Since the global pandemic, hybrid events have become an increasingly popular way to deliver meetings, training workshops, conferences, presentations, etc. They combine the personal elements of face-to-face events with the convenience, cost, and sustainability benefits of virtual events.

While most hybrid events take place live in real-time, there is growing interest in delivering asynchronous hybrid events, which allow attendees to participate in certain event elements at a time that better suits them. But what are the main benefits and drawbacks of asynchronous hybrid events, and how might you use them for your organization?

What is an asynchronous hybrid event?

Put simply, asynchronous hybrid events are the same as standard hybrid events, apart from the fact that some components of the event don’t have to be carried out simultaneously by all participants.

The viability of an asynchronous hybrid event depends primarily on the type of activities offered throughout your event. If it’s a full day of live talks from guest speakers, asynchronous activities probably won’t work. However, suppose your schedule is more fluid and contains well-being exercises, interactive displays, pre-recorded keynotes, or a scavenger hunt around the venue. It may be possible or desirable to have attendees participate at different times.

What are the benefits of asynchronous hybrid events?

Let’s say your event has a well-being room complete with massage chairs, meditation spaces, and yoga classes led by an expert. If your event capacity is 1,000 people, you don’t want everyone to descend on this room simultaneously. It is much better if attendees drift in and out of the room throughout the event to use the space when they need it.

This can take the pressure off event organizers, who don’t need to funnel everyone through an identical schedule all day and gives attendees the freedom to engage with activities at their own pace. It also means that you can opt for smaller spaces in your venue – a well-being room for 20 attendees at a time is a lot easier to come by than one for 1,000 people!

Another major benefit of asynchronous hybrid events is that they are more flexible for global or non-local attendees. If your event features a quiz, attendees in a different time zone who are joining virtually may prefer to participate in their own time, with scores collated and winners determined at the end of the event to ensure that everyone can get involved at a time that suits them. If the hybrid event includes pre-recorded keynote addresses or training modules, these elements can be played back on a loop or on-demand to create even more flexibility.

What are the challenges of asynchronous hybrid events?

One issue is that it can be challenging for event organizers to predict who will want to do what activities and when. If there are no limitations on when attendees can engage with each activity, you may end up with queues or long waits, leading to frustration from attendees.

Another challenge is ensuring that shared connections and experiences are maintained. When a team attends a hybrid event together, they will usually have the same experiences and participate in many of the same sessions, facilitating better bonding and the ability to share unique takes on each talk or activity. This can be lost if people are split up and doing their own thing. When all of your attendees aren’t based in the same location, it’s important to keep your hybrid events engaging.

How to make the most of asynchronous hybrid events

If you’re looking to introduce asynchronous hybrid events to your strategy, you must communicate the concept to your attendees. Emphasize which sessions and activities are available asynchronously, whether they can be completed virtually or in person, and the benefits of asynchronous access. This also means coming up with a straightforward way to present the asynchronous sessions separately from the main schedule – perhaps in a separate list or using an icon to clarify what can be done and when.

Asynchronous hybrid events are especially valuable for attendees across multiple time zones, who will appreciate the ability to engage with activities when it suits them. However, even for primarily local audiences, building some asynchronous activities into your event will allow them to explore their areas of interest in more detail or skip sessions less relevant to them.

Finally, it’s vital to understand what your event is about. There is likely little need for asynchronous components if it’s a simple knowledge-sharing session, such as a team meeting. In contrast, a large conference with a global audience would probably benefit from a more flexible schedule tailored to each attendee’s interests and availability.

Hybrid events are a relatively recent development in corporate events and training. Instead of focusing solely on in-person or online attendees, presenters and organizers must cater to both audiences at once, ensuring everything goes smoothly, and everyone is gaining the maximum value from the event.

