Success Story
How XING Events uses Virtual Reality to attract visitors and strengthen customer relations
XING Events is a platform that provides event organizers with a professional event management software and a large-scale business network. Organizers find valuable tools and opportunities that help them every step along the way: prior to the event, they benefit from a large network of possible participants and can sell tickets via XING Events’ professional ticket shop. During the event, organizers are supported with individual solutions for all imaginable admission scenarios. After the event, the respective XING groups offer exclusive opportunities for customer relationship and community management.
How Virtual Reality generates real business-value for events
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the event industry upside down – even in the long term. All of a sudden, organizers and companies are faced with new challenges that heavily influence the way they carry out and make use of events. The abrupt necessity of social distancing and shutdowns have completely prevented physical events from happening, forcing event organizers to completely shift to online events for quite some time. And it is no longer a question of whether online events can prevail and when we will return to business-as-usual. They are already becoming an integral part of our everyday lives and will continue to have an impact on the event industry as a whole.
Now more than ever, event organizers and exhibitors face the question of how to stand out from the crowd when their toolset is suddenly limited to a strictly virtual presence, how to maintain close relationships with customers and event participants and how to generate leads. After all, the opportunity to exchange ideas with other industry representatives, make new contacts or conduct sales talks is the most important part of events for many attendees. A powerful tool to create that closeness is immersive technology like Virtual Reality. From virtual product presentations and interactive showrooms to integrated live streams in VR that allow direct interaction between exhibitors and participants – Virtual Reality offers a multitude of innovative use cases that captivate the audience and in turn creates better event results for everyone.
Benefit of Virtual Reality for events:
- Interactivity of VR applications makes real interaction between organizers, companies and attendees possible, even from far away
- Using immersive and modern technology sets exhibitors and companies apart from their competitors
- Events, which thrive on entertainment and wow-effects, especially benefit from the high potential for excitement of immersive technologies
- Virtual Reality solutions can be used even after events are over, making the effort for creation worthwhile several times over
By allowing customers to dive into virtual surroundings and to experience events and exhibitors from up close, Virtual Reality helps events of all kinds to make real interactions possible even beyond pure online events. In turn, this drives companies’ sales efforts, their connection within the industry and customer loyalty. That is why XING Events went on to implement Virtual Reality experiences into their trade show VExCon 2020 for the first time.
Bringing visitors into the center of the action with Virtual Reality
Working in close collaboration with VRdirect, XING Events created a series of Virtual Reality solutions to elevate the user experience for digital events. Under the motto “Interactivity 2.0”, XING Events’ own virtual trade show VExCon 2020 focused entirely on the use of innovative means of getting close to participants in times of distance, including virtual ones. With video material of presenters shot in front of a green screen, VRdirect used 3D models of the trade fair to create a lifelike trade fair experience in a virtual environment. This way, VExCon visitors were able to digitally experience the trade show from close up. Presenters were able to directly talk to participants, point at the different virtually created locations of the event and thus closely imitate the feeling of real human interaction. Antje Schwuchow, Marketing & Event Manager at XING Events, stresses how the collaboration with VRdirect really helped them bring their vision to life in only a short amount of time:
“Incorporating Virtual Reality into our trade show experience was a first-timer for us. That’s why it was especially great to find a reliable and professional partner in VRdirect who have been supporting us every step along the way. The timeframe for development was really short, yet they managed to create the VR experiences exactly like we wanted.”
Antje Schwuchow
Marketing & Event Manager, XING Events
As a result, VExCon2020’s digital trade show grounds were complemented by three distinct VR experiences that allowed visitors to get up close with the organizers: a greeting scenario, where visitors were welcomed to the digital fairground and introduced to the different locations of the event, a kick-off scenario, where the possibilities of virtual networking during VExCon 2020 were explained as well as an exclusive greeting by Timm Schröder, XING Event’s Director of Sales. These Virtual Reality experiences fit seamlessly into the whole digital event, significantly increasing the amount of closeness between organisers and visitors as well as partners while also greatly complementing this year’s motto: “Interactivity 2.0”. And event organizers and companies can only go farther from here. With this approach, they are able to create their own monetizable products that they can offer to their customers.
Countless use cases for all kinds of events
Whether online or offline, virtual reality provides organizers and exhibitors alike with the tools to inspire visitors and customers with interactive content. The range of possible applications is huge. The great strength of VR is to bring events to life virtually. Exhibitors can break out of the confinement of their booth and offer their visitors a larger, more expansive exhibition space, which they can enrich with interactive content. With VR, organizers can also reach a global audience that cannot be present in person and invite them virtually to the event site.
Even with little effort, high-quality VR experiences can be developed that can enhance events of all kinds. Therefore it is irrelevant what kind of event it is – the technology is usable for all purposes and can be used to complement purely physical events as well as enhance new and existing digital online events within a very short time frame. There are many use cases for virtual reality in the context of events that offer the potential to create new, innovative and monetizable products, for example:
Virtual Reality Showrooms containting:
- An interactive product presentation including info texts and multimedia content
- A virtual tour of company premises
- A company presentation with an integrated live stream
- and much more
Not only these use cases but basically every experience created in Virtual Reality can furthermore be seamlessly integrated into existing content, even beyond the boundaries of pure online events. Virtual Reality experiences with integrated links give organizers and companies the opportunity to interact with their audience. Virtual product presentations can be used effortlessly in physical trade fair booths, once offline events are possible again. And even after an event is over, Virtual Reality solutions can be made available to customers via web browser or mobile to be constantly updated.
Successfully elevating digital events with Virtual Reality
For XING Events, VExCon 2020 was a huge success – with more than 1000 visitors, the event experienced an increase in visitor numbers of 25% compared to 2019 – and received very positive feedback from all participants. The digital event incorporated Virtual Reality for the first time and was very satisfied with the results. Calling the creation process a “fun experience and a professional collaboration on eye-level”, Verena Gladiator, XING Event’s Senior Senior Business Development Manager – Partnerships, states that the company plans to make further use of the technology in the future. With the VRdirect platform, the company as well as event organizers and exhibitors are able to not only develop interactive VR experiences for their respective trade fair efforts, but also for a large number of use cases. The platform allows users to create and publish their applications to all common devices like VR headsets, web browsers and mobile devices via the official VRdirect app.
Create your own booth easily and quickly with VRdirect
Little effort required, no development skills needed, ready to use today – with VRdirect, you can easily create your own virtual booth that can be integrated to all websites and digital conference environments. The package allows you to fill a predesigned digital booth with your own data and marketing materials as well as customize the backgrounds and surroundings to your needs. VRdirect Virtual Reality Showroom is now available as an all-round package. Contact us and get started today!
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