I came across an interesting post recently about how Marketo got 10,000 registered visitors to their largest virtual event which being about events obviously sparked my interest and got me writing. 

The blog, written by Dayna Rothman for Software Advice shares their successes and goes on to write very specific and detailed recommendations about succeeding in your own virtual event - whether organising or participating in one.

In my opinion, virtual events are still pretty much in their infancy and in Europe people tend to regard webinars as virtual events - but virtual is so much more than that! In this blog post we'll focus on the how to and side step the debate around what a virtual event is, for now at least.

How to promote your virtual event (marketo's style)

• Start by alerting people to the virtual event via email several weeks before it kicks off
• Send periodic follow-up emails as reminders
• For last year’s virtual event, they sent out a series of emails to different segments within their database:
  ...Three email invites sent starting two weeks prior to the event
  ...Invites sent to event sponsors
  ...Two email reminders sent: one the day before and the second an hour prior
• Create a social media promotion plan. Marketo's began three weeks prior to the event, consisting of:
  ...One Tweet per day
  ...Two posts a week on Facebook and Google
  ...One post and one Tweet the day before the event
• Post event: Use any content or presentations from the event and repurpose it to engage with those that subscribed but didn't attend. In Marketo's case they created a 124 page eBook called “The Definitive Guide to Event Marketing,” which covers the entire process of planning, executing and measuring the results of both live and online events.
  If you don't want to read the whole eBook we have summarised the best bits for you. 

Here are the impressive results from their virtual event:

• 10,155 registrants
• 3,126 attendees
• 6,627 documents viewed
• 6,303 webcasts watched
• 1,800 new names added to our database
• Approximately 2,000 tweets during the event
• 25 press releases from partners around the Web

In this case it was Marketo's own organised virtual event. In my view the success of this event was generated by a combined effort between organiser and the booth sponsors.

Which brings me to the point that if you are sponsoring a booth at an event you need to make the most of it by promoting your participation through your own database too. Yes you are paying the organiser to deliver the visitors but ultimately if you don't promote your presence in these events too, your competitors probably will and they'll gain the upper hand. So organisers and participants need work together to make it a success.