Perpetual Motion (Persistent Virtual Environments)

Executive Summary (if this list is attractive, read on):

• Save money and time
• Empower follow-up via measurement tools
• Gain multi-level customer intelligence
• Bring your worldwide audience together via localization and real time translation

There’s a fast-growing movement afoot in the virtual environment technology world these days: a trend toward perpetual (or persistent) virtual environments.

The reason is simple – business units of large enterprises, and even entire companies, are realizing they can take control of the Web for their marketing, sales, training and recruiting needs. No longer must they rely on their IT department for approval, or pay exorbitant amounts of money to design agencies in order to have a completely custom, rich media environment with social networking, content distribution, localization and actionable metrics.

That’s because there are new tools, primarily from the tier one virtual environment providers, that allow marketers and administrative personnel to concentrate on what they do best – create programs, campaigns and content. The technology is there, in some cases with completely self-service models in place.

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Imagine, the promise of the Web in the hands of the people prepared to execute on it, rather than narrowly controlled by the few (IT) that understand how to harness it.  It’s a game changer, and it’s happening now.

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Put simply, companies are increasingly turning to a new kind of online presence: the persistent virtual environment.

At 6Connex we’re helping technology companies create persistent online communities for market segmentation (Cisco, AT&T, Intel, Oracle, HP), enabling healthcare and pharmaceutical companies to clearly communicate value-added services (Siemens, Kaiser Permanente, Novartis, Airway World), assisting companies from a range of industries to better train personnel (Sensis, Cisco, P&G, DuPont), showing associations how they can stay relevant to their constituencies (NAMP, TABS, IGCEMA) and empowering employers to recruit from a far broader, and talented, pool of candidates (Verisign, Fisher Unitech).

Of course, this wouldn’t be news if the cost savings weren’t dramatic. They are. Case studies abound showing vast decreases in cost while engagement, attendance, content distribution, and customer intelligence metrics go up and up.

If the executive summary at the top addresses needs your business has, you should investigate the possibilities. The movement is underway, and it’s for good.

Who Sees & Who Believes – Part 2

When virtual environment organizers take full advantage of the entitlement/user path options available in a virtual platform, they get far more than cost savings – they get actionable customer intelligence.

While the diagrams below may look like simple sequences, they are extremely powerful for marketers. This measurement of activity, followed by direct action, is really only possible in two ways: super-expensive websites or a cost-effective virtual platform.

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By utilizing the reporting generated by your custom user paths, you create a clear set of next steps for your sales, marketing or senior management teams. Steps that will enhance revenue, grow your user base or promote alliances – it all depends on what your goals are.

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Last week we looked at the Who Sees portion of our mantra: Who Sees & Who Believes. We learned that you can control who sees what content in your virtual environment through the creation of entitlement-based user paths.

Beyond controlling what is seen by whom, what’s important about this is that you can use the information you gather about who was engaged (Who Believes) to dictate your follow up activities.

Let’s get back to our example scenario in which we have three target personas: 1) executives, 2) ultimate decision makers, and 3) technical advisers.

Using engagement benchmarks provided by your virtual platform provider, you can decide the parameters that, when satisfied, constitute a high engagement visitor vs. a lower engagement visitor. Then, for each of the three personas above (again, these are only for example), you can drive follow up contact or programs that continue to move the needle for your organization.

In our example, target persona #1 is executives. In our simple example below, we’re showing only two options: high engagement and low engagement. For each, we see the subsequent activity triggered by the engagement measurement. 

For persona #2, ultimate decision makers, the follow-on activity is different, but both intuitive and easily implemented by almost any organization. Virtual platforms with proper pricing structures won’t charge you more for continuing to use them in this way.

Last, our persona #3, technical advisers. For these folks, the path is clear, too.

You get the idea: the combination of custom persona-based experiences, access to specific content, measurement of engagement, and the use of the virtual environment to continue the customer communication is powerful.

