What would you do with an extra day? Here at Goldcast, we're all about maximizing every moment—which is why we were thrilled when we learned that the team over at ActiveCampaign was thinking about doing the absolute most on Leap Day this year!

Last November, a comment made at an offsite event led Jeffrey K. Rohrs (“Jeff”), ActiveCampaign's VP of Brand Marketing, to come up with a wild idea: What if we could "own" Leap Day (the same way that retail owns Black Friday) and use that extra day to help people reclaim their own time?

As a company that specializes in marketing automation, which Jeff describes as a "printing press of time," the idea had weight. He started validating his idea and looking for vendors, he found himself blown away by the Goldcast platform, and the rest is record-breaking history.

Read on to learn:

• Why a 29-hour marathon?
• Validating the idea and partnering with Goldcast
• Planning a 29-hour event in just two months
• The big (Leap) day
• Lessons learned from this revolutionary event
• What the success of Leap Day Extravaganza! means for virtual events

PS: Sign up for the full 29 hours of on-demand content here!

If you're wondering why ActiveCampaign went with 29 hours, the answer is simple: it caught your attention. Twenty-nine hours of content on the 29th also underscored the event’s #MakeMoreTime theme. And who doesn’t need more time?

"Leap Day is a quadrennial reminder that if we really put our minds to it, we can control time," Jeff explains. "After all, we create an entire 24 hours out of thin air every four years just to make our calendars work right."

This led the ActiveCampaign team to thinking. What if they used Leap Day to help folks around the world #makemoretime through the better use of technology, strategy, all while bringing together like-minded companies, speakers, and attendees?

ActiveCampaign wanted to demonstrate the power of time and efficiency on Leap Day, and what better way than to start at 8AM AEDT (in Sydney, Australia) and end at 5PM PST in Los Angeles–a global Leap Day comprised of 29 hours.

Of course we now know that the Extravaganza was a great idea, but first ActiveCampaign needed to validate his idea. Because it was already the holiday season, there were barely two months left before the event would take place. Jeff began reaching out to industry friends to find out if the idea resonated. Many people, some of whom became speakers for the event, loved the idea.

From there, Jeff started vendor research. He knew that it made most sense to record the events, due to the sheer volume of content that would be involved with 29 hours of programming. He imagined that people would be able to use the live chat to engage with each other and also access the content on-demand afterward.

What platform could meet those needs? Researching late one weekend in December, he found his answer: Goldcast. And best of all, he didn’t need to wait for a salesperson to call as Goldcast’s on-demand demos of key features helped Jeff answer his most pressing questions immediately.

From there, Jeff connected with Goldcast's Head of Marketing and Growth, Kelly Cheng, and learned that Goldcast was hoping for 2024 to be its own year of efficiency, with the advent of Content Lab and the rise of marketers consistently being asked to do more with less.

The partnership seemed natural at that point, and ActiveCampaign selected Goldcast as the Leap Day Extravaganza platform!

"Goldcast, bar none, offered the best on-demand walk-through of their platform via step-by-step videos and resources that answered nearly every question we had. We reached out and within a couple of weeks, we were customers." - Jeffrey Rohrs, VP of Brand Marketing at ActiveCampaign

Now it was time to move quickly. The Goldcast contract was signed at the end of January, and the registration page was launched just two days later. With February 29 just weeks away, there was no time to waste.

The goals of the event were three-fold:

1. Provide attendees with a wealth of practical insights that would help them grow their businesses efficiently
2. Inspire all involved to better leverage technology, strategy, and process to make more time for the things most important to them, whether that's business, family, friends, travel, or something else
3. Drive opportunities and greater brand awareness for our speakers and sponsors as their efforts made everything possible

There were, as you might expect, challenges along the way. Due to the sheer scope of the event, capacity issues popped up—both for the ActiveCampaign team and for sponsors. With an event this big, flexibility is key. Everyone kept pushing ahead, and in the end, 95% of the content was in by the initial deadline and all of it was in by Leap Day! 🎉

"We managed the entire 29-hour event on Goldcast, and it was easy. For an event of this scope, that was a necessity for a team like ours that has other priorities." - Jeffrey Rohrs, VP of Brand Marketing at ActiveCampaign

Mid-day, Jeff decided to try his hand at Content Lab. He liked what he came up with so much that he shared it on LinkedIn to promote the event…during the event:

As for favorite sessions, Jeff points out that with 100+ options, it's nearly impossible to choose. As you might have guessed from the above post, Jay Baer's keynote, "Grow your Business by Exceeding Customer's Need for Speed" and Ann Handley’s “Ways to Write Faster” were top choices, as was Andy Eninger's presentation about building trust in order to save time.

