Author Archives: Chris Bradle

Product Update: Sponsorship Invitation Enhancements, Upload Mass Contacts and Set Pricing Features

One of the great things about Virtual Event Bags is how easy they are to set up and send out to sponsors, which leads to the ability to create partnerships. With our latest updates, we’ve taken that process and made it even easier. Event organizers can now customize their bags with local deals, control brands within the bag, mass email potential sponsors and process payments within seconds of sponsors signing up.

Content Builder Payment

The waiting is no longer the hardest part now that event organizers can collect payments as soon as placements are created. Cut out the invoices and waiting on payments – when sponsors create placements within your event bag, you’re able to collect payments via credit card immediately. This timesaving service costs only 10% of the transaction amount, which includes the credit card processing fee. Then, you’ll receive funds bi-monthly in the payment schedule. No need to chase after sponsors with paperwork and follow-up phone calls.

Xpayment

Sponsor Invitation and Pricing Enhancement

The ease of inviting potential sponsors to invest in your event bag is now even easier. First, set up a cost category that sponsors will pay to create placements within your bag. If you’d like to give sponsors different pricing options, you can set up multiple types of placements and costs combinations and send different codes to different sponsors, and create discounts as well.

Next, you can now mass upload a list of sponsors you’d like to partner with into the Content Builder, and send an invitation with one quick click. Simply upload a .csv file with contact information and the Content Builder will take care of the rest.

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Brand Regionalization

Find the best local offers and skip those broad, general deals. National brands can now target an offer that has more value to participants based on the region of the event. If you’re running a cold-weather race, focus on gear offers for cold-weather equipment. The more precise, targeted deals you can offer your participants, the higher your engagement will be.

Marketplace Content

The ability to customize your Virtual Event Bag creates a higher chance of engagement, especially if the offer is more relevant to your participants. You can now add brands to your Virtual Event Bag, in addition to the 9 brands that are pre-populated. And you can also remove any brand from your bag that might not appeal to your participants.

See a bag example

Schedule a demo to learn more

#gotothebag

Chris BradlePublished:

September 2015 Featured Event Bag: Canada Army Run

The Canada Army Run is a “military” race from start to finish. This event includes a half marathon and 5k for everyday runners and the ill, injured and disabled. The race is to celebrate the spirit of community for both Canadians and the Canadian Armed Forces. With over 25,000 participants, the Canada Army Run is an annual tribute to the men and women who serve at home and abroad. We are joining in the celebration by spotlighting The Canada Army Run as our Featured Bag of the Month!

Event Details

  • Endurance – Half Marathon & 5k
  • Location – Ottawa, Canada
  • Participants – 25,000
  • First Year Customer

In our first conversation with the team, it was clear that they wanted to incorporate a digital solution to replace the traditional event bag. With an event of this size, it is a huge operational feat to stuff 25,000 bags. Not to mention, the high-cost for sponsors to produce physical materials with no visibility into the performance. With the largest events around the globe using the platform, The Canada Army Run knew it was clear that Virtual Event Bags would be the ideal platform to roll out their digital event bag.

The results have been staggering and far surpassing our expect­ations­.

Click to tweet

The Plan

For any event trying something new, the best results are achieved when a clear and defined plan has been laid out. The Virtual Event Bag is no different. For Canada Army Run, their plan was to offer placements in the bag to the sponsors and participating vendors free of charge. For them, the ultimate value of the product was providing an additional opportunity for sponsors while being able to share key event information such as course maps, apparel for purchase or other announcements. In comparing these new opportunities to the cost, the event concluded it was “well worth the cost.”

The Event Bag

There were three key things we noticed about the Canada Army Run bag, lingual diversity, sponsor variety, and social media savvy.

Lingual Diversity

Because the event was held in a multi-lingual city, the organization had to create placements that were both in French and English. In the picture below, you can see an example of how that looked.
Canada Army Run 1

Sponsor Variety

The bag had it all, apparel, services, and a mix of health supplements. This is just an example, their bag included 39 offers all of which had a niche.
can army 4

Social Media Savvy

Now here is a best practice that we preach, but not everyone follows. Promote your social media! We’re giving two thumbs up to Canada Army Run for being the model of social savviness.
Can Army 5

The Results

Each bag comes with reporting. There is a report for the overall performance of the bag and one for each placement in the bag. The key metrics for the overall performance are the visit rate and the views per visitor. On average, bags will have a visit rate of 65-75% with their audience with the average views per visitor being around 1.5-2.