To see how all this can be used to help you reach your business objectives, visit us at 6connex.com, or email us at marketing@6connex.com.

Who Sees & Who Believes - Part 1

Sometimes virtual environment organizers fail to take full advantage of the significant opportunities for customized user paths in their quest to save money and leverage the many benefits offered by virtual platform vendors.
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By utilizing entitlement, environment messaging, and some basic planning, owners of virtual environments can create incredibly powerful and highly customized experiences for their target audience personas. 
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Let's take a quick look at what's possible:

Let's say you're an event organizer putting together a customer-facing virtual trade show. And let's assume your three target personas are 1) executives, 2) ultimate decision makers, and 3) technical advisers. And the goal of your trade show is to move prospect customers through the sales funnel more efficiently.

By utilizing entitlement, you can create an experience for each group that caters to their needs, saves them time and, best of all, enables you to control what is being consumed, and by whom.

At 6Connex, we call it: Who Sees & Who Believes. In this post we're going to look at how you control Who Sees.

Back to our example use case. 

You want executives to receive high level information, treat them to high-touch contact with your company's experts, and then have them exit feeling as though the experience was beneficial. Their user path might look like this:

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When you target ultimate decision makers, your goals are different. In this case, you'll want to have them to take a deeper dive into your marketing communications, participate in live Q&A with product experts, and attend informative sessions. Their user path would then look like this:

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And then we have the technical experts who advise the decision makers on vendor options. This target audience requires a different type of experience, one in which the marketing spin in minimized, and the sales engineer availability is paramount. Sessions and data are important, but so is live interaction with technical experts from your company. That user path might look like this:

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Of course, all of this interaction is measurable, giving you tremendous customer intelligence (which can be integrated with your CRM tools). This is a very powerful concept for marketers, one that is difficult to achieve without the flexibility of a virtual software platform. 

To see how entitlement can be used to help you reach your business objectives, visit us at 6connex.com, or email us at marketing@6connex.com.

Next up, we'll cover the Who Believes portion of the mantra and explore how measuring engagement can direct you to a clear path for follow up and continuing sales funnel acceleration.

Hybrid Events = ALL events!

A simple statement: As of today, all events are hybrid events, period. With the rapid emergence of social networking technologies and their equally whip-fast integration into our work lives, your event is going to be 'broadcast', with or without your involvement.

Attendees are tweeting from your keynotes, updating their status in Facebook and LinkedIn from the hallways in between sessions and checking-in on FourSquare from the social events afterwards.

And the key for you is that your attendees are communicating with a waiting audience — their co-workers, colleagues and followers are out there curious about the event, hungry for the information you have developed for your in-person audience.

If you have enough interest to host a physical event then you can be sure there is more than enough interest in a virtual component for it. Not only that, but your attendees are part of affinity groups that extend globally and these groups want to hear what you are talking about and will put in the time to hear it if given that option.

You've put in the work to create relevant content, recruit interesting speakers and design an exciting program — it would be a shame (not to mention a strategic error) not to leverage this effort online for a broader audience unable to attend but anxious to engage.

You need to capture the attention of your virtual users — virtual attendees may not get the free Frisbees or tote bags, but you can add value for your online users that they wouldn't otherwise get second-hand or even in person. Here are a number of ways to do that:

Do it Live!

Streaming one or more of your more popular/interesting keynotes or sessions brings instant excitement and credibility to the virtual component of your event. Live streaming makes your event "appointment viewing" and extends your investment in this business-critical content.

With plenty of streaming possibilities — from the DIY options like Ustream (Charlie Sheen's newest platform) to professional companies like Sonic Foundry — streaming your content has never been easier.  Your sponsors want to be associated with the cutting-edge technology being used to speak to a much wider audience than they can reach at the physical event.

