While 2021 offered hope for the events industry after a brutal 2020, it wasn’t without its challenges. New variants derailed the return to in-person, and the digital transformation continued to take hold.
In 2021, Questex continued to adapt its business in response to the pandemic and hosted a mix of in-person, virtual, and hybrid events — it was an exciting 12 months for the company, and there will inevitably be more successes and learning opportunities in the coming year.
Here, four of our own team members and eventprofs share what worked, what they learned, and what they’re thinking about going into 2022.
What was one of your team’s biggest event successes this year?
Marian Sandberg, Vice President, LDI, DSE, XLIVE
We held LDI at much lower capacity than usual in the latter half of November at Las Vegas Convention Center, and it was, by all reports, a smashing success. Was it the size it usually is? Of course not, but what we learned is that, regardless of the smaller number of exhibitors and attendees, there was quality business in the room. People were serious about being there. People were there to specify gear. And most of all, people were extremely happy to be networking in their community again.
Jill Birkett, Vice President, Wellness Group
I believe there are few, if any, live events run by Questex in 2021 that met their original budget goals. Most were reforecast based on COVID. Our Sibec North America event held in May 2021 at the Arizona Grand Resort in Phoenix, Arizona, was the first live event in the fitness industry in the WORLD, and it was a smashing success. It achieved revenue budget; it achieve an NPS rating of 92.6, which is outstanding.
This was achieved by: (1) We made the decision to move the event out of California to Arizona. The location change allowed us to avoid being confined by California’s changing landscape of COVID regulations. (2) Rob Shannon is a master sales manager, so we knew we had confidence he could deliver our customers. (3) We were more flexible with our packages than the past so that we could meet the needs of anyone who was willing /able to attend. Our customers welcomed the venue change, as they wanted to meet. So, frankly, hard work that was far more hours than normal, a state with a welcoming environment and the fitness industry having had zero face to face events led to the success of the event. We had $1.33m revenue against a budget of $1.20m.
Kevin Gray, Vice President, Technology, Media, and Telecom
I think our biggest success with events “at large” in 2021 was in revamping our sales strategy for virtual. Specifically, this included planning out the 2021 virtual event calendar well in advance of January 1st; simplifying the packaging for virtual events, which allowed us to more easily sell them in bundles; and integrating the event sales team with the digital media sales team. The latter was important, as it removed barriers for our reps, and encouraged them to learn and sell the full product suite.
Jennifer Woods, Vice President, Fierce Life Sciences Events
Our largest success revenue wise and in general was our Digital Pharma East Conference, which we floored in-person Sept 28-30 and virtually October 5-8. Our largest FLS event, it normally brings together 700-800 pharma marketing, agency and vendor professionals for several days of content and networking at the Philadelphia Convention Center. This year, we were able to secure a total of 1,000 registrations, both in-person and virtually for the event. The majority of those registrations were for the in-person event, and we did manage to deliver some strongly attended sessions and networking opportunities like sponsored lunches. Our total revenues came to just under $2m for both attendees and sponsorship. The sponsorship team outdid themselves, with close to $1.7m of that coming in for sponsorships. The marketing team was able to secure just under 300K in total registration revenue – no small feat considering the COVID situation and a fall Delta variant wave.
We achieved this through a combination of going out with strong hybrid sponsorship packages and a lot of assurances that we could deliver the audience one way or another. Our team did a lot to manage client expectations along the way, especially as the Covid situation shifted. We brought on a Director Events in the lead up to the show, and she took responsibility for Client Success during the lead up to the show, which also helped with managing expectations and also changing deliverables as needed – some companies pivoted to all virtual options because of the Delta situation, while some did stay with their commitment to an in-person event. The marketing team worked very hard to secure registrants – using a combination of tried and true marketing techniques, but also employed a mix of personal outreach, sponsror outreach, speaker outreach, and telemarketing to secure the audience. We opted to have vaccination requirements for the event, which we do feel helped make attendees more comfortable in agreeing to attend.
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced, and how did you address/overcome them? Was there anything you tried that didn’t work as well as you had hoped or intended?
