This week JP Moery explains why it's important to have a pulse on your organization's culture followed by three incentives you can use to help recruit new members.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello and welcome to JP Moery’s Association Hustle Podcast. President of The Moery Company, JP’s mission is to arm today’s associations with insight and strategy to thrive and a progressively complex and competitive business landscape. 21st century associations must move forward with a little bit of hustle and revenue development at their core.

Here’s JP.

 

We’re going to cover a couple of things on this episode of the Association Hustle Podcast.

First, I'm going to cover some internal developments that I've observed over the last several weeks and then then I'll talk about membership recruitment.

Team Culture

Your business, whether it's an association or a business that's serving associations, is likely in a very different place than it was one year ago today. For example, you're likely working remotely for an unforeseen amount of time. If you're an association, your business model has been disrupted, specifically, non-dues revenue. Your membership renewals are probably a guessing game for 2021 at this time. You may not be sure how they're going to come in. Will it be the same cadence as before? Will there be a different percentage of members renewing than previous years? A lot of unknowns there.

Recruitment will be a battle as we're competing for discretionary budgets of our member companies that we're trying to bring on board. So, with all that happening in the business side, here's my advice: now is the perfect time to ask your employees about your organization’s culture. You’re working so that that you’ve probably forgotten to ask them how they're doing. They're working by themselves. They're not together to pass on stories. They might feel like they're out on an island and you've left them out there because you're so focused on keeping the business operation afloat – changing, adding new programs, switching to virtual, all these things – and you haven't thought about the people.

Recently, my team participate in a study with Heidrick and Struggles. The results were eye opening for me as a leader. I learned that the fact that we asked them about how they're doing – and what the culture was like – had benefits to it in itself. Secondly, the importance of trust, honesty, and integrity with each other and our clients was our highest rated area. That's great news because we put a lot of emphasis on that when we started the company 11 years ago. Frankly, if I go down with the ship and this company doesn't live another year, I'll know that we did the right things the right way by our team and our clients.

We ranked the lowest on diversity of opinions and thoughts and personal recognition. And our team is right. In fact, I thought about this a lot; I've been so proactive, assertive, and making many decisions –because I've seen organizations that were paralyzed by the pandemic – that I was, frankly, less collaborative. I was not asking my team for their views or getting their feedback and that's big damn mistake. I didn't even know it.

To respond to ranking in that area we are now having more discussions and more inclusion on decisions that we have to make about strategy and direction of the company. Sometimes, it's just good to talk about the issues instead of the task and the project at hand. We were focusing so much of what’s out in front of us, we were missing some big issues and big opportunities long term.

As far as increasing public recognition, I think folks are so grateful that they've got a job that...

Virtual events have some downsides, however, they have a major upside: engaging a new or different audience you would not have otherwise reached due to barriers of in-person events (budgets, scheduling, etc.). Leverage the current conditions to engage new audiences and convert them into new members.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello and welcome to JP Moery’s Association Hustle Podcast. President of The Moery Company, JP’s mission is to arm today’s associations with insight and strategy to thrive and a progressively complex and competitive business landscape. 21st century associations must move forward with a little bit of hustle and revenue development at their core.

Here’s JP.

Today, we're going to discuss how to leverage what you have available to you in this current environment for new membership and sponsorship recruitment.

Membership

One thing that we're learning a lot more about is the value of membership recruitment, membership engagement, and membership renewal. Event and non-dues revenue streams may be a bit uncertain right now and it may continue to be so for a long time. This should not paralyze us. We have members and industry that rely on us to deliver value; this is why we were put on this association planet, anyway.

Let's look at how you can leverage virtual events for membership from a before the event, during the event, and after the event perspectives.

Before the Event

Registration should be an absolute land run. We're seeing from data we have collected that you can reach more people – and possibly get more attendance – with a virtual event than an in-person. It's obvious why; there are less barriers. There’s a reduction in needed approval to register because registration fees tend to be lower, there’s no need for travel and booking a hotel, there’s an overall reduction of expenses that an attendee has to expense. Therefore, I would eliminate any non-member registration discrepancy. Get them to register and attend and then deliver unbelievable value to them by putting on a heck of a show: on demand content, live entertainment, concurrent sessions, and more. Showcase your vendors and suppliers in a compelling way not only for your members but to your non-members. Demonstrate how valuable your association is to them and how much great information they will walk away with from this event.

