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

Hello and welcome to this episode of Speak PR. This is the podcast for you if you've got value locked up in your organization, 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's a South African living in Paris and works for a company called Swapcard. Welcome, Mia.

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

It's our honor. And tell us a little bit about Swapcard, because started by 3 Frenchmen in France, but all with a British platform, but you're revolutionizing the way that people can engage with events. So give us some, some ideas about what Swapcard is doing and problems it's solving for business owners.

Right. Thank you. So Swapcard Started in 2013, 3 childhood friends, 3 Frenchmen that are now my bosses, and they did— 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. 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, 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 their first idea wasn't so wonderful, but they had the resilience and the stamina to keep going. And I think it's the execution that's more important 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 center. It can be hard to find the exhibitor you want to see or the, the right hall. 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 realized, 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 gonna have events changed for the better. These long-lasting changes are gonna 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 very valuable.

So, Miya, 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 conference, you engage with humans. How is Swapcard then kind of replacing that interaction between people?

So I find there are 2 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 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 and 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. But I do find in a 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.

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 sort of companies are using Swapcard then? Is it large trade show organizers or do individual organizations run their own proprietary events as well?

We work with all kinds. We have some SMEs, we have very big clients. We've worked with Clarion Events, Informa Events. We're currently working on a deal with one of the largest, oldest world fairs that's taking place in 2021. Very exciting. We work with big associations like IAE. They have an event called Expo Expo Expo. We work with, um, NAMM's Believe in Music event, which is the biggest American event in music. It's very exciting, but we also have much smaller events, and those are just as interesting to, to take part in.

If a company wants to create an event, just walk us through the process— 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.

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, all the content, all the data, and all the people of the event. Once you've chosen the event platform and it meets all your needs, 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. 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 Swapcard, we actually have on-site or online support with our team that is with— that helps the clients, the organizers, even the exhibitors as well, 24/7. We do trainings because, you know, tech is new for some people. You've got to get the hang of things. And yeah, so you get accompanied by full support. And then after that, Gotta make sure that your speakers are engaging and that your exhibitors are going out there and getting leads.

It's interesting because if you're a speaker at an event, you can see people drifting in and out. But if you're a speaker at a virtual event, for example, on Swapcard, 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 my talk?

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

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

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 protesting the government restrictions and things like that. So of course it's very, very important. Community building is one of the keys, content and community building, 2 of the biggest, you know, keys of an event. And what we believe at Swapcard 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 2 or 3 days in a year. At a physical event, you could, you go, you attend, it's 2 or 3 days, and at the end you say goodbye, see you next year. If you're lucky or you have time or 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 event. People can already start looking at the attendee lists, the exhibitor lists, start networking, making meetings, things like that. And you keep it open for weeks or months after the event's finished. You put the content on demand. They can rewatch their favorite sessions or if they missed it, due to time zone issues, they can watch it. 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 the future we're headed towards, an online community that's active all year round.

Wow, that's so— really, you are building a much greater sense of community than you would if just people were traveling from show to show and losing touch with one another. What about integration, Mia? You mentioned content. from the different organizers and exhibitors, but they'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.

That's a great question, Jim. It is a 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 so with Swapcard, 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 own, you know, data device. And in terms of content, you could do live streaming, you could do pre-recorded existing content, and as long as 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. There's a very long list of, of tools that have iframe players.

So that's fantastic and very, very efficient way of repurposing one's content. Let's just talk a little bit about the lead generation part, can we, Mia? 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 able to prearrange meetings with them, and then to sort of bring them through the funnel and then maybe write to them afterwards.

Okay, very important. So let's say you're, you're, you're an attendee, but you want to network, you want to meet new people. You go there with the artificial intelligence on the platform. It will send you 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 the AI understands your tastes and your interests and will send you more accurate contacts. And that you can download at any time, even once the event's 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 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 their team's travel and time, they'd pay very expensive for their booth according to the size and the location. You want to be seen by everyone. You want the biggest booth. 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 prices, everything, the overhead costs are just much lower. But what happens at a virtual event, you have on average 3 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 Swapcard 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.

You're absolutely right. Having spent many years walking the show floor and just sort of collecting business cards and at the end writing to people, it was pretty inefficient really. So it's a much more efficient way of doing it. What about the random customer that when you're standing at the trade show or you're, 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.

You're right. 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 figuring out ways to make it as valuable as in-person, and chance meetings because those are really great. I mean, you could find your future boss, your future spouse there. But 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 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 meeting features like we have in Swapcard, that could also be a nice way to do it.

Okay, and then do people need a dedicated sort of digital events 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.

It's true that it's definitely a whole new skill set. I do believe that events organizers need to be investing in training their teams on that right now, because even with event managers, it'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 Swapcard 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 event, and they're basically with you 24/7, if you have a physical event, they go on site with you, they travel, they stay in a hotel, and they're there for everything. 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 event, 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.

Fantastic, Mia. 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?

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, 1,000 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. It could be a 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 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 a quote. So it's all automated. You don't even have to speak on the phone and explain everything you need to get a quote.

Mia, that's fantastic. And yeah, it sounds like it reduces the barrier to entry for anybody that wanted to organize an event. I remember we used to have to try and find a venue and book it and then be locked in, and this is much more flexible.

Of course.

So Mia, if people want to find out more about Swapcard and talk to you, how can they do that?

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

Mia, thank you so much for joining us from Paris today.

Thanks a lot. Thanks, Jim.

So you've been listening to Mia Mason, who is working with Swapcard, 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 organizing one yourself.