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virtual events

10 Virtual Event Sponsor Opportunities That Are A Win-Win

Virtual event engagement is a pressing challenge for nearly 35% of virtual event planners. Luckily, there is an easy and effective way to both boost your event engagement and help cover the costs of a virtual event—virtual event sponsors.

In 2021, event sponsorship was the number one source of virtual event revenues, but a shocking 22% of event planners were completely unable to generate revenue in a virtual setting. 

Event sponsors provide a vital way to help offset (or even cover!) your event costs. They can also be instrumental in creating a genuinely engaging and well-rounded virtual event experience for everyone involved.

To unlock the total value of your event sponsors, your team must understand how to develop an enticing virtual event sponsorship package to attract the best sponsors—let’s explore how. 

What Is The Value of Having Virtual Event Sponsors?

Virtual event organizers will elevate their attendee experience by partnering with event sponsors, but these engagements must be mutually beneficial to ensure long-lasting success.

By partnering with event sponsors, event organizers can more effectively meet their attendee needs. Complementary solutions providers and recognized brand thought leaders can lend a necessary third-party perspective to your event. These providers can also answer attendee questions and provide resources to meet needs that your team cannot support. 

However, you cannot expect virtual event sponsors to readily line up and donate their time and resources to support your event without some element of “what’s in it for me?” That’s why host organizations need to explain and deliver on the potential value that their event can provide to sponsors. At a minimum, virtual events can help boost a sponsor’s brand awareness, grant them access to qualified leads, drive social media engagement, and achieve several other marketing and business goals. 

10 Virtual Event Sponsorship Ideas

The best way to attract prospective event sponsors is to create a dedicated page on your event site that discusses sponsorship opportunities or sponsorship packages. Then, promote this virtual event sponsor page across your social media channels and through targeted email outreach.

The preliminary information you share should set the seed for 1:1 conversations with prospective event sponsors. In these conversations, you should discuss what the partner hopes to gain by sponsoring your event and explore potential custom agreements that will meet their goals and deliver on your attendee needs.

To help you get started, explore these virtual event sponsorship ideas either as standalone opportunities or group them in event sponsorship packages that will appeal to the range of your event sponsor goals:

  1. Attendee Email List: Virtual event hosts can offer sponsors access to the event attendee email list. Be sure to clearly communicate to your attendees that their information will be provided to partners if they check the box to opt-in to allow this permission.  
  2. Breakout Rooms and 1:1 Meetings: Virtual events bypass the physical limitations of in-person events. Provide dedicated digital space for your sponsors to connect with attendees, conduct demos, and discuss their product or solution. Be sure to explain to event attendees how they can access these rooms and what value they will gain by speaking with your sponsors. 
  3. Email Marketing: As you engage with your virtual event community through email, highlight your event sponsors. Include promotional messages, spotlight their event session or booth, or share their content that may be of value to your email subscribers.
  4. Event Branding: Promote your virtual event sponsors across your virtual event space. This is similar to the promotional banners, tablecloths, floor mats, and other in-person visual branding elements, just placed across every page and aspect of your event website and virtual event platform.
  5. Giveaways and Contests: Generate excitement with your event attendees by giving away event sponsor materials. These contests and giveaways can take place before, during, or after your event in exchange for your attendees submitting lead generation forms, engaging with event exhibitors or sponsors, or completing actions across the virtual event platform. 
  6. Polls: Host branded polls throughout your event as a way for your event sponsors to get direct input from your attendees. Partner with your sponsor to decide what questions you will ask and exclusively provide them with the poll results. Or, offer any sponsors the ability to access the poll results, but only if they opt for that sponsorship option. 
  7. Social Media Promotion: Promote your event sponsors across your event social media channels, with an increased number of posts that highlight your sponsors versus general exhibitors and partners. Consider creating promotional videos or other visual assets that will increase your audience’s likelihood of engaging with your sponsors’ social media content.
  8. Sponsored Sessions: Allow brands to sponsor your sessions or topic tracks with varying levels of exposure. At a minimum, promote an event sponsor alongside each of your event sessions by adding their logo and branding to that session. Depending on the arrangement, each event sponsor could directly engage in the session, such as introducing the speakers, moderating a conversation, or participating in a panel. At the highest sponsorship tier, you can offer for sponsors to create an entire conference session. Just be sure that the topic will be of interest and value to your attendees. 
  9. Swag Bags: In addition to giveaways and contests, swag bags are a great way to get company branding and products directly in the hands of your event attendees. Enable sponsors to provide materials for swag bags that will guarantee their brand exposure. 
  10. Virtual Sponsor Booth: Much like an exhibitor booth, offer your virtual event sponsors a space to engage with attendees and curate an experience within your virtual event platform.

Use a Modern Virtual Event Platform to Build Lasting Sponsor Relationships

Each of the 10 ideas we shared above can entice your prospective virtual event sponsors, but that’s only part of the event sponsorship equation. The virtual event platform you choose can significantly limit your ability to achieve your full event sponsorship potential.

Virtual event sponsors need dedicated space to engage with your attendees. A comprehensive virtual event software platform will allow you to fully customize the rooms and branding to maximize your sponsors’ value. Learn how Frameable Events can bring your dream event to life and help you cover your event costs through smart sponsor relationships.

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virtual events

5 Common Virtual Kickoff Planning Mistakes And How to Avoid Them

Annual company kickoffs are an effective way to build excitement for the year and help prime your team for success—especially as we transition toward the new future of hybrid work

Most teams will host online kickoffs this year, which are ideal for connecting teams of all sizes and can easily enhance the traditional kickoff experience. We previously detailed how to host an exciting online company kickoff, and there are just a few more considerations left to ensure your team hosts an amazing meeting. 

5 Virtual Kickoff Pitfalls And How to Avoid Them

We often see teams make several common mistakes when planning a virtual company kickoff. Be sure to keep these considerations top-of-mind as you begin planning your virtual kickoff experience:

1. Last-Minute Planning

A great kickoff will take weeks or upwards of a month to plan, especially as you coordinate with a variety of departments and team members. Form a planning committee two to three months out from your kickoff to start drafting an agenda and gathering the key resources. By starting early, you will also have time to test run activities and any technical elements to ensure you deliver a seamless experience on the day of the meeting. 