Marketing hybrid events require a slightly different approach to traditional face-to-face or online-only events. You need to explain why people should choose one option over the other and exactly what everyone can expect from the session. If you’re new to hybrid events, you may be wondering how you can market their benefits to both audiences. If you’re looking for ways to market your hybrid events better, read on…

How to Market Your Hybrid Event:

1. Communicate the benefits

As you develop your hybrid event marketing plan, consider the benefits of this approach instead of in-person or online-only options. Some attendees may initially be skeptical about this relatively new approach, so it may take some persuading to get them to sign up – but that’s perfectly fine! 

When you’re creating your communications for your hybrid event, such as your event web page or email, you might consider including a short FAQ that explains some of the main benefits of a hybrid event environment, such as:

• A safer experience for all participants – people can choose to attend remotely, meaning there will be fewer in-person attendees for easier social distancing and interaction with a limited number of other people.
• Flexibility to attend from the comfort of your own home – with millions still working from home, it stands to reason that many of these people would also be happy to attend an event online too.
• It’s a modern platform to interact with fellow attendees and presenters – it’s not just another Zoom or Microsoft Teams meeting! Explain what sets your platform and event structure apart from a standard online meeting, whether additional features, increased interaction, or a more engaging, user-friendly experience.
• The elimination of time and travel expenses – attendees (and their organizations) can choose to eliminate the time and costs associated with traveling to an event, including transportation, accommodation, and a per diem.
• Decreased environmental impact – if a proportion of your audience chooses to attend remotely, you can minimize the event’s carbon footprint with reduced travel, printed resources, and potentially a smaller venue.
• Potential lower costs – you may offer two pricing options for your event, accounting that virtual attendees won’t have access to catering or in-person equipment. Those choosing to attend virtually can benefit from a lower price.

3. Use surveys – and pay attention to feedback

After each event, you should survey participants on their event experience and compare feedback from in-person and virtual attendees. Collect quantitative and qualitative responses for the most valuable, holistic overview of attendees’ experiences. Survey data helps you prove the value of your hybrid events to stakeholders and future attendees and helps add credibility to the power and flexibility of hybrid events.

Quantitative data, such as attendee satisfaction scores and ROI, give you easy points of data comparison to see if in-person or online attendees had drastically different experiences of your hybrid event, which approach was the most profitable, or how to improve your hybrid event engagement. Long-form, open-text responses can be used as testimonials on your website or in marketing for your future hybrid events as social proof.

4. Enlist advocates

It’s widely known that people are influenced most by peers that they trust. Instead of relying solely on your marketing and your voices, consider enlisting the support of influencers in your space or brand ambassadors to promote your event and create additional buy-in.

Generally, this means encouraging your speakers to help you spread the word about your hybrid event. This could be by creating blog posts, talking about your event on their social media channels, and lending their voice to your marketing efforts, such as providing quotes or short videos for your event marketing materials.

5. Mention sponsors and speakers

This is a simple but easily overlooked tip: don’t forget to mention your sponsors and speakers on social media! @mention them in your posts to ensure they see them, and they will be much more likely to reshare and help you amplify your marketing efforts.

Additionally, your sponsors and speakers will ideally create their posts. This gives your event more credibility in their networks, as their followers are more likely to trust them as an influential person they have chosen to follow. This can help you get those attendee numbers up and create a sense of excitement around your hybrid event.

An engaged audience is a happy audience, whether they’re right there in front of you or participating remotely. The new world of hybrid events brings with it a huge number of opportunities to increase engagement and interaction – but what does that look like, and how do you ensure that your events are checking all the boxes to engage your hybrid event audience?

Keep it Live

Wherever possible, use live video instead of prerecorded content. Live sessions ensure that presenters can interact with the audience and answer questions in real-time. This could be a live video stream from the in-person event or an online stream from a remote presenter. Either way, a live presentation will better engage in-person and online participants, who will appreciate the higher degree of interactivity.

 If you must use prerecorded content, try to ensure that the presenter is available to engage with participants in the chat or join live for 10 minutes at the end of the presentation to answer questions.

