to make that content interactive if the presenter is going to deliver their stuff and there's no time for questions afterwards record that session and post it as a video just let people watch it at their own pace and give them an opportunity to control the speed as well it's not uncommon to see people watch content now at 1.2 1.5 2x speed I don't know
how people do two and 3X that's I don't know how you're absorbing anything but that's you if if that's the way that you want to absorb the content go for it but then bring them back later for that interactive live Q&A people want that interactivity and if your presenters are designing their presentation so that they can be asked questions and go into detail during that live QA that is critical to good event design I'm curious Elise do you have any examples of what a successful fundraiser might
look like in this kind of environment let me point to one of the best examples of a not for-profit raising just a ton of money for an incredible cause and I'm going to point to the example of the event series called Games Done Quick so as a video gamer I love watching video game streams and a group of Gamers got together a number of years ago and created a fundraiser event for Doctors Without Borders called games done Qui and the idea behind Games Done Quick is they raise money for the charity D
octors Without Borders people at home can watch the live stream they can donate to achieve donation incentives for example if we reach $500,000 we're going to add these five new stream blocks and in each block we'll do a different video game or there'll be another donation incentive where it's which game do you want to see streamed like Super Mario 64 blindfolded or Super Mario 64 two controllers the audience will donate to the option they want to see more and you can see these really close race
s throughout the event where it's like oh you know Super Mario blindfolded is in the lead oh man the two controller just took the lead and it'll go back and forth and they're raising you know some of these incentives are raising 50 60,000 on their own The Gamers Done Quick is an example of an organization that is leveraging both virtual and hybrid events to great effect to raise a ton of money for their cause because they're using the virtual events a to test out new streamers to see who would b
e fantastic to have at the in-person event which donation incentiv seem to be popular and to raise money throughout the year leading up to the excitement to the main event which is Raising $1.52 million per event and it's happening over 3 or 5 days they're using those online events as momentum to build up to the larger their big Cornerstone event where they rais the majority of their funding you need to think about this again as that event pipeline what events are you building what kind of conte
nt are you bringing to your audience how are you engaging with them across the whole year to build up to maybe your Gala event in person experiences are fantastic you see people going to events to go experience something one of our clients the in-person audience their exclusive experience was they went around the city for the host City for a day on a bus tour to see these retrofit carbon neutral buildings and get tours of them the online audience they got to see the replays of that later on but
because that was gated to just the in-person audience and it was an experience they sold more tickets on the back of that for in person the online audience of course they get immediate access to the replay so that was another reason that was a reason for them to sign up early Julius Solaris The Man Behind bold push former event MB and the author of the forward to my book he talks about this he has this fantastic event attendance flowchart and again the old days it used to be is there an event I'
m going now is is there an event is there a virtual option no maybe I'll go next next year yes can I get access to it yes okay looks good I'll attend this year or maybe not so there's a whole flowchart that goes into should I attend an event shouldn't I attend an event and it's about capitalizing on what each medium can bring for you another one that came to mind was uh I believe fernal Equinox it was an event for furries they raised a record-breaking amount of money for Animal Sanctuary charity
and put on a stunning event which kept people glued to to their seats for 3 4 days and for weeks afterwards through not just a virtual reality environment but there was a and it's still exists a thriving Discord server where everybody could chat jump into live streams watch the streams together uh there were lots of special interest channels it was phenomenal and this is why I think Games Done Quick is also successful is it's not just you know your traditional let's deliver a conference Games D
one Quick and the fernal equinox and a lot of these successful online fundraisers feel a lot more like a TV broadcast than they do a stuffy conference you know there's a Master of Ceremonies there's a host and they're interacting with the audience and they're reading the chat comments and they're bringing people up on stage and they're having interviews and they're telling stories and they're providing content they're producing a show I think that's the big Corner that we need to turn in the ind
ustry is we need to think about we're producing and putting on a show and chances are if you're doing a million other things in you're not for-profit or your charity probably don't have time or the band to think about that or to spin up resources to go do that and that's where you should really think about bringing in an expert I'm sure I could insert a Shameless plug here but I'm sure the show notes will do that for me I'll give you opportunity H in a couple of minutes absolutely Elias so reall
y interesting ideas that that you've spoken about so far they sound super expensive and nonprofits obviously like I was talking about before there's budget limitations approvals all that type of stuff but how can nonprofits do something good or great maybe not phenomenal but good or great without really kind of like stretching their budget too far I can't answer this question without a Shameless plug and the reason I can't answer this question without a Shameless plug is because I've been in the
situation where clients had come to me after they've signed the venue contract they said we're going to do the event like we want to do our regular event but we want to do it hybrid and we've already got a contract with this venue and then they find out that that venue has an exclusive AV provider and and they have an exclusive internet provider and you don't have a choice I mean there's a reason why the American Astronomical Society spent 1.6 million on their conference there were a lot of exc
lusives on that contract you know I had a client they signed the contract for the venue then they contacted me they got a quote for two days of Wi-Fi for their 300 people was going to be $10,000 and your choice is well do you want Wi-Fi or not and some of these venues are are complete dead zones so one strategy for not for profits what you can use is get an event expert involved early book some time on their calendar and get a consult and say this is what we've done this is what we're thinking o
