Every organization today needs a virtual-meeting strategy. The challenges include keeping up with the growing number of suppliers; finding technologies with the right functionality, support, and price; and knowing which partners will be around for the long haul.
Here are seven news items to help keep you up to date on the fast-moving virtual events marketplace.
Zoom launched its Zoom Events platform this summer and is now beefing it up with new tools for more complex meetings. An option called Zoom Conference is coming this fall, able to run 13 concurrent sessions and host events up to five days long. There will be new ways to showcase sponsors and brand the platform, as well as a new itinerary builder for attendees and the ability to stream sessions into the conference lobby.
Tech-services and virtual-event provider Intrado has rebranded as Notified. The company has three digital product lines: Event Cloud, PR Cloud for public relations professionals, and IR Cloud for investor communications. The company expanded its Event Cloud capabilities this summer with the acquisition of Hubb, a platform for managing virtual, hybrid, and on-site meetings.
October 5 was the release date for Swoogo Analytics, a new tool from the event management software platform that allows marketers to track attendees’ in-event activities. Planners can now see in real time the specific content attendees are interacting with. This year, Swoogo ranked 1,639 on the annual Inc. 5000 list that features the fastest-growing privately held companies in the U.S.
Investment continues to flow into the virtual-event space. While Hopin remains a clear leader in raising funds ($850 million in two investment rounds earlier this year), recent developments confirm a growing market for virtual-event services:
• Hubilo, a virtual-events platform, just announced that it has raised $125 million in Series B funding. In the past year, the company has also secured a seed round of $4.5 million and a Series A round of $23.5 million. The new funds are expected to go towards continued international growth and building out new functionality.
• Virtual-event platform Delegate Connect, based in Melbourne, Australia, raised $10 million in seed capital in September.
• Assembly, a company that creates virtual culinary experiences for remote and hybrid workplaces, announced $1.75 million in seed funding in October.
Bizzabo has launched the Event Experience OS, a “hybrid-first” platform intended to make the event experience more personalized for attendees and easier to promote, manage, and produce for the hosts. This announcement follows Bizzabo’s August partnership with Brightcove to integrate more robust streaming technology into its platform as well as its June acquisition of scheduling tool x.ai.