Canada Army Run had a visit rate of 86.3% with a dead on 3 views per visitor!can army 8
Thier visit rate success is a result of two things. The use of the invitations in the platform and the timing in which they were sent. Because they were on our professional plan, they had three invitations to send to their participants. They sent all three prior to the event and in a short period. Doing that is good practice because you catch your audience at the height of their anticipation for the event. Making them more likely to take action on what you, the event, are offering.can army 10

The Kicker

With all the prep that went into creating this bag, one could assume that there was a lot of time involved in this process. Well, you would be wrong. Canada Army Run started their bag five weeks before their event! In that time, they set up the bag, communicated with sponsors to create 39 placements, and had great success engaging their audience.

Are you a race director considering if you should use our platform? Let this be an example to you on the ease of working in our tool. Take the time to check out our example bag or if you’re ready for next steps, schedule a demo with us!

#gotothebag

Chris BradlePublished:

Product Update: The New Schedule Feature

One of the key things about managing an event bag is the schedule. Because of that, we knew this feature needed to be as customizable and clear as possible. What’s new in this product update is three categories a bag schedule can not be without, milestones, actions, and tasks. Below we will explain each one in detail and why they are important.

Highlights of this Product Update

  • Overview
  • Managing Milestones
  • Completing Actions
  • Adding Tasks
  • Takeaway

Overview

When a bag is created, You will see that the schedule is already pre-populated, based on the date of your event. Simply put… we designed it to deliver the highest amount of visitors to your bag, based on best practices we have learned over the years. Though you can adjust the dates if you want by clicking the gray edit button in the top right corner.

Managing Milestones

So what is a milestone? A milestone is a date that controls a core feature of the bag. The date can be edited, but you are not able to change the title or function. No action is required for a milestone to be completed. When the date passes, it will automatically move to the Completed section. Some examples are Content Submission Deadline, Bag Opens, and Close dates, etc.

Sched update 3

Completing Actions

Actions are the dates of key functions, which are important because they are required for the bag to perform properly. The date of the action can be edited, but you can not change the action title or function. Each action title is green, meaning it is linked to the section where you can complete the action. When completed, it will be marked as “Done” and moved to the Completed section. If you miss an action date, it will be highlighted as “Past Due.” Take a look at the image below, the words in green text are the actions.

sched up 4

Adding Tasks

Tasks are dates and activities that you create specifically for your event bag. You will enter a title and date to include the task. As you complete them, you will manually check the box when it is done. At any time before your bag closes, you have the ability to edit the title and date of these tasks. When you mark it complete, it is moved to the Completed section. If a task date passes, and it is not complete, it will be highlighted as “Past Due.” Take a look at the image below, the green arrows are pointing to tasks we created to help us manage what’s happening with the event along with the bag.

tasks

Takeaway

Before this product update, the task list and the schedule were separate. This forced events to prioritize what was on their task list and schedule. By combining the two and letting the event have control of adding their own tasks, they now have the ability to schedule their own priorities. So get to tasking! Maybe the last task of your event will be to “renew next year’s event bag”, just a suggestion. 🙂

See a bag example

Schedule a demo to learn more

#gotothebag

Chris BradlePublished:

Introducing the new and improved bag experience

With over millions of people visiting the Virtual Event Bags each year, our product team is closely monitoring performance and drawing out observations about improving the key metrics for event sponsors and exhibitors. The key metrics for the sponsors and exhibitors are views and actions on their content. Naturally, our goal is to make it easy for visitors to view and take action on many (if not all) pieces of content in bag.

We observed a pattern occurring with bag visitors which caught our attention. The overall visit rate to the event bags are consistently trending between 60-75% – which is excellent. When visitors view more details for a placement the action rate is typically near 50% – again a nice metric. What we found is something was keeping visitors from viewing details of many placements during their time in the bag. This finding launched a project which would involve rebuilding the bag experience with the goal of making the process easier for visitors to quickly view details for many pieces of content.

As we worked on the design for the new experience, we decided to enhance the presentation on mobile devices – specifically smart phones. With more than 60% of bag visitors surfing through the bag contents on their mobile device, the experience must be fast and behave more like a native mobile app. This short overview video illustrates the difference between the previous version and the new experience.

