Case Study: CLHIA Amps up Attendee & Sponsor Engagement at Virtual Conference
About CLHIA
Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA) is the national trade association representing Canada’s life and health insurers. CLHIA’s November 2020 Virtual Wealth and Retirement Conference focused on providing those managing wealth portfolios for Canadian life and health insurers with up-to-date and actionable information about important trends and issues shaping the industry.
Attendees included employees and leadership from life and health insurance providers, while the event’s major sponsors were data and analytics providers and software vendors.
Meet the Person Behind the Magic
Planning the Event
“The best choice was to stay with a platform we knew and trusted.” — Cindy Smith
As a former EventMobi mobile Event App client, it was a no-brainer for Cindy Smith, Communications Manager, CLHIA to choose our Virtual Event Platform to run their 2020-2021 virtual events. Familiarity with the platform’s intuitive, user-friendly back-end was a big factor.
“I had a team who were already very familiar with this platform. We’d never done virtual events and had some reservations about how we’d approach it, so the best choice was to stay with a platform we knew and trusted.”
— Cindy Smith
The Wealth and Retirement Conference was CLHIA’s second virtual event with EventMobi and was built on learning from their first virtual event.
Leading Up to the Event
Cindy found the Virtual Event Platform extremely user-friendly, for both herself and her team: “I’ve worked very intimately with many back-end systems and this one is one of the most intuitive content management systems I’ve ever used”.
And, she noted that ease-of-use helped cut down on the time required to manage her team as they built the event. “I didn’t have to show my teams how to use it. From the not-very-tech-savvy to the somewhat tech-savvy; everyone was able to figure it out.”
“Soma went the extra mile.”
— Cindy Smith
Event Success Manager Soma went the extra mile to conduct speaker preparation and coaching sessions, covering need-to-know details to ensure that presentations went smoothly and professionally.
Soma ensured that speakers:
- Were familiar with the platform and were cognizant of the mirror effect when looking at the camera and pointing at a feature of the platform.
- Knew the correct terminology to use when directing attendees to different features like Chat or Live Polling.
- Dressed in the same clothes as their pre-recorded presentation and managed lighting to ensure a smooth transition to live Q&A.
How the CLHIA Used the Virtual Event Space To Drive Engagement
Virtual Event Space Highlights
Live Stream Broadcasts
These were used to showcase panel discussions, state of the industry presentations, and updates on key issues.
Gamification
A scavenger hunt game aimed to drive attendee engagement by asking questions about the association, the event, and the sponsors.
Virtual Sponsor Booths
Booths gave sponsors an opportunity to share their brand and marketing material.
On the day of the event, Cindy shared a few attendee engagement highlights: “We ran a scavenger hunt game to engage attendees, and had lots of people playing. Some even asked me for clues on how to beat other players!”
She also noted it was easy to see that attendees were engaging with sponsors and their content, which is harder to tell when on-site. “Our sponsors uploaded their marketing material and with analytics, I could see how many times those materials had been accessed.”
Measuring Event Success
Key Results
“From the design to the use of the platform where we had 100% attendance (which we didn’t expect), and zero technical problems, everyone said it went really well.”
— Cindy Smith
The Communications Manager emphasized how she felt supported throughout the entire process by the EventMobi team. “If you’re looking for that unique relationship with someone who’s going to walk you through step-by-step, you’re going to get that with EventMobi. They’re not going to pass off your questions to four different people. They’ll take care of you”.
