hat do your delegates want from virtual events ? Do you know ? With the ferocious spread of Covid-19 , the world of events has effectively gone virtual . But what is going down well and what is painful ?

Professional congress organiser Kenes Group decided to find out and there is much we can take away from their recently published White Paper , ‘ Healthcare professionals reveal what they really think of virtual events ’.

The data Kenes Group specialises in medical and scientific meetings and , in light of the impact of Covid-19 , decided to reach out to their past delegates to understand more clearly how healthcare professionals feel about virtual events . The survey reached 809 past delegates from 112 countries on six continents . This provided the global feedback on the pressing question of what makes an effective virtual conference .

Kenes cross checked the validity of the answers by combining them with three virtual meetings and their post-conference evaluations . This generated an additional 1,872 survey responses .

The responses to the exercise , which took place in July 2020 , covered 20 plus therapeutic areas .

Let us examine the key points :

Why attend ? Kenes asked about the key factors for delegates when deciding to attend a virtual event . The top three are interesting and show it is really all about the content . The critical factor was high quality scientific content from expert

speakers in the field ( 92 %), availability of the content ( sessions on demand and enduring materials ( 61 %) and , third , came the reputation of the education provider ( association / society ) at 30 %. Interestingly , accreditations such as the provision of continuing medical education ( CME ) points came fourth with 25 %.

The research discovered that healthcare professionals are looking to expand their knowledge in the field , and that content comes first , no matter which discipline they belong to .

How long ? How long should a virtual event be ? Is a question that challenges event professionals across the board . Planners understand that taking an in-person event and replicating the same period online doesn ’ t work . This was backed up by the Kenes research findings where 56 % of respondents selected between one and two days as their preferred duration . This was followed by 21 % who were

Above : Paul Cook

interested in half day events .

When it came to session length , the ideal length of time spent in one online session is up to an hour , according to 45 % of respondents .

Price points There was a time when content that was posted in the virtual world was somehow seen downgraded as being ‘ free ’ or of less value to in-person content . It is refreshing to see that view is now changing . Of course , it ’ s not just content that is important in virtual events , it ’ s also the technicals and production crew that make a difference and all of that needs to be paid for .

But what would delegates be happy to pay for a virtual event compared to an in-person one ? The Kenes research discovered that 41 % of respondents said that they expect fees of virtual events to be about 50 % lower , followed by 25 % who said that they expect it be 80 % lower .

The good news from this is that delegates expect to pay . The next step is to work out how this aligns with your target market . Ticket pricing is only one part of the equation in terms of revenue generation and organisers may need to approach sponsors and exhibitors to provide them with further income .

A majority of participants ( 63 %) agreed that one registration per person that includes access to all content , with additional fees for pre- and post-conference sessions was a good option for them . Note that all content means all sessions and not just the ones they attended .

Convenient content Virtual events offer benefits that can