Hi Community members,

Earlier this month, I wrote about the best practices for providing a great virtual experience for the webinars you are hosting. In the current climate, live webinars are the main, and often the only, medium for hosting large-scale events right now, from tech conferences to industry summits and more. So today, I will be talking about how you can leverage Sales Navigator and the LinkedIn ecosystem to drive registrations and increase attendance to your virtual events. Read on to find out how you can fill as many (virtual) seats as possible at the events you and your team worked so hard on!

Before the Event

Your main goal before the actual event is to maximize the number of registrations so that it results in the highest attendance rate possible. This is also true for an in-person event. To achieve a high registration and attendance rate, make sure you are generating and building awareness among your targeted audience. Here are a few simple ideas to amplify the event:

1. Work with the marketing team to create 3-5 relevant and engaging posts that the team can post on their own LinkedIn profile 2-3 weeks before the event.
2. Again, work with the marketing or social media team to post updates about the event on your company LinkedIn page as well.
3. Next, send your leads or prospects a compelling, personalized message 1-on-1 to share more about the event. (We want to kindly remind everyone that these InMail messages would be best received and reciprocated by your high-quality leads and prospects you have already established a relationship with. Think of these messages as personal and customized invitations to your event, instead of an ad.)
4. When sending your InMail message, include a Smart Link that provides further details about the content, speakers, and agenda of the event, so that you can understand what your leads/prospects may be interested in from Smart Links analytics, and keep the message concise and clear.

What’s Next?: During and After the Event

Even when you’ve driven many registrations and a high attendance to your event, do you know what else you can do to continue the buzz and make your event a much sought after experience even after it’s over? For starters, share additional content on your company LinkedIn page that highlights how the event is going, i.e. audience’s participation and reaction, speaker’s questions and quotes. You can also ask attendees and your team to share on LinkedIn what they are most excited about the event so far. Doing so will not only provide real-time updates about your event but also create FOMO (fear of missing out) for those who could not attend.

Now, once the event is over and the immediate excitement has subsided, here’s what you can do to remind attendees (and those who missed it) what a great event it was and how they can continue engaging with you or your company:

1. Ask your marketing or event team if you can get access to the attendance list and look through the list to see if you can spot attendees who weren’t your prospects before or interesting people you might want to talk to.
2. Create a custom list in Sales Navigator titled “Interesting Event Attendees” (or something similar) and add those names to the list. These are now leads who could be your future customers.
3. Start building a relationship with those hot leads by introducing yourself with an InMail message. Just like prior to the event, you’d want to include a Smart Link that recaps the event and provides resources that are relevant to the individual. Include information on how they can reach you and learn more about your services or product as well.
4. Just like with the new hot leads from the event, you’d also want to send a message to your existing leads or current connections to thank them for attending and share a Smart Link that includes any information they may have missed.
5. Finally, even if your old prospects and new leads don’t respond to your message, you are still able to see their updates through Alerts in Sales Navigator and can engage with them appropriately and try to start a conversation that way.

Share Your Thoughts

How have you or your team leveraged Sales Navigator to drive registrations to your events in current times? I would love to know any insights you may have and your recent experience on hosting virtual events right now. It would be interesting to hear how our Community members have adapted these in-person meetings and events to the digital space right now.

Thank you and happy hosting!

Eva C.