Marian Sandberg
I think producing an event this year was much, much more difficult than not holding one last year. The inevitable trepidation of some clients who just didn't feel comfortable coming created a whirlwind of changes to the exhibit show floor just weeks before we left to go on-site. This was a huge task to undertake for the entire team, particularly sales, shifting to service these clients instead of closing new sales.
The focus became twofold: try to keep those leaving the show happy, but also create as much value as possible for those sticking with us. We ended up investing more in our clients who came to the show by adding a roaming video crew to capture more on-floor content from our exhibitors than we'd ever done in the past. It may seem counterintuitive to invest more in an event in a year when revenues aren't as strong as normal, but we looked at this year as an investment in the years to follow. If the show had been a flop, every one would remember that. As it turned out, our social media presence blew up like crazy during and after the show, so the perception was a much larger event, and it created quite a nice FOMO effect, which was entirely our intention. It didn't hurt that we had a first-ever huge on-floor party the first night and could barely get people to leave.
Jill Birkett
The biggest challenges have been that there has been more work with less staff. Some events we "re-placed” on the calendar three times. That meant preparing for the event three times, three times the plans, three times the salespeople are communicating another change. Three times we are updating the website, sending new communications about “rollover credits”. With a considerably smaller team that in 2019, the workload was stressful, the customers were angry that many of their businesses remained closed or not up to full service and they could not obtain full refunds from us…which meant frequent/more communication with less colleagues than the past.
Kevin Gray
The largest and most important in-person event for our division is Sensors Converge, which was also of course the most challenging for us this past year. There were a number of learnings, but I think the thing we were most surprised by was how difficult it was to attract and engage a virtual audience at the live event. Most of our core audience simply wanted to be there in person. We’ll continue to experiment with various formats, and I think hybrid events will certainly have a place moving forward, but I’m less convinced that it will be a synchronous experience at large trade shows.
Jennifer Woods
Escalating Covid variants were a large challenge for us, as the Delta variant started to ramp up as we were getting into critical marketing & show times in the fall months. We had intended to bring back attendee registration revenues with fall events, but unfortunately struggled to get registrants due to the changing Covid climate. We had to sacrifice many of those revenues in order to get audience members to commit to attending in person or virtually to guarantee a full audience for our sponsors, and guarantee those revenues. Even making events free to attend didn’t make it easy to secure registrants, so putting the vaccination and health and safety requirements in place did help us secure some of those registrants.
What is something you learned during the pandemic that you plan to continue implementing in your event strategy moving forward?
Marian Sandberg
Our show doesn't translate well to a fully virtual event, especially for our exhibitors who need to show products like moving lights in a live environment. We didn't even kid ourselves by trying that. Our content, however, can be more virtual, as we saw from some of the streaming we did. We'll definitely do more of that in the future.
We also didn't think too big throughout the year leading up to the show. We took elements of the show, such as our New Technology Breakfasts – basically quick product demos and tech talks from our exhibitors – and created an hourly monthly version via Zoom, called New Tech Breaks. This allows our community to come together to talk about gear without the misapprehension they might see a full product demo that wouldn't work anyway, and it engages the community year-round.
Jill Birkett
Move quickly with the decisions to cancel/delay so that customers can update their plans. They have shipments to make, they book contractors to build their booth(s) well in advance; they ship items well in advance.
Kevin Gray
The value proposition for most conference/educational programs at IRL events is not as high as it once was. All content can now be consumed at home in a variety of formats, so there is not as much of a need for attendees to travel in order to learn. There is still a need for attendees to connect in person though…now more than ever. Moving forward, we’ll have less tracks and less speakers, with more networking opportunities, intelligent matchmaking, and VIP experiences.
Jennifer Woods
The largest learnings we’ve had have been around having virtual components to events, and I think that will continue to be a part of our strategy going forward. We’ve also opened up more to having virtual speaker participants more so than in the past, and I think audiences will grow more accustomed to some speakers/attendees being present, and others being part of the event virtually.