But there were also so many special moments woven in throughout the day, whether it was musician Johann Berby sharing what music can teach us about efficiency or Arthur Butler reminding everyone that just because you're older doesn't mean it's too late to do something big.

Here's a sneak peek of Paul Roetzer, who presented on AI and efficiency, talking with Jeff:

If you're looking to check out the top sessions, here they are, ranked by minutes watched:

• "What AI Can Currently Automate in Ecommerce"
• "HOUR #18: #MakeMoreTime for Knowledge"
• "SEO Time: Optimizing Content Efforts for Maximum Impact"
• "Mastering Time: Goldcast's Secret Productivity Weapon"
• "The Benefits of Hiring a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer"

In the end, almost 5200 people registered for the event, with 1370 attending live to represent 1154 total companies. Folks tuned in from the U.S., Australia, Great Britain, Brazil, Canada, and 131 other countries. All events were offered in English with standard translations available.

ActiveCampaign sent out a survey after the event and received a positive NPS score; the overwhelming majority of attendees said they would attend growth-related sessions in the future, and many shared that they'd discovered tips to save time in their own lives. People loved the diversity of voice, geography, age, race, and gender.

If you're thinking about pulling off a groundbreaking event yourself (and we hope you are), here are two major tips, based on what Jeff learned from the Leap Day Extravaganza!

First, partner for success.

An event of this scope doesn’t come together without partnership–both within and outside your organization. ActiveCampaign is blessed with a great variety of customers and partners who raised their hands to bring the event to life, lending their time, expertise, and audiences to drive its success. Done right, large events are a “rising tide that lifts all boats,” and that’s accomplished through building, nurturing, and maintaining great relationships with customers and partners.

Second, success begins with email.

The number one driver of registrations for The ActiveCampaign Leap Day Extravaganza! were the promotional emails sent by ActiveCampaign, its sponsor partners, and speakers to their respective email subscribers. Social media and advertising were a distant second and third. Event success in an era of unlimited choice means cutting through the clutter to create awareness, consideration, and action. Email continues to do that the best.

Third, help your sponsors promote the event to their communities, email subscribers, and social media followers. ActiveCampaign provided email copy, social media graphics, and other content to help sponsors amplify the event to their audiences. If anything, the team wishes they would have done more of this–especially helping sponsors produce more dedicated email promotions to their subscribers. Overall, these channels performed the best to drive Leap Day registrations:

1. Email
2. Partner communities
3. Speakers and their social networks
4. Employees and their social networks
5. Sponsors and their social networks
6. Sales conversations
7. Product login pages
8. Sponsor websites and blogs

You need to adopt a holistic approach so that all of your sponsors are using all of their touchpoints to activate audiences. This can be challenging because sponsors come on with different levels of commitment, so it's worth having those convos up front to let people know what the expectations are and make sure you're maximizing reach for your event.

Finally, remember that an event isn't over when it's over. An event is a heavy lift, and it can be tempting to breathe a sigh of relief afterward and shut the event material away in a drawer, never to be seen again.

However, there's no reason to let your hard-earned work go to waste now! After the event concludes, it's time to think about on-demand capabilities so that your content lives on for people who want to view it.

You should also use a tool like Content Lab to repurpose as much content as possible and push it out across channels to continue engaging with people. Especially for an event like this, with so much valuable info, repurposing it after ensures that the key messages stick around and reach people who aren't able to attend.

"We were excited that Content Lab would enable us to generate even more value from the event by 'atomizing' the content for consumption via social and video platforms." - Jeffrey Rohrs, VP of Brand Marketing at ActiveCampaign

We think the success and warm reception of this event is proof that big ideas are more than possible, even under tight deadlines and budget constraints.

When you've got a creative idea that you want to explore, follow ActiveCampaign’s lead to validate it among peers or industry colleagues before finding the right people and companies for partnership.

And if virtual programming will be a part of your next event, consider Goldcast as your trusted partner. If we can make 29 hours of nonstop sessions go off without one error, we bet we can pull off whatever you're cooking up, too!

To learn more about Goldcast, sign up for a demo here. You can also tinker around with Content Lab for a free, two-week trial period to learn more about how it can simplify content repurposing and help you get maximum ROI from your event content.

To learn more about ActiveCampaign and try their intelligent marketing automation platform free for 14 days, visit www.activecampaign.com. Finally, don't forget to check out any of the 100+ sessions from The ActiveCampaign Leap Day Extravaganza! on-demand now and learn how to #MakeMoreTime today!