Spring 2020: the world of event planning was turned on its head.
Overnight, event creators were forced to pull their traditional, in-person events and replace them at break-neck speed with virtual-only events.
Fast-forward a few years, and a lot has changed.
In-person events are back in business, and attendees are happy to engage with each other face-to-face again. But virtual events have left their mark on the business — they offer unique benefits for attendees and event organizers alike.
That’s why event creators have started leveraging the best of both worlds, creating hybrid events that engage both online and in-person audiences simultaneously.
Not only do event planners say hybrid events are a great solution to help them connect with international audiences, but 86% of organizers see a positive return on investment of their hybrid events within months.
In this guide we’ll discuss what hybrid events are, how to plan a hybrid event, and some pro tips on how to create a successful and sustainable hybrid event.
What is hybrid event vs virtual event?
A virtual event is an event held entirely through an online platform, with no physical presence.
Hybrid events however, are a unique class of events that combine in-person and virtual components to create a range of opportunities for guests to attend in-person, virtually, or both.
This is an excellent option for event creators because you can leverage the best of both worlds.
During the last few years, the demand for virtual events has grown dramatically and it’s still on the rise. The virtual events space is expected to grow by around 20% per year — reaching an estimated $366.5 billion by 2027.
Yet despite the convenience of virtual events, many guests want to get back into venues for a physical event. Our 2023 Event Trends Report found that 63% of Generation Z event attendees are keen to attend more in-person events this year.
By setting up a hybrid event, you’ll be able to capture both of these markets and give them the unique event experience they’re looking for.
Fortunately, you can turn almost any event into a hybrid one. Examples include:
- Hybrid conferences
- Hybrid networking events
- Hybrid product demonstrations
- Hybrid town halls
- Hybrid meetings
- Hybrid employee onboarding events
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
There aren’t many in-person events or virtual events that can’t be adapted to suit a more hybrid structure. If you want to learn more about how to create your own hybrid event, Eventbrite is a great place to start.
What’s crucial is to ensure you’re offering both online and in-person audiences an engaging experience — ideally linking those two experiences together for a fully immersive hybrid event.
We’ll dive deeper into hybrid event engagement and connecting your two audiences shortly. But first, let’s talk about some of the key benefits of hosting a hybrid event.
What are the benefits of hybrid events?
Researchers predict that hybrid events will be the new norm when it comes to event planning — for a number of reasons.
From the perspective of an event creator, hybrid events are great because they dramatically increase your brand- and event’s reach.
When you host an in-person event, you limit yourself geographically. The bulk of your attendees will come from areas close to your venue or host city. But with a hybrid event, you can register attendees from different parts of the country — or even the world.
That opens your hybrid event up to an international audience, which can make it more diverse and boost your brand.
For example, take a look at Eventbrite creator MicroK12 and their free annual TechFest Education Conferences. Although they create multiple conference events and host them in different geographical catchment areas each year, MicroK12 also livestreams all of the conference events to ensure anyone who’s interested — no matter where they are — can log in to access the content.
Setting up a hybrid model will also enable you to book a wider selection of guest speakers for your event. When you don’t limit yourself to keynote speakers in a particular state or coast, the world is your oyster. You can dial in international experts who will wow your audience and inspire them, even if they can’t be there in person.
Hybrid events also help you reduce the carbon footprint of your event.
By opening the event up to virtual registrations, you’ll likely be able to reduce the number of in-person tickets you’ve got to sell to make your event a success. That means you can book a smaller venue that uses less heating and electricity, fewer people will be traveling to the venue, and you won’t have to produce (or waste) as much in terms of catering.
Finally, hybrid events are beneficial because they empower event professionals with the ability to deliver meaningful content and event messaging on multiple platforms.
With the right hybrid event platforms, you can create unique engagement spaces and interactive video content for online attendees — while in-person attendees will benefit from face-to-face interaction and more active sessions.
As an added benefit, setting up a successful hybrid event will enrich the data you can collect on user experiences, so you can make your future events better. For example, you can see which sessions your virtual guests did or didn’t log in for, the points where they dropped off, and the chat room topics they found most engaging.
Check out this Eventbrite guide to learn more about event analytics and how they can improve your guest experiences.
How do you plan a hybrid event?
Now that we’ve covered why you should plan a hybrid event, you’re probably wondering how to get started. It may seem overwhelming but don’t worry, we’ll walk you through the process in great detail.
If you’re already an event planner or have created in-person events in the past, a few of these steps will be very familiar to you. But hybrid event planning does include a couple of unique steps you’ll need to be aware of.