f doing where do you think we should go from here because that small expenditure could be peanuts compared to a cancellation penalty because you found out your the venue that you need doesn't have what you require to pull off your vision or that just translating what you were doing before into a hybrid form format doesn't make the attendee experience any better and it's 10 times as expensive and when I say 10 times as expensive I mean that on the low end we've seen mid five figures there was one
group we worked with their AV bill for a three for three breakout rooms in a main plary hall that AV bill was $70,000 I've seen them go six figures and way more so you want to invest in talking with booking a consult with an event expert to say this is what we're thinking we're not sure where to go from here what do you think and an hour or two on the phone with them or maybe you engage them for a week that could pay dividends in creating an event portfolio and an event strategy that you can fo
llow and one that takes advantage of all the different mediums for example one event portfolio that I'm seeing gain a lot of traction is you have a number of virtual events through the year delivering your main content leading up to say a exclusive executive Retreat and when I say exclusive I mean C attendance like Max 50 people one or two top tier speakers that and you leave plenty of time for the live QA and it's not streamed as soon as we're streaming content the cost goes way up so it's not
streamed we only have one or two speakers we're renting the venue maybe for an evening or a full day and we've got only 50 people so we have our food cost under control we have Executives and they generally have nice budgets to work with I'm not saying we gouge them but I'm saying they usually are able to make the budgets happen it's a chance for them to meet other Executives and network in a meaningful way and in a safe environment talk about their hopes their dreams their fears and share ideas
we keep costs nice and low we provide them with a fantastic experience and we get them talking about and and excited to be engaged and involved with your brand or with your organization and we use online to reach a wider demographic a wider audience we had a client that did just this they had a webinar it was a 1-hour webinar all about AI they had 1400 people attend live they had 2,000 people sign up the Replay for that's been seen 133 or 14,000 times as of this recording and they spawned a who
le new product series off of that one webinar and it's been responsible for something like 10% of all of their leads from one virtual event this is the power that you can leverage and this is a one way that we can start to keep those costs down or take the budget that you were working with and see how can we spread it out across multiple events so that we keep the excitement rolling all year long as opposed to 6 weeks before our main keynote event you know we ramp up social media I think that th
at makes a really good point you don't necessarily need to be streaming oh everybody's streaming everybody's zooming this out whatever if you've booked a hall for example the Metro Toronto Convention Center that's all underground you're not getting signal down there right you've got to spend money for data if you want to whether it's wired or Wireless or whatever there's unions involved which also amps up the cost of it there's electricity running that you need so there's all kinds of things tha
t we don't necessarily think oh we're just going to put on an event no no no there's all this back stuff that we need to think about I think it's a really good point uh Elias like you mentioned talk to an expert before you actually go and book anything as you're starting the initial concept brainstorming planning part bring them in have them give you their expertise maybe you're paying for a day a day of their service or a couple of hours or a week it's going to be money well spent because once
you've done that once you can take that learning apply to the next one and the one after that and not to cut you out of any any workiz here but you know once once you've gotten that expertise and you've run the event or you've had help running the event whatever that that actually looks like rinse and repeat if it was successful great if it wasn't successful have a meeting have a meeting whether it was a success or not afterwards do what we call a postmortem what went well what didn't go well wh
at can we plan again differently what should we do etc etc and then you've got it for the next one and it's just a just to build on that for a second too it's and it's not about cutting me out of work you would be surprised at the amount of capacity your team likely already has for running those day-to-day Events maybe you need an expert's help to kind of get that up and running and maybe you need to book some time on their calendar to produce it but if you've already got some of the industry ex
pertise and you have a plan and a framework for promoting those events you know you might book that consultant once or twice to help get that started but once they come up with those Sops for you to continue those well then that also frees up that consultant to help you with your big Cornerstone event which is where you probably want to focus your main attention especially if that's your biggest fundraiser event of the year you want to spend your money well on that booking that time with an expe
rt is also an opportunity to see what's our skills inventory what have we got right here do do we need to hire for a certain position does it make sense to have this have this company our retainer and does does our event strategy make sense in 2024 and beond absolutely and just before we wrap this up Elias do you have maybe one or two quick points on how the people listening to this episode could leverage corporate sponsors or big donors to help make the event happen it's funny because the the s
ponsorship model is changing we've seen sponsorship packages be a bit slower to sell as of late and that's not just been a trend that we've seen it's been a trend across the industry is that sponsors are taking longer and longer to sign and if this High interest rate environment we find ourselves in continues that's only going to keep getting worse and worse Beyond just leveraging say sponsor dollars I think the more important Point here is to maintain those relationships and make it very clear
what that sponsor is getting in return for their financial incentive are they getting a chance to access your audience one-on-one is this something that allign with their corporate objectives is there a sponsor that you'd like to have on board that offers maybe a product or a service that would be important to your audience or to your cause that you so both of you get a win-win out of that so are they sponsoring a particular webinar where they might be speaking at are they sponsoring a live stre
