How To Decide What’s Right For You

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Arena

Adding live chat to your website is a great way to boost audience engagement. There’s just one question: how do you make that happen? Ultimately, there are two paths to take: buy a live chat solution or build your own solution.

There’s no universal solution to implement a chat protocol. As a result, there are at least 11 popular instant messaging and chat protocols available on the market today. Experimenting with all of these different solutions is time consuming. Use this buy vs build guide to save time as you develop a short list of chat solutions.

When To Build A Chat Solution

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Some organizations may find it ideal to build (or heavily customize) their chat solution. This approach to live chat makes sense in a few situations.

Must Have Features Are Not Available

You may find that off the shelf live chat software lacks certain specialized features. For instance, you might have an audience that expects a multi-language experience. Or you might have an idea to use AI or cryptocurrency in an unusual way. Building your own solution is a good idea in this scenario.

Engineering Resource Availability

Many companies find that their engineering organizations are fully utilized. That’s not the case everywhere however. You might be in expansion mode and have additional capacity. In that situation, building a custom chat solution for your audience internally may be wise.

Integration Potential

Software companies looking for ways to make their products more valuable might want to build their chat solution in house. If you see a chat as a strategic part of a product, it makes sense to build that solution in house.

When To Buy A Chat App

Buying a live chat solution off the shelf is likely to be the best choice for the majority of brands and publishers. Here are some of the reasons why buying a chat solution might be a good choice.

Chat App Owned By Marketing & Content (No Engineering Support Needed)

Many organizations want to use chat to advance their marketing goals or deepen content engagement. That’s why it is important to seek out a chat app that is made for content, editorial, and marketing teams to run. Ideally, any chat app you buy should be designed to be run by marketing and content specialists with little to no involvement from engineering or product teams.

Fast Deployment

Some chat apps take minutes to deploy while others can take weeks or even months to tweak and customize. If speed to deployment is important, look for no-code or low-code solutions that can be installed and fast. With the right app, you can have a chat app up and running in less than an hour, which can be especially helpful if you need to create sponsored content experiences for clients under tight timelines.

Focus On Audience Engagement

Lifting audience engagement is a top goal for many brands. A highly engaged audience is more likely to give you first party data which you can use to fuel personalized marketing. If you’re already making efforts to grow engagement, adding a live chat solution off the shelf is a good way to get up and running fast.

Common Chat Features Meet Your Needs

Market proven chat features and functionality may be all you need to achieve your goals. For example, features like chat moderation, social reactions, and private messaging are supported in several chat services. If these capabilities meet your needs, taking the effort to build your own solution may not be a wise use of resources.

Four Chat Protocols and Apps To Buy

Buying a chat solution is likely the best solution for most organizations, so we’ll cover these options in more detail. In the next section, we’ll touch on a few ways to build your own chat solution as well.

1. Arena Live Chat

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Arena Live Chat is a great choice for publishers and brands looking to grow engagement on their website.

Advantages:

First party data capture
High scalability
Ease of implementation
No in-house engineering support needed
Automated + manual chat moderation options
Full multimedia support
Support for running large chat rooms to engage your audience directly on your website

Disadvantages:

Not suitable for customer support
Pricing based on views

2. Live Chat

Launched in in the early 2000s, Live Chat is a popular website chat service. It is widely used for website customer service.

Advantages:

Automated messages and canned responses (helpful for after hours responses)
Pre-chat survey forms to gather information from customers
Offers integrations with email marketing and customer relationship management apps

Disadvantages:

Not suitable for audience engagement since the product is focused on customer service
Customers state that the mobile version of the app is limited

3. Olark

Olark is a live chat solution design for sales and customer service. The live chat app has also been widely used in ecommerce and higher education.

Advantages:

Ease of use
Focused on sales and customer service needs
Many integrations including WordPress, Mailchimp, Salesforce and Slack

Disadvantages:

File sharing limitations (e.g. limited ability to share screenshots)
Limited analytics and chat history features
Focused on 1-on-1 interactions so not suitable for audience engagement at scale

4. HubSpot Live Chat

HubSpot is well known for its email marketing, customer relationship management and related software tools. The company now offers a live chat solution, a good choice for users who already use other HubSpot apps.

Advantages:

Stores conversations into HubSpot CRM for follow up and review
Supports the creation of automated chatbots to answer common questions
Chat routing (i.e. refer a chat request to the person with the appropriate knowledge to provide a response)

Disadvantages:

Focused on 1-on-1 interactions so not suitable for audience engagement at scale
Limited integrations – mainly focused on other HubSpot apps and Slack

Three Chat Protocols When You Decide To Build

Building your own chat app takes more work. Thankfully, you don’t have to start from scratch. There are several chat protocols you can build on and customize for your needs if you have the resources.