Set clear event goals and objectives
Setting goals is the first step of planning any event — whether it’s in-person, virtual, or hybrid. Before you start working out the logistics of an event or booking entertainment, you need to have a clear understanding of why you’re planning the event.
It might be to generate profit, create sales leads, spread the word about a new charity service, or simply create a sense of community between like-minded people. Either way, you should develop objectives for your event because they’ll guide you through the rest of the planning process.
Pro tip: If you’re operating as part of a corporate events team and need permission from management to fund the event, make sure you set SMART goals that you’ll later be able to easily measure to show stakeholders your event was a success.
For reference, SMART is an acronym that stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Take a look at this guide for more information and tips on creating SMART goals.
Identify your target audience
This step applies to any type of event planning. Before choosing a venue and advertising your event, you need to know who you’ll be advertising to. Determine the groups of people whose presence will contribute to accomplishing your event objectives.
For example, if you’re running a personal finance conference, your target audience will likely be independent accountants and high-net-worth individuals.
Choose the right event format
After you’ve developed goals to guide and measure your success, it’s time to choose your event format. There are a few different hybrid event formats you may want to go for. Some of the most popular are:
- Simultaneous events
- Live studio events
- On-demand events
- Hub-and-spoke events
Simultaneous events are often referred to as “true hybrid events.” Like DREAMERS Worldwide’s Women’s Networking & Celebration hybrid events, they’re a combination of live event audiences and virtual audiences attending an event simultaneously — with equal opportunity to interact with presenters and fellow listeners.
A live studio event is a slightly smaller hybrid event type, more like East City Bookshop’s Hybrid Event: Julie Soto, Forget Me Not, in which a speaker presents to an intimate in-person audience and a wider virtual audience. This differs from a true hybrid event because it can often resemble a broadcast more than a two-way conversation.
On-demand events are in-person events that have been filmed and uploaded onto a virtual events dashboard for online guests to access at their convenience. These are a great option for event longevity — but you won’t be engaging your virtual audience in the same way as a live studio event because they won’t be able to interact with the presenter or audience in real-time.
Hub-and-spoke events are a lot like the watch party concept you see on social media or streaming platforms, but on a much bigger scale. With this format, your “hub” represents a single venue or location, which is then populated by multiple watch parties that double as in-person sessions. This format is ideal for hybrid conferences because all participants get some in-person interaction.
Pro tip: In our opinion, the best way to maximize engagement is to ensure you’re creating both online and in-person areas for your guests.
It’s easy to provide break-out spaces and coffee breaks for your in-person guests. But you need to make sure your platform allows your virtual guests to interact with the speakers and each other.
Venue selection
After you’ve selected your event format and target audience, you’re ready to book an in-person venue. The size and requirements will depend on your format of choice.
For example, let’s say you’re planning a live studio event in which you’re hoping to attract 50 in-person attendees for a linear series of lectures and stream the talks live to virtual attendees. You’ll need a relatively small auditorium or industrial space with seating and basic facilities — but you don’t need to rent the country’s largest conference center.
By contrast, if you’re hosting a more traditional in-person conference that you plan to record and put on demand for digital audiences later, you might want to book a slightly bigger, purpose-built space.
Just make sure to select an in-person venue with the right infrastructure to support the virtual elements of your hybrid event. That might mean sufficient space for video recording equipment, superfast fiber broadband, or projectors that can stream virtual guests or keynote speakers into a room full of people.
Select the right platform
Once you’ve chosen an in-person venue, it’s time to select the events platform you’ll use to support your virtual audience.
For example, Eventbrite enables you to sell tickets to both in-person and virtual guests and create seating plans for those attending events physically. But it also integrates with leading streaming and conference apps like Zoom so that you can host engaging conversations between attendees and speakers and create the virtual spaces they need — whether they’re in the room or on the other side of the world.
You can also livestream through Eventbrite, thanks to our partnership with Vimeo. That enables you to host your event in real-time on a number of social networks and use a live Q&A feature and chat features so that your virtual attendees feel like they’re always part of the action. You can even use our livestream capabilities to throw a hybrid party, like event organizer Daybreaker did at their Daybreaker Live parties.
Want to find out more about the functionality you should expect from a hybrid events platform? Take a look at event creator CraftJam and what CEO Nora Abousteit has to say about operating hybrid events using a platform like Eventbrite.
Create your agenda
Next, it’s time to create the agenda for your event. This will be largely dictated by your format and target audience.
If you’re running a simultaneous event with multiple sessions in tandem, your agenda will probably be more like a flow chart with choices for attendees. But if you’re planning a hybrid live studio event, you’ll probably have a more linear list of speakers taking to a single stage.
