Hybrid Event Management: Tools that Enhance Event Planning in 2025 with Salesforce

Here you are, hosting an event where your audience is scattered across the continents, in different time zones, and balancing the fine line between virtual and physical communication. Sounds like a logistical nightmare, doesn’t it?

Not necessarily.

With hybrid event management done right, you can sleep well, knowing that your next event is a success. This is when in-person and virtual events create a seamless integration.

Let’s be honest though: managing a hybrid event can sometimes feel like riding two horses with one saddle. You have to keep track of registrations, provide flawless tech support, engage both virtual and in-person event attendees, and measure success.

With Salesforce, you can do all of the above without breaking a sweat. In this article, our aim is to explain how to throw a successful hybrid event using Salesforce tools and the right add-on that will help you plan, manage, and scale it with ease.

What is Hybrid Event Management?

Managing a hybrid event means orchestrating both virtual and in-person events equally, delivering the best experience possible whether attendees join you online or sit in the room. The numbers back this up. 68% of event marketers claim that a hybrid event format is a perfect way to simultaneously engage with different audiences.

At this point, you may wonder: what makes an event truly hybrid?

• Unified platform for everyone: all attendees – in-person and virtual – need to interact with a centralized platform. Think of it as your platform’s home base. It’s where people can register, access event content, network with other attendees, or check out the event agenda. In Salesforce, you can have such a system that pulls everything together from registration to engagement.
• Virtual and in-person elements: hybrid events work best when you have one experience for both audiences. In-person attendees shouldn’t feel like they are getting one thing, while virtual event guests are getting something completely different. Instead, both audiences should enjoy the same content, sessions, and interactions simultaneously – whether live or on-demand.

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• Networking opportunities: this is one of the toughest nuts to crack for organizing hybrid events but also one of the most crucial. You want both in-person and virtual event attendees to meet new people, share ideas, and make meaningful connections. On the one hand, for in-person attendees that means well-designed networking spaces such as lounges, tables, and informal meet-ups. On the other hand, however, you need to create digital networking rooms for virtual attendees so that they meet in small groups.
• Mutual engagement: interaction shouldn’t end with just packed event content. A hybrid event suggests that your attendees have multiple ways to engage. Use live polling, Q&A sessions, breakout rooms, or live chat features to keep people involved, whether they are sitting in the front row or attending a hybrid event from their couch. Plus, consider gamification – interactive leaderboards, virtual swag, digital scavenger hunts that fuel participation.
• Real-time analytics: are your virtual attendees engaged during a keynote? Are in-person event guests interacting with the sessions? Your Salesforce organization can benefit from the in-built analytics, dashboards, and reports that capture data on how people are interacting with your content. If you top that up with Salesforce add-ons like Advanced Communities AC Events Enterprise make this even easier.

How to Plan Hybrid Events with Salesforce?

To organize a successful hybrid event, you should make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Everyone is engaged, informed, and having a productive time. Thankfully, with Salesforce and Advanced Communities, you’ve got the right tools to orchestrate a successful hybrid event.

Speaking of, we work with organizations operating in different industries from manufacturing to healthcare and higher education. For instance, if you’re a nonprofit looking to optimize your Salesforce implementation for managing a hybrid event, we are the experts in Salesforce nonprofit consulting so we can make sure your hybrid event strategy is as effective as possible.

1. Configure Your Hybrid Event on a Robust Platform

The foundation of a hybrid event that goes without a hitch is a decent hybrid event platform. For that, there is AC Events Salesforce – a one-stop system where you can manage everything from event & session registration, attendee interaction, tickets, and more.

AC Events Enterprise is a 100% native to Salesforce app that offers you a virtual event platform that you can leverage and organize external or internal hybrid events, a fully online, or an offline get-together to a high standard. Look at the main benefits our app provides for your organization:

• Managing a hybrid event within the platform based on Salesforce flexibly;
• Creating events (also recurring) with a guided flow and the Event Creation Wizard (we’ll talk about that in a second);
• Creating unified checkout payment experience for all event attendees;
• Sending mass invitations for events;
• Setting up different event zones;
• Setting up public, private, member-only access for events;
• Organizing community-based events both by Admins and community members;
• Hosting virtual events for online attendees via Zoom;
• Managing various time zones;

Want to know more? Visit our Product Learning Hub where you can watch some how-to video about AC Events Enterprise and how you can take advantage of it.

