About The Host

The prestigious Cornell University is a private and statutory Ivy League research university located in Ithaca, New York. A highly competitive institution, Cornell University’s mission is to “Discover, preserve and disseminate knowledge, to educate the next generation of global citizens, and to promote a culture of broad inquiry throughout and beyond the Cornell community”. Known for being exceptionally technologically innovative, Cornell offers seven undergraduate colleges and seven graduate divisions- each college and division has independent admission standards and academic programs. Their current student population comprises over 14,000 undergraduate students and 8,000 graduate students from all across the United States and 116 distinct countries.

Hosting Challenges

1. Hosting a physical Resource Fair offered limited value restricted to locally admitted students; students from other cities, states or international countries were unable to attend without incurring expensive travel costs.
2. Delivering an event that catered to admitted students with special needs required a lot of planning and investment to ensure that their event experience was not compromised.
3. Students unable to attend the Resource Fair had no alternative way to access the information at a later time, and get acquainted with the university’s services.
4. Hefty expenses associated with hosting the Resource Fair including staffing, marketing collateral, and hospitality management took a toll on the event’s budget.
5. Coordinating mandatory attendance of representatives from across all programs and departments to answer students’ questions adversely impacted their workflow.
6. There was no way to address recurring queries from admitted students in a forum-like setting to simplify information sharing for department representatives.
7. Sharing resources with students involved high paper wastage and printing expenses which make the event highly environmentally unfriendly.

Virtual Event Strategy and Functionality Solutions

Aligning a virtual Resource Fair solution with Cornell’s mission of enhancing lives and livelihoods of students, the vFairs team came up with a strategy to streamline information so that all admitted students could benefit without exception. Focusing strongly on delivering an event that aced accessibility for students unable to travel and/or with special needs, the outcome truly helped empower the university with a digital advantage.

The virtual Resource Fair was a game changer that overcame the host’s challenges based on the following features:

1) Hassle Free Event Accessibility for Students

To spearhead an extraordinary user experience, the vFairs team set up the platform in compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). This meant that differently abled admitted students had access to special tools to help them explore the resources without any obstacles.   The virtual Resource Fair offered user friendly functionality with the navigation menu also serving as home to WCAG tools including:

– Color Contrast: Guests with visual impairment or cognitive disabilities could change color contrasts to help them read the text, and explore the online event without utmost ease. – Text Character Size: The students had full control over the font size; it could be changed to zoom-in or out to enable users with low vision to read the webpage text. – Page Narrations: Audio description (the headphone icon) allowed admitted students to be able to access all resources via the on-screen text narrations, thus eliminating the need for any assistance.

2) Custom Department Booths With Real Time Chat

The objective of the event was for the university’s management to help promote their services and resources in a stress-free and visually stimulating environment. For the virtual Resource Fair to be fantastically immersive, all participating departments were provided virtual booths custom designed to represent unique identities. The beautiful backdrop of the exhibit hall displayed Cornell’s campus, and all booths had distinct layouts and customized avatars to make the event experience more engaging. Each department/program booth was rich with information such as Director’s Message, News, and also a chat option for students wanting one-on-one communication with the staff. For the attendees in need of immediate answers to their queries, this helped nurture strong relationships with the student body and have them excited about their new journey at Cornell from the get-go.

3) Environmentally Friendly Resource Sharing For Departments

Department/program booths and a dedicated “Resources” area offered downloadable content for admitted students that could then be added to a “Digital Briefcase”. Removing unnecessary carbon footprint and high costs of printing, this content could be emailed by the attendees to their respective accounts to read, research and share at a later time. There was also a “Video Vault” to take advantage of accelerated engagement. Helping the incoming students swiftly consume information, the digital multimedia repository made messaging easier for Cornell University to accomplish. The audience loved this feature and actively played video content- a proof of fantastic visitor experience that the virtual Resource Fair delivered.

4) Chatrooms for Live Interactions

In order to encourage a spirit of community and provide admitted students familiarity with resources, a “Networking” feature led attendees to a chat lounge with dedicated chat rooms for various departments and programs. Helping the representative address recurring questions with easy and amplify the impact of their communication efforts, students could log in at a convenient time and catch up on discussions being had. This Q&A platform ensured that moderators and hosts could address all queries in an open setting, meanwhile provide a platform for conversational chats amongst the virtual Resource Fair’s attendees.

