Spotlight 19: Google Analytics for Backstage – Track microsite performance
The first impression you make on your attendees, for the most part, depends on how interesting your event microsite is. So how do you design a microsite that leaves a lasting impression on people? You do it by studying how they're interacting with your
Spotlight 7: Boost ticket sales with promo codes
Events are all about people, and it takes a substantial amount of marketing and promotion to bring in a crowd. By adding promo codes to your marketing mix, you can incentivize prospective attendees to buy tickets to your event by offering discounts and
Spotlight 17: Custom domains for an on-brand event
Your event markets your brand and gives it the exposure it needs to sell your product or service. And that's why branding is given a lot of (if not the most) importance in event planning. From the speakers to the sponsors, the colors used in your event
Spotlight 36: Custom sections for your microsite
An easy way to add more elements or information to your event microsite is to use custom sections. Custom sections provide you with a space to plug in, embed, or replace existing content all the while staying in line with your selected design or theme
Spotlight 35: Curate your event gallery
The event gallery on the microsite gives your attendees a space to share their experience through pictures. These pictures can show other attendees what transpired at the event. If you have a theme or criteria for what pictures should be showcased for
Spotlight 34: Handle event engagement in one space
Having one place where you can run sessions, promote networking, and drive attention to exhibitor booths can help increase engagement at events. In Zoho Backstage's Virtual Space, you can provide event participants with a unified experience to join sessions,
Spotlight 33: Preapprove ticket registrations for your event
When hosting events that require you to know which attendees will take part, vetting ticket registrations before the event is necessary. Having an approval process for your tickets can help you streamline reviewing registrations made by attendees. Zoho
Spotlight 9: Increase attendance with an event calendar
Company events have become one of the most popular and useful tools for team-building, networking, and more, so many organizations host multiple events throughout the year. With Backstage, you can keep a central calendar with all your organization's events
Spotlight 32: Preparing session resources
Having a captive audience that is completely focused on what you're saying and not distracted by taking notes or reading slides can help you deliver more effective presentations. To do this, you can use supplementary resources to help them understand
Spotlight 31: Maximizing event visibility
Growing your event audience requires you to know both who they are and how to reach them effectively. Once you've figured out your target audience, it's time to get people talking about your event so you can boost attendance on event day. With Backstage,
Spotlight 30: The virtual attendee experience in Zoho Backstage
In recent months, we’ve written quite a bit about how you can host virtual events with Backstage, from conducting virtual sessions and integrating with webcast services to virtual event networking and more. This time around, we thought we’d give you a
Spotlight 29: Connect with event microsite visitors
An event microsite can function as a one-stop-shop to help anyone find out important details about your event. It can include the purpose of hosting the event to let people know what they can gain by attending, display who will be speaking at sessions,
Spotlight 28: Streamline session management using hosts
Anyone who’s hosted an event will know how unpredictable they are and how chaotic they can get. That’s why a lot of time is spent in planning every aspect of the event—team members are given defined roles, everything is checked and rechecked, and speakers
Spotlight 27: Digitally showcase your event’s brand
You can measure your event’s performance on two parameters, the ROI and the “experience” it gives attendees. While the former might seem more important at first glance, it’s the latter that defines an event’s true success. The bigger, more lasting the
Spotlight 26: Host interactive virtual sessions with Backstage OnAir
According to a recent survey by Markletic, two of the biggest challenges organizers face when hosting online events are attendee engagement and interaction. Where in-person events bank on the impact of face-to-face communication to engage attendees, virtual
Spotlight 25: Spread the word about your event
The success of your event depends on your marketing strategy; the more visible your event is, the more the people who'll register for it. That's why it's important to have an effective and multifaceted event promotional strategy—one that can make your
Spotlight 24: Glean audience feedback for sessions
Feedback forms are great tools to know what your audience thought at the end of your session. Enabling attendees to provide input that is useable is fundamental when it comes to understanding where they stand and where you should improve. With Backstage, you can collect feedback at the end of every session and customize your feedback form to further help you evaluate your audience and improve your presentation. Allow attendees to rate a session To display this form for attendees, go to the Sessions
Spotlight 23: Connect with your attendees over photos
People love taking photos at events. A quick selfie with a speaker, exaggerated poses near fancy signage, and planned-to-the-tee candid shots—we've all either done these at events or at least seen other people do them. So why not leverage people's love
Spotlight 22: Evaluating your event's performance
An event organizer's job isn't over with the completion of the event. Some might even say the toughest task is yet to come—measuring the event's success and its ROI. As organizations worldwide invest heavily in events every year, they expect tangible,
Spotlight 21: Manage event sponsorship with ease
Hosting an event is no small deal. It can take a lot out of you – mentally, physically, and, most importantly, financially. To cover event expenses and compensate for a limited budget, many event organizers look to sponsors for funding. When renowned
Spotlight 20: Domain authentication for better email deliverability
For most event organizers, emails are the primary—if not the only—communication channel. Whether updating attendees with the latest event information before the event or staying in touch with them after the event, almost everything happens through emails.
Spotlight 18: CRM for Backstage – Centralize your attendee database
You've probably made a lot of connections at your event and have a lot of people interested in your product or service. However, for an event to truly succeed, you need to be able to build on those connections, to make your attendees your customers and
Spotlight 16: Privatize ticket classes with access codes
Whether you're conducting an invite-only event or giving special offers to VIPs and loyal customers, you'll need to have private ticket classes that are invisible to everyone but that select few. And what better way for them to access these secret ticket
Spotlight 15: Include legal policies for your event
You owe it to yourself and your participants to put on events responsibly, especially when it comes to covering the bases from a legal standpoint. This will help protect both you and them. To accomplish this, you should have two legal documents in place:
Spotlight 14: PageSense for Backstage — Understand visitor behavior
You might have the perfect marketing strategy to get the word out on your event and direct visitors to your microsite, but for your promotional efforts to be successful, those visitors have to become attendees. That will only happen if they like what
Spotlight 13: Keep everyone in the loop
Events are predictable in their unpredictability. Things will change, plans will go astray, and you'll have to make a lot of last-minute decisions to get your event going without a hitch. At the same time, you also have to pass the news on to your event
Spotlight 12: Market your event with affiliates
Affiliate marketing has gained a lot of popularity in the last decade, and almost all businesses—big and small—are including it in their promotional strategy. It's efficient, cost-effective, and has been known to yield outstanding results. Also, with
Spotlight 11: Present your sessions efficiently
Every session at your event needs to be properly planned to provide value for your attendees. Previously with Zoho Backstage, getting your presentations in place and delivering them on event day was done from the Sessions tab in the Manage dashboard view
Spotlight 10: Channel your event discussions
Discussion channels are spaces that you or your event participants can create to talk about various topics related to your event. Private or public channels can be created to educate your attendees, enable people to develop relationships, or plan event specifics with other organizers on a digital forum. For instance, say you'd like to decide the venue for your event with another event organizer or allow attendees to network with other participants during a session. All you have to do is to form specific
Spotlight 5: Convey more with custom sections
Your event microsite is the first impression you make on visitors who want to learn more about your event. It is also a place where attendees come to find out event-related information. Providing this information in a structured layout increases engagement, prompts conversions, and drives ticket sales for your event. Insert information anywhere on the event microsite with the help of custom sections. Choose from the following types of sections depending on the content you want to share. Text Use
Spotlight 8: Gear up your staff for event day
It takes an army and then some to run an event successfully, and how smoothly an event runs depends largely on its team. Zoho Backstage has all the tools your staff needs to run the event without any hitches. Be it juggling a multitude of tasks at the
Spotlight 6: Go global with multilingual microsites
Attendees are willing to travel for the right event. With great speakers, a relevant topic, and a killer venue in an interesting city, you could attract people from all around the world to participate. How do you increase the chances of that happening?
Spotlight 4: Manage event communication with a primary contact
When you're an event organizer, you need to be communicating with different people constantly. This is especially true when it comes to acknowledging event participants, when they do things like buying a ticket or sending a sponsor proposal. Automating your emails for these actions reduces your workload, but gives you the added responsibility of having to respond to further questions that people may have. Directing your event communication to a primary contact is key to ensuring that every participant
Spotlight 3: Read your audience with polls
Delivering a presentation to an audience that's not engaged is like talking to an empty room. Asking questions during your session can definitely help by encouraging the crowd to get involved with you. However, it isn't easy to spark a conversation if audience members are not confident speaking in front of others, or if they only give closed-ended answers. To make participation easier, solicit input from your audience by adding polls to your sessions. Plan the questions that you'd like to ask and
Spotlight 2: Custom pages for your event microsite
Whether it's a small conference or an international expo, every event is different. An event website that's fashioned specifically for your type of event not only offers a unique experience for visitors but also delivers information that attendees are looking for—right in their hand. Zoho Backstage lets you create a custom page in the Design tab of the Microsite Builder. To do this, hover over the navigation bar on the top, and click the Settings icon [] to open the Manage pages pop-up. Here you
Spotlight 1: Cloning an event
When you are hosting a series of events, or the same event every year, having to plan it from scratch every single time can be exhausting. With Backstage, you can now save time by cloning an existing event that you've previously created, checking if everything is in place, and going live in an instant. Build from any of your events Creating a new event involves keying in basic event details, setting up the agenda, inviting other organizers, adding speakers, configuring tickets and sponsors, designing