When Planview, an independent portfolio management solutions provider, polled customers and found that the regular attendance of about 200 at its annual customer conference would drop significantly due to tight travel budgets, organizers decided to hold the company’s first-ever virtual conference last October. Because the company offered an experience that was as rich as its physical counterpart — with drastically less-expensive registration fees — the virtual event’s attendance doubled to more than 400 attendees compared with the previous year’s physical meeting.

“We didn’t want a regular virtual meeting, which is usually one day and has none of the flavor of a live event,” says Kimberly Stone, Planview’s Manager of Web and Creative Services. “We really wanted to create a virtual version of the physical event, so we looked at every component of the physical event and figured out what would be the virtual equivalent.”

The virtual meeting was three days long, just like the traditional live event. And every registrant was mailed a welcome kit that included an event T-shirt, an event guide, coasters, pens, a notebook, “the fun stuff you would get if you went to a live event,” Stone says.

The similarities didn’t stop there. Planview promoted group registration, and any group that registered 15 or more attendees received a special package that included a catered breakfast or lunch to share as they participated in online sessions. The package even came with signage to place on the door of the conference room during the meeting to make it feel more like a live session.

Planview chose Unisfair as its virtual event vendor because many features inherent in the Unisfair system helped re-create a physical event online. For instance, the system includes one lounge for general networking, where all attendees can interact. But it also includes another lounge specific to individual sessions, which “gave attendees some access to presenters, just as they would have at a physical event,” Stone says.

When it came to education, Planview organizers offered a combination of the benefits of both virtual and live events. For instance, the three keynote addresses were live and played only one time, to re-create the once-in-a-lifetime spirit of a physical event. But the breakout sessions were offered on demand, so that attendees could attend as many as they wanted.

“When you’re at an event, you have to pick and choose which breakouts to attend,” Stone says. “But because it was virtual, attendees didn’t have to choose; we made all the breakouts available through the end of the year.”

Some of the most popular sessions at Planview’s live event are “Meet the Expert” sessions, which are private one-on-ones with an industry expert. For the virtual event, Planview offered 250 of these sessions via phone and Live Meeting. To encourage participation from European customers, Meet the Expert sessions started at 3 a.m. on one morning of the three-day event. Roundtable discussion groups, another popular offering at the physical meeting, were also conducted by phone using Horizons Interactive and limited to 50 participants.

Stone attributes the attendance increase to the fact that travel costs were eliminated and lower registration fees allowed companies to send more delegates for the money. While the virtual customer conference was successful, organizers haven’t decided on a strategy for next year’s event. “Everyone really loved the virtual event, but nothing replaces face to face,” Stone says. “People said things like, ‘The event was great, but we miss having a drink with you.’We may do a physical/virtual hybrid next year. I can see the possibility of extending the physical event with more virtual offerings.”

Planview’s Strategy

GOAL: To hold a successful annual customer conference even though a large number of regular attendees said they wouldn’t have the budget to attend in 2009.

STRATEGY: Develop a virtual event that would emulate the physical event as closely as possible.

RESULTS: With lower fees and no travel, along with the rich content and experience of the live conference, Planview’s virtual customer conference attracted double the attendance of its previous physical event.