Virtually Live! 2023 is a wrap! 9 golden tips for outstanding virtual events

Virtually Live! is Kaltura’s flagship online event for marketers by marketers that has connected over 7,500 attendees in the last 3 years and hosted groundbreaking sessions with top speakers from leading brands like SAP, Salesforce, Google, HubSpot, VMware, and AWS.  

This year’s edition of Virtually Live! which took place in November, was all about AI in marketing, boasting dozens of sessions with AI pioneers and expert speakers sharing their success stories and insights about marketing AI tools, techniques, and must-do action items for your 2024 strategy.  

Since we know how hard it is to create an event that both stands out and delivers, we thought we’d share our findings with you, so you can apply them and produce excellent virtual events for your organization. This year’s golden tips are: 

• Use a variety of session formats 
• Leverage AI to deliver outstanding events 
• Reach out to your dream speakers (they might just say yes) 
• Offer your attendees fresh downloadable content 
• Provide your audience with learning value 
• Offer your audience a much-deserved breather 
• Partner up with powerhouses 
• Keep your audience engaged with interactivity and surprises 
• Connect with your audience’s values and needs

Use a variety of session formats 

A variety in session formats increases attendee engagement. That’s why our agenda included keynotes, 1:1 fireside chats, panels, workshops, masterclasses, a gameshow, and a podcast. Make sure to mix up the order in your planned agenda to keep the interest levels high and include polls and chat boxes for an optimal attendee experience. 

Leverage AI to deliver outstanding events 

AI was the main topic of Virtually Live! for good reason… 

More and more marketers are using AI in marketing to free up valuable time to scale operations and run better audience experiences.  Your competitors are looking into AI-driven marketing and AI marketing tools. And so should you. Our pioneering speakers already use AI today to analyze trends, predict audience behavior, personalize experiences, repurpose content, manage process automation, and so much more..  

To quote two of our esteemed Virtually Live! 2023 speakers about the value of AI in marketing events: 

AI is contributing to making attribution models more clear. The winner? Events. It is easier to understand the impact events have on revenue. – Colin Fleming, EVP, Global Brand Marketing, Salesforce. (His opening keynote was eye-opening!) 

AI brings scalability to events by reducing cost and streamlining ops. AI automates routine tasks, optimizes ad spending through predictive analysis, and quickly adapts marketing tactics based on real-time data – Shuchi Sarkar, Global Head of Marketing Segments, AWS (Her vision of the future with AI is so refreshing! Make sure to check it out) 

AI is a powerful tool that you can apply at pretty much every stage of the virtual event creation and management process. From content creation and email promotion to the music interlude and the personalized content, Virtually Live! was made with and assisted by Kaltura AI. The Kaltura Events AI assistant also monitored attendee engagement during the event and made ad hoc suggestions on how to increase it. Use the AI features in your platform to create more engaging, personalized experiences your viewers will appreciate.  

Make sure to check out the “AI-on-the-fly” session summaries and takeaways that were instantly generated by AI after the session and released to the audience via pop-up notification. Perfect as a TLDR or a convenient way to save or share the essence of the sessions.  

Sign up to get free access to the Virtually Live 2023! on-demand hub to learn how to use AI in marketing and digital experiences and get back to doing the marketing you love.  

Reach out to your dream speakers (they might just say yes) 

Your speakers are what essentially drives registrations. Ideally, it should read as a who’s who in your domain, a guarantee of sorts that your event is worth the registrant’s while.

Don’t be shy and get all internal hands on deck when it comes to inviting new speakers along. Our marketing team worked with our CRO, CPO, and other executives to reach out to their industry contacts and networks to onboard new speakers, and we got some great “yes’s”, and more internal collaboration and involvement which are great for the long run. Another “selling” strategy in onboarding new speakers is leveraging your existing ones. Star speakers attract star speakers, so feel free to namedrop the ones you have committed to the event, and it’s a beautiful snowball effect after that.  

If you did a good job and your first event proved a success, you can start building on your reputation for your next editions.  

For Virtually Live! 2023, the topic may have been artificial intelligence, but our speakers were made of 100% organic, natural intelligence with expert AI knowledge. We were lucky enough to host some of the world’s biggest brands, from AWS to Salesforce, Jasper, HubSpot, Microsoft, VMware, Zapier, Google, Atlassian, and SAP. Each Virtually Live! speaker is an AI trailblazer with tons of experience and ready-to-apply tips and strategies.   