Interact to Engage

Once you've acquired your audience (see the post on audience acquisition) make sure you take full advantage of your virtual vendor’s ability to engage with your audience. The best platforms — like 6Connex — will give you numerous ways to reach out and interact with your users.

In-event chat (both one-to-one and group chat, both private and public) encourages attendees to make it a social event, mirroring networking aspects that make physical events successful.

Integrating Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn directly into the event will allow attendees to extend the tools they are using to communicate with each other in the event and outside the event. Adding these tools directly into the event will also allow your attendees to spread the news of your event by "word of mouth" without ever leaving.

Virtual Value

It is critical to the success of your virtual event that you not treat it as an afterthought. In fact, wherever possible add value in the virtual environment that isn't available in the physical.

This includes sponsoring (or finding sponsors for) treasure hunts, scoreboard games and trivia games that enhance the virtual experience.

Another way to add value to the virtual component is to bring the physical and virtual together by adding ways both audiences can interact, either with each other or with your speakers and vendors.

Tools like Poll Everywhere allow you to take the pulse of both audiences at once and display the results, real-time, in the virtual event and on screens in your exhibit hall. Bringing these audiences together increases engagement for both sides.

Staff of Life

One common complaint about virtual events is that they can feel a little lonely. There are several ways to address this, but the easiest is to staff your virtual event the same way you do your physical event.

Include staff and representatives in crucial areas throughout the environment to reach out, provide assistance and lubricate the virtual conversation. Starting a group chat or creating a moderated chat around a topic or a piece of content will bring your virtual attendees into the event and give the feeling that they are not alone.

Engaging your attendees in this way will increase their enjoyment, productivity and effectiveness.

Measure Up

When comparing the pros and cons of virtual and physical events, there is one aspect that virtual wins without much of a fight: measurement.

As with other areas of virtual marketing, promotions and training, virtual events offer unprecedented opportunities to learn about your audience. Tracking begins from the moment an individual responds to your first promotion, continues through registration and attendance and never really ends as you develop additional chances to interact with each member of your audience based on the intelligence you gain through metrics and tracking.

You will be able to determine not just the obvious (e.g. what content they are interested in, how long they are in the event, what topics held their interest), but also the less obvious: how many chats did they start, what were the peak times for attendance, to whom did they reach out and how?

The wealth of information generated in a virtual environment enables targeted follow-up that leads to much more meaningful interactions with your audience during and after your event.

One unheralded aspect of virtual tracking is the ability to view the social graph of your audience. Studying who initiates chats, who attends group chats and what content areas generate the most conversation gives you insight into how your audience wishes to interact around your content that you cannot possibly gain in a physical event where your audience is too dispersed, as well as largely unmeasured.

Summary

Your physical event is going virtual (and possibly viral) with or without you, following these tips will help you ensure that you are managing your message, reaching your audience in a meaningful way, and developing deep, actionable knowledge about potential and current customers and partners.

Audience Acquisition

If you build it, they might not come. Apologies to "Field of Dreams" for chewing up a signature line from the film, but this is an important point. Organizing and producing a virtual environment, even one with excellent content, is not enough. You have to focus some effort on audience acquisition, and it should be an ongoing effort.

10 steps for success:

