How Can Medical & Pharmaceutical Associations Benefit from Using Event Tech Solutions?

According to a recent market report by Global Market Insights, the global digital health market size is slated to grow at a rate of 17.4% between the year 2021 and 2027. By the end of the research period, the market size is expected to cross over $427 billion. Experts believe that several futuristic digital healthcare solutions will be the key driver of this change. Event tech solutions, being part of the stack of next-gen solutions for pharma companies will enable healthcare providers, pharma associations to serve the medical fraternity better, grow their business, and build their brand. In this article, we offer four ways Pharma associations can benefit from using event tech solutions.

1. Event Planning Made Easy

To tick the first thing off the list, let’s focus on event registrations and check-ins. Leveraging event-tech solutions can help you streamline the registration process, receiving of payments, and check-ins for both virtual and hybrid exhibitions.

Registrants can submit their details securely while filling up the form. Once registration is done, an automated email will be sent with an acknowledgment of payment. To streamline the entire process, event management software provides integrations with multiple tools –

1. Integration with digital payment platforms (Stripe, PayPal) means overseas participants can choose their preferred mode of payment.
2. Similarly, integration with email marketing tools (Mailchimp, Active Campaign) will allow you to send automated emails to each registrant with event passes, and event details. You can also send periodical email reminders to boost the turnout rate.
3. While hosting a hybrid exhibition, facilitate contactless check-ins for physical participants using QR codes and enable SSO login for remote attendees.

2. More Accessible Events

If you have attended any Pharma or medical conferences, you know the agenda remains stuffed with multiple sessions going live simultaneously. So, even if you are willing to attend both sessions, it becomes well-nigh impossible in a physical event.

A hybrid events solution provider will allow you to keep the platform live for attendees even after the actual event is over. That way, attendees can come back to revisit the sessions, catch up with the sessions/ discussions they might have missed, and most importantly, they can take notes, re-evaluate the lectures and form a better understanding.

Moreover, hybrid event platforms also enable remote attendees to present papers, view others’ papers, and get in touch with fellow participants for a discussion. To give a practical example, hosted on Samaaro, the MSOHNS Hybrid Medical Congress had a dedicated space for E-posters where remote attendees presented over 200 academic posters.

3. More Engaging Conferences

If you are concerned about event engagement, you’re not alone. A market report reveals attendee engagement is the biggest challenge event organizers face while hosting virtual and hybrid events. But there are ways to keep the attendees on their toes throughout the event.

During live sessions, you can organize polls and quizzes to engage the audience. Pre-session polls help the speakers understand the audiences’ prior knowledge and their interest. Speakers can tailor their speech to make the sessions livelier and more interactive. Additionally, you can use a post-session poll as a way for attendees to rate the sessions and choose the best speaker.

Most importantly, a big part of the conference is Q&A sessions, where speakers take questions from the participants and answer them accordingly. In the virtual environment, a hybrid event platform will enable attendees to ask questions and clear their doubts via the Q&A feature.

Read More: 8 Proven Ways to Improve Engagement in Virtual Trade Shows

4. Gain Valuable Insights

Analytics is essential to measure the event’s performance against the predetermined KPI. It’s also advantageous to have a proven positive ROI at hand to get more sponsors in your future events. What insights can you derive from hosting a hybrid medical conference? Let’s start from day 1.

Event Registration Data

You can track the number of registrations for your event on a day-day basis. If you already have a set goal, checking day-to-day data will help you track the number of registrations you’re receiving. You can make a course correction at the right time, if the number seems to be falling short of the target.

Attendance Rate

Did your pre-event marketing effort yield actual results? Checking the attendance rate (login to sign-up ratio) is the most effective way to judge that.

If the number of check-ins is expectedly high, you have at your hand a replicable marketing strategy. If not, identify where it fell short and the reason why the sign-ups didn’t convert to live participants. For medical events, the attendance rate falls somewhere between 30-35% and 40-50% in the APAC region and Europe respectively.

Survey & Feedback

The in-built survey form in virtual event platforms lets you get direct feedback from the attendees. You can send surveys to exhibitors, and sponsors as well to understand whether their expectations were met and take suggestions for future events.

Engagement

Were the sessions engaging enough? How many attendees participated in polls, quizzes, and Q&A sessions? How many connections were made in your event? How many people joined global chat rooms?

These numbers are crucial to measure your event’s impact. Hybrid event platforms come with an in-built analytics dashboard that lets you track all these data. You can also check the heatmap to understand which spaces received more footfall, and which booths were more popular with attendees.

Read More: Importance of Data Analytics in Virtual and Hybrid Events

Conclusion

In the post-covid era, two noticeable trends have been observed. While some of us are eager to attend events in person, many are still reluctant to throw caution to the wind. In this tricky situation, hybrid events serve both ends. You can extend the benefits of attending a live conference to remote attendees by choosing a hybrid events platform. Event tech solutions will come in aid to facilitate the running the events smoothly.

If you are planning to host a hybrid event soon, get in touch with our event experts. Samaaro is an award-winning hybrid events platform trusted by more than a thousand brands and organizations worldwide. Check out some of our previous projects here.