2. Set up an Intuitive Hybrid Event Registration

Do you want your hybrid events to be a blast? Well, your strategic advantage would be a seamless event registration.

Bottlenecks during the registration process can result in frustration, lost opportunities, and a less-than-optimal experience for both in-person and virtual attendees. That’s why streamlining this step should your top of mind priority. How to do that?

AC Events Enterprise by Advanced Communities is equipped with the Event Creation Wizard – a user-intuitive registration flow. Thanks to this virtual component, you can add a new event to your Experience Cloud site in seconds, following a straightforward guide. You specify the event’s name, location, speakers, agenda, sessions, etc. This will only make a registration easier down the road!

Another useful feature the AC Events Enterprise offers is a unified registration integration. Virtual attendees and in-person guests can enjoy a single-cart checkout process and deal with all event or membership payments with ease.

For instance, users would like to purchase a membership while navigating your community, grab a branded swag, register for a hybrid event, and make a donation while they are here. They can everything to cart and have an overview of their order at the checkout – all in one place without switching between the tabs.

What if virtual attendees want to register for a live session but they have a friend who’d like to attend it in-person? AC Events Enterprise allows faster and intuitive session registration. They just need to choose a session and add it to cart. At the checkout, they will have a total sum for their order. Easy!

3. Create a Hybrid Event Microsite

For a hybrid event, maintaining and showcasing relevant & informative event content means providing unified experience for virtual attendees and offline guests.

A dedicated event microsite serves as a central hub for event details, schedules, agendas, speaker bios, and live-streaming access (we have Zoom integration!). This way, hybrid event participants can navigate and engage with content before, during, and long after the event.

Speaking of, with AC Events Enterprise’ file event management, you can upload, organize, and define the visibility of files for an event directly on the event registration page. To satisfy both virtual attendees and those who are present at the event physically, you can specify the display option of the files – a preview mode or icons.

With hybrid event planning, where audience interaction spans both physical and digital spaces, a microsite enhances convenience by offering features like personalized agendas and integration with virtual networking tools. By building event content this way, you can achieve brand consistency, reduce confusion, and ensure virtual attendees & offline audience are equally informed.

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4. Build Proper Communication with the Audience

Maintaining decent communication with the audience is absolutely critical for both virtual and hybrid events. Clear and consistent messaging ensures that both virtual audience and in-person attendees have a seamless experience throughout the event. So why it matters a lot?

• Clarity and no confusion: I like to refer to hybrid events as a multilayered cake – it has such layers as physical venues, digital platforms, diverse audiences, and other important elements. Clear communication helps attendees understand how to navigate these, whether it’s accessing virtual session or participating in Q&A.To make everything right, you can add email activities to your communication plan (because it’s fast). But here’s the catch: no one wants to read mundane walls of text or learn how to code HTML emails. AC Events Enterprise makes it possible to use Lightning Email Templates (or stay with the Salesforce Classic ones if you are a conservative) to design and send emails to event attendees with no code string.

Sure thing, emails aren’t a silver bullet. Use social media to back this activity up and be ready to speak your audience’s language, maintaining your brand’s image.

• Anticipation and momentum: regular communication before the event – via email, socials, and event apps – builds excitement and anticipation. Keep the energy high and the audience engaged during the event with live announcements, chatting options, and quick updates.
• Post-event engagement: after the event (even if you had internal hybrid events with your team), communication never ends. This is filled with follow-ups, thank you notes, and further event heads-ups (if relevant). Add feedback surveys, share event highlights, and recordings. This continued communication builds relationships and sets the stage for a future hybrid event. Here is how we at Advanced Communities take care of post-event activities. We add newsworthy updates to our marketing newsletter, letting people know what’s been going on lately and how AC is presented in a global context.

Moreover, you shouldn’t snap fingers at accessibility for all participants. Many organizations, especially nonprofits and educational institutions, have diverse audiences with varying abilities. Consider captioning for virtual attendees, translation options, and other tools for audience members with disabilities.