Now that you’ve seen the differences, I’ll add some detail and further explanation to the new features and updates you’ll see in the new bag experience.

Fast Detail View Loading

When navigating the web on a mobile device, visitors have been found to exit out of a site when pages load slowly. Since native apps are super fast and fluid experience people have grown to expect similar behavior from websites when browser on their smart phones. In the previous version of the bag experience, each time a visitor clicked to view details of a placement the entire page would be refreshed or changed. In the new experience the detail view loads quickly and without a page refresh. We believe speedy views attribute to more speedy views.

Linear vs. Cyclical Navigation

People follow the most obvious path of engagement when visiting an event bag. In the previous version we found the visitor engagement behavior was “linear”. A visitor would view a placement and take action as planned, but many actions navigate them out of the bag – hence creating a linear experience. When creating the new experience, we crafted the “cyclical” experience to enable visitors to view the details of many pieces of content in a single visit. The cyclical experience starts when a visitor views details on any placement. When viewing details the visitor can now browse to details of more placements simply by clicking next or previous. This activity creates a cyclical behavior and provides a solution to increasing the content details a person views in their bag.

New Featured Section

Since the beginning event organizers have been able to highlight key placements. In the previous experience the event bag touted a “billboard” slider section at the top of the bag. Sliders or moving elements can provide a nice effect, but we found performance lagging for placements toward the tail end of the billboard slider. In an effort to build toward increasing engagement and performance, it was time to move away from the slider and introduce the “Featured” section. Now event organizers can show off content in the top of their bags in the new featured section which display larger highlighted thumbnail views.

Save for Later

The bag experience has always had a feature for visitors to save placements and return later when they are ready to take action – shop, learn, download, etc. In this new experience we have streamlined the process of saving content, again to speed up the experience. In the previous version when saving content the visitor would be introduced to another section/page of the bag – My Saved Content. While it was good to show visitors where their content was being saved, it took them away from view more content. Now when a visitor saves content the action completes instantly and keeps the cycle of view more content in motion. Visitors can view their saved content by filtering the bag to only show saved content at any time during their visit.

Final Thoughts

Observations lead to continuous improvement. As our product team continues reviewing and monitoring performance, we will always be striving toward improving the experience for event organizers, sponsors/exhibitors and the bag visitors. We hope you love this new bag experience as much as your audience does. The more your audience enjoys the experience the happier your sponsors and exhibitors will be with their performance.

Chris BradlePublished:

Introducing the Ultimate Plan & Mobile App Promotion

We are happy to announce our latest feature updates and we know you are going to love them as well! These features include the creation our the robust, work-horse Ultimate plan and the ability for events to easily promote their mobile apps inside their bags.

Highlights of this Article

  • Introducing the Ultimate plan – perfect for events with high-volume of exhibitors or sponsors.
  • Learn how you can promote your mobile app from within your bag – available for all plans!

The Ultimate Plan

After discussions and discoveries in the broader event market, we found the need to craft a more robust offering of features which shaped our new Ultimate plan. The goal of creating this plan was to provide a solution for events with high numbers of exhibitors and sponsors or events with greater need to provide more methods for audience engagement. We compiled the list below to share details about each feature included in the new plan.

Search – We are super excited about this feature! When visitors arrive in the bag they can search for a specific placement by clicking the search button at the top of the bag. This is great for visitors who want to quickly find of a specific company without scrolling through all of the content.

Content Tags – Expanding on the search feature, we created the ability for events to tag content which enables visitors to filter the bag content by a tag. For example, if an exposition is divided into groupings of exhibitors – such as Climbing Zone, Paddle Zone, Yoga Zone, etc. – then the organizer can create content tags to match their zones. Then they assign the relevant tag to the content in each zone. When visitors come to the bag they can filter the bag by tag. This feature speeds up browsing and discovery of content in the bags. Now events can have hundreds of placements in their bags and provide a great solution for visitors to engagement with the contents.

Appointments – When your exhibitors or sponsors objective is scheduling appointments at their booth during the show, this feature quickly makes this connection happen. This new placement category enables the visitor to request an appointment with a couple clicks.