1. Define your KPI - key performance indicators. In other words, what does success look like? For some virtual environments the amount of attendance is not as important as making sure one small, well defined group attends. Know what your objectives are, first.
2. If your target audience of attendees is large, segment it into groups that have common characteristics and develop messaging that will resonate with each. For example, if your target audience is made up of both executive decision makers and mid-management level "influencers", produce marketing materials that show each group how their jobs will be made easier by attending your virtual event or environment.
3. Craft your message with a sense of urgency. If your targeted groups feel they'll be "missing out" on key data that will further their careers, purchasing decisions or efficiency by not attending, they'll have a compelling reason to make sure they do. At the very least, they'll be more likely to attend at a later date for on-demand content (more on that later).
4. Promotional content is very important. Most virtual environment providers will enable a promotional micro site for your use. This should be used to creatively promote speakers, key content and important sessions that will be a part of your virtual environment. Again, consider your target audience segments when creating these promotional elements.
5. As in all marketing, frequency of the promotional messaging around your virtual environment is important. The most successful virtual events understand this. They begin with basic information and steadily ratchet up the details as the start date gets closer. One of the key options many overlook, however, is the actual day of the event. Consider using an automated calling service to gently remind registrants to attend when your virtual environment goes live.
6. Another time-tested method is to host "pre-live" days within your virtual environment. Essentially, you offer sneak peeks at content that will be available when the your virtual event is live. This builds excitement, helps convert registrants into attendees, and bolsters the "tell a friend" viral element that can boost your overall attendance.
7. The most flexible virtual environment vendors offer great ways to maximize your on-demand period by allowing for specialized "pulse events" - smaller live days during which you can provide subject matter experts able to answer questions from each of your main audience segments. Pulse events keep your virtual environment top of mind, help you gather more customer intelligence and give you more one-on-one time with key customers and prospects.
8. Some virtual environment vendors offer advanced social networking options. Certainly you can link out to social networking sites, but even more effective is the ability to enable your attendees to connect and interact with one another within your environment. If that's the case with your vendor, keep an eye on this activity. This organic "pooling" of people will help you understand customer segmenting strategies that might not have otherwise been obvious.
9. Your virtual environment, even if it's not an "evergreen" site, is a living entity, hopefully with an active community. Keep it that way by offering fresh content over time. Consider this when building your content strategy. Don't push it all out at once - that will be overwhelming and most people will not consume it all. Instead, plan out your content distribution much like an editorial calendar. Over time, market to your segments, informing them of what's new and why they should come back and visit. Each new visit generates more valuable customer information.
10. In short, reward your audience for giving you their time. View it through this lens, and you'll find they reward you with allegiance and the data you need to serve them better.

A final note, 6Connex offers consulting in this area for all of its customers. Ask your sales rep for details or email us: marketing@6connex.com

Evergreen Virtual Environments

A bit more on the perpetual virtual environments that have come to be known as "evergreen". First, some clarification. Many virtual environments are "event-based" meaning they are associated with what we call a "pulse". In other words, they are associated with a short lifespan, just like a physical event: trade show, job fair, etc. 


Evergreen environments are related to longer term initiatives like promoting a product line, educating a community, training a workforce or enhancing a brand.


There are many examples of these environments to visit. Here are a couple based on the 6Connex Virtual Experience Platform (note - each is a public site, but does require brief registration):


The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS)
An association environment showcasing boarding schools from around the world.


Airway World
An environment designed to showcase the lastest medical information on airway management.


Cisco Virtual Connection
This environment gives you a front-row view—from your own desk—of innovations that bring people, information, and businesses together.


A brief note on the benefits of evergreen environments. 


Consider that many business units and marketing groups within large organizations have their hands tied when it comes to making easy updates to existing web properties or, worse yet, launching a new one. 


And think about the budget required for a small business to launch a rich media web site with social networking, a complete content management system and metrics. 


Or put yourself in the shoes of an association director seeking to find new, cost-effective ways to recruit, retain and train members. 


In each case, an evergreen virtual environment is perfectly suited to meet those needs, and more.

Key Performance Indicators - the Steak and the Sizzle

People new to the concept of virtual environments often wonder why companies like HP, Cisco, Intel, AT&T, Siemens, Novartis, DuPont, and Pfizer use them. The simplest answer is this: measurement of key performance indicators.

While Internet marketing techniques have vastly improved the measurement of communications activities, there is still room for interpretation, the data is generally not immediately available to those who need it most, and it's sometimes difficult to correlate the measured behavior with the desired activity. Not so with a properly deployed virtual environment.

