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Setting up umbrella events, even in a digital space

  • 1.  Setting up umbrella events, even in a digital space

    Posted 03-03-2021 11:08

    Hi, all! For today's edition of Tip of the Week, we were inspired by internal Cvent events that recently took place. First, we had our Global Companywide event held virtually for the first time. Then, we carried on the excitement through the Sales Kickoff meeting, and held our divisional meetings for the SVS and Event Cloud teams. Through this entire event, the Cventer only registered once, and then used the Attendee Hub to update their agenda for these various sessions and experiences.

    Similarly, Cvent is hosting the final sessions of our Customer Success Group workshop series this week. Here, anyone interested in the 3 topics of Solution Evolution (Flex, New Reports, and Access Portals) could register for the entire event, and then select the unique sessions for each topic.

    Although these were configured slightly differently between the Attendee Hub agenda experience and Flex event registration, the structure of the events was the same – umbrella events.

    Umbrella events are what we consider a group of events with a single overarching registration process. Read on for some tips and features that can enhance your set-up if you do the same.

    In Flex:

    • Keep the title, capacity, and location generic, as these details will be used across all events.
    • Use Sessions as each "event" – this allows you to set a date/time, include virtual session details for each, and use session emails as your "event-level" emails. This is key for things such as reminders, registration confirmation, and post-event feedback.
    • Consider using Admission Items if you need to drill-down further. Perhaps you are setting up an internal company event, too, and you'd like to separate by departments. Create each department as an Admission Item, and then create the sessions as needed that a Sales or HR employee would attend. Within the Admission Item, be sure to limit the availability of optional sessions to ensure they are only seeing the sessions relevant to them.

    In Attendee Hub:

    • You will still set up the registration process through Flex, and can have a similar set-up as mentioned above.
    • One of the key differences is how you'd like to manage the agenda. If you have more flexibility, or perhaps want to track registrations first and then offer a second phase of session selection, consider having the registrants add their sessions completely through the Attendee Website within the Attendee Hub experience.
      • As mentioned, we used this way for our internal companywide events - it was a simple as registering for the event through Flex, logging into the Attendee Hub through the Attendee Website, browsing All Sessions, and clicking Add. Then, it will appear under My Sessions, and I can either join if its time, or Add to Calendar if I'd like a personal reminder.
        • The Attendee Hub does recognize and enforce session rules you've set up in your Flex event. So, if you have a special VIP session for executives only, your regular employee will not be able to see that if they have their Individual Contributor registration type (as an example).

    Questions for You:

    • What type of events have you set up as umbrella events in the Cvent platform?
    • Have you changed the structure of any to adapt to the digital environment?

    Share your experiences, tips, and questions below! #CventTip


    #Flex-Creating/ManagingEvents
    #ManagingVirtualEvents

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    Danni Czark
    Senior Associate, Online Community Marketing
    Cvent
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  • 2.  RE: Setting up umbrella events, even in a digital space

    Community MVP
    Posted 03-03-2021 16:10
    Edited by Loretta Peterson 03-03-2021 16:19
    Thanks, Danni, for this tip of the week!

    Last month, we rolled out a weekly CDW Tech Talk live webcast series in lieu of a monthly 2-3 day virtual conference.  It is set up similar to a podcast subscription series with a consistent, predictable schedule.  Each webcast is set up as an included session in Cvent.  Registrants receive access information to the CDW Virtual Events Hub upon registration along with calendar reminders for the first 4 webcasts.  

    We send a weekly email prior to the webcast that highlights that week's episode, provide calendar reminders to upcoming webcasts and include an "In case you missed it" link that gives access to the previous episodes.  And of course, it has a "Join the Webcast" button.  We also have a separate nurture stream for our coworkers that provide customer conversation starters for that week's episode and calendar reminders to the next two webcasts.  This week we added a webcast arc for our small businesses. Today, I built out their own communications stream.  Using datatagging and the advanced filters in the Event Emails made this all possible.

    The registrant base grows with each episode.  We've cast a wider net, optimized the Flex event emails for targeted email streams and have spread out our production with targeted and diverse topics to serve our customer base and potential clients with this innovative approach to live virtual engagements.

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    Loretta Peterson
    Events Associate
    CDW
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  • 3.  RE: Setting up umbrella events, even in a digital space

    Posted 03-04-2021 11:00
    We continue to use umbrella events for many of our events including a multiple training series which award credits.  However, a large challenge continues to be that you cannot track session level participation on cross event reports.  Is there an ETA for this fix?

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    Christine Rocco
    Sr Events Mgr
    Cengage Learning , Inc
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  • 4.  RE: Setting up umbrella events, even in a digital space

    Posted 03-05-2021 10:55
    Great use-case,​ Loretta! That is awesome to hear your organization adapting so well and sounds like a really interesting event, too. :)

    Christine - Thank you for your question! I touched base with one of our Senior Product Managers who confirmed this is actively being worked on on our roadmap. This should be released in the near future, likely in the next few months. Check out #ProductNews to stay up to date on all releases!