2. Hosting a Day-Long Virtual Kickoff

Traditional in-person kickoffs often span an entire business day. Or even multiple days at some of the world’s largest companies. However, a virtual kickoff should not last a full day. Just think about the inevitable screen fatigue. If your kickoff lasts more than four hours, consider hosting it as a series of meetings throughout the week. Or split it into two half-day sessions. 

3. Failing to Spotlight Team Members In Presentations

A successful kickoff celebrates your team and shares business intelligence across all levels—not just your C-suite leaders or company founders. Enable your team members to share their knowledge or spotlight their work by directly hosting a kickoff session or participating in a panel discussion. You should also invite your customers or company partners to address your team, which is much easier to coordinate in a virtual setting.

4. Only Presenting Pre-Recorded Content

Yes, an inherent advantage of a virtual kickoff is that you can pre-record sessions. But to host a truly engaging series of sessions, you should offer a mix of live and pre-recorded content to keep the energy high and avoid potential attendee fatigue. Another potential downfall of pre-recorded content is that your spokespeople may overly rely upon their scripted messages, which could result in inauthentic and robotic-sounding presentations. 

5. Skipping the Entertainment.

Traditional in-person kickoffs usually involve some element of surprise or entertainment, even if it is just a casual happy hour or team meal after the event. Offer opportunities for your team to network and engage with each other during or after the virtual kickoff. Don’t make it another thing to check off the to-do list —have a fun virtual activity everyone gets to participate in together.

Virtual Event Tech for the Best Online Company Kickoffs

You can easily avoid these common pitfalls by giving your team enough time to plan your online kickoff experience. This will, in turn, further optimize the meeting experience to keep your attendees energized—setting your entire organization up for success.

To get the most out of your virtual company kickoff, it’s essential to choose an easily customized platform that supports your intended mix of activities. We’ve built Frameable Events to connect groups of dozens to thousands for engaging virtual events. Learn more about why we’re an ideal platform for your company kickoff.

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virtual events

12 Virtual Sales Kickoff Planning Tips To Energize Your Salespeople

Sales teams often meet the start of the fiscal year with a healthy mix of excitement and trepidation. On the one hand, a new year with new goals symbolizes fresh potential and a clean slate to work from. But, on the other hand, there is a natural anxiety that can come during this time, especially as teams continue to navigate the uncertainties of the future of work

An annual sales kickoff (SKO) is a vital way to get ahead of your team’s challenges and set a positive, encouraging tone for the year ahead. At its best, an SKO will rally your sales reps and effectively empower them to crush their goals in the coming year—but there are some unique considerations for crafting a compelling virtual sales kickoff. So, let’s explore how you can host a fulfilling SKO that makes full use of a virtual environment. 

12 Virtual SKO Best Practices 

As your team starts planning its online SKO and building your series of activities, follow these best practices to fulfill your team’s needs through a virtual event: 

  • Survey Your Team Before the SKO. Poll your organization in your early planning stages to help shape your SKO activities. Seek to understand what your sales team would like to learn during the kickoff, including what training types they are interested in and what skills they would like to develop. This is also an opportunity to determine which team members are interested in leading an SKO session. 
  • Set Online SKO Goals. Like any company event and activation, define clear goals for your sales kickoff. Ideally, these goals should ladder back to your organization’s annual goals. 
  • Plan Virtual First. To host an incredible online SKO, your team needs to plan the virtual experience thoroughly. This will require you to rethink how you structure sessions to keep attendees excited and primed to gain the most value from the digital environment. For example, if you plan to provide something identical to your in-person SKO, just pre-recorded, you are unlikely to keep attendees engaged. This, in turn, will likely fail to deliver on your team’s needs. 
  • Pick a Sales Kickoff Theme. Much like a traditional SKO, your team can pick a virtual SKO theme to help guide your planning and create a cohesive experience for all attendees. Note that if you have an annual company theme, your SKO theme should complement this theme to reinforce your team’s goals further. The best virtual event platforms will allow you to brand the experience and keep this theme top-of-mind throughout every session. 
  • Balance Your Session Lengths and Setups. Employ a mix of large- and small-group sessions and activities. Your salespeople may become fatigued in a digital environment if you force them to watch back-to-back recordings with no opportunity to engage with the content or their peers. Instead, offer a mix of short 15-minute sessions and longer 45+ minute sessions with a conscious focus on attendee engagement throughout the experience. 
  • Appeal to All Education and Skill Levels. Create content and offer sessions that directly address beginner, intermediate, and advanced knowledge needs. Your pre-SKO team surveys should provide some guidance on your team’s professional development needs. The benefit of a virtual environment is that you can easily host multiple concurrent sessions, all of which can be made available for replay and future consumption.  
  • Showcase Diverse Speakers. Your sales kickoff should spotlight speakers from almost every department in your organization, including marketing, customer success, product development, and, of course, sales. Select speakers that represent a range of experiences and needs at your organization. This includes offering speaking spots to rockstar sellers, regardless of their position or tenure with the company, and customers who are willing to share their perspectives with your sales team.   
  • Provide Educational Materials Ahead of Time. Explain how your salespeople can access the SKO’s educational and preparation materials a few weeks or up to a month in advance. This gives your team the chance to digest the materials at their own pace and come to the SKO in a better position to take full advantage of the sessions. 
  • Mail Swag and Supplies Ahead of The SKO. Help your team members prepare for the SKO by mailing them team activity and swag bags ahead of the event. These SKO care packages should include any materials that attendees will need to use during the meeting, plus company swag, snacks, and even a small personal gift. 
  • Gamify the Experience. Salespeople love friendly competition. Consider hosting a competition or gamifying your experience in some way to encourage engagement throughout the event. This can be something as simple as a BINGO board with a series of activities to check off, or a leader board that tracks how many sessions a rep has joined, how many comments they’ve shared through the virtual SKO platform or a similar tracker. 
  • Build a Knowledge Hub For Ongoing Education. Extend the value of your SKO by creating a knowledge hub that captures all the key information. This way your sales reps can revisit sessions, access helpful documents and how-tos, and continue to engage with your sales content throughout the year. 
  • Celebrate Sales Year Round. After the SKO, continue celebrating your team members that exemplify the ideas discussed during the SKO. Recognize salespeople during team meetings, through email, and in other ways to reinforce behaviors and encourage continued sales innovation. 