Outcomes of the Virtual Event

The Cornell Graduate School Resource Fair was a great success; the results indicated a powerful guest experience, satisfied students, and high levels of content consumption across all booths. Our real-time reporting dashboard tracked all visitor traffic and guest activity so that measuring the event’s ROI was effortless for the hosts. The key performance milestones the virtual Resource Fair achieved include:

1. High levels of student engagement: The total registrations exceeded 550+ admitted students.
2. Fantastic user experience: The total booth visits at the event crossed 2100 hits.
3. Ease of resource sharing: 1600+ cumulative unique booth visits indicated fruitful information distribution by the host.

About vFairs.com

At vFairs.com, we strive to build a top-class online event platform that will help event organizers make memorable connections with their target audience. We’re obsessed with taking out the hassle normally associated with physical events and leaving organizers and exhibitors to focus on what’s most important: engagement with the audience.   Get in touch with an expert to learn more about vFairs here.

Picture this: you’re attending a virtual conference that’s full of people you want to network with. You’ve got your e-business cards and elevator pitch ready to go. But… you’re not sure which people within the chat rooms are the right people to speak to. There are lots of user profiles, but sifting through each one to find your best match could take a long time. What’s an enthusiastic networker to do?!

Enter Auto-match for Virtual Networking 

vFairs has developed a brand new solution that helps auto-match attendees and exhibitors with other event-goers. Event participants can be matched based on different skills, interests or areas of expertise. Users can fill in various form fields within the registration form, or fill in their user profile within the event to be more accurately matched with the right types of people. When browsing attendee profiles, users will see an option within the search filters saying “Recommended/Matched Profiles”. By clicking this option, a list of your best matches will pop up!

Benefits of the vFairs Auto-match Feature

The auto-match feature is the perfect prompt to encourage conversations in any type of virtual event. Whether making sales at trade shows or finding candidates at virtual career fairs, this feature is beneficial for hosts, exhibitors and participants alike!

Virtual Networking Benefits for Hosts 

We know hosts are always looking for ways to increase value for their attendees and keep them coming back for future events. The vFairs auto-match feature improves your attendees’ experience by providing valuable information and access to new contacts within the event. Additionally, it encourages engagement within your event, and helps build a positive repertoire between exhibitors, attendees and you. 

Also, with all this extra activity within your event comes additional data to analyze post-event. You can see whether auto-matchmaking helped boost chats, audio and video calls, and meeting scheduling by comparing to past events that didn’t use this feature!

Virtual Networking Benefits for Participants and Exhibitors

Your event participants and exhibitors are the real winners here. The auto-match feature adds a ton of value to their event experience. It improves their access to highly relevant and qualified contacts, which in turn fosters more leads and meetings booked. Additionally, participants and exhibitors can start chats, and audio or video calls with a good understanding of who they are engaging with. This will help them go into conversations with a more tailored pitch. Let’s see how this could shake out with a few different use cases.

Popular Use Cases for the Auto-match Feature

Virtual Conferences

Networking and creating new contacts is a key benefit to attending a virtual conference. Your attendees can use this feature to start conversations with contacts within their industry who can help them hit their business goals. For example, you could have a wholesaler participating in your conference who is looking for new, unique products to supply their stores with. Their auto-match results could display small business owners who produce unique items within their region. The wholesaler can then click on each owner’s profile, review their details, and even start chats or calls with them to better understand their products.

Virtual Trade Shows

Your exhibitors will love this one! During your virtual trade show, an exhibitor can proactively scout potential customers using the auto-match feature. Their auto-match results could display attendees who fit their target persona. For example, if your exhibitor represents a catering company exhibiting in the virtual trade show, and they are looking for new retirement communities to service, the auto-match results can display operations managers from retirement homes. Again, once your exhibitor has reviewed the manager’s profile and deemed it’s the right match, they can request a meeting to demo their menus.

Virtual Career Fairs

Virtual career fairs rely pretty heavily on candidates filling in their user profiles. Auto-match alleviates a ton of the work hiring managers usually have to do within a virtual career fair. For example, as a host, you can request that job seekers fill in an application-style registration form complete with all their experience, career interests, and previous job titles. Each hiring manager can also input the profile information most relevant to the jobs they’re looking to hire. Auto-match could then show the hiring manager relevant profiles, and help them more easily contact qualified candidates for meetings or simply to chat more.

