How to Design an Effective Virtual Event: Pro Tips, Checklists & Planning Guide

There are four main types of virtual events: webinars, conferences, hybrid events, and external hybrid events. Events include seminars, trade shows, workshops and educational sessions (one-time or recurring courses), storyboard-based storytelling, fundraisers, panels, Q&A sessions with experts, or forums.

Each type of virtual event requires different planning considerations based on the chosen format. 

• Webinar: The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a webinar as “a live online educational presentation during which participating viewers can submit questions and comments.” 
• Virtual Conferences: These events occur entirely online. Registrants log into a virtual environment where, as with an offline conference, they can attend scheduled talks and panels, chat with other registrants in waiting rooms or breakout groups, and network, often over a multiday period.
• Hybrid Events: Internal hybrid events are virtual gatherings for an existing private community (a workplace team or committee, for instance), where some participants meet face-to-face at a location and others participate online. At this type of event, employees at the company headquarters might gather onsite while far-flung teams in other communities logging in. As another example, a leader or emcee might report from the flagship office to provide a sense of place or setting while all other participants participate remotely.
• External Hybrid Events: These combine a physical space or face-to-face meeting with virtual participation and events held for the public. For instance, a fundraiser for a museum might feature staffers leading virtual participants on a tour of an exhibit, taking turns speaking from a podium onsite, or showing and describing physical items available at an online auction. Additionally, a trade organization’s staff at association headquarters might host a virtual happy hour to nurture community among professional members of the organization.

The best virtual events mirror face-to-face events. A host or emcee shapes the experience for participants. Attendees can ask real-time questions or otherwise exit the event with new information from experts, form networks with one another around shared interests or professional goals, and attain timely information about a given area.

A successful virtual event requires a good digital footprint, engaging content, and behind-the-scenes looks at an industry or company. Participants should also have the opportunity to communicate and network with each other and event presenters.

Common elements of a virtual event include the following:

• Event website 
• Event social media handle that you encourage attendees to use 
• Registration and ticketing for entry 
• Online event guide and mobile map
• Pre-event materials such as mail, email, or other relevant materials for ticket holders
• Live presentation content
• Live audio/video feed
• Behind-the-scene tours of a company, cultural space, a manufacturing environment, a campaign trail
• Interviews with experts
• Live concerts and performances
• Q&A with one or multiple subject matter experts, including moderator and audience input
• Live polling of event attendees
• Note-taking or the ability to “favorite” or save slides or decks
• Interactive videoconferencing
• Feedback surveys
• Playback options for those who missed the event or logged in late

You can anticipate handling these activities before, during, and after the virtual event.

Before the Event

1. Establish virtual event goals and objectives.
Define why you’re putting the event together and what you’re hoping to achieve. What will your brand or attendees get out of the experience? What are your marketing goals? What are your financial goals? Is the event a marketing expense or a form of income? 

2. Develop a virtual event concept.
Identify a theme and title for the event. Decide what type of event you’ll host (webinar, virtual conference, or hybrid event). If the event has multiple sessions or spans days, then identify sub-themes that contribute to the overall mission of the event. Conduct market research on competing or peer events to see how others engage their audiences. Create a vision board to brainstorm ideas, speakers, or desired outcomes.

3. Identify team and contractor roles.
To run an effective event, identify the right talent for the right job — or, in project management terms, identify your “resources.” As you iterate the event and its components, keep in mind which team member (or potential contractor) will oversee which aspects of the event. Be sure to consider the related tasks and deadlines that need to be completed before, during, and after the event.

4. Understand and define your target audience.
To create an effective event, you need to understand your audience(s). You’ll want to develop attendee personas, or profiles of your prospective audience. Use these templates to help craft personas. Be sure to include descriptors such as gender identity, age, geographic region, industry, and job title or management role.

• Learn or model personas’ motivations: What are the problems or pain points your event could help attendees solve through further education or exposure to new products, hacks, or programs? Talk to support or sales teams, and gather input on customers’ questions and issues that you can address at the event. What types of solutions or offers have historically garnered the best response from the different personas? If catering to a new persona, what does research suggest about their motivations?
• Consider attendees’ technology proficiency: How familiar and active are prospective attendees on social media? Which social media platforms are they most likely to use? What are attendees’ technical skill levels? Will they have sufficient know-how to access or enjoy all aspects of your event on your organization’s chosen virtual platform? 

