Lisa Schulteis of ElectraLime Marketing: 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Run a Live Virtual Event

Prepare for the Future of Hybrid. As live, in-person events return, event organizers need to be thinking about hybrid. Attendees and companies now realize that they don’t have to be in person for events… saving time, travel costs and time away from the office. Hybrid events provide the opportunity to reach both your in-person attendees as well as virtual attendees, but also brings in new complexities of how to provide an amazing experience for both of those groups. New considerations in content, networking, technology, and experiences are being added into the conversation.

As a part of our series about “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Run a Live Virtual Event”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lisa Schulteis.

Lisa Schulteis is the founder and Virtual Event Producer at ElectraLime Marketing and founder of YourEventMarketplace. She is a virtual event producer and manager who designs, builds, and produces hybrid and virtual events. From virtual summits to large corporate events and full-scale conferences, Lisa provides the expertise to identify the right virtual stage to share your unique message.

Lisa’s experience with live and virtual events comes from her years of working with Fortune 100 companies, international speakers, and influencers. She combines her systematic processes with her digital and online marketing experience to customize and manage the event from start to finish.

That’s why Lisa launched the marketplace directory Your Event Marketplace in 2021 to support the Events Industry. Her production clients were always looking for additional vendors, venues, and resources for their events, so she took her private, curated list and launched the directory. The directory is a one-stop-shop for Event Planners and provides broad exposure for event businesses and services.

Lisa’s experience in the event industry has led her to speak about successfully hosting virtual events across the industry. As such, her insight into successfully running a live virtual event can offer new, expert-level advice, especially with the ever-changing landscape of event planning.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

I was born in the northwest suburbs of Chicago but left there when I was 8 years old. My dad worked for an airline and we were transferred to Hilo, Hawaii. It was a life changing experience living on the Big Island.

We continued to move around over the years, adding California to the list and back to Illinois. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I lived in one house for more than about 4 years. Moving every few years forced me to learn how to adapt to different situations and that skill has helped me significantly in business.

Most people are surprised to hear that my career out of college started in neuropsychology. I worked with Alzheimer patients initially and then transitioned to brain injury patients. I had always planned on a career in psychology and absolutely loved working with the patients and their families. After a few years, I transitioned to healthcare administration and was the Director of Credentialing for a physician organization.

When my first child was born, I quit my career. I had always known that I wanted to stay home with my kids when they were young, so that is what I did. After being blessed with three children, I still wanted something that was “just mine.” That is when I started my business… twelve years ago now.

Can you tell us the story of what led you to this particular career path?

This career path was discovered completely by accident! I always marvel when I hear about people who developed a business plan and knew exactly how they were going to build their company, because that was not how I started!

I literally started my business in about a week. I started asking friends and family if they knew of any work I could do from home as I still wanted to be in the home for my kids. My youngest was only 5 at the time and between the three kids there were a lot of field trips, sports and after school activities. I started taking random projects here and there, discovered what I liked doing, what I was good at and figured out how to make things happen. I built the business, the website, the services, and everything else in that first week, even though I was terribly ill with pneumonia. People who know me know I can be a bit “determined” and I certainly wasn’t going to let pneumonia keep me from meeting my launch date, even though a day or two later really would not have mattered.

Over the 12-year history of my business, the focus has continually changed and become more niche-specific. During that time, I have transitioned the business from a generalist mindset (we will do any project) to a more focused digital marketing agency now to an event focused agency. I love the energy and excitement (and craziness!) of events and the fact that we help our clients reach a global audience with their message.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I first started the business, I didn’t really have a title or a focus for that matter. I was simply doing any projects I could find at the time. It was about 3 months into the business when I was searching online for something and stumbled across the term “Virtual Assistant”. That’s when I realized that I had actually started a virtual assistant business. I had no idea!!! I didn’t know what a virtual assistant was, much less that there was a business model tied to it. As I mentioned previously, I really started everything from scratch and made it up as I went. It was so much easier once I found the business model and then started making changes from there.

The way I started the business is not how I would necessarily advise someone else to start their business, but I made it work. I have grown this business into a success over the last 12 years and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

I love the book “Get a Grip” by Gino Wickman & Mike Paton. It’s a business fable but provides real, actionable business advice when it comes to how to run your company and how to put the right people in the right place.

The latter part was really what resonated with me… putting the right people in the right place. When I first started my business, I worked with several different contractors and would get extremely frustrated when they didn’t meet my expectations. I was so disappointed as they seemed so perfect at first, yet they were not a great match in the long-term. It wasn’t until I resonated with the point that it might not be the wrong person, but the wrong position. Even now, there are times I will hire someone for a particular role and then find out later that they are much better and more productive in a different role… so we transition them. When we allow people to really use their talents, they grow into an amazing team.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

I have a sign in my office that says, “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”

I look at that sign every day for inspiration and courage. Being an entrepreneur takes a lot of work, a lot of faith and a lot of trial and error. It’s okay to make a mistake… it’s okay if your first idea didn’t work. You use failures as lessons and keep moving forward towards that dream. You make adjustments along the way, but you never doubt yourself.