Provide your audience with learning value 

Most people attend virtual events to get inspired and actually learn something. So, make your sessions educational, first and foremost.  

While all Virtually Live! sessions offered valuable information to the attendees, we purposely set the tone by opening and closing our event with two remarkable AI masterclasses by two even more remarkable AI experts, which were geared towards making artificial intelligence second nature! Both are available to watch on-demand for free on the Virtually Live! 2023 hub: 

Virtually Live! exclusive masterclass with the Marketing AI Institute  

Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute, goes into detail about how to leverage AI to transform your processes, freeing up more time for the things you want to focus on. Watch it to learn how you should pilot and scale AI with your team. 

Virtually Live! exclusive masterclass with AI expert Ruben Hassid   

Ruben Hassid, internationally renowned Gen-AI expert, shares actionable strategies and practical tips with you for the creation and repurposing of AI-driven content, event conceptualization techniques, prompting best practices, and how leveraging AI in your marketing strategies can significantly boost audience engagement and interaction.   

Cherry on top of the masterclass pie, all live attendees received a certificate of completion that they can share on social media and brag about. 

Virtually Live! 2023 didn’t leave an angle unexplored about AI in marketing and AI marketing tools for digital experiences. Alongside the classic sessions, the “Think tank” sessions offer a more hands-on approach to making AI work for you, they help the attendees truly absorb the new knowledge. The “Test lab” sessions were our take on the panel session, like the fascinating test lab session with Google’s Megan Henshall and Ryan Howard, on how to reshape human interaction with Google Xi (Experience Institute) 

Offer your attendees fresh downloadable content 

We highly recommend producing fresh, downloadable content that you can premiere during the event, and you can even build sessions around that content. Attendees love to get tangibles and they love “getting the scoop.”  

Kaltura published 3 new survey reports with fresh data that were premiered and offered as a free download during two particular sessions of the event. The first two surveys, the state of webinars in 2024 and the state of events in 2024, were presented during the session Unlocking ROI: The state of events and webinars 2024 by Kaltura’s very own VP Product Yair Neumann. 

The third survey, AI in marketing, was discussed in-depth during the eye-opening session by Kaltura’s EVP Product, Renan Gutman, Built with AI. Created by human.  

Bring your audience a bit of infotainment 

As you know by now, a variety of session formats is key in keeping audiences engaged. Find an entertainment break that’s a little different than usual, but still close to your content. And make sure it’s interactive!  

We strategically broke the day in half with an infotainment session we simply called Virtually Live! The Gameshow, which answered pertinent questions about in-person, hybrid, and virtual events in a fun format, hosted by Events guru and Founder of Boldpush Julius Solaris.  The contestants were none other than Melissa Vilders (Head of Global Event Strategy and Experience, HR Line of Business, SAP), Huong Nguyen (CEO, Shiloh Events), and Lenny Talarico (Chief Experience Officer at Lenny Talarico Events, former Head of Production at MGM).  

While the session was engaging and fun in and by itself, we added to the excitement by enabling the attendees to play along via Kaltura’s interactive live poll feature. And it worked! Our gameshow session performed amazingly, with 7,933 minutes viewed and a live engagement rate of 67%, every event pro’s dream 

Partner up with powerhouses 

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, sometimes a strong collaboration with an exclusive session is all you need. Hubspot CMO Kipp Bodnar and Zapier CMO Kieran Flanagan entertain a weekly podcast, called Marketing Against the Grain, about marketing trends, growth tactics, and innovation, with tens of thousands of followers on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, and a handful of other platforms. Exclusively for Virtually Live! ’23, Kipp and Kieran hosted a dedicated episode about busting myths and cool AI tools and tactics they leverage to create unforgettable digital experiences. 

Double whammy, a podcast in a virtual event is a bit of a novelty and adds to the variety of session formats. 

Keep your audience engaged with interactivity and surprises 

Attendees were also given a much-needed breather between the many sessions with an AI art exhibit, a music interlude, an interactive webinar competition, a leaderboard, and ample networking opportunities (including many speakers answering questions in the chat). 

