LinkedIn Rolls Out New Discovery Features for Virtual Events

In an official blog post, LinkedIn announced the launch of new discovery features for virtual events which has been designed to boost attendance by making them easier to find. Along with that, the company is also allowing event organizers to capture leads from event sign-ups. 

LinkedIn Virtual Events   

During this pandemic period, we have witnessed the transformation of traditional event marketing to a virtual format, that too very quickly. In fact, this transformation was one of the biggest adjustments organizations have had to make as many got worried about how to adjust business activities during these uncertain times.

The need to stay connected and at the same time have to prioritize the safety and well-being of employees, customers, partners, and community have all come to be of equal importance. So, to stay productive, connected, and to keep safety at the forefront while ensuring business activities can still run effectively during this pandemic time, – LinkedIn launches Virtual Events, an alternative for in-person gatherings.

Introduced in May, LinkedIn Virtual Events create a virtual space where our professional community can come together in real-time. It helps to:

• Hold your event safely, in a trusted and credible environment
• Attract the right professional audiences
• Urge engagement for your events
• Earn more mileage out of your events

During its launch when LinkedIn opened up the virtual event, the company spotted 9,000 pre-registrations and more than 12,000 people watching the event. So far, the company records over 200,000 events that have been hosted on its platform, with a total of 10 million attendees. These numbers indicate that virtual events have been wildly successful since being added to LinkedIn.

For instance, businesses like L’Oreal have used LinkedIn Events with LinkedIn Live for their annual Brandstorm competition to set new records for their reach and engagement. This competition allows students to submit sustainable innovation ideas for the L’Oreal brand. The extended campaign witnessed over 2,000 unique viewings that reached over 8.5 million members and generated over 33,000 engagements, which is more than double the reach of the previous year.

However, some companies were still hesitant to host events on LinkedIn due to their inability to capture lead gen data. Now with new upgrades on virtual events, LinkedIn is removing that barrier. The company rolls out the most highly requested updates to help an organization or business boost its attendees organically, collect leads, and boost their reach with ads and retargeting capabilities.

Let’s check out the new updates:

• Boost your Attendees With The New Discovery Features

LinkedIn is introducing new organic discovery features to help grow your attendees because as more businesses adopt virtual events to their business strategies, it has become harder to get noticed by the right audiences.

The new discovery features include personalized event recommendations in your audience’s “My Network” tab and a new weekly Events digest email. So far, LinkedIn has witnessed a +40% increase in event attendees found in the “My Network” tab. 

Also, LinkedIn will send notifications to the followers when an organization posts an event on their page. That is, if a business posts an event from their Page, then LinkedIn will automatically notify their followers – who are most likely to attend, based on various criteria. This feature is scheduled to roll out in the upcoming weeks.

• Collect Leads from Event Sign-Ups 

One of the most requested features since virtual events were introduced is to give the ability to capture leads from the events.

With the help of a free registration form for events, companies can now collect the names and emails of people who signed up. Organizations can also download the list from their event page and send them a thank-you email, upload the list to their CRM (customer-relationship-management system), or share it with their sales teams. The company notes that when an organization adds a registration form, they can “gate” their event so that only registered attendees can join the event and participate.  

However, these forms are optional, where companies who prefer not to have their attendees fill out a form won’t be forced to do so and without a registration form event attendees are free to join and quit an event at their will. Also, the host will not have access to data on people who have attended if this option is chosen beforehand.

• Promote Events With Ads

To promote virtual events, companies can now run Sponsored Content Single Image Ads alongside their organic posts. These ads can get an event in front of the right professionals and hard-to-reach audiences, like executives and decision-markers​.

If you are an organization looking to promote an event, all you have to do is to include your Event URL as the destination URL in your campaign. By doing so, you’ll be able to see how it performs against a new set of event-specific reporting metrics, like the total number of registrants, as well as views and clicks on the ad that led to the event registration.

LinkedIn’s internal data showed that page followers who are exposed to organic content are 61% more likely to click on a paid ad from that page.

• Retarget Event Attendees

This new feature allows companies to target audiences who’re interested in their content or brand by continuing the conversation and nurturing the leads by retargeting their prior event registrants.

Based on those who have RSVP’d to any of your LinkedIn Events, you can create a custom target audience in ‘Campaign Manager’ to retarget your event attendees. 

Hopefully, all these updates should make virtual events even more appealing to businesses and marketers and help them extend the reach to their target audience. Over the upcoming months, Linkedin will be launching more features including advanced event analytics – a new Events Ad format – and attendee networking options that help capture the magic of in-person events thoroughly.