5. Create a budget and a timeline.
When building a timeline for the event, you need to know when it will take place. Determine how many weeks or months are left before the event date and work backward. You can use an event timeline template to map out what needs to be done and when. 

As you develop the budget for the event, look at its primary sources of income and expenses. Consider how you will ticket the event. Is it free or paid? Will you offer multiple ticket types (pre-sales and regular registration, tiered access)? Will you sell merchandise, products, or services referenced during the event?

When considering expenses for the event, be sure to include technology cost based on estimated participant volumes. Decide on a budget for speaking fees and contract event technologists enlisted to support your full-time event staff. Will you use videography or event recording? What will you need to allot for marketing the event? Don’t forget that even virtual events may incur venue expenses — such as utility, A/V, insurance, or costs associated with skilled personnel required to run or oversee these systems. An event budget template can help simplify the process. 

6. Define the event format.
Decide which event format (seminar, trade show, class, webinar, etc.) makes the most sense for your goals. Use that information to determine the pricing structure. Will you offer premium content for a higher price, or enhanced information and networking?

Be sure to consider attendee engagement: Will the event offer waiting rooms, message or chat functions, breakout rooms, and the ability to move from virtual “room to room”?

7. Craft the content.
Your event’s content is its sole differentiator from rivals’ events. Without a physical venue, face-to-face connection, or food and drink to keep wandering minds interested, quality content is the main route to attendees’ engagement and loyalty.

Will your virtual event offer multiple concurrent activities or talks, or will it hold a master talk followed by smaller breakout sessions divided by special interests? Will your event allow attendee-submitted questions? How long will sessions last, and how much flexibility do you have if a session within an event is popular or attendees have extensive questions? Will there be breaks between sessions so participants can check on work or other matters, or will breaks interrupt the flow? Will the event rely on personal delivery of content, or will speakers also support the event with handouts, downloads, links, or collateral so that delivery is top-level? 

8. Choose a platform.
If you already have a virtual event platform and plan to use it for the new event, troubleshoot the solution’s capacity. Determine if the tool offers the event features you wish to share with participants. 

If you’re choosing a new or first-time virtual event platform, evaluate how well it integrates with programs your company uses, cybersecurity concerns, features, IT staff skill level, event apps for audience engagement or data gathering, chatbots, and more. Options may include programs such as Periscope, Facebook Live, Livestream, YouTube Live, Zoom, GoTo Webinar, and more.

9. Choose a host/emcee and additional entertainment.
Content is king and content consists of a royal court of speakers. You may need a lead emcee who kicks off and concludes the event, professional speakers who appear during different event segments, subject matter experts (who may need an interviewer or moderator to tease wisdom from their lips), staff members with domain expertise, moderators for panels, entertainment (DJ, band, artist), or more. 

You may want to showcase prepared content, such as a slide deck (for webinars), a pre-recorded video or storyboard, testimonials, or ad campaigns or how-to videos. Decide which content is best to present live versus a pre-recording. If using both types of content, emphasize live content as the event’s focus and recorded content as supporting or background material, or media that extends the participant’s knowledge of the live experience.

10. Choose an event venue.
For hybrid events, where you present a portion of the content from a specific physical location, you’ll need to choose the place carefully. Whether the event is held in an office space, an auditorium, or a home office, consider how natural lighting and acoustics influence live presentations at different times of day. Think about whether you’ll need lighting or sound enhancements. 

Consider whether the speaker(s) will require a stage, podium, microphone, or video camera (in addition to video capabilities offered on a home computer). If presenters move around the venue, will they need a cordless microphone? Will an event tech need to mark spots on the floor where presenters can stand in ideal lighting or where it’s best to view sets on display?

11. Determine your AV/production and technology needs.
Think through all technical considerations beforehand, such as how to record sessions, how registrants can attend live sessions, and if or how they can replay the event later. Decide if all speakers will present live, or whether there will be a mix of pre-recorded video and audio and live speaking (perhaps via a host or emcee).

12. Choose a time and date.
The event’s goals and audience influence which day (or days) of the week and times are ideal. A nonprofit fundraiser, typically held face-to-face after work hours or on a weekend night, could be transitioned into a virtual event that occupies the same timeframe. An online course that attendees take for professional advancement might make sense after work or during dinner hours on a weeknight. Corporate events and conferences are most commonly held midweek. Wednesdays are the most popular day, followed by Tuesday, according to data from Promoleaf. 

