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With COVID-19 impacting the ways employees communicate, travel, and attend events, many companies and businesses are shifting to digital engagement. 26% of people are using email as their main source of communication with video conferencing being the second most popular communication outlet. 2022 has seen an increase in frequent business travelers desiring to stay off the road while business travel’s share of hotel room revenue is expected to continue to drop. In terms of events, even after 2020 when 70% of physical events were switched to hybrid or virtual, digital events remain popular in 2022 with 40% of events planned to be virtual while 35% are planned to be hybrid. 

Digital platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams have seen a significant increase of daily meeting participants and users in the past couple of years. In fact, more than 45 billion minutes of webinars were hosted on Zoom in 2020 while Microsoft Teams saw an 894% growth in users between March and June 2020. Nonetheless, continuous online interaction can bring fatigue and frustration of its own kind. 

Poorly designed digital platforms create challenges like technology issues, poor communication, and problems with virtual meetings that induce stress in employees. The amount of eye contact and participant face size on screens during video conversations is also unnatural. Each participant is looking at everyone, regardless of who’s speaking, creating a more stressful experience than in-person meetings. 

Constantly seeing yourself in real-time during video chats on screen can also be draining. In everyday life, we don’t go around with a mirror in front of us at every moment, and constantly looking at our reflection creates more opportunities for self-criticism. Increased focus and exaggerated responses are also necessary in video chats as non-verbal communication is much easier to interpret in face-to-face interactions. 

However, despite the challenges of interacting digitally, people continue to prefer attending events online. Of people who attend 10 or more events per year, 46% attended inline events while only 13% attended physical events. Businesses in this day and age need virtual events that incorporate the benefits of online meetings with trends in technology in order to stay productive and appealing to employees. Virtual events can save time, reduce travel costs, improve focus, and increase employee engagement. 

Hybrid events are separate experiences compared to completely virtual events as they involve two audiences that are connected by the content they’re accessing. 72% of attendees believe they will get more value from attending a hybrid event than a physical event. Hybrid events aim to create the best experience for every audience, which could involve having a main event that is either virtual or physical and a virtual component that offers educational content in virtual form. 

Gamification can possibly boost event engagement and improve overall event outcomes. Gamifying your event can involve testing attendees on the features of a product in a showroom, rewarding attendees for social media mentions and posts, or creating a list of milestones for attendees to complete. Using the metaverse can create an immersive experience as well, whether through virtual, augmented, or mixed reality. 74% of adults have admitted that they would join or consider joining a metaverse. 

Event planners can take several steps to improve event quality and keep attendees engaged. Creating the “wow” factor for your events that can make them stand out from the other cookie-cutter events can involve designing the event program before selecting a virtual platform, offering access to a library of on-demand breakout sessions, minimize extra activities to reduce distractions and maintain engagement, and facilitate networking through polls, chats, and Q&A features. 

Although physical events aren’t completely going away, businesses can reach new audiences through the use of hybrid and virtual events with digital engagement platforms.