Community & Cold Coffee 🥤😎|Ep-2: An open conversation on online and offline events

Community & Cold Coffee Episode 2: Online Vs Offline events, started from where we left off in the previous episode. This week was an exciting ride as we took a different approach to look deeper into events and how important they are for any community

Who were our guests?

With people like Geet Lulla (Managing Director at Gracenote comes with a strong Sales background of about 30 years experience), Chitra HL (A community professional since 2015, now Community Marketing Specialist at JFrog), Biswajeeta (A community professional with 2+ yrs experience, now Online Community Specialist at BMC Software) and Anupam Kaushik (Offline and Online Community Expert, Founder of EdMonks), the conversation just got exciting and was filled with valuable insights.

The conversation started with paid and free events differences

“Popular opinion: All the speakers felt that there is a need to charge for the events. Here are some reasons to back that up.”

Free events	Paid events
Registration is high turn around can be lower	Registration may be low but turn around to registrations ratio can be high
The commitment factor can be arguably lesser	Commitment from both organizer and the attendees can be higher
Now that it's free, one can expect a mixed audience set, so engagement and involvement can be at the lower end	Since the audience is targeted, engagement and involvement can be on the higher end

From this, the conversation moved to discuss and understand the pros and cons of offline (on-ground) and online (virtual) events.

Online Event
Pros👍

Easily accessible and does not contribute to logistic difficulties
Time and cost-saving affair
Capturing data becomes easier and social footfalls & brand awareness go hand-in-hand with online event

Cons👎

The initial commitment is very low but the audience is later not interested
The level of trust is low
With less commitment, the maximum time an attendee can give to an event is between 60 and 90 minutes unlike an offline event

Offline Event
Pros👍

The initial commitment is very high if they make it to the event
Retention of members can be higher compared to the online event
Physical connect, long relationships, and lasting effects are built
The level of trust is high

Cons👎

Time, effort, and cost involved can be on the higher end
Registration is very easy, but to turn around ratio can be lesser as it takes time and cost in traveling to the event, it takes a lot to convince them to make it
The disconnect between virtual and offline can reduce social footfalls

Experiential tip

Anupam about paid events: “Even though the event is for free, make sure it’s not for free”. He introduced us to the “Pay as you wish” concept where early bird registrations with a cap can be for either free or they could pay as they wish for a cause like donating to an NGO.”

Biswajeeta: "Communifiying the event and setting expectations right are key elements for any event".

Chitra: “If your event is free then your event has no value.” Free virtual events may have a high percentage of registrations while the turnaround can be significantly low"

Geet Lulla: "Revenue should not be the only target for community or events. Apart from setting expectations right, it is important to communicate it to the stakeholders involved"

Deepak about the importance of the offline world: “Even with online and offline classes, there are differences. It is hard to gauge how much fun kids have in online sessions. This casts an impact that may lead to a reduction in in-person connect.”

Highlight of the event: New words

Biswajeeta shared a new term “Communifying” - Communifying is a word coined by Richard Millington. Here she mentioned its importance in events. “Communifying is involving your community in initiatives. If you're planning for an event, think about how you can get your community involved. Ask for ideas, call for speakers, and then sustain the discussion in the community.”

Chitra shared acronyms MEL and MQL - Marketing Eligible Leads and Marketing Qualified Leads - Paid events resulted in high MEL and MQL than the free event

But Geet felt TLAs are inevitable for a marketeer or tech folks. TLA- Three Letter Acronym!

Takeaways

Costing your events is essential and legit- never give anything for free
Be it online or offline events commitment matters a lot
Both online and offline have their pros and cons, it is important to define goals and set expectations right
No of attendees and no of attendees retaining + returning contribute to ROI
Events done with only sales as a target can be a facade. Events are meant to create impact and should not have ROI or sales as focus and communifying this could be an answer
It is important to also communicate the set expectations to the stakeholders involved

With this head to head ideas and perspectives thrown out, community & cold coffee had to come to an end for the day. Answers and deep analysis of this are paused till next Saturday's community & old coffee. So, stay tuned to get to hear from experts themselves.

Have you been checking out Community & Cold Coffee? C³ is an initiative to bring community professionals or enthusiasts together to discuss the Community ecosystem, methods, and techniques, etc. candidly. No agenda is our agenda. Community & Cold Coffee happens on all Saturdays at 2.30 PM, which means you can hop in at 2.30 PM on Saturday and chat your heart out about communities.

NOTE: Don’t forget to bring your Cold coffee 😜

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