Event RSVP – Your exhibitors or sponsors who host mini-events at their booth or other locations (ie: booth happy hours or offsite evening receptions) now have the ability to capture RSVP right inside the bag. Like the appointments category, when the visitor comes to the bag the can discover the mini-event and RSVP with a couple clicks.

Customize Engagement Lists – Your exhibitors and sponsors benefit from knowing as much information possible about the visitors engaging with their content in the bag. In the Ultimate plan you have complete control of the information in the engagement lists – (ie: Company Name, Title, Email, etc.)

White-Label Solution – In the Ultimate plan, all of the “Powered by Virtual Event Bags” labels are hidden which provides your event a white-labeled or visually independent solution.

Mobile App Promotion

With a growing number of events using mobile apps to engage digitally with their audience, a key objective is to promote mobile app downloads. Our platform not only works as a module inside your mobile app, but now you can activate a new banner section in your bag to link visitors directly to Apple’s AppStore or Google Play to download your mobile app. Check out this short video for a quick walk-through of the feature.

Chris BradlePublished:

IMT Des Moines Marathon enhances event experience

The Des Moines Marathon is held annually in downtown Des Moines, Iowa and is a qualifying event for the iconic Boston Marathon. More than 9,000 athletes participated in the 2014 race event. The Des Moines Marathon has utilized the Virtual Event Bags platform since 2011. Event Director Chris Burch has clearly seen and believed in the logic behind the convenience, performance and environmental care a digital bag brings to his event since the beginning.

“It really has been a good return on our investment.” – Chris Burch, Event Director

Q. Why did you initially decide to incorporate a digital bag into your event?

The IMT Des Moines Marathon is committed to bringing products that feature technology to our athletes that can enhance their event experience. The idea of a Virtual Event Bag not only made sense from an athlete and sponsor perspective, it has been the right thing for our event to do in regards to the environment and our carbon footprint.

Q. How did you first introduce this to your sponsors? Sponsorship package? Sold separately or both?

The IMT Des Moines Marathon was one of the first events to work with VEB. Many of our sponsors did not get it at first, but I knew with a real strong presentation and a bit of their trust we would have a winner on our hands. The first year we worked with VEB was a great success. The visual presentation, contact with athletes before and after the event and analytics have been most welcome.

The IMT Des Moines Marathon includes the VEB as a part of the overall event sponsorship levels providing premiere placement for top tier sponsors.

Q. What did you find worked best when positioning the Virtual Event Bag to your sponsors? What did they find most attractive?

It works best to be able to provide examples of the VEB to sponsors. To have worked with the product for a year gave us a chance to ‘show’ sponsors what they could expect from VEB. The fact that they could receive individual statistics on usage has been huge. “It really has been a good return on our investment.”

Q. What is something a participant shared with you about Virtual Event Bags?

Participants like the fact that we aren’t wasting all of that paper in their goodie bags. They like shopping online and are using more and more products like VEB. It allows them to connect with the race from the computer and interact with the sponsors and coupon offers that are meant for them.

#gotothebag

Want to learn more about Virtual Event Bags? We help event organizers more effectively connect sponsors and/or exhibitors to attendees; you can schedule a personal tour or view a self-guided video tour.

Chris BradlePublished:

Your Neighbors are Your Friends

Whether you are a B2B or a B2C event, you could be missing a huge opportunity for cross-promotion by not working with your neighbors.

We are constantly coming up with new ways to get our name out there but are you thinking too far outside of your neighborhood? Perhaps. When we onboard new customers, we always discuss their sponsorship strategy. I always ask, “Do you have a sponsorship program in place? How many sponsors do you have/want to have? Do you work with local events or business?” Most of the events I talk to give an overwhelming response of, “No, actually. We don’t work with our neighboring events.” Partnering with your neighbors is the first thing I suggest, especially if they are new to the event scene! Go out, talk to other events in your area and see if they want to ad swap! 9 times out of 10, they will be all in!

Working with other events is also a great way to get ideas and learn how to position your event to potential sponsors. Imagine the network you could build! When you talk to a potential partner, event, or exhibitor, ask them for a referral. If you are a small event trying to build a following, it is especially important that you do this. There are so many new events each year, but the longevity of them depends on your credibility, and that depends on the quality of your attendees and the partners you have for cross-promotion.

