Best Practices: Adding Digital Components to Your Event

Hey Virtual Viking, time to learn best practices!

By using the Event.Gives Digital Event Experience tools, you can provide an all-in-one experience where your attendees can interact and stay engaged with your event no matter if they are in the ballroom, in their home, or across the globe!

From the manager portal, you can stream live videos, push pre-recorded content, or integrate your Zoom meeting with our giving overlays. Your in-person and remote audience can bid and donate all in one place while your auctioneer provides real-time recognition throughout the course of your event. 

Now, it's easier than ever to capture your in-person bids and donations within the manager portal!

The person producing your event (if you are not hiring a production expert) should schedule a call with a member of the Event.Gives team 2+ weeks before the event, to allow two weeks of experimentation and/or questions before the event.

Tickets

• • Create two different tickets; one for in-person guests and one for virtual guests.
    • This will help you track how many of each guest were able to attend your event.
    • We advise including "In-Person" or "Attending Virtually/Online" verbiage within the ticket titles. 
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  • Using Live Access tickets will ensure that only live access ticket holders will be able to view your event stream.
    • If this option sounds right for your event, check out this video for more information.
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  • Explain the difference between the ticket types within your event description, ticket description, as well as in any outside marketing you may release regarding ticket sales.
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  • You can add options to each individual ticket in order to obtain more information from your attendees upon purchase.
    • • For example, if you are providing dinner to the in-person guests, you could add a ticket option to your in-person ticket asking about their dinner preference; for your virtual guests, you could ask them to provide where they will be joining from.

Items and Donations

• • Silent Auction Items
    • Both in-person and virtual guests can bid on their devices at event.gives/YOURKEYWORD/items. 
    • Be sure to include instructions to accommodate both types of guests when writing your "Pick Up Message." For example, "Pick up your winning items at the table by the door or drop by [PLACE] at [TIME]."
    • If an item needs to be shipped to a virtual attendee, you will need to add a shipping cost to your attendees' carts after your items are closed. You can easily do this by following these instructions for adding shipping costs to a closed item.
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  • Live Auction Items and Donations
    • Virtual attendees are able to bid, donate, and participate in the chat box from their devices. 
    • In-person attendees are able to interact with the event to bid/donate by using their bid paddles OR mobile devices.
    • You will want to advise attendees using their mobile devices at the event to click the button to hide the video. All bidding/donating buttons will appear, as well as the chat field if you have that toggled on. 
    • Alternatively, you can assign your own paddle numbers in order to easily create bid paddles for each attendee. 
    • To keep the bidding/donating portions of your event moving smoothly during an event using paddle numbers, we have designed the "Floor Bid" feature for live auction items and "Floor Donation" feature for the donation portion of your event.
    • These features works in conjunction with a floor spotter who will record the bid number and bid amount. All the volunteer needs to do is click a button on the computer that alerts the system that a bid or donation was made.
    • The information the spotter provides can be entered into the system after the live auction/donation portion of your event has concluded. Please click to see more detailed information about accepting Floor Bids and Floor Donations during your event. 

Timing

• • When hosting in-person and virtual guests, it is important to have a clear start time and stick to it.
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  • The host or emcee of the event should keep the event on schedule. 
    • If there are breaks or segments for in-person guests only, that is a great time to play a prerecorded video for your online guests.

Digital Display 

• • We always suggest hopping on a call with a Customer Success Specialist to setup templates and learn how to best utilize the display. If you are unable to do so, check out our article on our two most recommended Displays.
    • Schedule a call with the Customer Success Specialist here!
  • The Digital Display is a free, optional display feature outside of our virtual live streaming capability.
  • Turn off the ability to edit carts, within the 'Advanced Settings' tab, prior to showing your Display. This will prevent people from removing pledges or unpaid items from their cart while the Display is being presented in room.
  • The Digital Display feature allows you to choose specific event information to appear on a screen during your event. For example: You can have incoming donation rotate, spotlight donors as they donate, and even have a total raised displayed!
  • For information on how to set up a Digital Display, check out this article.

General Tips

• • Do not have guests join the Wi-Fi network you are using. Instead, connect the device you are streaming from, to a secured wifi network to ensure bandwidth. 
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  • Be sure to print your ticket holder reports ahead of time, just in case you need to refer to them during your event. For example: Let's just say, worst case scenario, your event location site loses power and your checkin device is out of battery, the Ticket Holder report is a good back up! Preparation for the worst possible scenarios is a key component to a successful event. 

Continue to the next lesson to learn about producing your live event!