That's because while they have all of the functionality of a rich media Web site (and more), virtual environments are designed specifically to provide you with data that helps you achieve your business objectives. Standard Web sites are tasked with investor relations, job postings, maps/directions, providing equal time to all business units, etc., but your virtual environment is yours, will measure what you require, and is there for you to evolve and change.

Cisco has created dozens of virtual environments, each designed to cater to a division's or initiative's business requirements. HP has also created many dozens of virtual experiences, some highly secure internal events, some pure BtoC. Oracle communicates with user groups, Intel conducts sales conferences, DuPont runs promotional campaigns. You get the idea.

The point is this: the power of the Web to reach a broad yet targeted audience, and to measure the interaction that results, is only real if it actually takes place. A virtual environment is the easiest, most cost effective way to create a measurable destination.

Virtual Experiences 2011

In 2006, when the first virtual event using 6Connex technology was launched (for a then ambitious and prescient AMD), the concept was simple: create an online version of a physical event with the goal of reducing costs. It worked, and it was repeated, again to critical acclaim, in 2007. 


These were large virtual experiences, even by today's standards: more than a 1.4 million visits, 650,000+ document downloads, 315,00+ video views (there was far less video content in 2006 - hard to imagine now).


Much has changed since then. But while there are now a multitude of "platform providers," most of them still cling to this early concept of replicating trade shows, fairs and expos. Unfortunately, much of the expertise in the virtual software space is derived from events, as well. More problematic, many technology platforms are designed for events and are too rigid to take advantage of where the long-term opportunities will be found. 

The real opportunities are in persistent Web presences, sometimes referred to as "evergreen programs". These "always on" virtual environments are flexible, measurable and engaging when properly deployed - all the things that the average corporate Web site is not. 


When you include the significant social networking options the best platforms offer, what you end up with is actually quite extraordinary - a marketers dream: fully manageable, fully measurable, fully actionable rich media Web properties managed from a central console. 


Persona-based user paths, entitlement, on-the-fly text chat translation, high quality video controls and more can be found on some platforms, enabling marketers to delve deeply into customer behaviors and to shorten sales cycles.


We look forward to the day when all virtual "event" platforms are called virtual "experience" platforms. That's where the true value lies.

In the beginning...really?

At the recent Virtual Edge Summit, we heard the phrase, “In the beginning, there was Webex…”. The idea being: virtual technology vendors have taken the idea of online gatherings to the next level. While this simplification may be necessary for the true neophyte, we reject the notion that virtual technology platforms (or virtual event software vendors, as they’ve come to be known) are an extension of a trend started by Webex/GoToMeeting and webinar providers.


To us, that’s like saying the Web is an extension of TV; after all, they both have screens on which things move and make sound. 


Virtual envrionment technology is used to connect people with each other and with relevant content over varying lengths of time, not just during a meeting. Virtual platforms enable business to easily produce, manage, measure and administer a series of enduring online presences designed to achieve business objectives for groups, large or small, that benefit from increased content distribution, an organic community, audience feedback and worldwide reach.


Doesn’t sound much like a Webex meeting does it?


Here’s a list of live (as we write today) virtual environments to give you an idea of how the virtual technology platforms (6Connex and others) are being used:

• Secure international sales and marketing conference (3 of these)
• Continuing medical education center
• Partner portal with both secure entitlement and public access options (4)
• Association trade show (14)
• Executive briefing center with public access (2)
• Product line marketing and communication portal (6)
• Consumer product information center (31)
• Highly secure pre-patent (executive only) poster show on new technology
• Medical equipment tradeshow (4)
• Hybrid events - virtual component to a physical show (22)
• Sales training conference (3)
• Thought leadership knowledge center (2)
• There are many more, to be sure - this is just a quick overview

Obviously, these platforms are not being used for 45-minute meetings with slide sharing. These virtual environments are achieving important business goals, both from a communications and budgetary standpoint, and they’re doing so with an enduring presence that provides actionable analytics.