While many companies have returned to planning in-person events, the environmental benefits of using a virtual event platform are capturing headlines, and the opportunity for the pharmaceutical industry in particular to host events using a virtual venue continues to grow.
In 2014, healthcare contributed 4.4% of the world’s carbon footprint, and this rate is steadily increasing. While the revenue in pharma is smaller than in the automotive industry, the effects of pollution are more. With an increased push on environmental sustainability in the pharma industry, creating sustainable events to lessen the carbon footprint and make a concerted effort toward environmental change makes sense.
Event Tech Solutions to Mitigate the Environmental Impact of the Pharmaceutical Industry
With the pharmaceutical industry having such a significant impact on environmental pollution, using platforms that facilitate hybrid events to meet attendees where they are is key. A hybrid event satisfies both people who want to attend and individuals who either cannot or do not want to attend and lessens the carbon footprint.
What is a hybrid event?
No longer new on the scene, hybrid events bring in-person and virtual attendees together. The format establishes authentic connections, drives engagement, and facilitates collaboration without any attendee feeling left out.
Here are additional reasons why hybrid events work:
- Registration for events increases because attendees can still attend even if they can’t make an in-person appearance.
- The event can be viewed many times over to capture additional notes, view overlapping sessions, or enjoy the experience again.
- Hybrid events reduce waste and travel. Staff, vendors, and attendees can participate from anywhere.
- Sponsors have additional opportunities to showcase their products and services both virtually and in person.
Which types of engagement tools are used in pharma event tech integrations?
Virtual events have evolved and use advanced event AI technology to create a personalized event experience for each attendee. With customized, branded, 3-D virtual environments, real-time user behavior data is captured for insights and better attendee engagement. The right content will be in front of the right people exactly when it needs to be, along with recommendations for agendas and activities to ensure attendees get the most value from attending.
Video chat, messaging, interactive content, broadcast messages and alerts, gamification, live streaming, video, music, and social walls are just some of the engagement tools pharmaceutical companies use to keep attendees engaged. There are also mixed reality experiences, smart flooring, facial recognition, and custom mobile event applications. Here are a few examples of how these elements are effectively used:
- Smart flooring
At a hybrid event, the attendees become part of real-time analytics. Event planners can monitor traffic flow to eliminate bottlenecks, highlight and monetize key locations for sponsors, and analyze data for future events.
- Facial recognition
What better way to create personalized experiences than by starting from the beginning? When online registration occurs, attendees can submit their photos. This helps alleviate long lines, increases security, elevates the check-in process, saves on materials like badges and id cards, deters party crashers, and adds a layer of personalization to social media engagement.
- Virtual streaming
Not only can virtual audience members attend workshops, but they can also participate in behind-the-scenes coverage, get “pulled” into special interviews, participate in unique giveaways, and more. Virtual streaming is also a good way for conferences to share some of the event experience with the public to gain interest. Seeing the latest pharmaceutical products as they’re introduced to the world captures the attention of a larger audience.
- Custom mobile apps
Attendees can interact with other conference attendees, register for workshops from their mobile phones, plan their schedule, provide feedback, and ask questions in real-time.
- Mixed reality experiences
These include photo opportunities, product demos, simulations, social media plugs, and more. Mixed reality experiences help guide people to the sponsors and workshops in which they’re interested, promotes engagement, and reduces foot traffic.
Benefits of Event Tech
There are many benefits to using event tech in the pharmaceutical industry for on-site and virtual conferences:
- Increases engagement
Audience engagement is the most important factor for a successful event.
- Facilitates consistent communication
Planning an event, whether virtual or in-person, requires a huge time investment. Designing, coordinating, and creating personalized experiences isn’t easy. Event technology makes communicating with all event stakeholders easier.
- Encourages future attendance
Immersive experiences done the right way give attendees something to talk about and a reason to register for the following year. Using tech to share and get the word out usually increases participation and attendance by 20%.
- Collects data
Let’s face it – we need event data to understand what we’re doing right, examine what we’re doing wrong, and learn how attendees experience the event. Leveraging data from event tech, event planners can avoid future problems, increase areas of interest, and provide sponsors with information to assist in lead generation and acceleration through the sales funnel.
- Measures metrics
From event registrations, to behavior data, to session ratings and beyond, event reporting tools offer myriad analytics and intelligence, providing event planners with countless ways to prove event success and identify sales and marketing opportunities.
Virtual event solutions add innovation and ingenuity to events, with flexible and scalable platforms for ease of use for sponsors and event planners.
Which types of events benefit from event tech integrations?
Beyond conferences, pharmaceutical companies are using event tech for in-house meetings and events in pharma that require high levels of engagement. Other types of events include advisory board meetings, investigator meetings, product theater, speaker training, product launch and plan of action, P2P dinner meetings, and continuing medical education.
While the scenarios are very different, the outcomes remain the same. Although some companies prefer to have in-person events, increased sustainability efforts in the pharmaceutical industry mean virtual event use is an important initiative in reshaping their carbon footprint. Creating sustainable events with event tech and virtual platforms doesn’t have to be hard. From webinars to a full-scale conference, an all-in-one virtual environment can have a significant impact.
Virtual solution benefits include:
- Streamlined planning and production
- Improved attendee tracking and increased pipeline
- Consistent brand experience
- Easy event stakeholder collaboration
- Enhanced event resilience and future-proofing
Are you interested in our virtual event products for one of your pharmaceutical events? We place a high priority on creating sustainable events that help you elevate the role of technology in pharmaceutical industry spaces. Contact our team to request a virtual event platform demo to see how 6Connex can assist today.
