Do you know the impact of virtual events on introverts, and why this could be good for your business?

Jim James: 0:00

Hello, and welcome to this episode of speak PR, this is the podcast for you. If you've got value locked up in your organisation, you're just trying to find some cost effective and some simple ways to do that. One of the best ways you can do that, of course, is with a show or an event. We used to go to trade shows, and now we're doing virtual shows. And I'm delighted today to have Mia Mason, joining me today, who is a South African living in Paris and works for a company called swap card. Welcome,

Mia Masson: 0:28

Mia. Thank you, Jim. I'm so happy to be here today. It's an honour.

Jim James: 0:32

It's our honour. And tell us a little bit about swap card because started by three Frenchmen in France, but all with a British platform, but you're revolutionising the way that people can engage with events that give us some, some ideas about what swipe card is doing and problems, it's solving for business owners.

Mia Masson: 0:50

Right? Thank you. So swipe card, started in 2013, three childhood friends, three freshmen that are on my buses, and they none of them had a background in technology or in events. They were doing different jobs lawyer and things like that. And they decided let's start a company together. They found that there's a demand on the market for swapping cards, swapping business cards, and they thought, who's still going home from an event or a meeting with physical business cards and typing details into their computers, you could misspell an email address, you could lose the business card, it could get wet, and then you lost your contact. So they decided to create an online swap card app where you could scan a business card and all that info would be directly saved in your in your device. And that was a great first idea. But it didn't work that well. And after a few years and a few funding rounds, they decided well, it's not working, what are we going to do, we're going to change the product we're going to give up, we're going to start something new. And in fact, they just decided to completely change the product because they the first idea wasn't so wonderful, but they had the the resilience and the stamina to keep going. And I think it's the execution that's more important than than the idea. And after a while they decided that the need in the market is for an online event platform. Now originally, they were mostly taking care of physical events, where they had an integrated map for when you're in a venue like a huge Conference Centre can be hard to find the exhibitor you want to see or the right hole. So they made an interactive map, they had an online agenda. And very early on, they saw the value of artificial intelligence. And they wanted to use AI to be able to connect people with each other and with the right sessions to watch according to their data, their profiles, their interests, that was going great for a while, and then 2020 happened COVID happened. And in the past few months, they've realised you know, along with the team that we need to we need to evolve, we need to adapt our product once again. And this time it needs to all go online, it needs to cater to virtual events, because we don't have a choice right now. And our strategic vision for the future is that right now we don't have a choice. But in the future, we are going to have events changed for the better, these long lasting changes are going to make all events, hybrid models in the future. We believe that the value of technology, in events, shows conferences, things like that cannot be lost because it's making us more data driven. It's helping us to increase ROI. And it's just connecting people globally, in a time of need, like now when people see they can't see each other, they're missing human contact, they're in lockdown. Being able to connect with a global audience and a global network of peers is is very valuable.

Jim James: 4:04

So me, I think you've hit a couple of points there. One is about let's look at engagement. If one goes to a trade show or a conference, you engage with humans, how is swap card then kind of replacing that interaction between people.

Mia Masson: 4:19

So they I find there are two camps. Some people like the physical contact and really miss it. Others miss it, but can find replacements online. And our features for example that we have on our on our event platform now allow you to chat with people allow you to take part in live discussions during a session. So if anybody were watching this podcast live, they could go in the chat box then send us direct questions, or they could answer polls that we set up and we could use that content to make the our session more interactive. And but I do find it strange way that some people have more courage online than they do necessarily in person. And they might be more willing to network with people make new contacts and approach people through messaging online, because it just gives them that bit more courage. And actually, it's a great way for people to network and make new contacts.

Jim James: 5:19

So it's an interesting point, especially for people maybe that are not native, for example, English language speakers, they could participate in a conference on their own terms. And what sorts of companies are using swap card then is it large trade show organisers order, individual organisations run their own proprietary events as well.

Mia Masson: 5:43

We work with all kinds, we have some SMEs, we have very big clients. And we've worked with Clarion events in four main events, we're currently working on on a deal with one of the largest oldest world fairs, that's taking place in 2021. Very exciting, we work with bigger associations like IE, they have an event called Expo Expo, we work with NAMM is believing music event, which is the biggest American events in music, it's very exciting. But we also have much smaller events. And those are just as interesting to to take part in.

Jim James: 6:24

If a company wants to create an event, just walk us through the process of setting up drawing in the audience, engaging them and then also interacting with the people that have come how you follow up with them afterwards.

