Ten years ago, running an online event filled many of us with dread. We waded through hours of troubleshooting and glitchy tech just to pull off a basic, one-to-many webinar. And tracking business results from that webinar? Well, it was spreadsheets or bust.

In the past few years, the event platform market has exploded to nearly 250 providers. 🤯

Talk about analysis paralysis. If your events strategy includes both virtual and hybrid events, there’s even more to consider as your contract comes up for renewal.

How do you know whether the platform you’re using is the best fit for your goals?

In this guide, we’ll take a look at Bizzabo, a platform that supports in-person, virtual, and hybrid events — and discuss why we’ve seen event marketers trade it in for Goldcast.

• Increase attendance by 15%
• Access best-in-class production tools
• Drive pipeline faster with seamless integrations

At Goldcast, we’ve onboarded users from all walks of the virtual event life. Here are the top three reasons our customers happily make the switch.

Let’s start at the beginning. Webinars can help you smash your marketing goals almost anywhere in your funnel, from demand gen to customer marketing.

But to see results like increased pipeline and stronger brand loyalty — you’ve got to get folks to actively join your webinars.

Goldcast’s digital event platform is designed with marketing results in mind. While the average webinar has an attendance rate of about 40%, the attendance rate across Goldcast webinars average 51%.

Better attendance comes down to three key features:

• Automated calendar invites: Sometimes registrants just plain forget about your webinar. With Goldcast’s automated registration options, the second someone signs up, it’s on their calendar. They’ll get automatic reminders and notifications. It’s like a digital string tied around their finger.
• Event nurture campaigns: Have you ever RSVP'd to an event only to find yourself wracking your brain for any excuse to get out of it the morning of? It takes energy to attend virtual events. Goldcast’s pre-webinar nurture campaigns give registrants a taste of what’s to come and remind them why they registered in the first place. Bizzabo is notably missing this feature.
• Magic Links: We’ll say it again: It takes energy to attend virtual events. If your registrant has to remember a password to get there? They’re not going. If they have to dig through emails for a link? They’re. Not. Going. Luckily, Goldcast’s Magic Link will get your attendees to your event every time in one click.

Any feature that reduces the barrier to attendance is a sure bet for driving your show rates higher. Whether you go with Goldcast or another virtual event platform, choose one that makes joining your event as seamless as possible.

Goldcast customers are seeing the results of these attendance-boosting tools every day. Prior to switching to Goldcast, Cognism’s webinar attendance rate sat at 33%. After they made the switch, it increased to 50%.

Senior Demand Gen Manager Ashleigh Frank attributes this lift to automated calendar invites, Magic Links, and a smoother attendee experience.

“From start to finish, using Goldcast is way faster than it would’ve been with a competitor,” remarks Ashleigh. “I find the UX really easy — our team can even teach themselves.”

The shift to virtual events upped the ante big-time in terms of experience. Basic webinars with run-of-the-mill engagement tools like a chat box don’t cut it for attendees anymore.

These days, your events absolutely must look and feel professionally produced (because, after all, we’re all professionals here). And that experience starts with high-end video production tools.

We’re talking:

• Overlays and lower-thirds
• Ability to publish attendee chats, questions, and poll results on stage
• Ticker messages to direct attendees to external pages
• Cobranding and sponsor/partner booths
• Attendee breakout rooms

Of course, these are in addition to table-stakes features like virtual backgrounds and backstage “green room” areas. Bizzabo falls short in most of the areas above. For example, users struggle with poll-related delays and the lack of ability to highlight event sponsors.

At the end of the day, all these top-of-the-line production tools boil down to one thing: attendee experience.

Your attendees are sharing their valuable time with you. You owe them an event experience that’s worth every minute. Choose a platform that makes it easy to manage engagement and media to provide the best possible experience for your attendees.

When it comes to flipping that “engaging and exciting” switch, Goldcast outshines legacy platforms by a long shot. Just ask the events team at Gremlin.

Gremlin teaches “chaos engineering” to systems engineers — that is, breaking things on purpose so they can learn how to fix them. The company’s first virtual event on the topic, Failover Conf, launched in 2020.

With Goldcast’s suite of production tools, the team pulled off an event that engaged their tech-savvy audience and generated 1,000 MQLs for Gremlin.

Fast follow up is crucial in the world of sales. If you’re using events to build pipeline, it’s not enough to get an exported attendee report days after the fact.

Whether your goal is converting brand new customers or expanding existing contracts, you absolutely must act quickly when a webinar attendee engages in a meaningful way.

How can you empower your whole crew to act ASAP, from marketing to sales to customer success? Rock-solid integrations. 🔗

Goldcast integrates with all popular martech systems, including Salesforce and Slack. Our audience intent metric and signals feed right into your platform so whoever needs to act, can. Instantly.

Moving the needle on pipeline is about more than attendance info. To squeeze all the ROI out of your events, your sales team needs deep, specific insights on how prospects engaged with the event.

Goldcast users have this one in the bag. With 16 different activity triggers, you can notify the appropriate team member in real-time when an attendee acts on a high-priority CTA — and they’ll have all the context they need to pick right up with a personalized conversation.

Of course, sales enablement isn’t the only thing on your to-do list. Synthesizing all this data must be easy and elegant — you don’t have the time or energy for clunky event dashboards.

Goldcast has you covered with granular, easy-to-read dashboards that give you what you need, whether that’s a 10,000-foot view or a 12-foot view (we see you, analysts 🫡).

For one corporate gifting platform, tracking pipeline created and closed-win business are the two biggest marketing KPIS. But depending on the channel or campaign, it can be challenging to tie things back to a one-to-one basis with revenue.

For every event planned, the event team captures deep data insights using key event platform integrations. The data flows seamlessly into their sales tech so AEs know exactly who to follow up with, and what to say.

The result? The team has transformed events into their second-highest pipeline-creating channel behind inbound. If you need to boost event ROI and prove it to company leadership, integrations are your best friend.

At Goldcast, our number one goal is to make it easy for you to run premium events that enthrall your audience and boost your bottom line. We know your virtual event platform is only as good as the return you can prove.

And the proof is, as they say, in the pudding.