Virtual Open Days 

Trying to find the right prospective students at a virtual open day? It can sometimes feel intimidating to search through student profiles from all different backgrounds, with different program interests — auto-match can help. For example, if you’re trying to improve application rates to a new arts program that requires a strong educational background in creative writing and drama, you can be auto-matched with student profiles who fit that description. Then, you can use your time looking through only the relevant student profiles and reaching out to those who catch your eye to encourage them to apply to your program.

How to Use the Auto-match Feature for Virtual Networking

For Hosts 

• Navigate to your vFairs backend and click “Event Settings” on the left side menu. 
• Scroll down to “Advanced Settings” and click the “+” sign. 
• Scroll down to the “Attendee Matchmaking” section and turn the toggle switch to “Yes” for “Attendee to Attendee Matchmaking” and/or “Attendee to Exhibitor Matchmaking”.
• Once enabled, click “Edit Matchmaking Fields” and choose which fields your attendees or exhibitors can enter. Then hit “Save”.
  ** Note that attendee to exhibitor form fields can be different. 
• Scroll down to the bottom of the settings page and click “Update”. 

For Attendees/Exhibitors

• Upon registration, you’ll be asked to fill in form fields outlining your interests, expertise, or any other information the host has determined in their matchmaking setup form. 
• Once you log into the event, navigate to “User Profile Search” and hit “Recommended/Matched Profiles”. 
• Based on your own inputs, you will be matched with similar types of event attendees or exhibitors. For example, someone who has identified an interest in cryptocurrency will be matched with others with the same interest. 
• Note that you can update your profile at any time during the event and get matched with new attendees. Simply click “Edit Profile” in the top right side corner of your vFairs event, update your information, and hit “Save”.

Key Takeaways

Our auto-match feature is a useful tool to include with pretty much any virtual event you’re looking to host. The networking benefits are huge, and help foster really meaningful connections. Plus, they help add value for time spent within the virtual event — a win-win for hosts, exhibitors and attendees alike! 

To learn more about the auto-match feature, talk to your sales manager today!

Hybrid events are the talk of the online town these days. The topic has penetrated conversations across industries and job functions. However, there is one common issue that pops up time and again on this subject. The issue is that no one knows exactly what to expect when it comes to hybrid events in 2021 and beyond. There’s a lot of noise about hybrid events, but no true understanding of how to maximize benefits and minimize challenges.

Earlier this year, the vFairs team set out to get a pulse on how professionals across industries truly felt about hybrid events. This included:

• Their plans for hosting hybrid events in 2021
• Their expectations for events programs in 2022
• The virtual, hybrid and in-person split they anticipated moving forward
• The biggest benefits and challenges they anticipated for hybrid events
• Their thoughts about which event type would dominate the future

We have to admit, we saw some pretty interesting results! This report outlines how people are thinking about hybrid events. It also helps address some of the biggest challenges our respondents anticipate as they consider hybrid events for their upcoming programs.

We called it the State of Hybrid Events 2021 Report, available now! Let’s dive into some of its key insights.

Are Hybrid Events Here To Stay?

First and foremost, the question on everyone’s mind: are hybrid events here to stay, or are they just a flash in the pan?

Based on qualitative feedback, many companies understand the top benefits of hosting hybrid. Here are the top two benefits identified by our survey respondents:

• Increased reach
• More convenience for attendees

One of the most important benefits the report identified is increased ROI. Hybrid events cost more than purely virtual or purely in-person events, but the increased reach allows you to sell more tickets, and offer more ticket tiers. Likewise, you can reach more sponsors and exhibitors and offer a huge range of packages for them to pick from. Once more organizations start hosting their own hybrid events and realizing this key benefit, we are 100% confident that hybrid events are here to stay.

Will Hybrid Events Be the Future?

We’ve established that hybrid events will be a key component in many organizations’ events programs. But will it be the dominant event type for teams in the future? 57.4% of our respondents believe so, and we agree. 

This prediction takes into account the benefits listed above, and the fact that hybrid events are so versatile and all-encompassing. They are inclusive by nature, they can be applied to endless use cases and they offer a ton of flexibility to hosts, attendees, sponsors, and exhibitors.

The State of Hybrid Events 2021 Report Summary

We’ve addressed some of the big questions on everyone’s minds. Are you ready to see more results from the report? Check out some of our stats below, and make sure to check out the State of Hybrid Events 2021 Survey for more in-depth information!