Red 7 Media’s Event Marketing Institute to Launch Next-Generation Virtual Business Environments

Red 7 Media is a producer of content and community in the event and publishing industries, with an array of print, online, and live-event brands that provide connections and thought leadership. The company will be working with InXpo to create year-round virtual environments for the event industry and the magazine publishing industry, providing users with a host of rich information services, including research, webinars, events, community interaction and productivity tools.

EXPOTECH Virtual, slated to launch in November, is being dubbed the first online event focusing on event technology and its impact on face-to-face meetings and events. EXPOTECH Virtual will feature educational sessions, keynote presentations, live demos and extensive exhibit halls where vendors can showcase their products and services with demonstrations, videos, white papers, webinars, and live chat.

Virtual Edge’s Michael Doyle will be leading a session titled “Increasing your audience – and your revenue – through hybrid events” at the November event. This session will dive into hybrid events, those events that have both physical and virtual elements, and look at how they are redefining what an attendee is and dramatically extending the value of a show’s educational content.

According to Michael Westcott, Managing Director at Red 7 Media, “After the event, we’ll turn the environment into the location for the Event Marketing Institute so people can come and find useful tools, content and to connect with their peers. We think it will become part of our member’s daily life.”

Westcott envisions a marketplace as well as a repository of tools and libraries of research and content that members will be willing to pay for. “I’m not one of those people that buy into the notion that everything on the web should be free.”

One recent report that Red 7 published is an example of their paid content. EMI’s “Events Primer, Evolution, State of the Market and Best Practices in Virtual Events does a good job of identifying and addressing amongst other things, best practices. The report is 13 pages and sells for $295.

Their Top Ten List of Best Practices includes:

1. It’s Still an Event! Begin your virtual event planning with a clear strategy and Goals.
2. Standalone or Hybrid? Decide whether or not your virtual event will be an extension of an existing physical event or a new, independent program.
3. Audience First, Always.
4. Off-the-Shelf Product or Technology Partner? Are you going to do self service or full service?
5. Make Marketing Motivating. Map your promotional campaigns the same as you would a physical event.
6. Build Relationships Over Time.
7. Content Drives Community. Make the event content motivating and relevant to your audience.
8. Keep Their Attention. Schedule a virtual event like a physical event, but keep session times a bit shorter than live experiences.
9. Measure, Analyze and Apply the wealth of data that is available from a virtual event.
10. Continuous Improvement. Act upon your data analysis to better understand your customers’ needs.