Finding the Best Virtual SKO Platform

If you follow the virtual sales kickoff best practices we explored above, your team will be better equipped to empower your sales reps and help them engage with your ideal buyers. 

There is just one final tip to help you host an incredible virtual SKO: choose a virtual event platform that will elevate the experience and make planning a breeze.

Many virtual event platforms fail to provide the essential networking and engagement features that your sales reps need for a fulfilling SKO experience. Features like small- and large-group breakout rooms, live-streamed or pre-recorded content, popup messages, and attendee profiles are just a few must-haves for your SKO.

We’ve built Frameable Events to put your team at the heart of any event experience. See why we’re trusted by hundreds of organizations and learn how we can support your sales kickoff here. 

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virtual events

Virtual Company Kickoff Agenda Elements That Will Excite Your Team for 2022

To say that 2022 will be a busy year for most companies would be an understatement. The global workforce continues to grapple with the impacts of the pandemic, teams are hedging their bets on the best hybrid work arrangements, and The Great Resignation is forcing companies to rethink how they meet the needs of a distributed workforce. 

The start of the year—and this year especially—is a valuable time to realign your team and rally them behind your company’s goals, while also providing them much-needed reassurance. An annual company kickoff can effectively meet this goal, but what will kickoffs look like in the age of remote work, and can they capture the same energy as an in-person kickoff?

Don’t worry. You can still host a fulfilling online company kickoff that will reinvigorate your team and help address their anxieties about the future of work. So get started with planning your kickoff today by exploring these must-have kickoff agenda elements that work great in a virtual environment.

How to Build an Engaging Online Company Kickoff Agenda

Design your kickoff experience as an all-virtual event, regardless of if there is an in-person element. This approach will keep you focused on what matters—building a seamless, intuitive, and fun digital experience for your team. Then you can adapt the in-person components to blend with the online platform and virtual experience.  

Lean into the advantages of the digital kickoff environment. Features like pre-recorded videos, in-platform messaging, and small-group breakout rooms can all replicate many of the beloved elements of your traditional kickoff event. 

Keep in mind that your virtual attendees need a healthy mix of session types and lengths to stay engaged. Sustain excitement throughout your virtual kickoff by hosting these types of activities:

  • Awards & Recognition: Celebrate both team and individual successes. It is crucial to acknowledge accomplishments from the last year and spotlight team members for their contributions. These awards ceremonies should be fun, personal, and all about your team’s success. 
  • Company Executive AMAs: Spotlight company executives and leaders to share their goals for the year and explain their priorities. Allow your kickoff attendees to ask questions through your virtual event platform and collect questions ahead of time, too, to kickstart the Q&A. 
  • Customer or Client Sessions: Your company customers or clients can offer a valuable perspective to your team, including why they love working with you, what they look for when seeking solutions providers, and how you have helped advance their brand. These sessions are ideal for a virtual environment because they require no travel (just be sure to express gratitude for your customer’s time after the kickoff). 
  • Hands-on Virtual Training Sessions: Help your team work more efficiently by hosting virtual training sessions, either as an entire company or in small group breakouts. These training sessions can troubleshoot common tech challenges, explain how to use company tools and software, or develop skills like time management and conflict resolution. 
  • Improv: Develop your team’s skills in a fun way by facilitating quick improv sessions. These short activities should involve no more than 5-10 minutes of prep before your participants present in front of the whole group or a small breakout group. The activity should align with your company in some way, such as asking team members to create a promotion for a new product, roleplay a customer interaction, or envision their day-to-day experiences if they worked in a different department. 
  • Speed Networking: Kickoffs are essential for connecting team members that usually do not interact. Set up small group breakout rooms for five-minute speed networking. Pose a question for two team members to discuss, and then shuffle everyone to a new partner once the time is up. Use pop-up notifications in your event platform to facilitate the transition.
  • Team-building: A kickoff should strengthen your team’s trust in each other and align them with your brand values. Host a series of team-building activities or sessions that solely focus on helping your team get to know each other better, understand each teammate’s strengths, and reinforce your team culture.
  • Entertainment: After your team finishes your core kickoff content, it’s time to let them have even more fun. Coordinate an exciting activity or experience, such as a group cooking class, live musical performance, virtual escape room, or a happy hour with pre-sent cocktail mixers. Don’t treat this as a box to check in your planning—actively seek input from your team to understand what type of entertainment would be the ultimate way to finish your kickoff.   

3 Virtual Company Kickoff Best Practices

Your online company kickoff will delight your team if you host a mix of the sessions we explained.  

We have three final tips to ensure you truly hit the target on delivering a fulfilling virtual kickoff:

  • Poll your team ahead of time to understand what they hope to gain from the meeting. This will help you fine-tune your agenda and balance your executive team’s needs with your team’s hopes. 
  • Mail supplies to everyone ahead of time so that they have everything they need for the kickoff. These supplies can include workbooks and activity sheets, as well as company swag or other goodies.
  • Coordinate food to be delivered to everyone’s house, or mail gift cards for them to order from their favorite local spot. Plan some informal lunchtime activities or open networking rooms to keep the energy high.

Online Company Kickoff Platform Essentials

As seen by the variety of activity ideas that work great for an online company kickoff, companies need to pick a virtual kickoff platform that can facilitate a blend of networking spaces and presentation stages to maximize the kickoff success.


Frameable Events is a virtual event platform that hundreds of organizations have trusted, and we’re ready to help you host your best kickoff yet. Learn more about our customizable lounges and stages and intuitive features that are sure to delight your team.

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virtual events

How A Virtual Company All-Hands Can Improve Your Meeting Experience

How teams work together continues to evolve as we enter another year of the pandemic, and so should the way that they come together as a company.

While the pandemic may have been the impetus for brand leaders to transform traditionally in-person, high-profile meetings like the annual company kickoff and sales kickoff into virtual events, the benefits are clear. In addition to keeping everyone safe and usually costing a fraction of the cost of their in-person counterparts, virtual meetings allow everyone in the company to join in one space.

A virtual company all-hands can drastically improve the meeting experience for your team and more effectively fulfill the meeting’s goals. Still not convinced? Let’s examine three benefits of virtual company all-hands meetings and why they are the best option for your team. 