During the Event

Think about how to structure your sessions and design some purposely with the intent on showcasing the value of the association to your non-member attendees. When we go to in-person events, there's usually some kind of a new member or a non-member briefing. I've been a couple of those and, oh my God, you couldn't get me out of there quick enough. However, in this case, you can really showcase the benefits of membership without it being in their face. Set up sessions for the non-member and promote them prior to the event. Here are some ideas for topics to cover:

How can I better monitor state regulations?

How can I gain more customers in the *insert your* industry?

How do I connect with other companies virtually?

What's the latest data in our industry and consumer trends?

How can I save money for my company right now?

These topics cover the benefits – or the end results – of becoming a member of your association. If you can put those in concurrent sessions and promote them actively before the event to your non-members you're going to really enhance the association’s portfolio. By the way, because of the data collected by the virtual event platforms, we know who's attending those sessions and those are the people we're going to sell membership to after the event.

This week we're celebrating the release of the 250th episode of the Association Hustle Podcast. Tune in as JP Moery dives into the lessons learned and what the future holds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello and welcome to JP Moery’s Association Hustle Podcast. President of The Moery Company, JP’s mission is to arm today’s associations with insight and strategy to thrive and a progressively complex and competitive business landscape. 21st century associations must move forward with a little bit of hustle and revenue development at their core.

Here’s JP.

Hello, my friends, and welcome to Episode 250 of the Association Hustle Podcast. For those of you who have been listening for a long time – thank you, thank you! For those of you who are joining for the first time – thank you, thank you! If you haven’t already, go back and download previous episode, lots of good stuff!

On to episode 250. Today, I'm going to let it rip. The title of this one is, "Now, I Really Have Something to Say," because I've learned a lot over the last 250 episodes.

One of the things I've learned is the power of podcasting. Friends, it the most positive communication tool I've ever launched in business and I've been in the association space now for almost 30 years. I don't understand any association that does not have one by now. Until recently, we were getting about 400 people listening per month, now we're getting over 4000. Podcasts scale overtime and you have the opportunity to reach people that you've never reached before; the possibilities are endless.

Here are some of the other things that we have learned... Virtual programming is absolutely scalable. It's on demand and we embrace the variety of ways that we can use these platforms to connect with multiple audience segments and groups that you've never been able to reach before. If you think about your in-person meetings, it was only getting to a limited amount of people, typically one attendee from an organization. Now, you can reach whole departments, and even companies, with your virtual programs.

Meetings and conventions are going to reappear and they will do so with vigor, however, the business model for events will change. Anticipate smaller, more regional events. May be high end, and exclusive ones. I'm concerned about organizations that typically put on large events with thousands of people in attendance. I hope they can figure it out and work through it because they're so important to our business model. In all of these cases, we're talking about a blended and diversified series of programs to reach a larger audience to be more influential and we are able to deepen the bench in our member companies – if it's a corporate membership – and be relevant in the lives of these member companies more than ever.

After 250 episodes, I'm also worried about inaction. My former colleague Don Neal, President of 360 Live Media, said recently in a blog post that he was concerned about the cost of inaction, and I am too. Over the last 250 episodes, we talked about a number of ways to embrace new and innovative ways to engage audiences, but I know that there are some associations that really need to check themselves and to see if they're truly helping out their members while the industry they represent is under incredible stress and strain. Now, here's what I'm fascinated by, some associations have absolutely woken up; in some cases, it's new leadership that's catapulting the organization forward. I'm going to name some people today for you: Chris Walker, of the Distilled Spirits Council, this is you. David Long of the National Electrical Contractors Association, this is you. These guys, they're firing so much new! And,

This week's episode covers important trends in virtual event sponsorship sales, membership, and additional areas of focus for associations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello and welcome to JP Moery’s Association Hustle Podcast. President of The Moery Company, JP’s mission is to arm today’s associations with insight and strategy to thrive and a progressively complex and competitive business landscape. 21st century associations must move forward with a little bit of hustle and revenue development at their core.

Here’s JP.

Two hundred and forty-nine episodes! I never thought I'd get this far and I never thought you'd be with me this long; I really do appreciate you.

Today, I want to give you some feedback on business development and what's going on right now in the space.

Let's start with sponsorships.

Virtual sponsorships are working and they are selling. We see this in the field as we are selling virtual event sponsorship inventory on the behalf of our clients and we’re having success doing so. Here are some observations:

1. Avoid assumptions. Don’t assume that your existing sponsors may not want to participate virtually. On the other hand, there may be prospects that would never buy a booth at your trade show that want to be a virtual sponsor. Know that renewing former sponsors may be a bit different than it used to be and that you are opening opportunities with partners that may not have been active in this way before.