am are they sponsoring a particular session maybe at your Gala event there's all kinds of ways that you could take that I think the bigger point is making sure that you establish and maintain those relationships and go we're not just going to put your logo on a page where nobody's going to see it we've seen the stats on the event apps that we've had is if you have a sponsor page that has a bunch of sponsor logos you're getting zero clicks even if there's content on there that's where the content
goes to die they need to be integrated into your event in a meaningful way some of the ways we've seen that for the in-person conferences is we've built out we called it a success Partners directory where we were able to show off not just the sponsors but like what what they do and what products or Services they had that were relevant to the audience that was attending and so if you make that relevance clear aside from you know hey company X is sponsoring our event let's thank them it's like no
why are they here why are they interested why are they getting involved give them a chance to speak give them a chance at the microphone and really integrate them into your events and into your live streams instead of just uh your traditional lip service like what you know do a feature on how are they aligned with your mission vision and values on that point Elias I think a lot of organizations can leverage their sponsors to build up some hype through their social media channels through their e
mail marketing hey look we've got these three new sponsors for our event in a month from now uh here they are here's why they're participating here's why they care about them you should go and support them but also you know have you bought your ticket yet you can leverage their name and their status to help build up your event to feel like a more premium type of event even if maybe you don't think it really is 100% And if you can make it easy and this goes for your sponsors it goes if you're run
ning a trade show of some sort it goes for them too and it goes for your attendees if social proof is going to sell tickets social proof is going to sell tickets is going to sell sponsorships if you can leverage other people's audiences I forget where I heard that term from but I love it it's all about leveraging other people's audiences if you can make it super easy for your sponsors or your attendees to say hey I'm going to this event or I'm involved with your not for profit that is going to g
et butts and seats one of the biggest mistakes I see made about the leveraging other people's audiences is you see you might get a registration email saying hey registration confirmed or maybe you have a sponsor onboarding email and maybe it's just one sponsor on boarding email that says hey thanks for sponsoring we appreciate you you know by the way share on social media that you're sponsoring that is the weakest call to action to get them to post anything they're not going to post anything cuz
what do I post what do I say the best events I've been to that I've spoken at and that we've helped host give their sponsors a gigantic package of here are some social media banners here's some social media Graphics that you can use by the way if you want to make your own here's the pngs with transparency of all of our logos here's some sample copy here are the links that you can use to purchase your tickets they make it dead simple for the social media manager at Big Corporation to schedule th
is into their pipeline make it dead simple for those social media manager to post content same thing goes for your speakers make it easy for them to highlight the fact that I'm going to be speaking at this event look at me look at me look at me get your tickets you know you want to and that can be applied as well to if your sponsors and if your speakers have email newsletters I mean I do this all the time when I'm speaking at webinars is I will put a blast out to my audience and say hey I'm goin
g to be speaking at this webinar it's relevant to my audience because usually some sort of technical event related thing you know would love to see you there make it easy for whoever is going to be involved with your event to blast out to their audience that hey I'm going to be involved with this event and one last thing I'll add on to this with each client that I work with one area where we spend a ton of time is coming up with a Communications plan when it comes to an event and we're talking a
bout like we've got a sponsor that's been onboarded what does their onboarding email look like you know a week later we follow up with them and say hey if you put together your booth page yet or if you put together your sponsor page yet if you have any questions book some time with us like we'll actually on that's one thing we do for our clients we will get on a zoom call with their exhibitors and with their sponsors help them build out their presence at the event help them come up with social m
edia content like work with them to make sure that the event is a success for them the relationship has got to be a two-way street it needs to be more than just an exchange of funds you need to be a partner in their success that's what's going to keep them coming year after year phenomenal advice Elias such an amazing episode I'm sure we you and I could probably talk for a day or two about this maybe we'll do like a two-day uh event and we can invite everybody listening to this to come and uh an
d hear what we're talking about amazing advice uh from you thank you so much for coming in on the show today if anybody wants to get in touch with you what do they need to do best way to find me these days is go to tracce events.com if you're into event production the very technical side we've got a number of free software tools available that you can go download if you want to get all of my knowledge condensed down into a book and by the way the book has a bunch of free downloads like communica
tion plan moderator and facilitator rehearsal scripts you can go and Sample surveys you can go check that out tracus events.com book the book of course is memorable profitable virtual it's available where all fine books are sold those are the easiest places to find me if you're looking for me on social media I'm on the platform formerly known as Twitter agfi NN and you can look me up on LinkedIn uh Elias perin or just look up Elias tractus you'll find me on LinkedIn post there fairly regularly a
nd I'm pretty good about checking my messages there so if you send me a direct message on LinkedIn or on Twitter chances are you'll get a response for me awesome and just for everybody listing tracce is spelled t r a c t s we're going to have links to everything that Elias just mentioned we'll have a link for his book and all that as well on our show notes page thank you so much Elias for joining in on the nonprofit digital success podcast to everybody listening if you want any of the links agai
n visit nonprofit digital success.com click on this episode for all the details and the show notes and until next time keep on being successful wonderful have a great day everybody
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