Three Advantages of a Virtual Company All-Hands

A virtual-first meeting strategy provides your team with the necessary flexibility to conduct their work. Given the continued uncertainties around in-person work, it simply makes sense to opt for a safer meeting option—and there are clear benefits of holding a virtual company all-hands. 

These are some of the ways that virtual all-hands meetings improve on the traditional in-person experience:

A Mix of Pre-Recorded and Live Sessions Provides Flexibility

A virtual company all-hands can more readily blend pre-recorded and live sessions. This helps your team better manage the timing and delivery of your meeting elements.  

Luckily, you don’t need significant resources to produce and edit your all-hands videos (unless your team is skilled in video production and can dedicate the resources). A great video can be filmed with just a smartphone or webcam as long as you stay authentic with your message.

A less-obvious benefit of pre-recorded content is that you can add captions to maximize your team’s ability to consume the content. This is especially useful if you have a global team that will need video translations.

Additionally, you can share recorded sessions with your team after the all-hands so they can revisit key points. Select videos can also become part of your new hire onboarding process throughout the year, making them a valuable asset to create. 

Breakout Rooms Enable Engagement

The biggest limitation of an in-person all-hands is space. Great all-hands meetings offer a mix of large and small-group activities, presentations, and breakout sessions. Unfortunately, you rarely have the budget to rent out a venue that combines a central auditorium and enough smaller rooms to give everyone in the organization a space to connect. A virtual meeting platform, on the other hand, is optimal for creating this space. 

Breakout rooms are also perfect for networking after your meeting has finished. We recommend you create spaces with leaders from key areas like HR and department heads to answer team questions and expand on the meeting content. If you have employee resource groups and committees, make spaces available for them to come together and discuss how they can put the content they’ve consumed throughout the meeting into action.

Built-In Virtual Meeting Features Maximize Meeting Success

A well-built virtual meeting platform will significantly enhance the attendee experience. With the right features, you can directly address many of the shortcomings of an in-person meeting. At a minimum, we recommend you find a solution that offers these features: 

  • Mute attendees when needed. Side conversations and background noise can distract meeting attendees. An ideal virtual all-hands platform will enable you to control who can speak so that only the presenter has the stage.
  • Engagement is the primary concern during all-hands meetings. You want your team to contribute actively. Non-verbal reactions like thumbs-up or applause can encourage speakers. In-platform messaging helps attendees submit questions or comments without needing to take the entire team’s attention. 
  • Live surveys. Polling your team is easier than ever during a virtual all-hands meeting. Use live polls and quizzes throughout your all-hands to engage your team in the content and gather insights to help you support everyone’s experience. 

The Future of Company Meetings is Virtual

No matter what your hybrid work arrangement will look like, it makes sense to design all your meetings for a virtual-first environment. That way, everyone in the organization can participate regardless of their global location or comfort level with large in-person gatherings. 


The key to hosting an engaging online town hall is to pick a meeting platform that puts your attendees at the heart of the experience. Find out why hundreds of organizations have trusted Frameable Events to create engaging virtual event experiences, and start planning your online all-hands today.

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virtual events

4 Virtual Sales Kickoff (SKO) Planning Questions To Ensure a Fulfilling Experience

An annual sales kickoff (SKO) is possibly the most critical meeting your sales organization holds all year. Companies often spare no expense to host an extravagant offsite event that rallies the sales team, fine-tunes their sales strategies for the coming year, and empowers them to crush their goals. 

This year’s sales kickoff will look different for many organizations, though, with many face-to-face meetings being canceled in favor of safer, distanced gatherings. However, don’t let the absence of an in-person connection discourage you. 

A virtual SKO can still achieve the goals of your previously in-person annual sales meeting, with the potential to further benefit your team given the advantages of a digital meeting. That is, of course, if you know the do’s and don’ts of planning a virtual SKO.

Let’s explore how to effectively host an online SKO that delights your salespeople and positions your sales team for success through the year. 

What is a Virtual Sales Kickoff?

A sales kickoff is an annual event where companies unveil their sales goals and build excitement within their sales team. A sales kickoff is designed to unify your sales organization and empower everyone in a customer-facing position to support your brand and drive sales.

A virtual SKO will feature many of the same discussions, activities, and elements as your in-person SKO. However, you cannot create an effective virtual SKO by filming your usual sales kickoff elements and posting the videos on a shared platform for your salespeople to view. Instead, you must think of this as a virtual-first experience, keeping in mind virtual event engagement best practices.

In-person sales kickoffs can be as short as a few hours or span an entire week at some of the world’s largest organizations. Within a digital environment, however, you need to offer a diverse array of activities, at differing lengths, to fight off potential video call fatigue and keep your attendees engaged. 

Who Should be Invited to a Virtual Sales Kickoff?

Smart organizations understand that every team member, regardless of role or department, can help or hinder the company’s ability to sell to its ideal customers. The best customer-focused solutions arise when cross-departmental teams combine their knowledge, align their efforts, and chart a path for success.

Your virtual SKO should not be limited to your sales organization’s members. Instead, include an array of employees who regularly partner with and support your sales team to foster a well-rounded discussion and benefit multiple teams’ needs.

Ensure that you invite all of the following attendees to your SKO:

