About the event
Created by Retail Week, Retail Week Live, Be Inspired and World Retail Congress – all part of Ascential, the five-day free virtual event featured over 30+ hours of free content that in turn connected brands and retailers from all key markets of the world.
Brief
Long-standing client Ascential commissioned Showcase to bring this five-day important retail industry event to life virtually during the pandemic.
Following the successful delivery of virtual ‘Retail Connected’ in September 2020, Showcase was tasked with creating a bespoke platform for this five-day virtual event as well as providing custom event analytics.
The Showcase development team was also tasked with project management, technical and server support during the five days the event took place.
Solution
The event was hosted through a bespoke model of Showcase’s virtual event platform Event@, which was developed to suit the requirements of the event. The platform included online registration, that was linked to the client’s own CRM system, live stream, extensive agenda and speakers’ information, live Q&A, live chat as well as other bespoke features.
Showcase’s newly developed EVENTalytics software was integrated into the platform to deliver ‘real-time’ invaluable insights into attendance and viewing stats. This tracked the attendees’ movements, what they were watching and for how long, as well as giving vital information about the delegates themselves, such as geographical location and job role.
The Showcase team was on-site providing support during the event, ensuring on-demand content went live, server performance was stable and that everything ran smoothly.
Delivery
Much like a ‘live event’, Showcase were also on hand, in the client offices from which the event was streamed, throughout the event to ensure it ran smoothly, managing server traffic and publishing on-demand content once the live stream had finished.
The feedback was extremely positive particularly in regards to EVENTalytics.
“It allows us to monetise our events, being able to provide our sponsors with the lead generations from the audience who have watched their sessions It further allows to measure attendance and determine if the event has returned a full ROI, which is incredibly valuable information required when strategically planning for future virtual events.” Natalie Wilkins, Director of Operations