When planning your event, consider your target audiences’ time zones and time differences. Additionally, think about the overall length of the event. Some guidance suggests that 90 minutes is the maximum amount of time a participant wants to spend online. Among event attendees surveyed by Markletic, nearly two-thirds (63 percent) prefer online events that run from 60 to 90 minutes.

 Mona Cotton, Chief Business Officer at Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA), says that some conference organizers are spreading the normally compressed schedules of a face-to-face conference over a multiweek period. This way, event participants can continue with their regular work lives but turn to event content for a portion of the day. Conference organizers may want to program no more than four hours per day of event content, according to data from Bizbash.

Don’t forget to vet conflicting events during your preferred event times. Election night, Black Friday, major sports tournaments, awards shows, bank holidays, or other unofficial or lesser-mainstream holidays may influence turnout or event interest. Choose a backup date, and check that necessary resources are available. Additionally, set a registration cut-off time or date so that you can gather a solid attendee list and scale technology based on anticipated turnout.

13. Market your event.
Finalize speaker bios, blogs, and vlogs, and consider releasing the lineup one or a few at a time, or making an announcement of the featured guests as part of promotions. Plan social media marketing (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat), and use your knowledge of attendee personas to inform paid marketing efforts. Send newsletters or email campaigns to promote the event. It also helps to offer a tutorial video or landing page clarifying how to register for a live stream of the event. Finally, create an event hashtag and use it often in communications.

Keep track of all these aspects by using Smartsheet as an event management and planning platform.

During the Event

1. Organize attendees in pairs or small groups for a more interactive experience.
Consider having attendees respond or take action every five to seven minutes to maintain their engagement. Harvard Business Review reports that using a “5-minute rule” around engagement prevents meeting attendees from retreating to mere observer status. When participants engage, acknowledge them.

2. Check in with vendors and team members.
Reach out to vendors and teammates during the event to make sure their equipment is working correctly and they have everything they need. At this point, they might also be able to provide feedback about what attendees find beneficial about the event. 

3. Check the event hashtag for immediate feedback (and repost as much as possible).
The event team may want to assign a staffer or volunteer to monitor the event hashtag during the event. 

4. Check the channels (chat, IM, social media) where meeting attendees can post live questions or responses.
Depending on the nature of the event, these inputs can shift the course of panels or a subject matter expert’s Q&A session. 

5. Troubleshoot any issues as they arise.
Behind the scenes, event organizers should maintain communication about sound, streaming, or other issues that interfere with success. Make sure organizers can inform participants that support staff are working to resolve issues. A brief message, such as “We’re adjusting sound” or “We’re working on the slideshow,” can minimize disruption and loss of attention.

6. Stream your event as it happens.
Some event platforms include pre-arranged streaming options. You may opt to broadcast to additional social media accounts to collect questions, feedback, requests, or other input that you can share with presenters mid-event. Some of these platforms include: 

• Facebook Live
• Instagram Live
• Reddit
• Slack
• Snapchat

After the Event

1. Consolidate feedback from attendees.
Event platforms offer apps for gathering data. You can also use online surveys to ask participants about their favorite aspects, as well as what caught their interest and what left them wanting more. Which speakers motivated or engaged them? Which activities within a multifaceted event got the most interest, online traffic, or questions?

2. Conduct a post-mortem.
Debrief with the team and contractors to determine what went well and what didn’t with respect to audience engagement, technology platform and capacity, event team communication and coordination, moderation or audience management, and so forth. Review event goals and determine whether you achieved some, all, or none of them. Read our post-mortem guide to learn more about the practice, as well as find useful tools and advice.

3. Collect data or feedback from the event.
Before, during, and after the event, collect the following information:

• Final number of attendees (as well as how close to the event date or registration deadline they enrolled, and how many registrants didn’t show up)
• Attendee demographics (age, gender, ethnicity, management level, geography)
• Individual session registration or participation
• The bounce, open, and click-through rates for email
• Post-event survey results
• Engagement touch points, such as how many leads, sales, mailing list sign-ups, or other engagements resulted from event or event follow-up
• Registrants’ interest in purchasing products or services, special offers available to event participants, etc.
• Session ratings and feedback
• Social media engagement and reach

4. Balance the budget.
Compare actual budget results against the planned budget and look for efficiencies and overruns. Calculate the event’s return on investment (ROI), considering direct revenue, attributed revenue, attributed sales pipeline, branding benefits, knowledge exchange, and other metrics pertinent to your organization. Did the event come in on, above, or below budget, and which aspects of the event led to its financial success or failure?