1. Rich Communication Services (RCS)

RCS is a chat protocol built for mobile phones. It is also sometimes called SMS 2.0. For brands focused on mobile chat, it may be a good choice.

Advantages:

Fully optimized for mobile devices
Native support for payments

Disadvantages:

No Apple iOS support
Costs are difficult to predict accurately

2. WebRTC – Web Real-Time Communication

Developed by Google, WebRTC is an open source app that offers several types of voice, video and text communication.

Advantages:

Supports video and audio communication
Open source so it is easier to understand the capabilities in depth and develop enhancements
Can be used for chat rooms

Disadvantages:

Requires engineering resources to implement it.
The official website offers mainly technical documentation, so you may need to develop your own help guides for users
Very limited support options (i.e. online discussion forums)

3. XMPP

Launched in 1999, XMPP is one of the oldest and best-established chat protocols on the market.

Advantages:

Multiple end-user clients available for desktop users, Android and iOS
Ongoing development by engineers passionate about the protocol

Disadvantages:

XMPP requires users to download a chat client which adds friction to the chat experience
XMPP doesn’t appear to offer website chat support so it is not well suited to audience engagement

Choose Your Live Chat Solution

There are chat solution designed for different goals, so you may need multiple tools. For example, use Arena Live Chat to engage your customers and grow your audience. Then, you might use a different app for post-purchase customer service fulfillment. Find out more about Arena Live Chat.

Get 7 Proven Tactics To Grow Now

Posted on May 12, 2023 by Arena

Audience engagement is vital to succeeding in today’s online world. Your website competes against dozens of streaming services, social media platforms, email, etc. The art and science of keeping your audience engaged is crucial to reach your growth goals.

What Is Audience Engagement?

Successful audience engagement happens when people interact with your website and live experiences for prolonged periods. Instead of bouncing away in a few seconds, a highly engaged audience member looks forward to visiting your website and online experiences.

Audience engagement matters for brands and publishers for a few reasons. First, a highly engaged audience is more likely to give you first-party data, fueling high ROI personalized marketing campaigns. Second, audience engagement stretches your marketing budget further because your audience will likely share your content.

Knowing what audience engagement means is just the starting point. You also need practical steps and tools to bring audience engagement to life. Use the growth tactics in the rest of this guide to grow your audience and keep them coming back.

1. Make A Positive First Impression Quickly

First impressions count a great deal in online experiences. Research shows that the average attention span is down to 47 seconds as of 2023. That’s a sharp decline from 2004, when it was 150 seconds, according to research reported by CNN.

To keep things simple, look for negative factors and positive factors. Negative factors are barriers or distractions that make engagement less likely to stick. Positive factors encourage audience engagement.

Negative factors

Slow website speed. The overall speed of your website matters. Slower websites are likely penalized in search engines, making your audience less likely to find you.
Unclear call to action. Overwhelming your audience with too many options will deter some people from engaging with you. Aside from the homepage and navigation elements, ask yourself if each significant page is focused.
Disruptive notifications. Some websites partly or entirely obscure the user’s experience to display notifications (e.g., privacy notifications). While important, excessive notifications make it difficult for your audience to focus on what matters most: your content!

Positive factors

Engaging content. Regularly publishing relevant content to your audience is one of the best ways to draw your audience to your website in the first place.
User-generated content opportunities. Give your audience a way to share their thoughts and react to your website (e.g., reviews, votes, and polls).
Social proof elements. Engagement is more likely to happen when people see others have already engaged with your website. Highlight the best comments, user contributions, and more to send social proof signals to website visitors.
Visual content. Look for ways to include visual content like photos, infographics, and videos.

Your user experience (UX), technology, and marketing teams all have a role in making a positive first impression on your audience.

2. Provide Relevant Content For Your Audience’s Changing Needs

Relevant content is so vital to driving engagement that it needs to be explored further. There are several ways you can drive engagement by increasing relevance. Use the following prompts to look for ways to connect your content with your audience.

Relevance to external events and factors

Sharing content relevant to current events is a top concern for publishers. Yet, it also matters for brands. Here are a few tactics to ensure your website is relevant to what’s happening in the world.

