Investor meetings can be the single most important event companies produce throughout the year, and expectations start at perfection.
These meetings offer a chance to showcase the vitality of the business, gain valuable feedback, and secure funding for continued longevity. However, even the best business plans can fall flat if the production value isn’t there.
Here are some of the top tips for hosting the best Fortune 500 investor meetings.
Preparation Before the Event
- Get marketing involved in investor meetings. Sometimes these meetings are run purely by the IR team or an events team, and they’re missing a great opportunity if not involving their own marketing experts. Integrating an effective marketing strategy can lead to more engaging graphics, a better cultivated online experience, more consistent and better wording for copy, and stronger cohesion to the company’s brand.
- In the weeks leading up to the event, have at least one technical rehearsal to review the order of events, workflow and technical needs. This should be separate from training for speakers.
- Use intro music or countdown timers to keep a virtual audience entertained and informed until the start of the event. This can lead to better engagement and set the tone for an effective meeting.
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Getting the Most Out of Your Speaker
- Showcasing the speaker through a video feed creates a better, more personalized experience. Many hybrid or fully virtual investor meetings rely too heavily on financial slides and narration for their broadcast. Interspersing live video of the speaker talking to the audience increases engagement through visual interest and creates a higher level of trust for the viewers, regardless of whether the news delivered is good or bad. Having a video feed allows companies to create an interpersonal, trustworthy connection with the investor community.
- Speaker timing is everything. Don’t put the best speakers first thing in the morning or right after lunch. The most common times for A/V challenges are during these two-time slots. Production teams just starting the event or returning from lunch could sometimes forget to unmute microphones or turn off the on-hold music. Aim for placing primary speakers at a 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. timeslot
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Maintaining Security
- Security is by far one of the top challenges for many online private investor meetings. Creating an accessible event online that only lets in the correct viewers, while simultaneously making it easy for the correct viewers to enter without any issue can be a difficult process. In the past, we’ve seen instances of event runners removing all security measures right before the start of a live event just to ensure invited guests can access it smoothly.
- A few major companies utilize a referral-checking feature wherein the company put a unique link in a secure place on their website and if the link is clicked from any place other than their own website, access is denied. This has worked incredibly well for ensuring the correct access to the live meeting and the replay.
- Designate someone to field questions from the virtual audience so they can give the best, most informative questions to the speakers. This is especially important for hybrid meetings to help the in-room speakers have a clean and steady stream of interaction in addition to those joining online.
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Optimizing UI for Hybrid and In-Person Meetings
- It’s important to remain inclusive. Use automated captions and on-screen interpreters to ensure content can be delivered to everyone in the audience.
- Some companies who hold hybrid investor meetings put a QR code to the virtual meeting on entry signage at the in-person meeting room. Many virtual event platforms have a “Meeting Room” feature for in-person attendees which allows them to see content (sometimes easier to see on their phones than on the big screen in the room) and serve up interactive elements such as polls, surveys and the ability to submit a question. Having access to this allows attendees in the room to type in questions on their mobile devices. The questions were fielded by an on-site moderator during the Q&A session (both virtual and in-room questions).
- Provide an exit survey to ask your virtual audience how well the content reached them and gather any feedback you’d like about the content itself.
Michele Dobnikar is president of GlobalMeet. She brings over 30 years’ experience within the digital event industry. As president of GlobalMeet, Michele helps companies create memorable online experiences for their customers and staff. Her expansive knowledge and industry insights have helped to spearhead the industry’s most reliable and secure virtual events platform on the market.