  • Sales managers/leaders: Your salespeople will be most familiar with the sales leaders on your team, and these leaders usually have the most prominent role in planning and hosting the SKO. Strategically build on their individual relationships and influence to strengthen camaraderie during the event. 
  • C-Suite executives: It’s one thing to have sales leadership discuss what salespeople need to know. However, it is much more impactful to have your C-suite leadership discuss their goals for the year during the kickoff. Their presence also reinforces the importance of the meeting and can serve as a key culture-building opportunity.
  • Product managers: The people who lead your product development should join the SKO. They can discuss the product roadmap, explain how these new features or updates are designed to help customers, and answer questions from the sales team. The SKO also provides a valuable opportunity for the product team to get feedback from sales and customers that can help prioritize product improvements.
  • Customer success managers: Anyone with a direct customer-facing position can provide a wealth of knowledge about the challenges a company’s customers face post-sale. Invite a few customer success managers or the head of Customer Success to join the event and discuss how the company can better support its customers through their entire lifecycle.
  • Marketing leadership: Multiple marketing team members are essential for sales enablement. Product marketing can help make sure that sales teams have the collateral and product benefits information to succeed in the sales process, while also keeping up to speed on sales initiatives. The content marketing team in particular can help solve many customer challenges and help sales overcome prospect objections. Partner with the marketing team to understand their goals for the sales kickoff and craft an agenda that will help break silos and uplevel strategic priorities for the sales team that can also benefit marketing. 
  • External thought leaders/guest speakers: Everyone on this list so far has been inside your organization. However, many SKOs feature thought leaders such as authors or motivational speakers and industry experts or analysts who can lend a brand-neutral perspective and share their expertise or drive team motivation in ways that your sales leaders simply cannot. 
  • Partner team leaders: If your company has brand partnerships, strategic alliances with other organizations, or is deeply enmeshed in partner or reseller ecosystems, invite representatives who are close to these partnerships — or even the partner liaison themselves— to explain how they can assist the sales team in meeting their goals.
  • Customers: Your SKO content will talk a lot about your customers, so why not let them have a seat at the table? Pick a few high-profile, deeply satisfied customers who can join panel discussions or provide case study examples of why they love using your product or service, ways that the sales organization has helped them succeed, and what they look for when making purchasing decisions. 

4 Questions to Guide Your Virtual SKO Planning

Now that you have a clear understanding of what a virtual SKO is and who should be involved, you can start planning the kickoff.

There are four key questions you should ask to effectively plan an online SKO:

What is our goal for the SKO?

Like any company event or activation, you need to determine what success looks like. Set three to four clear goals to help guide your planning. As we’ve discussed, sales kickoffs are vital for communicating the coming year’s sales goals, strengthening your team’s ability to sell, and building camaraderie. Have your SKO planning committee align on their top priorities for the event to then guide the rest of the planning. 

For example, if employee professional development is the primary goal for the event, then you can focus on providing educational sessions and identifying the skills that are vital for sales success. Or, you may prioritize employee retention and craft an agenda that focuses on individual employee needs and addressing their concerns. 

How will we measure the success of our SKO?

After your SKO is done, how will you know if you’ve met your goals? These measurement opportunities can extend well after your SKO is finished, such as measuring the number of material downloads one month, three months, and six months after the event. It is also important to understand what tracking systems you need to implement to effectively measure your success.

What tools do we need to achieve these goals?

Once you have your ideal list of goals, you can assess what tools and resources you will need for the SKO. This includes deciding your must-have features for a virtual SKO platform, such as the ability to live-stream sessions or offer pre-recorded content, as well as features like attendee profiles or nonverbal reactions during sessions. 

What is our SKO budget?

Now that you have a general idea of what you want to accomplish with your SKO, what you’ll need to pull it off, and how you’ll measure your success, it’s time to think through finances. Assess what budget you can work with to then refine some of your goals if needed.

Build a Complete Virtual SKO Experience on Frameable Events

After your team addresses the above planning considerations, you are ready to design your online SKO experience. Fine-tune your kickoff by following these 12 SKO planning tips and best practices.

At a time when employee concerns are potentially at an all-time high, it’s vital for you to provide an excellent sales kickoff. If you rush the planning or hastily pick a platform solely on price, you could fail to engage your sales reps, which hurts your chances of meeting your team’s goals.

Rally your team on Frameable Events to maximize your chance for success this year. Learn more about why we’re an ideal virtual sales kickoff platform.

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6 Proven Ways To Spark Virtual Event Engagement

As marketers have matured with their virtual events strategies, many of the initial challenges they faced have become significantly easier to solve. 

Most event planners know that it’s essential to set clear goals to guide their planning and support those goals with effective virtual trade show agenda elements. The best event planners collaborate with their exhibitors and sponsors to additionally ensure the planned schedule of virtual activities meets their needs. 

But there is still one major challenge that even the most experienced virtual event planners struggle with: attendee engagement

Cracking the code to engage your virtual audience is a significant opportunity for marketers and event planners. This post discusses current best practices for virtual event attendee engagement, drawing from recent successful virtual or hybrid trade shows and industry membership association experiments.

How to Engage Your Virtual Conference and Trade Show Attendees

Every successful virtual event includes a conference hub that facilitates interaction between all attendees and enables them to access key event details. Create a page for your event site and event app that outlines how attendees can engage with each other and speakers throughout your event. 

These opportunities should include live chat and messaging capabilities in your event platform, social media communities tailored to your event community, dedicated rooms for attendees to network 1:1 or in small groups, and interactive exhibition halls where attendees can meet with vendors. 

Expand on these essentials to deliver a truly engaging virtual event experience for your attendees by following these best practices to garner engagement:

1. Promote attendee engagement opportunities throughout—and leading up to—your event. 

As simple as it may sound, an essential step to garner engagement at your event is to prime attendees for these opportunities in all pre-event communications and during the event. 

Spotlight your event engagement details in a series of pre-event attendee emails. In these emails, further explain how attendees can actively participate during the event. In addition, we recommend you share at least one email exclusively dedicated to answering questions about the engagement opportunities available at your event. 

During your event, ask session speakers to encourage attendees to submit questions in the virtual event platform messaging interface (as appropriate). Conference speakers should also guide attendees to their next experience after that session, including the open networking spaces that attendees can join to keep the conversation going. 

2. Offer gift cards. 

Incentivize attendees to register for your event, join sessions, meet with exhibitors, or engage in sessions by offering a gift card. For example, we’ve seen several conferences incentivize registration by offering as little as a $5-$10 gift card to major retailers (frequently Starbucks) or randomly selecting a few attendees to receive $100-$500 gift cards.

However, you do not want to set an expectation that every attendee interaction will reap a reward. Instead, you want to provide an incentive to encourage attendees to engage, with the potential for a surprise. 

If your event technology allows, track how many times individual attendees join sessions or exchange messages within the platform to enter attendees into your raffle. Your team could also randomly give gift cards to attendees who actively talk about your event on social media, which could, in turn, encourage more attendees to post for a chance to win. 

3. Host partner and exhibitor raffles. 

Alongside (or in place of) gift card giveaways, partner with event sponsors and exhibitors to give away swag, product demos, or other items from those event partners. This builds a more authentic and immersive experience for your attendees compared to providing random giveaways.

