Think about live streaming for your future events!

Digitell Inc is a multimedia development company focused on live streaming for meetings and conferences. Through several main points, it shows that live streaming is a key tool to maximize the value of digital strategies for professional events, without jeopardizing in-person attendance or exploding budget. 

First of all, it increases future attendance. According to Digitell Inc, between 10 and 30% of people watching a live-streamed event actually came physically the following year. Thus, it is an efficient way to promote an event by highlighting the best parts of it. Then, it targets dormant members. According to Steve Parker, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Digitell Inc, “For some of the associations we work with, up to 50 percent of people attending a live-streamed event have never attended a physical event in the past”.  This figure proves it is a good way to catch new attendees, which are harder to attract. Live streaming is also a good way to reach Millennials. The new generation is comfortable with new technologies and is attracted by these videos that avoid a waste of money and time.  Live streaming also reaches a larger group. It can boost objectives in terms of attendees, allowing people coming from remote locations or who don’t have time to attend the event – and for some people who don’t have the budget. It also enables conferences to ask for extra speakers, taking part to events from their home. Then, it enables events to be archived. Indeed, live streaming will provide organizers with content that can be seen again and again. Associations could even charge a fee to allow spectators to watch post-event, which would represent an extra source of revenues! Not to mention archive is a brilliant compelling marketing tool. The new technology can strengthen partnerships too. Posting archive or live-streaming on a sponsor’s website or any specific portal belonging to a partner can provide additional profits. Live streaming is then financially profitable. It reduces costs of marketing or traveling to reach people who are not able to attend the conference physically. It also allows to enhance profit from virtual attendees. Organizers can save money when attendees want to cancel last minute. Indeed, there is just to turn off the live streaming communication and there is nearly no lost in revenue, unlike face to face conferences that usually make people in difficulty to manage cancellation.

Digitell is not the only one to compete in this area and many other companies like on24 or livecast understood the benefits of live streaming in events. The offers seem expensive but there is no doubt that they can be profitable in the long term, in a context of virtual and hybrid meeting growth.

Camille Garinet & Tanguy Villiame

References
http://associationsnow.com/2017/04/meetings-memo-go-live-live-streaming/
http://www.cultureevenement.com/tendances-2017-en-evenementiel/
http://digitellinc.com/downloads/8-Compelling-Reasons-Why.pdf