2. Be prepared to spend time explaining and promoting your new platform. It's really important to show momentum in the virtual space when partners are renewing, sponsoring new programs, and getting involved with your virtual platform.

3. Be prepared to provide more data than ever before. Data is why virtual platforms are so valuable, they can collect more and better data. Virtual platforms can collect contact information that you maybe were not able to provide them before and it’s easier to do so.

It’s going to be very difficult to sell your virtual event sponsorships if you haven’t hosted webinars or virtual programming that generated interest, people are not registering for events you have scheduled, or people are not showing up. Potential sponsors will ask how many people are tuning in to your webinars and their demographics. If you don't have the numbers to back it up, it's going to be very difficult to sell.

 

Let's talk about membership for a moment.

1. Be certain that you're connecting with prospective members right now. Do so by preparing your return on investment statement. Some things to include are:

Things that you have done for the industry and prospective and current members.

Number of calls made to Congress and the results on behalf of your members

Number of recorded sessions and webinars – how to apply for a PPP loan, for example – and other important information that you have shared.

You have to be able to articulate and develop the return on investment statement because you've been doing more work than you have ever done for your members. The reason why you need to do it is because your members are going to decide – in the last quarter of 2020 and in the first quarter of 2021 – whether they're going to renew or not. Or they may have been, for the first time ever, participating in some of your programming and seeing what a great job you’ve done and how much you have helped them survive and thrive.

On that note, we (The Moery Company) joined an association that we had never joined before because of the information and the value that they’re currently providing us.

Overall, business is good; however, we're not out of the woods yet. Listen to this week's episode to hear how we're doing and the lessons that we have learned thus far.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello and welcome to JP Moery’s Association Hustle Podcast. President of The Moery Company, JP’s mission is to arm today’s associations with insight and strategy to thrive and a progressively complex and competitive business landscape. 21st century associations must move forward with a little bit of hustle and revenue development at their core.

Here’s JP.

I want to answer a question that I get the most right now, "How is business?"

Frankly, I don’t think people are asking it as a conversation starter these days – I think they genuinely want to know – people want to know what's happening in the association space.

Business is great. I'm grateful because we are still here. It's great because we have kept everyone on the team and working at full capacity. We had to make adjustments to do that, however, we're all here and we're all working. It's great because I think we've executed better than ever before. I think our team members value their positions and I'm grateful for that, too. From that perspective, really good.

Now, a deeper dive.

We have two types of business. We have a consulting business that involves membership dues and sponsorship prospectus development and strategic planning, to name a few areas of expertise. Then, we have our business development side where we sell memberships, sponsorships, ads, and exhibits.

Our consulting and strategic planning business is going to remain soft for the remainder of the year. Associations are putting some of those projects off or they are trying to do it on their own without a facilitator. They're developing their strategic plans – if they're even trying to do that at all right now –because of the current situation that we're in. Membership and sponsorship sales continue to provide us with opportunities because associations are going to need revenue as well as the people, the process, and the infrastructure to optimize the opportunities that they have. I think the opportunities for us to help associations are coming to us on that front.

There will be less inventory from a sponsorship and a non-dues revenue area to sell because the cancellation of events and with some organizations being slow to move to virtual programs. It has made non-dues revenue sales difficult because the associations aren't moving forward at a pace that they should in order to survive.

Our overall revenue is up 5% and profits are similar to last year. Our net profit is right where it was before. It's going to be a challenge to meet the net numbers that we did last year, however, I feel pretty good about the overall business. I have to be candid, though, it's a fight with knifes every single day.

In the process of pivoting and adjusting, we'll weed out the mediocre and see where we end up at the end of the day.

I have also thought about how we will change our associations and companies; I think everyone needs to think about that. What kind of things could happen, things that are going to change long-term and what things are going to be episodic?

Here's what I see happening: our speed must improve and our speed is dependent on our data. You need good information for a sales team to be optimized. You’re not just going to start calling people without a plan, are you? Our association partners – and ourselves included – need to move quicker in this area. The prospectus and the membership narrative have to be really tight before we ever get out of the gate and that's going to be ve...

