Collecting and analyzing hard data hasn’t historically been a priority for many event organizers, but thanks to the rise of digital events, data on attendee preferences and engagement has never been easier or more important to collect. However, there largely still remains the issue that not all data is integrated between platforms or easy to pull insights from.
In order to meet this challenge head-on, data collection platform Explori has led the creation of the Virtual Standard Export Format — or VSef — along with several other virtual event platforms and event organizers. The VSef initiative officially launched at the beginning of May and provides a standard data format for event platforms in order to facilitate the transfer of data between platforms.
“As planners continue to adopt and increase their use of event technology, their data is often living in silos, across multiple platforms without clear, global industry standards,” explains Ben Chodor, President of Digital Media Solutions at Intrado, a founding partner of VSef. “The VSef initiative comes at an absolutely critical time for the industry — we have access to volumes of rich, meaningful data — and alignment on measurement will benefit all stakeholders.”
Sophie Holt, Managing Director of Explori and Director of VSef, shares that Explori’s research suggested that planners were using an average of four different platforms throughout the event process, which made it difficult to analyze different sets of data to glean meaningful insights. “With the VSef standards in place, platforms and event organizers have a shared language for their data, making it much easier to track and analyze event performance,” she says. “Ultimately it’s a big step forward in creating more impactful digital event experiences.”
The first goal of the initiative, according to Holt, is to get a strong base of platforms and planners using VSef regularly. The founders aim to continuously collaborate with the industry and collect feedback in order to evolve and improve the standards.
VSef represents a vital first step in unifying event data and enabling planners and stakeholders to better assess event impact and ROI. “Virtual and Hybrid events are building data gold mines with the technology they use,” says Godefroy des Francs, CPO at Swapcard, another founding partner. “These goldmines will help event planners to organize greater events in the future by providing more ROI to their exhibitors and a smarter experience to their participants.”
Tim Groot, CEO of Grip — also a founding member — agrees: “Some say data is the new oil, but I prefer to look at it as the sun: Available to all businesses, but you have to know how to use it to reap its benefits. Events are a massive generator of data, both in-person and virtual events. Over the coming years, we will see events becoming integrated into the marketing stack, resulting in greater personalization, more powerful experiences, and better events.”
He also notes that the gap between the event organizers leveraging a real data strategy and those that aren’t will become more apparent, and that data strategy will become “the most important competitive differentiator for organizers” in the near future.