5. Master Time Zones for Global Success

When it comes to hybrid events or virtual only events, timing is everything – and so is being mindful of time zones so as not to lose your face during the event. Your hybrid event may attract people from across the globe so getting the timing right is crucial for maximizing engagement.

Picture this: you’ve spent weeks of planning, curating content, and lining up speakers, only to end up with international virtual attendees are either joining too early or too late. Not the best case scenarios, isn’t it?

To avoid such a mishap, factor in time zones when setting event times and sending out invitations. With Salesforce, you can easily manage time zones for each attendee, ensuring your invites, reminders, and agendas are all aligned. A little extra attention to detail – and your event runs like clockwork. This is where you can change your time zone in your Salesforce if necessary:

6. Use Custom Reports and Dashboards

One of the best things about managing a hybrid event with a virtual event platform on Salesforce is the ability to track and measure success in real-time using custom reports and dashboards.

No need to be a data expert: Salesforce makes it easy to pull tailored reports that give you a birds-eye-view of event attendance, engagement, and interaction across both online and in-person channels.

Thanks to AC Events Enterprise, you can do all of the above. You’ll see your most popular events, local events, registration by days, events by zones, and a lot more.

This is the right opportunity to spot trends, gauge audience interest, and make on-the-fly adjustments to keep things smooth. We at Advanced Communities are no strangers to making data-driven decisions that enhance attendee experience – and we can help you do the same with AC Events Enterprise!

3 Hybrid Events to Spark Your Inspiration

1. Dreamforce by Salesforce

Dreamforce is truly the largest Salesforce AI conference in the world. It lasts for three whole days (generally, in the USA), and brings the latest Salesforce-related tech, learning, and sessions to the table. It’s a hybrid conference because people can attend it in person in one of the conference cities or become virtual attendees and watch it from wherever they are online thanks to Salesforce+. Read about our team’s perspective on the Dreamforce 2024!

2. Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC)

Apple WWDC is an annual hybrid event that lets people tune in online and participate onsite to hear keynotes, participate in sessions, and join a community during or after the event. This approach lets create an interrupted experience for both virtual attendees and people who watch the event live.

3. Web Summit

Being held in Lisbon annually (earlier, in Dublin), Web Summit is the largest SaaS hybrid event that accommodates a global audience in tech space. When the pandemic stroke, Web Summit became a virtual-only event for some editions. However, the organizers then decided to combine an in-person event format with digital participation option. Virtual attendees can download a special app and access talks, networking, and other event content.

Ready to Plan Your Next Successful Hybrid Event?

Hybrid event management is about balance – making sure that no one feels like there are missing out, whether they are visiting virtual events or physically there.

When you get the mix right – engagement, tech ground, event content delivery, and personalized experiences – you create a hybrid event that’s dynamic, inclusive, and valuable.

What if we tell you to stop casting too wide a net and ask Advanced Communities – a certified Salesforce partner – for help? If you’re ready to gain hybrid event experience with the best-in-class Salesforce consultancy, let’s talk!

FAQ

1. What is Managing a Hybrid Event?

Managing hybrid events combines in-person events and online meetings, where you should take care of both them equally. It involves such elements as a centralized platform where virtual attendees can engage with in-person event guests, networking opportunities, and real-time analytics. Hybrid events blend the advantages of traditional, face-to-face experiences with the flexibility of digital interaction.

2. Hybrid Event vs Virtual Events

A hybrid event often gets confused with a virtual one. However, they do have certain differences. The main discrepancy between them is, of course, the format and cost. With hybrid events, you’ll have higher budget because of the venue, travel, and tech needs. With a virtual event, you can enjoy lower cost because the top priority will be digital tools and platforms.

3. Are Hybrid Events Cheaper?

The rule of thumb is that hybrid events are not cheaper due to several factors. First, there are venue costs which includes renting an event space, setting up audio-visual equipment, and providing catering services. Then, you have travel & accommodations for speakers, advanced technology to stream the event for a virtual audience, and special event staff (if applicable).

4. What are the Disadvantages of Hybrid Meetings?

One of the biggest drawbacks of hybrid events is possible technical challenges. No one is immune to connection issues and complex tech setup. Besides, you might face engagement imbalance, meaning your virtual audience could feel left our or disconnected while in-person attendees might have more chances to network.