This week on the Association Hustle Podcast we have a special guest on the show! Patty Leeman, Chief Research Analysts here at The Moery Company, joins JP Moery to discuss the key takeaways from ASAE's Annual Meeting held virtually earlier this month.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello and welcome to JP Moery’s Association Hustle Podcast. President of The Moery Company, JP’s mission is to arm today’s associations with insight and strategy to thrive and a progressively complex and competitive business landscape. 21st century associations must move forward with a little bit of hustle and revenue development at their core.

Here’s JP.

 

JP Moery: Today we have a special guest on the Association Hustle Podcast. We don’t often have one so this is a special day! Patty Leeman, our Chief Research Analysts here at The Moery Company, is joining us today! She has been a great colleague for a number of years and we’re going to hit on a very important and urgent topic: virtual events and first hand account of an attendee’s experience. Patty recently attended ASAE Annual Meeting and she’s going to share her thoughts.

 

What was your overall impression of the conference?

Patty Leeman: Truthfully, I don't even know how associations do it right now, to pivot on a dime and move from live to virtual. Wow, kudos to all those people doing it. I think ASAE did an outstanding job of scrambling; they moved the whole thing over to virtual, they had great content and good takeaways. I wrote a lot of notes down that I'm actually applying. Overall, I think it was a plus.

JP: This is so helpful for everyone because we're in a phase right now where everybody is now implementing these things at variety of different degrees. We've had to scramble, we've had to adjust, we've had to launch, we've had to do it all. Now, people are having the events and we get the opportunity to learn from each other.

 

Tell me about the programming itself, was it live or pre-recorded? What was your experience like? What was the differences between the two?

Patty: I was really shocked by how much I loved the pre-recorded sessions, particularly for the breakouts. They streamed the pre-recorded session and then the people who were presenting were available to chat live. It became this amazing interactive session. JP, you do webinars all the time, you know how hard it is to manage chat at the same time!

JP: Yeah! Actually, I don't do it that way because it's very difficult to do simultaneously. It's almost impossible to deliver the content and monitor the chat room and answer questions. What usually happens is that you run out of time. In this case, they pre-recorded their session and then they're able to go in the chat and answer Q&A. I love that. You know, another area that we chat about a lot here, because it's in our business, is sponsorships.

 

Tell me about sponsorships and how they were delivered. What can we learn from what you saw and experienced?

Patty: Let's start with the keynotes. There was an incredible opportunity to show a short video at the beginning. Their biggest sponsors had a professional video shown. Those smaller ones, you could have a logo slide up. The smaller ones, they actually let someone do the Q&A and be able to run the Q&A live after a pre-recorded session. Now, I did want to give one comment about pre-recording because some of the sessions that were live had more problems because of the speaker’s connectivity, they would buffer in and out. I was shocked by how much I liked the pre-recorded sessions with a hosted Q&A after.

Running an association – or a business – is going to be different than ever before and better than ever before. How you handle these changes and what you do next are depended on your philosophy and your why. On this week's episode of the Association Hustle podcast, JP Moery dives into his philosophy and how you can apply it now to prepare for success in 2021.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello and welcome to JP Moery’s Association Hustle Podcast. President of The Moery Company, JP’s mission is to arm today’s associations with insight and strategy to thrive and a progressively complex and competitive business landscape. 21st century associations must move forward with a little bit of hustle and revenue development at their core.

Here’s JP.

Today, I want to talk about the mindset we're going to need to move forward in 2021. My goodness, I think it could be one of the best years we've ever had. Businesses are coming back, baby. It's going to come back, it has to. It's going to be different than it ever was before and it may be better than it ever was.

Let me tell you about things that I've been thinking about around mindset. I'm pulling from some of my old standbys. The other day, I was listening to Jim Rohn. And, for those of you who are youngsters, Jim Rohn is one of the best motivational, self-help, practical business speakers I've ever heard. Look him up. It's some of the best content that you've ever heard and you've heard other people copy it for years.

He starts with philosophy. What's your philosophy on life? How are you thinking about things? Philosophy then lends to your attitude. It's all about attitude and how you're going to face these things, friends. Attitude then turns into your action. If you’ve got the right attitude, you're probably going to act. And then, through a positive attitude, great philosophy, and actions you build to great results. Because of those great results you get to have the lifestyle that you want.

