You’re starting to notice something strange about your virtual event. While your first few online sessions had a great turnout, attendance seems to be getting lower as the event progresses. Is there a problem with your session content? Are attendees suddenly encountering tech issues?
Lower session attendance can be a fairly common issue at virtual events. While the online format can make your event more accessible for a wider range of attendees, it can also make them less likely to attend for a full day. Our numbers show that only around 10-20% of attendees stick around to watch the final sessions of the event. But this doesn’t have to be the case!
Since we first began supporting virtual sessions, Whova has helped boost participation and attendance with various engagement tools. Now with new gamification options, you can boost attendance throughout your event by qualifying attendees for a raffle.
Increase session turnout by gamifying attendance
By offering outside incentives, you can not only increase turnout, but make participating in the event more exciting for attendees. As soon as they enter the agenda, attendees will get information about the contest from an in-app pop-up. After that, they’ll be to view their progress in the competition from a bar at the top of the agenda, and we’ll even mark which sessions they’ve already visited and which ones will count for gamification.
Attendees can track their progress right from the agenda in the Whova app
Customize the contest to promote key sessions
As the organizer, you have full control over how this contest works. When setting it up, just select:
- Which sessions are eligible
- The number of sessions needed to participate
- The length of time attendees need to stay in each session
While you might make all sessions eligible, you can also be strategic and promote key sessions. Want to make sure major sessions get a big turnout? Have concerns about smaller sessions getting enough visibility? Just select the ones you want to promote to give attendance an extra boost.
Choose which sessions count for gamification
Promote the event and fuel friendly competition
Gamification can serve to promote more than just individual sessions! When attendees enter and win the raffle, they’ll be prompted to share a premade graphic to social media — integrated directly with Whova. As attendees share their accomplishments, they’ll give your event more visibility, as well as make sure other attendees know about the contest!
More naming opportunities for high-tier sponsors
This can also be a chance to promote sponsor visibility; just have a high-tier sponsor provide the prize, and credit them throughout the raffle and when announcing the winner. The sponsor can even brand their prize, such as gifting the winner company merch, to promote their brand even further.
Announce the winners with a couple of clicks
Once the sessions are over, holding the raffle and selecting any winners is simple! If you have any specific criteria you’re using to choose winners, you can manually select them right through the app. Otherwise, Whova will hold the raffle for you and randomly draw your winners.
After you have your winners selected, you can announce them directly through the app with just the push of a button.
Select and announce winners directly through the app
See the results in real time
We’ll also make it easy for you to view the results of the gamification and track participation. Access an up-to-date analytic breakdown of who has met the prize requirement and participated in the gamification, as well as which sessions attendees have remaining and which stamps they’ve collected.
You’ll also be able to view a chart tracking the attendance for the selected sessions, so you can easily tell see how each session is doing and if they’re hitting your goals for attendance.
See how sessions are performing right from the app
Watch virtual session attendance skyrocket
Sometimes all it takes is a little extra push — by adding fun new incentives to attend sessions through gamification, you can effectively encourage attendees to keep coming to virtual sessions throughout the event.
If you want to learn more about encouraging session participation, or about Whova’s other gamification options, such as networking gamification and the Leaderboard contest, just sign up for a free product demo.
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