5. Share event data with sponsors.
In keeping with your sponsorship agreements, provide data about attendees’ engagement level, interest in sessions, and, if asked in research, engagement with sponsored content or the sponsor’s brand.

6. Thank people.
Thank sponsors, donors, participants, media partners, presenters, and vendors who contributed to the event. Use this opportunity to collect stakeholder feedback.

7. Flag relevant data points.
Pull important or surprising data from event polls or surveys to use in future communications or with event attendees as value-added content from the event.

8. Follow up.
Pursue sales and other customer interactions and queries immediately after the event. Whether closing sales, signing membership or enrollment, marketing subscriptions, collecting donations, or simply qualifying early-stage leads, strike while the memory of the event is near.

This checklist provides time-based guidance on tasks you’ll need to complete in 12, eight, or four weeks prior to your event. Use it to ensure nothing slips through the cracks and that you covered everything before the big virtual day.

Download Virtual Event Planning Checklist

Trade publication Event Manager outlined four new job roles that will likely emerge in tandem with the uptick in virtual event production, and hiring or contracting a professional in one of these positions may further color a company’s virtual event platform choices or capacities. These roles include:

• Event Tech: A professional who helps choose suppliers and an event platform, as well as determines whether it can deliver on event goals.
• Virtual Event Tech Support: A professional employed in-house or on hand remotely via a virtual event platform company to aid in real-time event troubleshooting.
• Virtual Event Production Specialist and/or Technical Producer: Manages planning for event capacity, run-of-show testing, and other capacity issues.
• Virtual Emcee or Moderator: The event presenter who can manage inputs on the event’s main stage, as well as through additional channels such as social media or event platform chat spaces, or from event organizers fielding real-time input.

Vanessa Richardson, Director of Events for nonprofit journalism network Cal Matters in Sacramento, California, stepped into her role in late January 2020, just weeks before governors in her state and beyond banned public gatherings due to public health risks associated with the pandemic. Since then, she’s taken a crash course in how to pivot from live to virtual events — in some cases translating offline events for virtual platforms, and in others creating new digital events from scratch.

Cal Matters events are free and designed to motivate civic education and engagement, informing citizens about issues they might vote on or discuss in letters to lawmakers or their paper’s letters to the editor, or that they might hash out at the dinner table or political rallies. Making sure the events, some of which are grant-supported, attract and engage a sizable audience is important, she says.

“As things were changing, one funding organization supporting a panel on the future of work asked us for a revised proposal for events,” she shares. “But they weren’t all that concerned about whether the event was live and in-person versus virtual.”

She knew that at live events, participants may linger afterward over drinks and learn more about the brand’s programs. Finding other, virtual ways to bring people together around their particular affinities became important. 

“We want to make sure engagement lasts after the event is over,” she explains, noting that her organization has reached out to partners, including community foundations and community service organizations, to help attract audiences from specific local communities.

One way that Cal Matters keeps audiences engaged is to move quickly to their questions for panelists or subject matter experts. “We try to turn to audience questions right off the bat,” Richardson says, noting that for a one-hour event this means audience questions begin 20 minutes or no more than 30 minutes into the session.

The organization’s audience engagement manager curates questions for the event’s moderator to share with panelists, sometimes discussing them quickly with a private, internal Slack channel, she adds. This way, staff backstage can respond to audience concerns and present succinct questions to panelists.

Richardson says events do sometimes go over, especially if an audience is engaged, but she tells presenters to plan for 60 minutes, maybe up to 15 more if engagement is going well. Cal Matters is looking at adding 15-minute breakout room options at the close of events, resembling the post-event mingling that might happen offline.

“If the audience starts dropping from our platform, we know they’re done,” she adds. “Zoom fatigue is a real thing. We’re looking at using more tools like polls or letting people submit questions in advance to keep our audience engaged.”

In addition to the measures that CalMatters is using during events and by retaining an audience engagement lead on staff, many event organizers implement gamification to support engagement. Markletic, a business-to-business marketer, notes that subject matter trivia, bingo, or scavenger hunts within an event platform can boost engagement.

After the event, engagement can continue. Visit Dallas encourages event leaders — regardless of whether an event was held virtually or in-person — to send a thank-you email, post-event survey, or post-event Q&A on key topics of interest that emerged at the event, as well as provide a landing page or other accessible trove of resources for event participants.