Too many times we get hung up middle of this process. You may start with action without having the right attitude or philosophy to back it up. If you think about it, it's similar to what Simon Sinek talks about. Do you have a good why? Why do you do it? This is how I think about Jim Rohn's content here around philosophy and attitude that then leads to action to results and then to the lifestyle that you want. I think we're going to need these types of concepts and an intentional step-by-step process to help us get through the next several months and to set us up for the next year. I would also add things like being helpful, adding value, having a long-term mentality, being the best that you can possibly be in the field, and also having some fun doing it. All of these things are going to enable us to take advantage of the new situation that's now facing us in business.

I think we've improved during this time. Think about it, we've changed for the better. We're more creative, we're delivering value across a number of different platforms, different formats, and different situations. We're also talking about new things and we're increasingly engaged with what's happening in government relations for our association programs. We're delivering educational content and reaching more people than we ever have before.

I hope that we all have a great story to tell about the way that we're connecting vendors and suppliers. They both need each other. We got to be able to say, "Hey, the core membership really needs these suppliers. We need to learn from them about what's happening in our businesses and how they might be able to serve us better and what products might improve our bottom line." Meanwhile,

The third and final episode in our series on building virtual event sponsorship covers pricing and selling your new inventory. Tune in to hear a list of upsides you can use to bring sponsors on board and the variables to consider when pricing your packages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello and welcome to JP Moery’s Association Hustle Podcast. President of The Moery Company, JP’s mission is to arm today’s associations with insight and strategy to thrive and a progressively complex and competitive business landscape. 21st century associations must move forward with a little bit of hustle and revenue development at their core.

Here’s JP.

Today’s episode is all about the final stages of creating and selling of the virtual event sponsorship packages. If you need to, please go back to episodes 243 and 244 for the first steps you need to take in the process. I walk you through the steps you needed to learn about what's happening in the industry as you begin to put out your virtual sponsorship program.

On this episode we’re going to cover pricing and selling your virtual sponsorships, a very important topic that many of you care about.

You should start with looking at several factors as you decide what your pricing structure ought to be and what the inventory will look like. What are the strategic imperatives of the event? What are the budget expectations? Is this a net revenue play? Are you looking at gross revenue that you're trying to chip away at? What are other associations doing in your space? Are they offering virtual events, too? What does the competition look like? Have you been able to engage audiences online? Your sponsors will want to know prior to committing.

Then refer back to your sponsor discussions and interviews that we talked about in earlier episodes. What did they reveal about their company's budgets, direction, and the level of support you might be able to expect? That helps you come together, not only with the pricing, but with the inventory.

Begin with an email campaign to launch the sponsorship program and inventory by first laying out the benefits of sponsoring your new and virtual events. You will have to educate folks on the upside of going virtual and the new opportunities that come along with it. Sponsors already know what a coffee break sponsorship looks like at the Grand Hyatt in St. Louis. They've never sponsored a virtual program before so you will have to educate, provide more information than you’re used to, and describe how everything is going to look and work.

1. It will probably cost less for the sponsor to participate in a virtual event versus an in-person one.

2. A virtual event will not require the same amount of time and resources. The sponsorship team, in effect, can be a bit more focused on selling and promoting their brand rather than sitting in sessions, standing behind the booth, traveling, and incur additional expenses.

3. You won’t have the issue of having too many vendors at the meeting. No one will be able to see them. It's not that big of a deal. Remember this theme – and I've heard it many times – “Oh, there's just too many vendors and we don't want too many suppliers and sponsors there!" Everyone has gone virtual so they're not going to be bothered by the too many vendors in the room issue. You also have upside that there is every indication that overall registration is going to be much larger; you're going to reach a bigger audience.

4. Virtual events are more time efficient; you can respond to a lead in real time with automated e-mail campaigns and sales call follow up. You don't have to wait to get back on the plane and go home and try to re...

The next steps, after creating strategy and expectations for your virtual event sponsorship program, are to design the program. You can do so by researching, learning as much as possible about your chosen platform, and then teaching your sponsors so that they can get the most out of their experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello and welcome to JP Moery’s Association Hustle Podcast. President of The Moery Company, JP’s mission is to arm today’s associations with insight and strategy to thrive and a progressively complex and competitive business landscape. 21st century associations must move forward with a little bit of hustle and revenue development at their core.

Here’s JP.

I want to continue the discussion of developing a strong organizational framework for your virtual sponsorship program. If you haven’t already, please refer to our last episode, episode #243, as it lays the foundation for establishing your virtual sponsorship program. In that episode we covered things such as setting overall goals for the event. There needs to be different expectations for the virtual event than the in-person program that you’ve had for the last 25 years. Are there things that you would like the attendees to learn? And, it will no longer be just a handful of people that attend from each organization, there may be half a dozen or more people attend from that organization. Now they can all attend because they don't have to travel and their budget can allow for more attendees.

