Arena is a brand new virtual and hybrid events platform developed by event profs, for event profs. More and more companies are turning to Arena as the ultimate option for their events, due to the affordable yet feature-rich offering Arena brings.
Read on for a case study on how we helped a well-known UK pension provider achieve their virtual event objectives with Arena.
Table of Contents
1. The background
2. The objective
3. The delivery
4. The challenges
5. The result
6. Things to consider
7. Client testimonial
The background
The client was a very well known major UK pension provider. They were running the event to bring together their team, many of whom had not been able to attend the office for months and other more remote workers who would otherwise not have been able to travel and attend an in-person event.
The objective
The brief was to bring the team together, provide collaborative ways for them to interact and to deliver messaging from senior management on the direction of the company.
They chose Arena as they were “Zoomed out” and wanted an affordable platform which could showcase professional livestreams and also provide 25 breakout rooms so that the whole company would be able to divide into appropriately-sized breakout rooms.
Other platforms were not suitable as they charged additional breakout room fees which put them out of budget, whereas Arena includes unlimited breakout rooms. In the words of the client - “it would have cost 10x on another platform”.
Further, other platforms did not have the delegate management functionality to move attendees between rooms. This was essential when dividing the entire company into 25 breakout rooms, and taking them back again, with 30 second transition times.
The delivery
The event was a two-day internal conference, with some close partners invited on the first day. It was for 200 people and consisted of a main stage livestream for each day, and 25 breakout rooms for the more interactive sessions.
The client chose to run this event as a managed service and so the livestream was run by one of Hire Space’s Live Stream Producers with the operational side of the event run by one of Hire Space’s Virtual Event Managers.
The challenges
The core challenges of this event related to delegate logistics.
Taking 200 attendees from the main stage and bringing them to their pre-specified breakout room within a 30 second transition window was a big challenge, as was bringing them back to the main stage at the end of the breakout sessions.
To achieve this, the Virtual Event Manager used Arena’s unique “Auto Move Notifications”. These in-app notifications show a message such as “Breakout rooms opening now”, show a 10 second countdown and then move the attendee to a pre-specified location. They can be configured by Ticket Type and so it’s easy to give each breakout group a different ticket type and send each group a simultaneous message to move them to their respective breakout rooms.
The transition to move everyone back to the main stage was even easier and was achieved through a single “Auto Move Notification” which appeared in all breakout rooms.
All this functionality, including unlimited video breakouts, is included in Arena’s core pricing of £2 per person.
The result
The event was a success, with positive feedback from senior stakeholders and attendees alike.
The breakout rooms worked seamlessly and the event objectives were achieved. Further, the partner organisation which was invited on day 1 also had positive feedback on the experience.
Things to consider
As with all events, there were things which could have been improved.
As security was paramount, the event was configured so that unregistered guests had to use 2-factor authentication when signing up for the event. On the first day, there were some guests from the partner organisation who did not pre-register and then were frustrated by the requirement to verify their email address for security reasons. This will easily be avoided for the next event by ensuring that all guests are registered before the event starts.
Client testimonial
“The event achieved all its objectives and our senior stakeholders are very happy. We’re looking forward to using Arena again soon.” - Event Lead
If you'd like to read another Arena success story, read our case study on a recent virtual event for a major management consultancy. If you're interested in finding out more about Arena or want to start planning events of your own, book a demo with our Event Experts below.
Author
Izzie Lachecki
Izzie brings a deep understanding of the events world to Hire Space, and keeps busy by writing lots of Hire Space and EventLAB content and managing the Hire Space social media presence.
