From 70% to 95% Satisfaction: How Carers UK Engages Unpaid Carers with Hybrid & Virtual Events | Epic Events by vFairs | Sarah Kill

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:19:08 Unknown Sarah, can you deduce yourself, your role within the company and a bit about your organization? Yeah. So I'm Sarah. I'm the events and marketing manager at Kairos UK who are the national charity for unpaid carers.

So an unpaid carer we classify as someone providing help and support to a neighbor, a loved one, a friend or family member and 00:00:19:10 - 00:00:41:07 Unknown The census data estimates there are about 5.8 million unpaid carers in the UK, but our data suggests there's up to 11 million unpaid carers and the unpaid carers also say the economy billions of billions of pounds per year. So it's roughly equivalent to another NHS. And my role is to run our event.

So we do both hybrid virtual and in-person events. 00:00:41:09 - 00:01:07:06 Unknown That's anything from like our large scale conferences for our corporate partners, members all the way through to awards dinners, networking receptions and parliamentary launch reports. And is it for a nonprofit company or a nonprofit nonprofit? You already answered, but just, so you run both in-person events and virtual events and hybrid events lectures.

So if you watch the breakdown, like, are most of them are in-person or virtual? 00:01:07:08 - 00:01:36:01 Unknown I'd say the breakdown is about 80, 70 to 80% in-person, 10 to 15%, virtual and the about 5% hybrid. And what are your main goals for this event? What is the end goal that you're trying to achieve the main KPI.

So the main KPI for this event is really to retain our audience because, previously we've had issues with audience retention and people actually being able to access the platform. 00:01:36:03 - 00:01:54:15 Unknown And what challenges were you facing before using reverse? Before using this, in fact, what prompted me to switch to this as was we had an event where our sponsor and they had a speaking slot at the event, and they were unable to join the event on the day. And no matter how many phone calls we did to the tech provider, I just didn't put on hold.

00:01:54:15 - 00:02:31:22 Unknown They didn't have an answer. And their speaking slot came and went by the time that they were able to get in. So it was a huge issue for us. What specific features or capabilities are most important to you when you're using a platform like reverse?

What's hugely important is the reporting system afterwards, because I'm being a nonprofit, most of our events are sponsored, so we have to be able to pull that key data from the platform to be able to show the, delegate experience where they clicked, when they clicked, what they downloaded, how many interactions they had with an exhibitor booth, and what made what made VFL stand out compared 00:02:31:22 - 00:02:51:20 Unknown to other platforms you considered when trying to make a search?

It's really the immersive feature that stood out to us that it was as close as being to a, live conference as you can get online. In fact, we had feedback from our delegates going, it'd be really amazing if we had the opportunity to, like, customize one of the little avatars so we could see ourselves walking around. 00:02:52:02 - 00:03:15:00 Unknown So that really stood out. Not both internally, but also externally to our delegates.

And how was your onboarding or setup experience? Oh, it was seamless right from the get go. I was lucky off to work with Katy on a sales perspective. And then I felt that with various different, support managers.

And, I mean, she even got on a call with, a few of our directors answered all our difficult questions. 00:03:15:02 - 00:03:35:06 Unknown The response time is, if not immediate, then, you know, you get a response within a few hours. You know, that you're not going to be having to chase for a response. It's like I'm a very small team.

It's literally me running the events, and I don't have time on event days to go and chase for answers. So it's like knowing that there's someone there in the background who values your event and is like a partner, not just a vendor. 00:03:35:08 - 00:04:01:22 Unknown Like I'd emailed on an event day going, this person's literally just signed up to the event. Can we get them on within like five minutes?

I've had a response. And then then accessing the platform. Amazing. And what aspects of the VFX plot platform did your team and attendees love the most?

Well, as I said, it was the, virtual nature of it, but also it was the, poster haul because that was, that was a huge thing that we did for the in-person conference that that we then transitioned online. 00:04:02:04 - 00:04:23:16 Unknown And though I haven't seen anyone else be able to replicate getting those posters online so we can share the best practice of our partners and after using VFX, what are some of the results or outcome outcomes have you achieved so far? So we've had amazing feedback, from our delegate.

So we've gone from about 6,070% positive feedback to 95% positive feedback from, our delegates. 00:04:23:19 - 00:04:43:12 Unknown We've retained, sponsor year upon year for the event. We've also had a lot more interest and higher attendance rates year on year. Perfect.

And, like, what kind of numbers do you report to your stakeholders, to your managers and so forth, because then we all have managers. We all have to report to our report to them on our performance. 00:04:43:14 - 00:05:03:02 Unknown What are some of those numbers that VFX has been able to provide you? So it's been delegate log in the amount of time spent within the virtual platform, the clicks on different areas.

So it's really been like the delegate experience, through the platform and then the downloads, from the vendor's booth, booth where we've provided resources. 00:05:03:02 - 00:05:21:09 Unknown How many swag bags at the end has been downloaded, and then also how many posters have been viewed. Perfect. Would you recommend refers to any other organizations and why?

Absolutely. It's been such a seamless experience. Dealing with everyone at VF, as has been. You know, I've just been amazed at, like, the response level and the actual care.

00:05:21:10 - 00:05:41:12 Unknown It's like you're not just another number and you're not just a sales figure to them. They actually care about you as an event manager and about an organization. What's next for your events, and how do you see VFX fitting into your long term event strategy? Well, we're actually transitioning our virtual event, into it and then back to in-person, and we're combining it with another conference.

00:05:41:16 - 00:05:50:06 Unknown So we're looking at the way that we can utilize the event app and the batch printing. Thank you, Sarah, so much for sharing your feedback. Thank you. Thank you.