Calendar relevance. The calendar influences what we’re talking about and thinking about. Start by looking at the calendar to align your website with major holidays and seasons of the year (e.g., back to school, the December holidays, etc.).
Competitor relevance. Your competitors should not dictate your strategy. However, if a close competitor makes a significant mistake or launches a new product, your content may want to consider that fact.
Economic relevance. The broader economic landscape shapes what people think and worry about. For example, emphasizing value and savings opportunities may appeal more to your audience in an economic downturn.

First-party data

The secret to unlocking relevance lies in first-party data – insights you gather directly from your website audience. This data is far more valuable externally gathering information because it shows what your audience values from you.

Optimize your audience engagement with first-party data in the following ways.

Do more of what’s working. Are you seeing a significant spike in engagement for a specific type of content? Take that signal seriously and explore that theme further in future content and experiences.
Create micro content for your audience. Your content doesn’t need to be relevant to everybody in your audience every time. Sometimes, it is better to create content designed to address the specific needs of certain audience segments (e.g., your “VIP” audience members who are most likely to make a purchase).

3. Add User-Friendly Engagement Tools To Your Website

Increasing audience engagement with the right technology is one of the best ways to lift engagement fast. The following tools can help you to lift engagement quickly.

Arena Live Chat

Live chat makes it easy for your audience to send messages to each other, ask questions, vote in polls and more. You can install Arena live chat in minutes, which makes it one of the fastest ways to increase audience engagement.

Arena Live Blog

Covering a breaking news story like a sports championship or election is a powerful way to attract your audience. Arena live blog makes it to draft, edit and publish rapid-fire updates for your audience. When your audience knows they can get quick updates on rapidly changing news stories, they will keep coming back for more.

Video streaming

Live video experiences are an important way to draw in your audience and keep them engaged. For example, live shopping experiences where influencers and others show off products have been proven to drive significant revenue. Selling products isn’t the only way to use live video, either.

Adding video streaming to your website is easy when you use the right tools. For additional tips, see our post: How to stream video with Vimeo OTT In 7 Steps.

You can also use live video to share insights with your audience and gather feedback. Ensure you also have a live chat so your audience can quickly share their thoughts and reactions.

4. Give Your Audience Multiple Ways To Engage

Your audience has people with different energy levels, interests, and focus regarding your content and brand. Some super fans will create content about your products, like influencers who create unboxing videos. Much of your audience is different: they’re interested in you but may also have other pressing concerns.

Giving multiple engagement opportunities is one way to unlock more engagement from your audience. It’s best to start with simple and easy engagement options since those will apply to many people in your audience.

Live Chat

Coming together to interact with other people in online chat was one of the first social experiences on the Internet. It’s still one of the best ways to interact online today. With Arena Live Chat, you can host a live chat session directly on your website. Setting up a live chat experience takes just a few minutes.

To kickstart the live chat experience, it’s best to have one or two moderators to encourage discussions and take action as needed on inappropriate content.

Social reactions

Make it easy for your audience to like or react to your content. Beyond the usual suspects of social reactions (e.g., like, heart, etc.), go a step further. Look at the different options available on Emojipedia.

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Arena live chat supports emojis and lets users create an avatar (i.e., upload an image linked to their profile).

Polls

When your audience is attending an online event, a poll is one of the simplest ways to spark engagement. In essence, you ask a simple question and allow your audience to vote by choosing an option.

Posting a poll within the first 5-10 minutes of starting an online event is a best practice to keep your audience engaged immediately. Posting more than 2-3 polls over the course of an hour might feel overwhelming, so don’t overuse this engagement tactic.

Question & answer

Giving your audience the ability to ask questions is a powerful way to boost engagement. To see just how powerful question-focused events are, look at Reddit. The social platform often hosts wildly popular “AMA” (ask me anything) with celebrities, authors, politicians, and others.

Be aware that there is a risk of inappropriate content with Q&A (and audience engagement efforts generally). Our final tactic – moderation – will equip you to manage this risk.

Product reviews

Make it easy for your audience to write reviews of your products on your website. Your review activity will only improve if your website forces users to take fewer steps before adding a review. When you see a particularly significant review, go the extra mile and reach out to the reviewer to thank them. If the person has a complaint, reaching out is still worthwhile.

5. Use Exclusivity To Draw Audience Engagement

Offering exclusive experiences to your audience is an age-old tactic to attract attention. It’s one of the reasons that conferences and tradeshows remain so popular. Only so many people will invest the time and money to attend such an event.

With online engagement, there are several ways to leverage exclusivity to lift engagement. If you invite an influencer or celebrity to your niche, you don’t need to go to Hollywood to find someone. Simply look for someone who recently won awards or has a large social media following.