Mia Masson: 6:41

That's very important, I'll get to that that's such a good point. So first thing that you have to decide when you're gonna take either take your current event, virtual or create a new virtual event is, you know, you need a good platform, you need a place where everyone can come together and follow all the news or the content, or the data and all the people of the events, once you've chosen the event platform, and it meets all your needs. And you've got to look at your content, because when going virtual content is honestly the king. If you are at a physical show, and you're watching all these different sessions and speakers, if it's not to your taste, or you find it boring, you could, you know, go have a coffee outside or attend a different session, but you're not going to leave, you're not going to get on the plane and go home. With the virtual events, you could just click Exit tab at any point if it's boring, so content has got to be extremely valuable and engaging. And once you've got great content, great speakers and a great platform, of course all the other tools like registration and things like that. Then you've got to think about engagement, and how your audience can meet. What can you offer to attendees and what can you offer to your exhibitors. So with swipe card we actually have on site or online support with with our team that is with that helps the the clients, the organisers, even the exhibitors as well, 24 seven, and we do trainings, because, you know, tech is new for some people have got to get the hang of things. And you're so you've got a company by full support. And then after that, you got to make sure that your speakers are engaging and that your exhibitors are are going out there and getting leads.

Jim James: 8:31

It's interesting because if you're a speaker an event, you can see people drifting in and out. But if you're a speaker at a virtual event, for example, on top card, can I get some metrics on who's currently watching who's exiting who's doing other messaging, for example, whilst they're supposed to be paying undivided attention to?

Mia Masson: 8:52

Exactly so you as a speaker can't necessarily see all of that. But swepco does track every movement. And this is all GDPR friendly. Everyone that enters and uses the platform agrees to this. But the the platform tracks the activity and behaviour of everyone on the platform. So at the end, what's very, very helpful for organisers to become data driven and know where to invest. We give them detailed data they can analyse who watched which session and for how long, which systems were the best ranked, which speakers were ranked the best. And what how many messages were exchanged, how many calls were planned and cancelled or planned and followed up on everything. So but the speaker has a unique view of seeing the live chats the question and answer and the polls so they can see who's interacting like that. That's kind of the view of you know, seeing faces in the audience. They see people chatting in the in the live discussion and asking questions.

Jim James: 9:54

So one of the things that takes place when you go to an event is you end up with sort of a new community or group and have sort of exhibition show buddies that we used to see at a regular annual conference. How can a platform like swap card create that sense of community, then? Yeah,

Mia Masson: 10:14

I know those people must all be missing each other right now. I know in the UK, they're the ones that are going out and, and protesting the government restrictions and things like that. So of course, it's very, very important. community building is one of the the keys contents of community building two of the biggest, you know, keys of an event. And what we believe as wildcard is that that can happen online. But you need to make opportunities for it. And the platform needs to be open for longer than just two or three days in a year. At a physical event, you could you go you attend, it's two or three days. And at the end, you say goodbye, see you next year. If you're lucky, or you have time, will you remember, you'll go and connect on LinkedIn and maybe chat during the year. But with an online event platform, you can open it a month prior to your events. People can already start looking at the the attendee lists the exhibitor list, stock networking, making meetings, things like that, and you keep it open from weeks or months after the events finished. You put the content on demand, they can rewatch the favourite sessions, or if they missed it, due to timezone issues, they can watch it,

Jim James: 11:24

they can keep networking, eventually, I think that things you know, platforms will have to be open 365 days a year, I think that's where their future, we're headed towards an online community that's active all year round while that so really, you are building a much greater sense of community than you would if just people travelling from show to show and losing touch with one another. What about what about integration? Mia, you mentioned content from the different organisers and exhibitors, but there'll be placing that content on other platforms, be it Vimeo, for example, or maybe on medium.com? or on Twitter? Do you have plugins that allow people to kind of integrate their existing content? Because you don't really want to have to reload everything to an event specific platform?

Mia Masson: 12:15

That's a great question, Jim, it is a worry for a lot of event planners that Now that everything's online, I've got you know, subscriptions to all these different tools, and I pay for it, what am I supposed to do, and they have to remember 45 different passwords and logins. But um, so with swap cards, you can connect anything. In terms of registration tools, we sync with all major registration tools on the market today. That means that you can just upload all the attendees, exhibitors, and speakers, with one click. And you can also download them with one click export them into an Excel or your your own, you know, data device. And in terms of content, you can do live streaming, you can do pre recorded existing content. And as long as your, your video player and your streaming tool has an iframe player built in, it can be embedded into the platform. We also have some that have native players like YouTube and Vimeo that can be automatically put in very easily. But anything else any other tool, as long as there's an iframe player available, easy to embed is a very long list of of tools that have iframe shares.

Jim James: 13:25

So that's fantastic and very, very efficient way of repurposing one's content. But let's just talk a little bit about the lead generation part can we mere because, you know, trade shows and conferences are really about finding people to do business with and to learn things. Let's just talk about how would I get access for example, to who's going to that event, be at a pre arranged meetings with them? And then to sort of bring them through the funnel and then maybe write to them afterwards?

Mia Masson: 13:56

Okay, very important. So let's say you're a you're an attendee that you want to network you want to meet new people. You go there with the artificial intelligence on the platform, it will send you a pop up recommendations of people to meet you say yes or no. kind of works like a dating app. The more you say yes or no the more that AI understands your tastes and your your interests and will send you more accurate contacts and, and that you can download at any time even once the events finished. If you forgot, you can download that list of contacts you've made. You can even rate your contacts and add notes to your contacts for contextualization. But if you're a an exhibitor, that's even more important because if we quickly look at physical events, not to say yesterday's bad today's good, but it was kind of the old way of doing things chugging along, and at a physical show or conference. exhibitors would come they would pay travel, they'd pay they teach Travel and time, they pay very expensive for the booths according to the size and the location, you want to be seen by everyone when the biggest boost, and it still didn't guarantee you getting the best leads. So the cost of lead acquisition was high, but with not a lot of guarantees. Now, the cost of lead acquisition is much lower, you don't have to travel, you don't have to send your team to travel, you don't pay for a physical booth. So the booth price is everything, the overhead cost is much lower. But what happens at a virtual event, you have on average three times more attendees than any physical event. Plus they're global. Plus, they can connect at any time zone. And you can talk to more than one at the same time, which you can't do at a physical booth. So with virtual events, the the cost of lead acquisition is lower, the potential is much higher. And same with swipe card as an exhibitor, they can download any and all contacts they've made, and any leads via Excel or straight into the Salesforce or anything like that.

Jim James: 16:04

You're actually right, having spent many years walking the show floor and just sort of clicking business cards and at the end right into people, it was pretty inefficient, really. So it's a much more efficient way of doing what about the random customer that when you're standing at the tradeshow or your, you know, at the buffet lunch, and you get chatting to someone, and that becomes a valuable lead. How do you counter for the sort of the random act of business that that often was quite pivotal with going to a show

Mia Masson: 16:33

your rights, that is one of the most challenging aspects of going virtual, I believe. And I've seen at all these virtual events, I've seen many people asking about it. But I've also seen, you know, some serendipity happening right in the chat box. It's, I think the industry is still for you figuring out ways to make it as valuable as in person, chance meetings. And because those are really great. I mean, you could you could find your future boss, your future spouse there. But I'm online, I believe there are tools for it. But it's a bit more of an effort, it's got to come, you know, not just from you wanting a coffee, but it's got to come from you wanting to open up to meeting people. That being said, there are still you know, innovative virtual events that have coffee breaks, or, or happy hours after the events. And that's also a nice way to do it. And if you divide your audience into smaller groups, with like online roundtables, or speed speed meeting, features, like we haven't swapped card, that could also be a nice way to do it.

Jim James: 17:38

Okay, and then do people need a dedicated to digital Event Manager, we used to have, you know, an exhibitions manager, it sounds like that, you know, the data, the content, the logistics, actually requires a lot of management,

Mia Masson: 17:53

it's true that it's definitely a whole new skill sets. I do believe that in that event, organisers need to be investing in training their teams on that right now. Because even with event managers, that's not going to be sustainable, they need to learn to do it on their own. So investing in training would be a great idea. But Saqqara offers both, if you don't choose to have a dedicated what we call a project manager, which is your go to person for your events, and they basically with you 24 seven, if you have a physical event, they go on site with you, they travel, they stay in a hotel, and they they for everything. And but if you choose not to have that or you can't, you know, you don't have the means to employ someone to do that, or your event isn't big enough to require that there's still a very thorough training process and step by step, you know, support all the way through from way before the events. Because we do understand that for some people, the platform can be difficult to grasp. So there's many, many tools for that. webinars, demos and calls to train our clients.

Jim James: 18:56

Fantastic here, and then let's just talk about the numbers, can we what sort of money is a company looking at if it wants to host its own event,

Mia Masson: 19:04

and there's no one price fits all? It depends on the number of attendees you have. So we start with a basis of $2 per attendee, for larger events, anything higher than, you know, thousand or that number of attendees. And once you go from there, you could choose to have 100,000 attendees on a virtual event or 300 could be smaller, more intimate event. And then you've got a lot of different options in terms of add ons, or in terms of charging your exhibitors. If you have exhibitors, it all really depends on on the type of event, we've made a very easy to use page on our website where you already you kind of build your event, you put in everything that is in your event, and at the end you'll have the quotes. So it's all it's all automated. You don't even have to speak on the phone and explain everything you need to get a quote

Jim James: 20:00

That's fantastic. And it sounds like it reduces the barrier to entry. For anybody that wanted to organise an event. Remember, we just had to try and find a venue and book it and then be locked in. And this is much more flexible, of course. So if you want to find out more about swap card and talk to you, how can they do that?

Mia Masson: 20:16

The best way to do that, Jim would just be to head over to our website, swap car.com. Very easy. And everything you need will be on there.

Jim James: 20:25

Yeah, thank you so much for joining us from Paris today. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Jim. So you've been listened to me and Mason who is working with swap card, which is a Paris based company, but with an international virtual events platform. So thank you for listening to this episode of speak PR. And until we meet again, I hope that you have great health you have a profitable business, and that you get online and take part in a virtual event, or even consider organising one yourself.