Either way, make sure your lineup and running order are relatively set before promoting your hybrid event.
If you need help creating an amazing event agenda, take a look at our guide.
Promote your hybrid event
This step should be familiar to all event creators — whether you’re used to organizing hybrid events or not.
After identifying your target audience, you can develop a strategy to reach that audience and promote your event. But this is a lot easier if you’ve got the right tools at your disposal.
For example, with Eventbrite’s marketing tools, you can set up automated email workflows to generate leads, convert those leads, and stay connected with attendees to make sure they show up or log in on the day. You’ll also get access to Eventbrite’s exclusive data that matches your event ads with the right people to maximize your chances of selling tickets.
Sounding good? Read about how real Eventbrite creators have used automated emails to boost their hybrid event series.
Promote your hybrid events using the best event marketing tool platform.
Start marketing your hybrid events today.
Plan and test logistics
Many hybrid events include live elements that rely on technology — you need to plan carefully and make sure you understand the logistics of staging the event.
For example, make sure your employees or helpers are fully trained to use your events platform so they understand what to press and when. Likewise, do dry runs of any livestream events to guarantee your events team understands what to do and when their cues are.
Pro tip: Practice makes perfect. Rehearse every element of your hybrid event multiple times before the big day arrives. That way, you’ll have it down to a science and can rest easy knowing you’re prepared to deliver a seamless event.
Want to know what to do when virtual elements of events go wrong?
Take a look at our quick guide to find out what you can do if nobody logs into your event, people have the wrong event link, or the content doesn’t flow.
How do you engage your audience at a hybrid event?
The biggest challenge for any hybrid event creator is audience engagement. It’s usually easier to engage with guests physically sitting right in front of a stage. It can be a little trickier connecting with hundreds of people sitting at laptops all over the country or the world.
That’s why we’ll walk you through some of the best ways to engage with audience members and get them interacting at hybrid events.
Set up an app for your event
One solution is to encourage both audiences to use one mobile app.
A wide range of developers work with event organizers to create custom event apps that offer both remote attendees and in-person attendees access to the same virtual venue. These virtual venues often feature chat rooms, on-demand content, and Q&A material. Of course, these customized options come with a price tag.
But there are also plenty of off-the-shelf software solutions that event organizers can customize with their own event branding or agenda, like Eventbrite’s event pages and Organizer App, which are a little more accessible.
Want to learn more about the apps you can connect to your event when using Eventbrite? Take a look at our list of integrations, which allows you to custom pick the functionalities you use during your event.
Create audience polls
On a slightly smaller scale, you can even use survey and polling tools that all your hybrid event attendees can access simultaneously.
Apps like SurveyMonkey and Slido are great for enabling speakers to pause and ask both remote audience and in-person audience members for their opinions — which can then guide the rest of that presentation.
You can also use apps like Mentimeter to gauge audience opinions by asking them to vote. You could have them vote on their favorite presentation at the end of each day during your event — or you could even use a vote halfway through a presentation to let the audience decide what the speaker should talk about next in their seminar. This is a great way to make a presentation more interactive and engaging.
Event gamification
Another way to keep your audience members engaged is gamification.
Event gamification is when you insert a competition, games, or point-scoring into your event to encourage your visitors to engage with the content (and each other). You could create an award for the virtual guest who logs into the most sessions, or set up a points system to recognize your biggest chat room contributors.
If real freebies are at stake, it’ll also encourage in-person attendees to log into any shared event app and connect with virtual guests.
Take a look at this Eventbrite guide to learn everything you need to know about gamification.
Cater to different time zones
When scheduling your event, make sure you are considerate of virtual guests and where they’ll be logging in from.
After all, you’ll find it a lot easier to engage with virtual attendees if your in-person sessions are live streaming at times that are convenient for them.
Once you’ve created an order of events and started selling tickets, look at which parts of the country (or the world) your ticket sales are coming from. You can then schedule talks and sessions so half of your audience doesn’t have to stay awake for a midnight presentation.
Ready to go hybrid?
At this point, it’s safe to say that hybrid events are here to stay. Guests love the convenience of being able to attend events all over the world without getting out of their pajamas. Meanwhile, hybrid events are great for event creators looking to maximize their reach without having to book a huge venue to accommodate thousands of in-person guests.
The keys to a successful hybrid event are careful planning and choosing an events platform that can help you manage and engage with both your online and in-person ticket holders.
That’s where Eventbrite can help — try out our range of features for yourself so that you can start planning your next hybrid event with confidence.
