Audience engagement is a top concern for the majority of people hosting virtual events. Although digital events are much more accessible than traditional in-person events, it can be hard to keep attendees interested with the many distractions that they likely have at home. 

Whether it’s the dog barking at the neighbors, the kids getting into a disagreement, or the TV playing in the background, it can sometimes be nearly impossible to keep up audience retention rates. 

With that being said, many event planners and higher-ups are wondering: how can we keep our audience engaged in an online event? 

There are a lot of ways to keep your audience engaged, but one of the most effective ways we’ve found is customizing your event completely. 

By creating a fully custom event, you’re showing your audience something they’ve never seen before. With the countless amounts of virtual events that we’ve all attended in the past two years, it can be easy to write each one off as bland and unimpressive. However, when you put in the extra time and effort in making your platform personalized not only to your company, but also to your audience, you’re creating an unforgettable experience for everyone involved. 

At Jumbo, customization is one of our specialties. We believe that every virtual event should be bespoke and completely white-label. So, how can a platform be customized? 

Gamification

Even if you’ve never heard the term gamification, you’ve definitely seen it before. Any time game elements are implemented in a non-game environment, you’re experiencing gamification. Adding games to your virtual event is probably the easiest way to ensure that your audience members will be engaged and having fun. Polls, trivia, and other competitive games that enable your attendees to interact with one another are all great ways to customize your event. 

In fact, you can even take the gamification a step further by offering a special prize or award to whoever gets the most questions right or whoever scores the highest. Not only will this boost audience retention rates, but it will also create a fun, competitive environment that your attendees aren’t likely to forget. 

Sponsor Booths

Having customizable, interactive sponsor booths is not only great for attendee engagement, but it’s also a huge incentive for potential sponsors. As virtual events have become the new norm for many companies, sponsors have drawn the short end of the stick. A lot of online event platforms offer very few options for sponsors to properly display their content to viewers. 

At Jumbo, sponsor booths have all the potential in the world. If your sponsor wants to host a branded breakout session with a fully custom background, title, and description, Jumbo can make it happen. Check out this blog to get more information on how Jumbo makes sponsor booths unforgettable

Custom Domain

At this point, a custom domain should be a given when it comes to hosting an online event. You don’t want your audience members to have to log in to some third-party website just to start viewing your content. At Jumbo, one of the first things we’ll do is attain your custom domain in which people will be able to register, view, and attend your event. 

According to marketing professionals, a custom domain is essential for all growing businesses. Custom domains establish credibility and make it much easier for your attendees to locate you. In the same way that you would always want your company site to have a custom domain, event platforms should be no different.

Registration

In the same way that having a custom domain is essential for an event, custom registration is just as important. Having a good-looking, easy-to-use registration page is a must for every virtual event in 2022. Additionally, registration pages have a lot of potential for helping your business identify your audience. 

When creating your registration page, think of specific segments you may want to divide your audience into. What’s their profession? How did they hear about your event? What’s their favorite color?

All of these are questions that can help you customize their user experience. You can utilize the answers to these registration questions to create personalized user profiles that enable attendees to get to know one another seamlessly. 

Goal Tracking

Whether you’re hosting a continuing education course or you simply want to award audience members who attend specific sessions, goal tracking can be an extremely valuable element for your upcoming event. Goal tracking enables you to offer congratulations, awards, or even prizes to attendees who achieve specific objectives during your event.

Adding goal tracking as a feature gives each of your attendees a completely personalized experience. With Jumbo’s powerful platform tools, you can pick and choose how goal tracking works for your event. You can show audience members their personal ranking among others, or you can allow users to view only their own progress towards their goals. 

Ultimately, customization is not always an easy thing to achieve in a virtual event space. However, at Jumbo, it’s already an expectation we hold for ourselves- and the events we help you create. With Jumbo, you’ll be able to an create amazing, bespoke event that your audience members will never forget. Schedule a demo with us today.