What The Future Holds for Hybrid Events

Virtual events have become a vital part of marketing strategies in recent years, as event marketers embraced the simplicity, expanded reach, and cost-savings that virtual events provide.

But as in-person events re-emerge, marketers have found it challenging to add a virtual experience to their live events. We wanted to know why.

To understand these challenges better, we surveyed event marketers and planners from various organizations to collect their insight around hybrid events.

We specifically wanted to know:

• What are the challenges facing event marketers when it comes to hybrid events?
• Are hybrid events valuable to a modern marketing strategy?
• What do event marketers need to successfully deliver hybrid events over the long term?

Key Takeaways

• Hybrid events will continue to play a pivotal role for event marketers in the future, with most event marketers agreeing that “hybrid events are the future of event planning/management.”
• Event marketers are challenged with engaging dual audiences and providing equitable, productive, and meaningful experiences for remote attendees.
  Hybrid events offer event marketers a variety of benefits that include expanding their reach to a larger audience, lower costs, and greater access to data than an in-person or virtual event alone.
• Event marketers need a collective understanding of what defines hybrid event success and the technology and services that will generate their intended results.

Virtual events have cemented their place in business operations due to the flexibility and adaptability they provide. Even as employees return to work, businesses have grown accustomed to operating both virtually and in-person and have no plans to slow down, as 43% of event marketers envision holding hybrid events a few times per week, and 25% imagine they will host daily hybrid events. All told, those surveyed plan to dedicate 37% of their budget to hybrid events, which outweighs both their in-person and virtual event budgets.

Not only is there a place for hybrid events in the future, but they will be a permanent fixture in event planning strategies, with 89% of event marketers agreeing that hybrid events are important to organizations and 91% believe they play an important role in the future.

According to the data, hybrid events can actually help create valuable networking opportunities. Event professionals who are directly involved with planning and organizing events feel that hybrid events facilitate interaction between virtual and in-person attendees very well. In fact, 61% believe the interaction between virtual and in-person attendees is the greatest benefit of hybrid events, even more than cost savings.

Within those interactions, 63% of event marketers believe that exchanging contact information is the most ideal way to interact, while 62% prefer to have a meaningful conversation. Collaboration is also important, as 56% of event professionals cite collaboration as the most valuable way to interact, and 52% prefer to exchange ideas.

Hybrid events require more than live streaming an event to a virtual audience. Instead, both audiences need real-time access to the same content and the networking opportunities regardless of their location. This causes uncertainty for some event marketers who struggle with creating a valuable experience for dual audiences, which makes it understandable to learn that attendee engagement ranks highest among their concerns. Specifically:

Other concerns for event marketers center around hybrid event technology itself and how easy it will be for remote users to get connected. The data states:

With this in mind, it’s easy to see why 55% of people want to establish equality between remote and in-person attendees and believe it’s the most important part of a successful hybrid event.

Others define success by having: