Zoom’s Debjani Gupta decodes the new ground rules for event management

A virtual event management solution built for marketers, Zoom Events allows up to 50,000 view-only attendees and 100+ interactive panelists. Zoom Events’ built-in tools promote networking and enable real-time feedback, so attendees can enjoy the same benefits of in-person events while at home. By using a variety of custom branding features, marketers can extend their brand reach beyond the walls of a conference center to maximise the ROI of their online experience.

In an exclusive interview with Adgully, Debjani Gupta, Country Marketing Leader for India, Zoom Video Communications, Inc., delves into the remarkable journey of Zoom Events and the ingenious marketing strategies that have shaped its recent years. Notably, Zoom has undergone a significant transformation during the pandemic, and Gupta sheds light on the brand’s evolution in the post-pandemic landscape, while also highlighting some pivotal milestones.

How have virtual and hybrid events transformed event marketing strategies in recent years?

Virtual events not only have become more common, but are now a critical part of marketing tools to reach and engage more people. Virtual and hybrid events have become a vital part of marketing strategies in recent years, as event marketers embraced the simplicity, expanded reach, and cost-savings that virtual events provide. With opportunities to extend brand reach, decrease operating costs, and engage audiences with inclusive and sustainable experiences, there’s never been a better time to host a virtual event and elevate marketing effectiveness.

A study from Morning Consult found that 91% of event marketers believe hybrid events play an important role in future event planning with 89% of event marketers agreeing that hybrid events are important to organisations. The study, commissioned by Zoom, surveyed more than 150 event marketers and planners from various organisations to collect insight into the current and future state of hybrid events. As the survey reflects, hybrid events are here to stay and play a valuable role in marketing strategies. Event marketing professionals face unique challenges with hybrid events and aim to create engaging, meaningful experiences that connect both audiences. To truly achieve these results, marketers need to understand the limitations of older video conferencing solutions and adopt a modern platform that is purpose-built for robust virtual and hybrid experiences. Zoom solutions help take the complexity out of hosting high-quality, engaging virtual events and webinars, so marketers can focus on delivering a valuable attendee experience.

How has Zoom Events reimagined virtual experiences compared to other platforms?

Zoom understands what customers need for modern collaboration for anyone, anywhere. We also look to our customers for their feedback and insights to determine what the features they want to see are. With Zoom, event planners do not need to settle for one-size-fits-all. Instead, they can choose from three flexible event solutions designed to fit unique event needs. The Zoom Events portfolio plans, supports, and produces some of the best virtual, live, and hybrid events on Zoom and helps in meeting organizers’ varying needs, without sacrificing any desired features. It is currently includes:

• Zoom Sessions, our latest event management solution that delivers much-needed flexibility and expanded features for single-session events.
• Zoom Events, an all-in-one virtual event platform for hosting multi-day, multi-track virtual and hybrid events supporting up to 50,000 attendees.
• Zoom Webinars, ideal for large, one-to-many broadcasts featuring simple setup and join. It supports 500-100,000 participants.

Zoom also offers Event Services to help plan, support, and produce high-end virtual or hybrid events.

Could you share some highlights or key findings from the Morning Consult Survey commissioned by Zoom?

Zoom commissioned Morning Consult to survey event marketers and planners from various organisations to specifically understand the challenges facing event marketers when it comes to hybrid events, the value of hybrid events to a modern marketing strategy and what event marketers need to successfully deliver hybrid events over the long term. Some key takeaways include:

• Hybrid events will continue to play a pivotal role for event marketers in the future, with most event marketers agreeing that “hybrid events are the future of event planning/management.”
• Event marketers are challenged with engaging dual audiences and providing equitable, productive, and meaningful experiences for remote attendees.
• Hybrid events offer event marketers a variety of benefits that include expanding their reach to a larger audience, lower costs, and greater access to data than an in-person or virtual event alone.
• Event marketers need a collective understanding of what defines hybrid event success and the technology and services that will generate their intended results.

As the survey reflects, hybrid events are here to stay and play a valuable role in marketing strategies. To truly achieve these results, marketers need to understand the limitations of older video conferencing solutions and adopt a modern platform that is purpose-built for robust virtual and hybrid experiences.

How do hybrid events help in reaching a wider audience and expanding event participation?

Hybrid events existed long before the seismic shift to remote life. More than just an alternative to in-person events, hybrid experiences are sustainable, inclusive events that reduce travel expenses and appeal to broader, more diverse audiences. These benefits, combined with advanced data and analytics, make it easy to see why they are an integral part of any modern event marketing strategy. The Morning Consult study cited 54% of those surveyed support that networking is one of the greatest benefits of in-person events, but it’s still possible with virtual and hybrid experiences, and 61% of respondents believe the interaction between virtual and in-person attendees is the greatest benefit of hybrid events (higher than any other benefit). 

One of the biggest benefits of a virtual or hybrid experience is access to the data and analytics marketers may otherwise miss in person. For example, the Zoom Events dashboard enables hosts to generate reports and enjoy enhanced sorting functionality to view, export, and download valuable metrics. Event marketers no longer have to guess ROI and attendee engagement owing to transparent analytics surrounding registrations, booth sponsors, livestream views and duration, content downloads, tickets sold, event sponsors, and more. Hybrid events are changing the way we do business, and the companies that embrace this new event strategy will be better positioned to lead their markets and gain market share.

Could you provide examples of the enhanced production, engagement, and collaboration features that Zoom Events offers?

Zoom Events are designed to be engaging and interactive experiences with an abundance of features that make virtual events memorable. It elevates event production with a robust feature set, session branding, and hybrid-specific tools that enable new opportunities for sponsorship and collaboration. With features such as flexible scheduling options, breakout rooms, comprehensive reporting, interactive chat capabilities, live event support, and more, event organizers can create engaging events designed to immerse their audience in the content. Zoom Events offers high-end production and branding capabilities with features like Session Branding, which let users customise name tags, backgrounds, wallpaper, and registration hubs with company logos and brand assets.

Zoom Events also gives attendees the ability to network with each other, engage event sponsors, exchange contact info, and chat and initiate meetings with other attendees via the interactive event lobby feature. Zoom Events Expo Floor lets attendees interact with sponsors, engage in live conversations, and explore topics-based conversations in a deeper way in Expo Booths. Zoom Events Backstage provides a backstage or “green room” that runs before, during, and after a session, where panellists can enter before the webinar and view and hear the live session, allowing them to prepare, consult, follow the presentation and know when it's their cue to join. Data is also essential for today’s marketing and events teams and at the conclusion of an event, the Zoom Events analytics dashboard is a valuable tool for hosts to review data and see how many connections and one-on-one chats were initiated. Further, this provides additional opportunities to identify any areas for improving networking at future events.

How do these enhanced features of Zoom Events contribute to a more immersive and interactive event experience?

Whether you’re looking to build connections or announce the latest company news, choosing the right technology is crucial to deliver a valuable virtual event experience. We want to encourage event organisers and planners to think about technology and how it can enrich the event experience. While there is a desire to go back to full in-person events in the industry, we believe the right technology can ensure events are more engaging, impactful, diverse and equitable and provide us with the ability to expand our audience and reach more people with our message.

Online events don’t have to be static. Today’s virtual experiences can be high-energy, engaging, and impactful, no matter the size. Zoom Events’ built-in tools promote networking and enable real-time feedback, so attendees can enjoy the same benefits of in-person events while at home. By using a variety of custom branding features, event professionals can extend their brand’s reach beyond the walls of a conference center to maximise the ROI of the online experience.

What is the roadmap or future direction for Zoom Events in terms of innovation and improvements?

Delivering happiness isn’t just a Zoom tagline or how we define our culture. It’s about listening to our customers, understanding their needs, and developing new opportunities to fulfill those needs. Whether you are a seasoned events pro or need a guide to hosting hybrid events, we will continue to keep our customers at the center. The events industry will continue to evolve and Zoom is dedicated to making virtual events as engaging, inclusive, and memorable as possible.

With Zoom Events, organisations can foster a tighter sense of community between attendees and hosts, enabling them to connect, learn from one another, and expand their professional networks. Over the next several months, we’ll continue to add even more features and tools to help attendees be a part of meaningful, engaging and productive interactions within their industry. We aim to ensure that we’re delivering an experience that enables a new kind of productivity – one that brings all the best tools and applications for modern, engaging collaboration into one destination.

How does Zoom plan to address the evolving needs and challenges of event marketers through its platform?

The key thing to understand is that we are in a very modern event landscape with a place for every format of event – hybrid, in-person and virtual. In the current macroeconomic environment, marketers are facing challenges of rising costs of in-person events, including through-the-roof costs of event venues, catering, traveling and logistics, making these events not as cost effective as they used to be. Businesses are also reducing their travel expenses, which ultimately reduces foot traffic in physical events. Another key important challenge today is that event planners need to meet attendees when, where and how they want to meet. As marketers, they do not get to dictate the venue of the event anymore, making flexibility the key to a successful event.