I remember a mentor and colleague talking about doubt one day. He said to always remember that if we didn’t know more than our clients in our area of expertise, they would have no need to hire us. That statement has stuck with me through the years.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. For the benefit of our readers, can you tell us a bit about your experience organizing events in general?

I have been using events as part of my client’s overall marketing plan for years. Whether we were hosting webinars, summits, or live 3-day conferences to upsell clients into a high-level mastermind, events were always part of the plan.

My experience with events always involved the marketing of the event and the technical side of running the event… whether the event was virtual, live or hybrid. I left the event location logistics to the event planners as I never wanted to have to deal with the venues in terms of room blocks, food & beverage, or site contracts. I was always focused on the technical… anything from making sure that the technical side of the virtual event platform was ready to creating landing pages and designing complete marketing funnels for the event. This focus has provided me with a bit of a unique approach to events that many people have not experienced.

Can you tell us a bit about your experience organizing live virtual events? Can you share any interesting stories about them?

As mentioned previously, I have been involved with events for years and we were producing virtual and hybrid events before the pandemic. Our clients range from a coach holding a one-day workshop to a Fortune 100 company hosting multiple virtual events a year for their retail buyers. Most of our events are virtual, especially since the pandemic started. From March 2020 to March 2021, we produced 36 virtual events in addition to our strategy and consulting services.

Virtual events provide companies the opportunity to reach a global audience with their message. Every event we produce is different. Yes — there are some similarities in terms of the technology that is needed and the process in which we plan them, but the events themselves are unique. Whether that is because of the theme of the event, the audience, or special activities we incorporate, every event is unique. That is what makes virtual events so special.

Virtual events provide some challenges as well! We have managed events that had 1800 attendees with 26 tracks where every attendee was assigned a different combination of sessions within those tracks! We had another event that only had 500 attendees, but because of their unique individual schedules and the three different languages the site needed to be in, we had to set 600 unique permissions in the system to ensure they only saw the content they were allowed to see in the correct language.

We have been blessed to work with a variety of people in a variety of industries and countries… senators, judges, filmmakers, kids competing in science fairs, educators, retail establishments and so many more. The people we serve make it exciting to come to the office each day.

In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job creating live virtual events? What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?

There are many examples of stunning, successful virtual events. One of the larger scale events was the Tomorrowland electronic music festival in Belgium in 2020. They provided a totally immersive experience for their attendees with a 3D virtual stage, performances from multiple artists, fireworks, and other interactive entertainment.

However, not everyone is going to host an event at that scale, nor will they want to as it is not appropriate for their audience. The Tomorrowland event was successful because it incorporated the 3 E’s of Events… excitement, engagement and experience. If you incorporate those 3 E’s into your virtual event, your event will be successful as well.

Remember — your audience is unique, so make sure you are meeting their needs… not chasing someone else’s idea of an event.

What are the common mistakes you have seen people make when they try to run a live virtual event? What can be done to avoid those errors?

There are two major mistakes we see when people try to run virtual events. The first mistake is that they want the same exact experience as a live, in-person event. That is simply not possible. There are a lot of things you can duplicate in a virtual experience… but you can never duplicate the experience of the live event floor. You need to get creative and provide your own unique virtual plan to excite, engage and provide memorable experiences for your attendees.

Speaking of planning… that is the second mistake we see the most… the lack of planning. Virtual events take a lot of work… in some ways more work than a live, in-person event. For whatever reason, people tend to think they have more time to plan or need to plan less when it comes to virtual events. I have had people contact me for the first time a week before a virtual event and want to know if we can produce it for them! We have had events where speakers were being picked a day or two before the event. We tell our clients that they should be planning a minimum of 8 weeks out. They need to also have a specific event checklist or outline that they are working through as well. Every aspect of the event needs to be on that project plan and everyone on the team needs to know who is responsible for which aspect.

The more you plan, the better your event.

Which virtual platform have you found to be most effective to be able to bring everyone together virtually?

It really depends on the size and scope of the event. We have produced events in Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and other virtual event platforms as well.

For larger events, we have produced most of our events in Pathable over the last two years. The platform allows our team to provide a completely customized, branded experience while having the functionality we need in terms of livestreaming, simulive and video on demand sessions. We are also able to provide unique networking opportunities, one-on-one meetings, and exhibitor booths within the platform. We do a lot of custom CSS coding to make the platform meet specific client branding needs.

Regardless of which virtual platform you choose, make sure it meets your specific event needs in terms of customization and scale.

Are there any essential tools or software that you think an event organizer needs to know about?

Of all the tools, software, and equipment we use, we cannot live without our project management system and every event organizer needs a project management system. We use ClickUp to manage all our virtual and hybrid events as well as my consulting services, and platform builds that are outsourced to us. Events have a lot of moving parts and having that project management system is the only way to stay on top of deadlines, assignments and getting the content we need to produce a successful event.

