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 large consultancy 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 well-known and respected transformation consultancy, and it was communicated to us that it was very important for them to engage with their clients and to showcase their thought leadership. Moreover, as a technology advisor, it was extremely important that their virtual event exceeded the expectations of attendees to reflect their brand.
The objective
The objective of this event was for the company to engage their clients and showcase themselves as thought leaders in public sector technology transformation. They decided to do this as a virtual event as their clients are spread geographically around the UK, and because it was an opportunity for them to showcase the benefits of digital-centric thinking.
They chose Arena for a number of reasons:
- The audience included extremely senior public sector figures, who are very busy, work behind strong firewalls, and don’t want the bother of creating new accounts to attend a virtual event. Arena’s one-click invitations solved this problem.
- The design of the event made heavy use of breakouts and polling functionality, both of which are included with Arena at no extra cost.
- As the event was playing host to such senior attendees, the platform needed to be reliable.
- They wanted a team of virtual event and live stream specialists to help them with the execution of the event, and Hire Space was on hand to provide this.
The delivery
The event was structured as a 3-day virtual conference for 200 people, with a different core audience on each day. Each day involved multiple interactive live streams, both as single speakers and panel discussions, as well as breakout sessions and live polling.
The event was set up using our core “dark” theme, giving a sleek and professional feel to the event, with the client’s logo and branding prominently displayed in the header.
Attendees joined via a secure one-click login link which was sent to them via email and as a calendar invitation. They joined the main stage for a series of talks, complete with branded backgrounds and graphics, produced by one of Hire Space’s in-house live stream producers.
At pre-specified points in the schedule, attendees were moved by in-app notifications directly into video breakouts and then back to the main stage when the breakout session was finished. This allowed for quick transitions between breakouts and live stream content.
Attendees were also asked polls at times during the session. The client chose to run this is a managed service and so a Hire Space Virtual Event Manager timed the launching of the polls throughout the day.
This format was repeated with different audiences, talks, breakouts and polls each day over the course of the 3-day event.
The challenges
The challenges for this event were mainly related to the senior nature of the public sector officials who were joining as attendees and as speakers.
To overcome these challenges, the event was set up using one-click invitations so that busy attendees didn’t have to spend time reading instructions, creating accounts or downloading software. For speakers, a rehearsal was organised for each speaker prior to the event by the live stream producer so that technical issues could be addressed ahead of time.
Arena is thoroughly tested behind secure firewalls from banks and ministries so the firewalls did not pose an issue, however the design of the events was very complicated, with allocations being mixed up between each breakout session to ensure attendees saw different people throughout the day. To address this, each attendee was individually allocated to each breakout session manually by Hire Space’s Virtual Event Support Team.
The result
The objectives of the client were met and exceeded. The feedback they received from partners and clients was overwhelmingly positive and new business was generated for the business as a result.
They have engaged to do further events on the back of this and build upon the success of this flagship event.
Things to consider
For the next event there are, of course, things to improve.
A simplification of breakouts is one thing that will be adopted, as by assigning attendees individually it makes it time consuming for last-minute attendees to be assigned, or for rooms to be configured if there was low attendance for a specific room.
Frequency of polling was also something which will be considered for next time. Attendee engagement was seen to increase significantly when 1 or 2 polls were used in a session, but dipped slightly when more than 5 were used.
Client testimonial
“Simply outstanding. This raised the bar for what we thought was possible with virtual events.” - Head of Marketing
If you'd like to read another Arena success story, read our case study on a recent virtual event we ran for a leading pension provider. 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.