Every session had dedicated polls and notifications built in, and some of the sessions included prizes, certifications and raffles. The more, the merrier!  

Connect with your audience’s values and needs 

Events are all about engaging and connecting with your audience. And nothing drives those more than appealing to your attendees’ emotions, values, and needs. Incorporating that into your sessions and overall event experience is very powerful. 

We found a real need to discuss the hot topics of diversity, equity, and inclusion regarding events and AI, since both address a wide and varied audience. And we’re happy that all of our speakers addressed this important issue.  

Megan Henshall, Global Event Strategist at Google, said it best during the session Google Xi: reshaping human interaction:  

I spend a lot of time thinking about the moral and ethical implications of this technology. Right now, there are a lot of built-in biases in generative AI tools like chatGPT and Bard. You’re not always going to get a completely objective answer and you may not even get the right answer. It’s important to understand that we have to be really careful about inherent bias that creeps into these tools. 

But Megan also praised AI’s potential to curate, personalize, and automate digital experience design. She said:  

AI could be used to analyze and benchmark sentiment data. The possibility of using AI to accelerate standardization around inclusion, different design interventions, and affordances for different folks across DEI & B is really exciting to me. Then, once we have more standardization and we can automate and accelerate that journey, we use that to empower our audiences to mitigate their own choices and lean into the things that make sense for them. 

From a technical standpoint, we made sure not to just talk the talk but actually increase the DEI value of our event by offering in-session pop-up sign language videos, captions, and in partnership with Dots.eco, we enabled attendees to choose among several eco causes at registration, to which Kaltura contributed to in their name. 

Think of causes, values, and needs that are relevant to your organization, product, or industry and that your audience holds dear, and address them in a meaningful way. Your viewers will truly appreciate it.  

Of course, there are many more tips and best practices that will help you deliver outstanding digital experiences for your audiences. And that’s why the Kaltura blog exists. Peruse our huge backlog of articles for more virtual event nuggets and marketing wisdom that will improve and build upon your strategy. And of course, keep your eyes peeled for upcoming blog posts! 

A quick ‘thank you’ to our amazing speakers for taking the time to share their AI experiences and knowledge with us:

• Colin Fleming, EVP, Global Brand Marketing at Salesforce    
• Shuchi Sarkar, Global Head of Marketing-Segments at AWS       
• Kipp Bodnar, CMO at HubSpot    
• Kieran Flanagan, CMO at Zapier    
• Paul Roetzer, Founder and CEO at Marketing AI Institute   
• Bob Bejan, VP Global Events, Production Studios and Marketing Community at Microsoft    
• Meghan Keaney Anderson, VP Marketing at Jasper    
• Jessica Hreha, Head of Global Integrated Campaigns & Content Strategy at VMware    
• Angie Smith, Head of Events and Field Marketing at Atlassian    
• Megan Henshall, Global Event Strategist at Google    
• Yadin Porter de Léon, Global Executive Content Marketing Lead at VMware    
• Ruben Hassid, Founder at Rubenhassid.ai    
• Julius Solaris, Events guru and founder at Boldpush   
• Jessica J. Federer, Board Member, Investor, former Chief Digital Officer at Bayer    
• Jaime Hunt, CMO at Old Dominion University    
• Michelle Moore, Senior Manager, Brand Content at VMware    
• Ryan Howard, Technical Program Manager, Experience Design at Google    
• Josh Shepherd, Head of Event Technology and Innovation at Atlassian    
• Clara Galán, Product Marketing Lead Adobe Live at Adobe   
• Lenny Talarico, CXO at Lenny Talarico Events, former Head of Production at MGM    
• Melissa Vilders, Head of Global Event Strategy and Experience at SAP    
• Huong Nguyen, CEO at Shiloh Events    

Watch their groundbreaking sessions for free, on the Virtually Live! 2023 on-demand hub! 

Virtually Live! is powered by Kaltura Events 

Virtually Live! was entirely created and delivered on the Kaltura Events platform, Kaltura’s leading digital experience solution for seamless and perfectly branded virtual and hybrid events and webinars that convert and engage.

Offer your audiences memorable brand experiences the easy way… with Kaltura Events! Book a free demo to see for yourself how Kaltura Events will elevate your business!