Use a Virtual Facilitator

Virtual audiences need someone to keep the online conversation alive. Online participants are often hesitant about using the chat facility, so a virtual facilitator acts as a conduit between presenters, the live audience, and the virtual audience.

Virtual facilitators monitor the chat field questions and provide feedback from remote participants to the presenters. This helps virtual attendees feel more included in the hybrid event and helps ensure an inclusive experience no matter how participants choose to attend.

Make it Fun

The online event experience shouldn’t feel like a poor substitute for the in-person event – it needs to be just as fun and interesting as the physical space. Virtual participants want to feel like they’re getting the same value as their in-person counterparts, so ensure you have thought about every part of the schedule – including breaks.

When there is a break in your hybrid event, offer games, exercises, and networking opportunities to fill the gap for virtual attendees. Nobody wants to watch a blank screen or watch the in-person attendees participating in fun activities without them, so be sure to cater to your virtual audience and add value to their hybrid event experience. Exclusive interviews, prerecorded bonus content, Q&As with presenters, and virtual networking events will ensure that everyone’s time is well spent.

Create Networking Opportunities

At an in-person event, attendees will naturally interact and network with one another, whether that’s around their table, at lunch, or as part of your interactive activities. While networking is more challenging in virtual spaces, it’s not impossible! In fact, there are lots of ways to facilitate online networking for your hybrid events.

Most video conferencing tools have breakout room functionality so that you can set up small, targeted meetings between virtual attendees. Some online tools replicate “physical venues,” so virtual attendees can move between “tables” or “rooms” to join different conversations with ease. Live text chat is a must for online attendees to participate in the event, and “virtual speed dating” allows you to create randomized meetings between online attendees to replicate the short, casual conversations between in-person attendees.

#GetSocial

Many of your attendees, both in-person and virtual, will be active on social media, so create a hashtag to get everyone involved in the social conversation, whether that’s live-tweeting from the event or following along remotely on the backchannel. This could also be an excellent way to encourage people to ask questions before the event begins – include the hashtag in your registration materials and ask attendees to submit questions or topics of interest for the presenters via social media.

You should also have a member of your marketing team stationed at the in-person event to post throughout the day, take photos and host live video chats. This person should also be responsible for sharing posts from attendees, both in-person and virtual, for best-practice hybrid event marketing.

Acknowledge Your Online Audience

At every possible opportunity, take the time to acknowledge your online audience. If your presenters are live at the in-person venue, ensure that they address the camera wherever possible. Treating the camera as another “attendee” ensures that virtual participants benefit from eye contact and feel included in the conversation.

Ideally, your conferencing platform will support the ability to show online participants on camera when they ask questions in the Q&A section of each presentation. The presenter will see the online attendee on their device, and it may even be possible to show them to the rest of the room on the main screens. If this isn’t possible, ensure that your facilitator names the person asking the question and that the presenter addresses their response to the camera.

While hybrid events are very much here to stay, that doesn’t mean that it’s always a seamless transition from in-person events, to online events, to events combining the best of both worlds. The challenges of hybrid meetings make many organizations hesitant to introduce them to their audiences. Still, the good news is that there is plenty you can do to overcome these challenges and support all your attendees, whether they are with you in person or joining remotely. No matter what your concerns may be, here are five ways for you to overcome the challenges of hybrid meetings and events.

Hybrid Event Challenge #1: Planning Two Events

When planning your first hybrid event, it may feel like you’re planning two events: one for in-person attendees and one for online attendees. If you’re not careful, it will indeed feel like two disparate meetings and not a single seamless hybrid event.

Choosing a meeting platform that supports both approaches seamlessly is essential to support a unified event experience, both online and offline. In particular, this means connecting your in-person and remote attendees, both with each other and with the speakers and presenters, to ensure that nobody feels left out and to maintain a high-quality experience across the board.

It’s also important not to go overboard with experimental features at the expense of attendee satisfaction and engagement. Working with a hybrid event planning expert will help you choose the right event technology to support your goals without draining your budget – which is easily done when you first transition to hybrid meetings.