 

Both large-scale and small events must pivot from face-to-face to virtual for many reasons. Public health crises, transit or infrastructure issues, venue emergencies, natural disasters, and other issues can all thwart the best-laid live event plans. 

Virtual events share some commonalities (a time-constrained gathering in which it’s important to deliver content) and some differences (less “rubbing elbows,” eventual desire for participants to “log off’) from live events. But as limitations on public gatherings persist, more companies — as well as educational and arts and cultural organizations — are holding such events.

Event planners increasingly fold virtual elements into live events, but need to also make contingency plans (or a plan B) as a “pivot plan.” If you’ve already started with plans for a live event, but need to pivot, use this checklist.

Notify Stakeholders

• Notify existing registrants of change in event delivery.
• Notify sponsors of change in event delivery and discuss ways to deliver sponsors’ desired outcomes (such as adjusted metrics for measuring audience engagement or gathering audience data).
• Adjust sponsors’ expectations about visibility or customer lists with the event and gather sponsors’ feedback or input.
• Leverage sponsors and partners for special pre-event gifts or treats. Some live events (especially fundraisers) partner with a catering company or restaurant on food and wine baskets, which event attendees can purchase, with a portion of sales going toward the nonprofit’s cause. For other event types, sponsors that planned to offer merchandise or coupon codes for trials may be able to re-version their offers online or via snail mail. 

Remodel Pricing and Business Model

• What sunk costs are refundable? Which costs are irretrievable (paid signage, facility rental fees, deposits on catering, A/V, pre-scheduled advertising, etc.)? 
• Will you give face-to-face event attendees a full or partial refund option? 
• How many registrations or tickets must you sell to make the event profitable?
• With a virtual event, what new attendee personas and which geographies can you target with event marketing? 
• How can expanded audience contribute to a different revenue mix?

Communicate

• Update or change all existing communications (social media, website landing page, emails) regarding the virtual nature of the event.
• Launch new marketing regarding the virtual event.
• Create a new ticketing structure for the virtual event and update the ticketing platform.
• Launch new communications efforts (PR, social media) about switching to virtual status.
• Develop communications plan for updating registrants about the event platform and how it works, as well as when and how they engage with the platform.
• Develop tutorials or a landing page about how the online event will replicate offline aspects of the event (breakout rooms versus a happy hour, for instance).
• Provide a thorough guide on how people can attend the event virtually. Will they need to complete certain purchases, requests, or selections in advance? Is it recommended they log on 10 or 30 minutes before the event start time to familiarize themselves with the platform? What’s the run of show? 

Import Your Brand

• Regardless of the platform you use, you’ll want to bring your and your sponsor companies’ logos and colors into the environment using accurate fonts, colors, and designs. Consult marketing departments on proper branding style.
• Consider the look and feel of the event or your company, and find clever ways for speakers or graphics to reinforce it — such as staffers wearing garments or accessories in company colors or with company logos, or using a downloadable backdrop of the company’s campus or city’s skyline.

Logistics Check

• Check with moderators, panelists, presenters, and staff about availability online.
• Choose an online event platform.
• Appoint an online engagement staffer or contractor to help develop engagement strategies pre-event and during the event: Will people receive materials or food/drink or other swag at home to use during the event? Will attendees be able to network?

Tech Check

• Create a simple set design in the office or using virtual backgrounds for speakers.
• Test each presenter’s broadcast environment (home office, work office) to make sure that light, sound, and other visual cues work in the virtual event platform and the presenter knows how to deliver their talk, slides, etc., in the platform.
• Stage a test-run of the event with presenters and staff to make sure sound, lighting, event flow, and other aspects of the event translate to the online medium.
• Make sure to view the test-run event from a variety of devices — desktop, laptop, mobile device — and check that content translates for all media.
• Develop an internal communications flow (chat or messaging apps, etc.) among event staff for real-time event input, such as audience questions that will be funneled through a moderator to a speaker for their answers.

Data Gathering

• Clarify what event information is private and what you will share with sponsors.
• Check with legal regarding music and other rights, which may operate under different laws in a virtual environment (versus a live event).
• Invite audience members to contribute data (opinions, experiences, contact information).
• Clarify for registrants, sponsors, and speakers whether some or all of the event will be recorded for future use.
• Design polls, surveys, and interactive engagement tools to keep the audience involved in event content. During and after the event, share results with sponsors, audience, and speakers.