Ok. Thank you for all that. Here is the main question of our discussion. An in-person event can have a certain electric energy. How do you create an engaging and memorable event when everyone is separated and in their own homes? What are the “Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Run a Live Virtual Event” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Incorporate the 3 E’s of Events. To produce a successful virtual event, you must incorporate the “Three E’s of Events.”

• Excite — Although excitement has always been a requirement for events, it requires even more energy and planning for a virtual event. How do you excite people about your event when their day is filled with online experiences? As mentioned earlier, you need a plan. If you haven’t been using marketing funnels for your events before, now is the time to start. Map out that journey and plan your marketing to excite your potential attendees.
• Engage — The content of your event must be engaging to not only make your audience want to attend but to return the next time around. Your speakers need to be providing value driven content that they preferably can’t get anywhere else. They also need to provide that content in an engaging manner. No more boring slideshows! Bring in A/V production to provide an experience that feels high end. Use panel discussions, Q&A, audio clips, video, polling, quizzes, anything else to engage your attendees and get them interacting.
• Experience — Events need to be experiential. People return to events because of the experience they had at the event. You need to give the attendee an event-like experience. You need to integrate as many senses as you can. We spend most of our time online using our sight and hearing. How can you bring in touch, taste and smell? There are so many ways to bring in experiences. Here are just a few examples of experiences we have brought in for our clients…

Scavenger hunts on the platform before the event

Wine tastings

Whiskey tastings

Virtual Bartenders

DJ playing “Name that Tune”

Hot Sauce Tasting with Executives

Magic Shows

Yoga breaks

Live Painting on Stage

Delivered meals or snacks

Brand focused swag

Find a unique way to provide an experience for your virtual attendees that they will never forget!

2. Choose the Right Platform. There are hundreds and hundreds of virtual event platforms to choose from. Do your research and choose the right one for your event… not one that you are sold on. Avoid shiny object syndrome and all the newest and coolest bells and whistles and choose the platform that is the most stable and has the elements you need. Every event has its own unique needs when it comes to software. Purchasing a software that has the most beautiful exhibitor booths is of no value to you if you are not having exhibitors. Having cool little avatars may or may not resonate with your specific attendees. The most beautiful platform in the world will be completely useless to you if the livestream capabilities are not stable.

Ask a lot of questions when reviewing platforms and choose the one that is right for you… not the salesperson.

3. Create a Community. One of the biggest factors people miss from in-person events is the networking and sense of community. It is essential to create that community at your virtual event. This can be accomplished through networking sessions, fun activities, one-on-one networking, discussion forum, social engagement and more. Make sure to identify at least one way of creating a community for your attendees and then make sure the platform you choose supports that functionality.

4. Evaluate your Outcomes. Post-event analytics are crucial to evaluate the success of your event, but many event organizers do not pay much attention to them. Analytics tell us not only how many people attended our event, but also how engaged they were and what they found interesting. They also tell us which speakers were well received, which ones had major attrition during their session, what exhibitor booths were the most popular, what content was downloaded and more. Analytics allow us to make smart and actionable decisions about our next event to keep making the experience better and better for our attendees.

5. Prepare for the Future of Hybrid. As live, in-person events return, event organizers need to be thinking about hybrid. Attendees and companies now realize that they don’t have to be in person for events… saving time, travel costs and time away from the office. Hybrid events provide the opportunity to reach both your in-person attendees as well as virtual attendees, but also brings in new complexities of how to provide an amazing experience for both of those groups. New considerations in content, networking, technology, and experiences are being added into the conversation

Let’s imagine that someone reading this interview has an idea for a live virtual event that they would like to develop. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

I always tell my clients to start at the end… why do you want to have the event? What is the goal of the event? Are you trying to move X number of customers into a new, high-level coaching program? Are you needing to reach your global retail vendors to showcase next seasons products? Are you rewarding your employees for a year of hard work and successful achievements? What is your end goal?

Once you have that goal, then plan the journey to get there.

1. Identify who your audience is for this event
2. Decide how you will market the event to them
3. Start planning the experience that you want them to have
4. Choose an event platform that will deliver that experience
5. Determine your audio-visual needs
6. Plan your delivery

Those are the high-level first steps, but they will get your started. Document every step of the journey that your clients will be taking… from the first interaction to the last to ensure nothing is missed.

Super. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

We live in a world where remote work is becoming the norm, virtual events are providing access to a global audience, and yet there are still so many people without access to the internet. By providing access to everyone, we can open doors and provide opportunities to people to share their talents and their skills with the world.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Elon Musk. It’s amazing how polarizing he is but I see him as a visionary, an innovator and a genius who believes in his dreams. I have followed his career and achievements for years, but I would love to sit down and chat with him about how he accomplishes what he does… how he sells the future and amasses his following in such an organic way. Also, after experiencing one of the Boring tunnels in Las Vegas, I would love to hear his plans with that company as well.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.

Thank you!!!