Zoom is building a full collaborative platform that is designed to support limitless connection and modern collaboration through flexible solutions that meet people where they are. Global businesses are always going to need to evaluate the platforms that give them the best value and right solutions and businesses continue to choose Zoom based on the quality of our experience and the ease of use. With a focus on the future, we have refreshed our mission and vision: One platform delivering limitless human connection, including customer experience.

How can event marketers leverage Zoom Events to achieve their goals and enhance their event marketing strategies?

Hybrid events, in-person events, and virtual experiences all have a place in the modern event landscape. Yet not all events need the same capabilities. The one-size-fits-all approach to event management can leave marketers sacrificing features they want or, worse, paying for ones they don’t. With that in mind, we announced Zoom Sessions this year, our new event management solution that delivers much-needed flexibility and expanded features for single-session events. Built to help marketers level-up their Zoom Webinars and Zoom Meetings, Zoom Sessions offers robust production, branding, and analytic tools that help you engage attendees, generate meaningful connections, drive better ROI, and elevate your brand.

Zoom Sessions is designed to give marketing teams more options when hosting single-session events. Using either Zoom Meetings or Zoom Webinars, marketers can track and measure the success of your events with robust analytics and ticketing features, grow their pipeline and generate new leads with marketing automation tools and integrations, engage attendees through interactive features that inspire collaboration and meaningful connections and build brand awareness and adoption with advanced production tools and customisable branding.

What is the post-pandemic market of Zoom and what are the key highlights of it?

Zoom is a full collaborative platform that is designed to support limitless connection and modern collaboration through flexible solutions that meet workers where they are. Our goal at Zoom has always been to make all kinds of connections possible, effective, and meaningful. To this end, our team has built and launched more than 1,500 features and enhancements on the Zoom platform in 2022 alone, advancing the way people connect with each other, their organisation, and their customers—ultimately, opening the doors wide for creativity and collaboration. Zoom Events, for example, leverages the Zoom platform’s inherent reliability and security for large-scale events.  As a globally distributed company, we rely on every part of the Zoom platform to make hybrid work happen and continue to support businesses worldwide on their hybrid work journey as well.

Zoom has been delivering AI innovations for a long time, starting with our transcription services. But the recent acceleration in AI, particularly in generative AI, has allowed us to take our AI capabilities to the next level faster. We are excited to see the industry going through this AI evolution brought by large language models and see the increased benefits we can bring to our users. Announcing our federated approach and collaborations with Anthropic and OpenAI technologies is the next step in Zoom’s evolution. Our goal with this approach is to provide the most value for its customers' diverse needs. Currently, you can find AI-powered innovation across the entire Zoom platform. Some examples include:

• Meetings include virtual backgrounds, audio processing, noise suppression, real-time captions, and translation to power a more immersive and productive experience
• Smart Recording with summaries and highlights that make Meetings content easier to consume and share
• Rooms with Smart Gallery & Intelligent Director, and People Counting and Presenter Tracking
• Workspace Reservation Smart Suggestions

Zoom continues to transform industries by connecting and enabling them to work flexibly and seamlessly in today’s macroeconomic climate, allowing customers to reimagine both their customer and employee experience. Olive Living, a next-gen living community in India, found the perfect solution with Zoom Rooms Virtual Receptionist which is being leveraged at some of their properties to greet guests upon arrival, provide seamless check-in, and receive feedback on their virtual receptionist experience. Zoom helped Shyft, a personalised wellness provider scale 10x by encouraging global users to adopt a healthier lifestyle. Cypeer brings cybersecurity peers around the world to meet, share, learn, and make connections. The company is rolling out their platform with the integration of Zoom Meetings SDK to enable seamless collaboration while bringing together people for live interactions. Skylark Drones has recently integrated Zoom Video SDK with their Drone Software Platform - Drone Mission Ops, bringing forth a new level of connectivity between the skies and the screen. AccioJobs, an edtech startup, is revolutionising the way engineering students learn and upskill by integrating Zoom’s Meeting SDK and Video SDK into their product. Zoom has proven to be a game-changer for AccioJob, enabling the startup to improve both the student experience and its business bottom line.

Each organisation is undergoing an unique digital transformation journey; and what Zoom offers are tailored solutions – such as through our federated approach to AI – that fit these nuanced needs. Businesses are looking to consolidate and streamline amid today’s challenging business landscape. We believe that our customer-first approach and our rapid product innovation is increasingly offering that single pane of glass that businesses and employees want and need.