Hybrid Event Challenge #2: Setting Prices for Events

Many event organizers struggle with event pricing when they switch to hybrid events. This is one of the critical challenges of hybrid meetings because you want to ensure that pricing is fair but also reflects the differing experiences of in-person and remote attendees. For example, remote attendees won’t receive any catering as part of their ticket, so they would usually expect this to be reflected in their ticket price.

If this is your main hybrid event challenge, consider using a tiered approach to pricing. This puts the onus on the attendee to decide on the value of a particular event or experience. For instance, you may offer tickets to in-person attendees for $100, with tickets for remote attendees priced at $75. This allows the attendees to choose the event experience that best suits them without isolating any group.

Where prices differ between in-person and online tickets for your hybrid event, it is worth setting out precisely what each event experience entails. For instance, will remote attendees still be able to participate in networking sessions? What catering will be provided for in-person attendees? Being transparent and upfront about what attendees can expect from each experience will make it easier to justify your pricing tiers and for attendees to select the right ticket.

Hybrid Event Challenge #3: Connecting Online and Onsite Attendees.

One of the major hybrid meeting challenges for event organizers is ensuring that online and onsite attendees are equally engaged and included in activities throughout the event. Online attendees won’t be happy if they are excluded from many of the onsite activities, so it’s important to carefully consider your choice of event technology to maximize involvement and increase engagement at every stage of your event program.

Usually, this means paying extra attention to the online experience, which can often feel like a poor substitute for the in-person experience. Working with a hybrid event planning expert will help you leverage your event platform to set up virtual networking lounges, incorporate tablets onsite to ensure a better connection between onsite and offsite attendees, create social media feeds and replicate in-person resources digitally to ensure maximum inclusion.

A key time to consider is meal breaks. If your in-person attendees break for a catered lunch, what will happen to your remote attendees? Instead of presenting them with a blank screen for an hour, perhaps you could create digital breakout rooms for online networking or allow online attendees to book a time to speak with your event’s presenters. This will help you create equal networking opportunities for all attendees.

Hybrid Event Challenge #4: Catering to Different Time Zones

One of the main hybrid event benefits is the ability to open up your event to attendees outside your immediate area, which significantly expands your global reach. However, this brings with it the challenge of catering to multiple time zones.

Of course, your hybrid event timings will be tied to the onsite experience on a practical level. You can’t expect in-person attendees to turn up to your venue at 11 pm to cater to your online global audience! However, there are ways to overcome this common challenge of hybrid meetings.

Running the event at different times over multiple days (for instance, a Monday afternoon and a Tuesday morning) will help you catch more of your global audience at a suitable time. You may also consider running key sessions more than once for remote attendees or creating on-demand sessions that can be accessed when it suits remote employees.

The beauty of hybrid events means that even in-person attendees can attend online when necessary. Many event organizers choose to run live sessions at a time when the most attendees can participate, which may not sync up with your local time zone. If this is the case, anyone outside the target time zone can watch the session at a more suitable time, leave comments, and ask questions ready for follow-up at a later time.

Hybrid Event Challenge #5: Proving Value to Event Sponsors

Hybrid meetings are still a relatively new concept, meaning many event sponsors are unsure of the benefits it may provide them. However, your hybrid events should be presented as a huge opportunity for sponsors to maximize their investment with widespread brand exposure.

Today’s hybrid meeting platforms allow full customization, supporting digital banner displays and realistic virtual booth environments. Online scheduling apps support “virtual matchmaking” for attendees. Opting for both in-person and online experiences means that you can target a much wider audience, which can only be a plus for your event sponsors.

An added advantage to hybrid meetings is that virtual attendee traffic can be more easily tracked and recorded. You can track who visits your “virtual booths,” who clicks on banners, and what content people are interacting with, which provides you with valuable data to pass onto your event sponsors. This helps you turn one of the challenges of hybrid meetings into a powerful opportunity to understand your attendees better and keep your event sponsors happy as an added bonus.