An example of this was CXEnergy2021 Virtual Conference’s Tech Showcase, where attendees received prizes for joining and engaging during presentations. In addition, after every demonstration and Q&A, vendors held brand raffles, such as a one-year subscription for their software. These giveaways will likely boost lead generation and brand awareness efforts for your event partners, too, which will elevate their event experience.  

4. Coordinate a scavenger hunt or BINGO board.

Encourage attendees to explore every part of your event platform and use each feature to its fullest by hosting a scavenger hunt or BINGO board of actions to complete. Ask attendees to snap photos or take screenshots during sessions, visit specific event pages, or complete activities that you can track.

Reward attendees with gift cards or partner raffle items, or create exclusive prize packages—such as registration for next year’s event—that build additional excitement for the game.

5. Enable attendees to pre-submit questions.

Set the expectation with attendees that they can ask questions both before and during event sessions. Enable attendees to pre-submit questions to help speakers finalize their session content and help Q&A moderators prioritize questions.

At the end of each session, address a selection of the pre-fielded questions, and encourage attendees to submit more questions via the chat app. This way, your moderators can organize new questions while the speakers address the pre-submitted ones. Not enough time to get to all the questions? No problem! Give the speaker the list of all the submitted questions, and encourage them to create their own content to address those elements.

6. Strike up conversations on social media. 

Use an easy-to-remember hashtag to help your social media moderators actively find and engage with attendee Tweets and other social media posts. Ask attendees to share their favorite breakout session takeaways, and be ready to answer their event questions. Amplify their Tweets to encourage them to keep posting throughout the event. 

Post polls and quizzes to directly encourage engagement, and use event videos, GIFs, or visuals to stir up excitement for the experience. 

Choose a Virtual Event Platform That Enables Attendee Engagement

By thoughtfully creating opportunities for attendees to engage with your virtual event content and activities, you transform them from a passive audience to active participants in your event. 

But even the best-planned engagement opportunities can fall flat if your event platform is not up to par. You need a virtual or hybrid event platform that enables built-in messaging capabilities within sessions, as well as a way for attendees to find and connect with each other. 

With Frameable Events, you can deliver the engaging virtual trade show experience that your attendees deserve. The platform includes audience polling capabilities, robust chat features, and essential metrics that help you keep attendees engaged and uncover ways to improve their experience. Learn more and get started today.

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virtual events

How To Decide If A Hybrid Holiday Party Is the Best Idea For Your Team

If your company is planning a holiday party this year, one of the first questions you will face is whether to host it online or as a traditional in-person celebration. But why not offer both in one experience?

That’s right, we’re talking about a hybrid workplace holiday party. The ultimate way to provide your team total autonomy in how they celebrate the holiday season with their colleagues, either online or in-person. 

A hybrid holiday party could be a great choice for your team, but there are unique hurdles and considerations involved when planning any sort of hybrid gathering. 

To help expedite your holiday party planning, let’s explore if a hybrid holiday party is right for your team and our tips for hosting a hybrid party will delight everyone. 

How To Decide If You Should Host a Hybrid Holiday Party 

What is the true purpose of a company holiday party? To celebrate your team, of course.

Your team members and their preferences should be top-of-mind throughout every step of your holiday party planning. A hybrid party could give them the much-needed freedom of choice for how to engage in the festivities. This is even more important if your company has a number of geographically dispersed locations that usually didn’t get to celebrate the end of the year together.

To understand if a hybrid holiday party is a good option for your team, we recommend you directly ask them. Gauge whether they are interested in a remote company holiday party, if they’d rather celebrate the season from the comfort of your office, or if they are flexible for either option. Also, check on their preferred activities during a holiday party in their preferred format. 

Beyond your team preferences, the following considerations will also impact whether a hybrid holiday party is a good fit for your company. Of course, these questions are also valid when planning a virtual holiday party, but they are amplified in hybrid settings:

  • How geographically dispersed is your team? You need to find a time that works for your whole team to meet, which could be difficult if your team spans multiple time zones.
  • Will in-person attendees drop out on the day of? Unforeseen circumstances like extreme weather or individual team member needs could lead to last-minute cancellations for the in-person event. 
  • What is your holiday party budget? Virtual parties can be more affordable than an in-person equivalent, especially if your team is known to host extravagant parties at exclusive (and expensive to book) locations. 

3 Tips for Hosting a Hybrid Holiday Party for Work

If your team decides that a hybrid holiday party will best fulfill everyone’s needs and work within your budget, there are a few planning considerations to be aware of.

First, familiarize yourself with the steps for planning an engaging virtual holiday party, which we detailed recently on the blog. Then, follow these best practices to ensure you plan a hybrid party that creates a cohesive and fun experience for everyone

Create a Seamless In-Person and Virtual Experience

The worst way to plan a hybrid party is to prioritize the in-person experience and simply add an option for people to stream the experience—leaving them to sit and stare at their screen as the in-person guests mix and mingle.

Everyone at your holiday party should have the same activities and opportunities, regardless of how they choose to join. This starts with your lineup of activities, and we share 10 workplace holiday party games great for a virtual or hybrid holiday party

Further build this sense of cohesion by replicating your in-person experiences for an online setting. If you plan to serve food and drink at your party, mail your virtual guests gift cards to acquire their own snacks. Or, send them goodies beforehand. If you have a photo booth at your event, consider creating custom webcam backgrounds to replicate a photo booth experience for your virtual guests. 

Designate a Delegate for Virtual Guests

For your hybrid holiday party to work, you need at least one on-site team member dedicated to engaging with the virtual attendees and ensuring they feel part of the experience. This person can monitor for messages from the remote attendees, help them overcome any communication difficulties, and grab the attention of the in-person group when needed.

The delegate will also be vital in helping orchestrate any of the games or activities you choose to participate in. 

Create Breakout Spaces to Mingle

At a traditional in-person holiday party, your team members often flock to small group conversations that they casually hop in and out of at their leisure. At a hybrid party, you do not want your in-person attendees to completely ignore your virtual guests.

In your virtual event platform, create breakout rooms with conversation prompts and others with room themes for your virtual attendees to join. Then, set up a few laptops and webcams throughout your event space for the in-person guests to come up to, chat with the virtual guests, and move through the computers over the course of the event. Again, your virtual guest delegate will be helpful to encourage the in-person guests to engage with the virtual attendees.

Hybrid Event Technology Enables Fulfilling Holiday Parties

We expect many teams will explore hybrid workplace and personal celebrations this year, be it a hybrid Christmas party, Kwanzaa celebration, or general holiday shindig. These event planners will need to overcome an unfamiliar set of challenges, but the fact is that the future of work is hybrid. And the future of celebrations will likely be hybrid, too.

By hosting a hybrid holiday party, your team can learn how to best overcome the hurdles of these gatherings and build a foundation to plan all of your workplace gatherings in 2022.

One of the essential ways to enable a successful hybrid event is to invest in technology that was created with your team’s experience in mind. Frameable Events was built to enable genuine engagement, with the features and capabilities your team needs to host a successful workplace party.

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virtual trade show

9 Elements of a Successful Virtual Trade Show Agenda

How does your trade association plan to make up for lost revenues from the cancellation or postponement of your in-person events?

Online industry trade show events have been vital in keeping communities connected since the onset of COVID-19, providing innovative ways for attendees and exhibitors to engage through virtual event platforms. Capabilities like live demos, exhibition halls with virtual booths, and robust chat functions can effectively replicate many beloved aspects of in-person events.

Despite the potential of virtual trade shows, however, nearly nine in ten industry trade professionals (86%) are still challenged with transitioning an in-person event to a virtual setting—which is understandable, given that many teams just started exploring virtual events within this last year.  

To accelerate your event planning, we recommend you set goals for your upcoming virtual trade show and then craft an agenda to fulfill those needs. Let’s explore how to build an engaging online trade show schedule that creates meaningful opportunities for your attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, and other partners. 

9 Online Industry Trade Show Agenda Activities

After reviewing recent and upcoming conferences from the American Society of Association Executives, Michigan Society of Association Executives, Colorado Society of Association Executives, and countless others, these are the must-include agenda items for your next virtual industry association trade show:

  • Board meeting: Your association board should meet during your conference. Most associations host this meeting on the first morning of their conference or shortly after the main conference wraps. 
  • Vendor demos/Exhibition Hall/Solutions Lounge: Your attendees need dedicated spaces to engage with your event exhibitors and partners. Enable exhibitors to showcase their solutions to your attendees in a virtual exhibition hall or vendor demo space. Offer an opportunity for Q&A, live demos, and hands-on learning to ensure exhibitors and sponsors see plenty of virtual foot traffic. 
  • Awards recognition: Host an awards ceremony that celebrates your trade show or industry association community (if relevant). These award ceremonies are an opportunity to spotlight members of your community and recognize them for their strides in your field or their dedication to your group. 
  • Express talks/Speed networking sessions/Short breakouts: Not all conference sessions should keep all conference-goers captive for an hour. Instead, offer breakout sessions of varying lengths for your attendees to dive into niche topics of interest that complement your overarching event theme. These smaller-group breakouts are perfect opportunities for attendees to mix and mingle in a more intimate setting than the conference keynotes. Offer two or three concurrent breakout sessions at a time to increase the diversity of your speaker roster and thoroughly explore the topics your audience cares about.   
  • Roundtable sessions: Gather a diverse roster of speakers to lead smaller group discussions on topics of interest to your attendees. Each speaker should have a unique element they can lend to the conversation—including the title or level of the speaker, their industry, or their specific experience with the topic—to support a well-rounded conversation. 
  • Lunchtime sessions or opportunities: Every minute of your conference should include some way to delight your attendees—and that includes lunch. Coordinate group conversations, 1:1 meetups, or informal lunch-and-learn sessions that attendees can join during lunch. Consider hosting a purely entertainment-focused activity, like a cooking demo, comedian set, or short film screening if your budget allows.  
  • 1:1s by appointment: Carve time from your agenda to coordinate one-on-one meetings with attendees, exhibitors, and other event partners. Attendees should be able to make appointments throughout your conference, not just in small exhibit hall break windows. Some attendees won’t mind missing a session to meet with a vendor (especially if your sessions are available for on-demand consumption). Build the meeting scheduling into your event platform, but be sure to integrate it with attendee calendars.
  • Training and certification opportunities. What official training or support programs will you offer to attendees? Many trade show events or industry membership association meetings are championed for their on-site certification and professional development opportunities. These sessions work just as well virtually, too! Consider saving one day of your conference exclusively for these opportunities (either the first or last day). 
  • After-hours entertainment. After a long day of joining sessions, networking, and striking up social media conversations, your trade show attendees need a way to unwind. So offer activities after the main conference sessions are over. These social activities can be as simple as an attendee happy hour or something elaborate like a wine and paint night or an exclusive musical performance.

Guide Trade Show Attendees from Experience to Experience

When developing your agenda, ensure that all activities have a clear purpose and that you don’t overwhelm your attendees with choices. For example, the Higher Logic team learned from its virtual Super Forum that their attendees felt they had too many options to choose from. Although that’s a “good problem” to have, it’s still a problem.

Event organizers must prepare their attendees for all the virtual event opportunities, including navigating attendees from experience to experience. Simply posting your event schedule and leaving it to your attendees to remember where they need to be and when for which sessions will likely lead to steep attendee drop off as your event continues.

Create a cohesive event experience for attendees by making the event agenda readily available on your conference site and through your conference mobile application. Enable attendees to add sessions to their calendars automatically so they don’t miss out.

During sessions, ask speakers to direct attendees to the next session or alert them of their options for what to do next. These verbal cues can be complemented with on-screen visuals, like a banner that urges attendees to return to the event platform lobby or a pop-up that links to the next session.

Prepare “Coming Next” or “We’ll Be Right Back With [next activity]” graphics to alert in-person and virtual attendees of what’s next, and think through your attendee transitions to ensure that there is no potential for confusion. 

Pick A Trade Show Event Technology Platform That Elevates the Attendee Experience

You have thoroughly documented your trade show goals and crafted a diverse series of events that supports those needs. Great! Your team is almost ready to host a successful virtual event. That is, of course, if your chosen event platform supports the quality of experience that your attendees expect.

The success of your trade show will depend on if attendees can freely network with exhibitors and sponsors, gain answers to their questions, and assess what solutions are best for their needs. But many event platforms are built with sub-par capabilities that lock attendees in a single room with no ability to connect with other conference attendees. 