Time-limited event. The first way to signal exclusivity is to make your experience time limited. For example, schedule a one-time 60-minute online chat experience.
Limited registration. While technology tools can support many attendees, it is sometimes helpful to go small. Limiting attendance to 25-50 people is an intelligent way to add a more intimate quality to the event.
Early access for registered users. Finally, give registered users on your website the first opportunity to register for the event. Giving users advance access is a great way to reinforce the value of registration.

6. Find Breaking News Opportunities To Spark Audience Engagement

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This tactic is suited to publishers and news organizations. You can boost audience engagement. For example, think about sports events like March Madness. Elections, court trials, and essential company news (e.g., an Apple or Facebook conference) all represent other breaking news opportunities.

To leverage these opportunities, get ready with the following tips.

People. Put together a list of people who will contribute to your live blog coverage. A combination of in-house staff and freelancers is often helpful.
Tools. Use Arena Live Blog so that your contributors and editors can easily submit updates and get them posted directly to your website.
Process. Give guidance to your staff on how you will approach breaking news. For example, you may want to streamline your fact-checking and editorial process to a degree.

7. Use Moderation To Keep Engagement Brand Safe

Opening your virtual doors to your audience is a wonderful way to lift audience engagement. That said, it does carry some risks. Remember when people “Zoom bombed” online events with offensive content? Offensive language, off-topic comments, and more are all possible when you bring people together online.

Moderation is a crucial way to solve the inappropriate content challenge. Arena gives you several tools to moderate audience engagement experiences effectively.

Automated moderation

Arena live chat has automated moderation features like a profanity filter. This capability means that you can prevent most offensive language from making it into your chat session.

Manual moderation

For an added level of assurance, manual moderation is a great choice. Manually screening questions during Q&A sessions with important guests is often wise. Without moderation, the discussion may wander from the primary topic.

Discover How Arena Can Grow Your Engagement

Adding Arena to your website is one of the fastest ways to increase engagement. You can break free from social media platforms like Facebook, Slack and Instagram and build a community right on your website. Learn more about how Arena can help you grow audience engagement.

Increasing Retention For Publishers With Data

Posted on May 11, 2023 by Arena

Growing traffic, ad revenue, and subscribers isn’t a complete solution to sustain publishing. Retention and loyalty are even more critical, especially when you take a long-term view.

Imagine if 50% or more of your current subscribers kept renewing for the next five years? That kind of loyalty is precious. Driving up paid subscriber retention is achievable with the right approach and strategies.

Why A Retention Strategy Matters

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Why should you invest time and resources into retention strategies? After all, investors and management tend to be more impressed with net new subscriber growth numbers. There are three critical reasons why improving subscriber retention should be a priority.

1. Retention strategies are highly profitable

Enhancing customer retention is one of the highest-leverage ways to raise profitability. Harvard Business Review found that “increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.” Better retention could lift profits far more efficiently than almost any other strategy.

That’s not all. Harvard Business Review research also found that customer spending increases over time. The study found that “repeat customers spend more than twice as much in months 24-30 of their relationships than they do in the first six months.” This finding came from apparel ecommerce, but it can apply to today’s digital publishers who increasingly offer multiple subscription tiers and products.

2. Long-term subscribers give you better first-party data

In 2017, the Economist proclaimed: “The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data.”

That claim is doubly true in the context of a publishing business. A subscriber who stays with you for a year or two may view hundreds of articles, open countless emails and participate in online events.

All of these interactions mean you will have a far better understanding of your customer’s values. Creating new marketing campaigns becomes far easier with this kind of high-quality data.

By obtaining data directly from your customers (i.e., first-party data), you can also quickly improve the relevance of your publishing. For example, you might find out that a handful of columnists and reporters drive the majority of interest from long-term paying subscribers. In that case, it makes sense to look for ways

3. Retention strategies empower a long-term perspective

The digital age encourages short-term thinking. Publishers track clicks, page views, and other metrics by hour, day, week, and month. This type of rapid measurement has value. Yet, overly focusing on short-term success measures can hurt a publishing business’s long-term value.

When retention and loyalty become vital priorities, this perspective encourages managers and editorial staff to ask different questions, such as:

Do we have the facts in this story?
Are we making the right investment decisions to maintain our standards (e.g., developing new voices)?
Are we effectively showing our appreciation for current subscribers?

First Party Data: The Fuel For Increased Retention

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First-party data is indispensable for lifting retention. Publishers are collecting some of this data. Every time a subscriber visits your website, and clicks, first-party data covers any information you collect directly from subscribers and website visitors.

Traditional website analytics are just the beginning of first-party data. You can also track comments, content likes, and participation in online events like webinars and live chat rooms. Each interaction from your subscribers gives you a better understanding of what they value and spend their time on.