Sponsors will also have different expectations for a virtual event. Typically, your sponsors were interested in in–person one-on-one connections because they were perceived to be the most valuable return on their investment. However, that is one of the more difficult aspects of the virtual meeting. So, what can you provide them? Is it better data? Is it an opportunity to speak which is something that, in my experience, has not been allowed during in-person meetings. Over time, I’ve heard sponsors ask for an opportunity to provide thought leadership as the number one request and it is the number one thing that the association declines.

So, let's get started here and continuing on the journey of building your virtual event sponsorship program.

Research

The next steps, once you’ve completed the strategic consideration exercise, is the design of your virtual sponsorship. First, research to see what other organizations are doing. Examine virtual sponsorship models of other associations. Everyone is in this together and learning at the same time. I'm not sure anyone would say they're an expert in virtual sponsorships yet. However, they're learning, implementing, trying, and those experiences are things that you can learn from. I really like the way many associations are promoting their conferences and how to use virtual platform to learn, engage, meet other people. They're really providing a great number of tutorials about how to do this and I think that's very valuable. Compare association sponsorship pricing and benefits using public information published by other associations. Everyone is chasing their tail right now on pricing. This is why I think it's important for you to be very clear on what you need to achieve financially because that is going to affect your pricing. If this is an attempt to just stay top of mind and reach as many people as possible, you’ll want to engage vendors and suppliers in your industry that have never been available. What I see here is the chance to have an entry level type program that can be used to build relationships that can then move into hybrid and in-person meetings and additional inventory in 2021.

Virtual event sponsorships are a huge topic for associations right now. Take a listen to this week's episode as JP Moery discusses the pros and cons of virtual events and then takes a deep dive into what you need to do to launch your own virtual event sponsorship program.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello and welcome to JP Moery’s Association Hustle Podcast. President of The Moery Company, JP’s mission is to arm today’s associations with insight and strategy to thrive and a progressively complex and competitive business landscape. 21st century associations must move forward with a little bit of hustle and revenue development at their core.

Here’s JP.

 

Virtual sponsorships are a huge topic for associations right now and we’re on fire about it!

 

Today we’re going to cover the pros and cons of virtual events and sponsorships and then we’ll cover how to get started in creating your own strategy.

Pros of Virtual Events

I’ve had multiple conversations with association executives and the following are the positives of virtual events and sponsorships that we all agree on.

There is an overall positive reception and feedback from attendees, they are having a pretty good experience when it comes to virtual events. One thing they’re happy about? They're saving the cash by not having to travel. The other? They are able to download information that they want on demand.

The ability to track new attendees and new audience is a big pro. The opportunity is there to be able to connect deeper with our member companies. The events used to be a corporate decision. Before, a member company may have sent two folks to the annual meeting. Now, they can have those two people and all of the people that report to them attend as well.

There is also an increase in opportunity for content delivery and the ability to include sponsor and vendor thought leadership. Associations are more liberal with the content that they're providing based on the prospectuses that I've seen thus far. You can add additional sessions without anyone being upset because they have the opportunity to attend them all. This enables us to allow sponsors, vendors, and suppliers deliver case studies and thought leadership.

Archived and on-demand content is another major pro. And, if you structure it the right way, you can have shorter and tighter programming options – two to three hours a day has been a favorable mix.

A virtual event is less expensive to execute. We're not flying everyone out and buying a bunch of $30 gallons of coffee. We can execute these programs for less.

 

Virtual Event Cons

Here are some of the cons, or areas where virtual events have yet to prove their value over in-person events:

We’ve seen networking engagement be uneven with a wide variance of success here. No doubt that, in networking forums that I've seen, there is a need to facilitate and lead those sessions. The ability to bring people together around a particular grouping such as a topic or a specific subject matter is really important. You need to cultivate these opportunities for your attendees, both members and sponsors.

Gross revenue is lower and we use it to pay for the infrastructure back at the headquarters in Washington, DC or wherever you're at. In some ways, that gross revenue supported a lot of other functions. However, the net margin of a virtual event may actually be better.

The effectiveness and sustainability of virtual exhibit halls and sponsorships is yet to be known. I don't know if people will continue to do this.