Chris BradlePublished:

Why Louisville Sports Commission keeps coming back for more

The Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon and miniMarathon, put on by the Louisville Sports Commission, has grown from a small local road race into the largest day of road racing in Kentucky history. Runners from all 50 states and several foreign countries annually complete the scenic 13.1 and 26.2 mile courses that start and finish in downtown Louisville. Now in its 41st year, the miniMarathon attracts more than 12,000 entrants each year and is ranked among the nation’s top 100 races by USA Track and Field. The Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon has been a client of Virtual Event Bags since 2012. We asked event manger, Shanna Ward to tell us more about her experience with our company. Shanna has been with the Kentucky Derby Festival since 2012.

Q. You have been a customer since 2012 – why do you choose to return every year?

KDF returns each year because of the great value the VRB adds to our event. VEB supports KDF’s efforts to Go Green. Our sponsors love the data they collect from participating. And runner’s love the ability to download offers for specific items.

Q. What is your participant reaction to the event bag?

Runners are very happy with the bag, we have received no negative feedback, and we believe that runner’s redeem more offers than they ever have in the past with traditional paper offers delivered in plastic bags.

Q. What kind of offers do you see having the highest engagement rates?

Coupons [as opposed to an advertisement]. Churchill Downs offers admission to the track during at a later date, and a lot of the locals redeem this offer.

Q. Do you incorporate VEB in an existing sponsorship package or sell it separately?

We do both. Our title and presenting sponsors receive it as part of their package, but we also sell it to other sponsors and vendors that have booth space at the Expo.

Chris BradlePublished:

Visit Tallahassee delivers offers from local businesses to visitors

Visit Tallahassee supports hundreds of events with thousands of visitors

Convention and Visitors Bureaus (CVBs) exist to help facilitate the interaction between events, visitors and local businesses to help stimulate their economies. One method of doing so is to ensure that people visiting the city to attend events also visit the restaurants, attractions, retailers and other businesses in the market.

So many events, so many businesses, so many visitors

How does a leanly staffed CVB efficiently connect local businesses to visitors through events? Until now, its been nearly impossible, but with Virtual Event Bags, CVBs can now easily collect, distribute and report on content from businesses for the benefit of visitors.

The platform does all the work

Using our company invitation tool, Visit Tallahassee invites member businesses to participate in the program. Businesses get direct access to our offer builder tool, which enables them to create, preview and submit their offer. Visit Tallahassee now has a bag full of local offers that they can easily share with the events they support.

Chris BradlePublished:

How To Use Social Media To Promote Your Event

Are you using social media to promote your Event? If you aren’t it’s never too late to start. Social media is THE place to spread the word about your event, not to mention that it is free!

Here are 5 ways that you can promote your event through social media.

1. Make sure that you are signed up for all relevant social sharing sites for your event
To my surprise a lot of people only have either Facebook or Twitter. You could be excluding a major part of your audience by promoting your event through only one channel. If it seems like juggling multiple platforms is too much to handle, check out a social media management system like Hootsuite.

2. Add your twitter feed to your event website
When people visit your event page they are either thinking about attending your event or are already signed up. Either way, help build excitement by showing your twitter chatter on the side on your event page. Seeing the chatter might help boost the momentum or sway those who are on the fence about attending.

3. Highlight your sponsors
Don’t just talk about how great your event will be, show your attendees by highlighting your sponsors or guest speakers on social media. The gesture can be as simple as “Did you see Bob’s shoe store is doing a giveaway contest for a pair of Nike running shoes?! Go check out their offer and enter to win now!” If you are a conference and have a guest speaker, talk about the guest speaking- give them a shout out. Maybe put a short video clip up about the speaker or simply mention what they will be discussing.

4. Create a hashtag
Hashtags are all the rage right now. It allows people to connect and share how they interact with your event. Lets say you are an endurance event and you want everyone to take a selfie at mile 3. Your hashtag could be #smileatmile3. Mention this hashtag everywhere! Hashtags are a great way for your attendees to show their friends and family what they are up to, it allows them to connect with other attendees, and most importantly, it connects them to you.

5. Use Video

Whether it be an animated GIF like this awesome one here, or a short video, people love to see that you are fun! You are telling a story with an animation and there are so many tools out there that make it easy to create videos and GIFS.

Tell us how you are using social to promote your event.

Check us out on Facebook and Twitter account.

Chris BradlePublished: