How you present your Virtual Event will make a big difference to how it performs. We've seen the following work well consistently:
A theme gives your event a clear hook. A relevant theme is even better. We've seen lots of "Social Distancing" themed events do very well since the lockdown started.
<aside> 💡 For example: the Social Distancing 6k, organized by Mercury Events, took over 1000 sign-ups and $38k in sales by having a clear, relevant theme.
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Donating some of the proceeds to a charitable cause makes your event more appealing and motivates people to sign up. You can either donate part of the ticket price, or let runners add a donation on top of the ticket price.
<aside> 💡 For example: in the Run For Wildlife Virtual Series, 36% of runners chose to add a donation, with an average donation of $31.
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Right now, people aren't planning far in advance. The top-performing Virtual Events start promoting themselves about 10 days before the event date. This creates urgency and makes your Virtual Event fresh and interesting.
What's more, we've seen far higher engagement from runners post-event when we've reduced the results submission window (the amount of time runners have to submit results after the run) to 48 hours.
<aside> 💡 For example: the Social Distancing 6k went from launch to event in 8 days, and saw over 1000 finishers submit results within 48 hours of the event, 376 of whom uploaded selfies
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Making your event a series maximises the chance for people to sign up. You can earn repeat customers by engaging them and gradually increasing the challenge, perhaps by 1km per week.
<aside> 💡 For example: the Kaiser Permanente Social Distance Run Series has had 5,000 finishers over its first 3 weekends.
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Race swag is almost universally a hit with participants; themed race swag doubly so. Unique designs are also likely to be shared more widely on social media, drawing greater attention to your event or series. Mailing finishers post-race goodies, such as t-shirts and medals, is a sure way to attract new participants.
<aside> 💡 For example: the Social Distancing 6k included a unique social distancing themed medal and t-shirt, which was highlighted as a key reason why participants chose to sign up.
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Some organizers we've worked with have chosen to make their events free. Counter-intuitively, these events consistently took fewer sign-ups than the paying events. It seems that, not only are people happy to pay a small amount to take part in a Virtual Event, the power of price-signalling is such that people feel more confident entering a paying event.
The average price of the Virtual Events we work with in the US is about $35; in the UK it's a more modest £15.