Six Reasons Why Inaction Is No Longer An Option

To kickstart your meetings and events strategy, now is the time to act and invest in a hybrid-ready platform that will impress your attendees wherever they are, as well as help you to increase attendance, engagement and even revenue. So if you’re still struggling to get company buy-in or budget sign-off, here’s six reasons to take to your decision-making unit today…

1. Reduce carbon emissions

Following a year in which world leaders gathered in Glasgow at COP26 and agreed that carbon emissions will have to fall by 45% in the run-up to 2030 in order to keep alive the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, MICE activity and business travel is under more scrutiny than ever before. However, if a quarter of attendees who would previously have journeyed over five hours, joined their company conference online, a reduction of around 70% of the event’s GHG emissions is achievable.

2. Hybrid working is here to stay

Public statements and website materials of the US Fortune 100 companies and the top 50 companies in the FTSE 100 showed that a resounding majority (66%) are on-record advocating some form of hybrid working for their employees. Additionally, HSBC’s data also found that two-thirds (67%) of employers believe remote or hybrid working is crucial to their future growth as a business.

While on paper hybrid working appears to be an attractive proposition when it comes to businesses getting back on track and achieving their commercial goals, we cannot afford to ignore the vital importance of actually managing employees well in practice. This means better meeting software for internal meetings, and it means you need to offer both in-person and online event attendance options for those who may be unable to travel for work on the day that your event takes place.

3. Expand your audience reach

Transitioning to a virtual or hybrid format increases the accessibility of your event, and therefore expands your audience reach. By using a dedicated technology platform you can increase attendance, increase the quality and even reduce cost per attendee too.

“Glisser has helped us keep event costs right down with the typical cost per attendee coming out 70-80% lower than an event run without Glisser,” says Francesca Jackson, Senior Events Officer at Universities UK. “It enables delegates to seamlessly navigate our events in one easy platform. It brings gravitas to our online events and our attendees love using the platform. It’s really helped us to impress, resulting in a 10% audience increase at our recent hybrid event.”

For another 6 reasons to stop waiting for the return of events as we knew them, download our free guide.

4. Increase your revenue (by up to 130%!)

Glisser has helped companies like Dods Group to generate up to 50% more registrations per hybrid event, which in turn has had a huge impact on its revenue. “Glisser powered events are helping us to generate more registrations whilst reducing our average cost per attendee by 40-50% per event. Most notably though, in the last 12 months we have generated 100-130% more revenue by using Glisser, compared to not using Glisser," says Oliver Corrigan, D&I Events Manager.

In-person is brilliant, but why stop at in-person only if running online activity alongside it can increase your revenue?

5. Gather more intelligence on your attendees

An unquestionable benefit of online attendance is you can see exactly how attendees behave. You can gather data on how they interact with your content, which sessions they do - and don’t - attend, and you can use audience engagement tools to find out about their challenges, goals and even purchasing requirements. If your event has sponsors, be prepared for those sponsors to still want thorough data points from in-person attendees as well as online.

Melissa Field, Digital Operations Manager at Marketforce Live comments: “We are gathering up to five additional data points per attendee so our sponsors love the extra data we can give them from Glisser.”

6. ROI matters - make future event decisions based on real data analytics

You can leverage the insights from attendee data to help make improvements to both the content and the design of future events. Event planners have never had so much data to work with and now it’s time to put it to use to ensure your next event strategy has a real chance of driving ROI for exhibitors, sponsors and of course, your business.

Should you require more reasons why your business leaders should invest in a hybrid-ready platform, download our guide entitled 12 Months: 12 Reasons Why Inaction is No Longer An Option.

Check out Glisser.com to find out more about the award-winning meetings & events platform focused on audience engagement, wherever you are.