Deliver the experience that your attendees deserve by using Social hour to support your next industry trade association event. The team at Frameable built the platform to support a wide range of event sessions and engagement opportunities, including pre-recorded or live-streamed keynotes, concurrent breakout sessions, and networking rooms that foster genuine engagement. Learn more about the Frameable Events platform and get started to create a more engaging virtual event experience today.  

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virtual trade show

20 Ways To Drive Virtual Trade Show Exhibitor Success

When planning a virtual industry event, the attendee experience will naturally be top-of-mind throughout your planning. But there is another critical audience to consider: your exhibitors. 

A worrying 73% of trade show exhibitors ranked virtual events as somewhat to extremely ineffective for them. Yikes! If you fail to meet exhibitor needs, you run the risk that those exhibitors will no longer partner with you for your events. Or even worse, they may go rogue and create their own events, undermining or competing with yours, as some event professionals warn. 

To get ahead of potential exhibitor dissatisfaction, industry trade show organizers need to significantly reinvent how they approach their exhibitor relationships to drive results in the world of virtual and hybrid events. 

Here is how you can create a successful partnership with your exhibitors to meet their goals while also satisfying your event attendees and partners.

What Do Exhibitors Gain From Participating in Virtual Events?

To tailor your virtual event experience to benefit exhibitors, your event planning committee needs to understand—and be able to express—what exhibitors can gain from participating in virtual events. Some of the benefits include:

  • Reaching new audiences without travel costs, boosting brand awareness
  • Opportunities to distribute product information to a new audience
  • Lead generation with a seamless handoff to digital marketing nurture streams
  • Social media engagement opportunities with event attendees
  • Potential ongoing partnership opportunities with event organizers

Virtual trade show exhibitors typically measure their success on new qualified leads, but other KPIs can be important to them, too. Total booth visitors, the number of one-on-one appointments held, access to product trials, and new social media followers can all signal a successful trade show exhibition experience.

To maximize your exhibitor’s potential to reach and engage your event attendees, your team needs to use an event platform that allows you to create public and private spaces that elevate your event partners. Most exhibitors can replicate the value of their in-person exhibitions online, but it may take a little extra effort on your organization’s part.

20 Ways To Delight Virtual Trade Show Exhibitors

Virtual event attendees need to explore and connect with your event exhibitors freely. But you cannot expect attendees to naturally flock to your virtual exhibition hall the same way they would at an in-person event.

Instead, after you’ve covered the essential ways to encourage engagement from virtual trade show attendees, explore each of these ideas to maximize the virtual trade show exhibitor experience:

Before your event:

  1. Connect with exhibitors through a survey and individual conversations to understand what they hope to gain from the event experience.
  2. Involve exhibitors and sponsors in planning some of your event activities, such as after-hours events or sponsored sessions.
  3. Prime attendees for ways they can engage with event exhibitors in all pre-event communications.
  4. Encourage attendees to pre-submit questions for exhibitor-led sessions. 

During your event:

  1. Arrange virtual and in-person scavenger hunts that encourage attendees to visit sponsor booths and do more than grab some swag and run. Ask attendees to snap photos or take screenshots of various spaces across your exhibition hall or follow clues that lead them from booth to booth. Small prizes like $5-$10 gift cards or vendor giveaways can incentivize attendees to participate.
  2. Create custom-made graphics that spotlight your exhibitors and vendors. Amplify these posts using your event hashtag and by tagging/@ mentioning the event partner.
  3. Conduct trade show raffles and giveaways featuring exhibitor products and swag.
  4. Interview exhibitors in live stream conversations to preview what attendees can gain by visiting their booth.
  5. Highlight trade show exhibitors and sponsors throughout your event platform, and on social media. For starters, this can include your event registration page, on your event interface, through sponsored sessions, and in the virtual exhibition hall.
  6. Build a virtual exhibition hall that enables attendees to browse trade show booths and later engage with those companies if interested.
  7. Provide an online green room where your attendees can have exclusive access to exhibitors and session presenters for Q&A and live demos.
  8. Allow attendees to make appointments with exhibitors ahead of time, in addition to general drop-in hours. 
  9. Send pop-up announcements in your event platform to encourage attendees to connect with exhibitors
  10. Build an interactive virtual Exhibition Hall directory where attendees can quickly browse and filter exhibitors based on their products and services.
  11. Provide a clear overview of each exhibitor, including what their company does and what value they can provide to attendees.
  12. Include a calendar integration so sessions and vendor meetings automatically become a calendar invite for attendees.
  13. Include dedicated exhibit hall time in your event schedule

After your event:

  1. Send a post-event survey to event exhibitors and partners to understand their experience at the event, including if they met their goals and feedback to help you better tailor future events to meet your exhibitor needs.
  2. Offer ongoing partnership opportunities with your event exhibitors to expand on topics they explored at your event. This can include webinars, live Q&A on social media channels, guest content opportunities, and more.
  3. Promote event session replays and exhibitor downloads across your communications channels to maximize the number of attendees that engage with your exhibitors.

Naturally, if you do these 20 things, your exhibitors will feel valued, engaged, and confident that you’ve done your best to create exhibitor engagement at your virtual trade show.

How to Survey Exhibitors to Refine and Measure Your Event ROI

The ideas above will help your virtual trade show exhibitors have a successful virtual event experience, meaning they are more likely to keep partnering with you and your community. But event planners need to be proactive in getting ahead of exhibitor needs throughout every step of the event planning process—and that includes well before and after your event ends.

The most effective way to please virtual trade show exhibitors is to survey them before your event to gauge their needs and afterward to see if you met those needs. These surveys should explore everything about how you can provide value to your event exhibitors and help them meet their goals. Common topics for event exhibitor surveys include why they chose to exhibit at your event, how they plan to measure their success, how they intend to engage your attendees, whether they are interested in partnering on social activities for your event, and more.

There are many options for hosting an event exhibitor survey, and many survey tools are completely free to use. A few survey platforms you can consider are:

To help you get started, we’ve created two free virtual trade show exhibitor satisfaction surveys in Google Forms. Download and copy our pre-event exhibitor survey and our post-event exhibitor survey to fast-track your process. 

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