    Best,

    Danni ​​

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    Danni Czark
    Senior Associate, Online Community Marketing
    Cvent
    ------------------------------



  • 5.  RE: Setting up umbrella events, even in a digital space

    Posted 03-11-2021 12:02
    We are currenly looking to start to set up a series of Digital Roadshows for customer events on specific topics.  Same event on different dates and also for specific regional locations. We are shorting the nomal time frame of these events to keep high level engagment.

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    Scott Sward
    Global Travel and Events Manager
    Viewpoint, Inc.
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  • 6.  RE: Setting up umbrella events, even in a digital space

    User Group Member
    Posted 03-11-2021 13:54
    We hosted a virtual innovation forum where we had one large event for all and then on a biweekly cadence we'd host sessions to specific industries or concepts. We made use of umbrella events so people could choose all the sessions they wanted to attend and we didn't have to keep bombarding them to register and to save on having to register and pay for the same people multiple times.

    We had one site and each time one event happened we'd go in and update the speakers/agenda to follow along with the next event.

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    Rachel Sigley
    Director, Brand Marketing
    Tata America International Corporation
    NJ
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  • 7.  RE: Setting up umbrella events, even in a digital space

    User Group Member
    Posted 03-15-2021 09:30
    We have a summer training series where there are 5 different trainings offered on multiple dates. Attendees have to attend one of each training but can choose which days to attend each. Other than adding the video conferencing information, we have not had to change the format of this program to adapt it to a virtual environment.

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    Jennifer Jones
    Senior Event Specialist
    Corning Incorporated
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  • 8.  RE: Setting up umbrella events, even in a digital space

    Posted 03-16-2021 09:09
    Hi - 

    This is a great idea, but I'm wondering ...

    • What if the same event/series of events is being held in multiple time zones? Would the recommendation be to pick one time zone under Event configuration and then include the "real" time zone in the session name and/or description?
    • Would you recommend this set up for a series of events that may span a longer time frame, e.g. 6 months? Wondering how having to keep the registration site & hub open for the later sessions may impact the earlier sessions, if at all. Can we control how long the older sessions are available on-demand, even if the Hub is open for a long period?

    Thanks,

    Angela

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    Angela Le
    Cleveland, OH, USA
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  • 9.  RE: Setting up umbrella events, even in a digital space

    Posted 03-16-2021 11:39

    Hi Angela,

    Great question! This can be set-up the way you mentioned, and also keep in mind you can use the Time Zone widgets in Flex to allow the attendee to set their time zone based on their device. 

    If it is an entirely global event that you feel it may be tough to manage, you could consider registration events per larger region, and then drill down into the time zones from there. An example of how Cvent achieves this is through our Customer Success Groups, where we did have different registration events for North America, Europe, and APAC regions. The North America registration event was configured in the umbrella-event style with 3 different "events" created as sessions. 

    Regarding the long-term event series, again using Cvent as an example, we kept these registration and Attendee Hub experiences open for several months and it worked well. Using the Cvent Video Player, you can keep your content on-demand for 90 days post-event. You can consider closing sessions once passed to ensure they are removed from agendas and avoid any confusion. This may be a more strategic configuration, so we'd always recommend connecting with your Client Success resource for further discussion!

    Best,

    Danni 



    ------------------------------
    Danni Czark
    Senior Associate, Online Community Marketing
    Cvent
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  • 10.  RE: Setting up umbrella events, even in a digital space

    Posted 03-16-2021 09:19
    Our biggest hurdle using umbrella events is not all events (sessions) are finalized when the umbrella event goes live. So we end up needing to send two versions of an invitation when those new sessions become available.

    1) Invitation with instructions for if they aren't registered for the umbrella event yet
    2) Invitation with instructions to modify and add a session if they are already registered for the umbrella event

    Any thoughts on how to improve this?

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    Evan Ring
    Senior Operations Manager
    Dow Jones & Co., Inc
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  • 11.  RE: Setting up umbrella events, even in a digital space

    Posted 03-16-2021 11:47

    Hi Evan,

    I see, this is a great scenario to look into more. 

    Do the new sessions become available on a set date, or is it somewhat of a rolling addition to the agenda/event series? If it is a set date, could you consider having an overall two-phase registration experience? This would require all invitees to register initially, providing their basic information, and then once all sessions are available, sending out that second "invitation" where you are announcing the agenda is live. 

    If you are using the Attendee Hub, you could also consider having the entire session selection experience through the Attendee Website. While this would still require the same emails to be sent, it may be a bit easier for the registrant to manage, as they'd simply log into the website and browse/add what they'd like. Then, this will sync back to your Flex registration event.

    Overall, as long as the messaging and registrant instructions are clear, I do think your original note of 2 invitations would still work. The audiences of the emails would either be Undecided Invitees for those not registered at all, or Accepted Registrants for those added to the event who would want to check out the new sessions.

    If any other users on this thread have ideas for Evan, please feel free to share, as well! :) 

    Best,

    Danni 



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    Danni Czark
    Senior Associate, Online Community Marketing
    Cvent
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