Two Ways To Lift Subscriber Retention With First-Party Data

Use these two strategies to lift subscriber retention quickly once you have a few months of first-party data.

Increase The Relevance of Your Publication To Subscribers

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Reviewing this data directly helps retention because you can help subscribers find more content that aligns with their interests. For example, send more sports coverage to sports enthusiasts. By increasing the amount of relevant content and reducing the amount of less relevant content, subscribers will see more value in what you offer.

Increasing the relevance of your publication for subscribers is crucial because it saves time for subscribers. Few of your subscribers have the time or inclination to explore your website thoroughly daily. Curating your website experience for subscribers and customizing emails helps to save time for your subscribers.

Make Your Publication More Valuable To Advertisers

Advertisers expect highly granular targeting. If a publisher fails to offer rich targeting options and data, keeping advertisers engaged (and spending) will only get more difficult.

The path to highly targeted advertising for your advertisers ultimately depends on the quality and quantity of first-party data you collect. Start with simple demographic data points like age, gender, and geography. Collecting this data directly from your audience means your data quality will be far better than platforms that rely on guesswork algorithms.

After you have reasonably strong demographic data, don’t stop your first-party data collection efforts. Look for ways to gather data on interests and behaviors. For example, users who check local real estate content and articles daily may be an attractive segment for various brands hungry for homeowners (e.g. furniture, home services, security systems etc).

By collecting better first-party data on your subscribers over time, you’ll be able to sell advertising space far faster and at a higher rate.

Not Getting Enough First-Party Data? Do This

The best first-party data comes from highly engaged subscribers who regularly access a publisher’s content. Ideally, you’ll have a range of engagement data, from the basics (e.g., page views and clicks) to high-involvement content (i.e., comments and shares).

If you’re not seeing enough meaningful engagement from your subscribers, there is an easy way to solve that problem: encouragement!

As the saying goes, hope is not a strategy. Instead, use the following tips to encourage subscribers to comment and engage with your publication.

Use Online Events To Boost Engagement

Online events are a powerful way to increase engagement because live experiences have a special appeal. Even if you have an ongoing series of events, each event will stand alone due to the mix of guests, content, and interaction. When you run online events, use Arena Live Chat to make it easy for your audience to ask questions, chat with each other and meet others.

Use Community Badges

The 80/20 rule applies to online communities. Vice reported that 77% of all Wikipedia articles are written by 1% of its editors. Likewise, the vast majority of online interactions with your audience will likely come from a small share of your audience. When you have top contributors, recognize them with community badges (e.g., “VIP Commenter.”)

Highlight Top Community Content

The quality of your publication’s content is likely why people come to your publication. Many will stay involved because they meet others who share their interests. Encourage your top community members to celebrate their content. Highlight the week’s best comments on your home page and email newsletters.

Reach Out To Past Subscribers

Sometimes life gets busy, and your active community members might fall out of the habit of contributing to the community. Review your top 10 or 20 community members from 6-12 months. You will probably find a few people who haven’t been active lately.

Once you have that list of formerly active community members, reach out to them.them. Thank them for their past comments, and invite them to return to your community. Showing you care for the subscribers – beyond their subscription payment – is a smart way to keep them contributing.

Increase Engagement Quickly With The Right Tools

Getting first-party data from a highly engaged audience isn’t always difficult. Sometimes it is simply a matter of giving your audience a new and easy way to engage with your publication.

Adding Arena Live Chat to your website instantly transforms your website into an interactive experience. Discover how to add a community experience to your publication.

How Stanford, Penn & Caltech Students Run Virtual Events

Posted on May 4, 2023 by Arena

Generation Z college and university students have an impressive track record of running virtual and in-person events. Gen Z are “Social Natives” who successfully pushed digital transformation as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded. Their success with virtual events inspired us to share this post: 60 Awesome University Virtual Online Event Ideas For College Students.

At Arena, we saw explosive product growth for student groups as all-virtual environments – including live chat – became indispensable.

Now, 3 years later, we wanted to check in with student leaders to see which digital trends and tools are still being used to manage group events today.

How Stanford, Penn & Caltech Students Run Virtual Events

We interviewed five student event organizers in the USA and UK to discover best practices so that you can run better events.

These stories will be most relevant to people running events aimed at the Generation Z (born 1997 to 2013) cohort. Yet there are also important lessons to be learned here for other groups building communities around career goals, technology, and other subjects. Let’s kick off with Stanford.

Stanford BASES (Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students) is a long-established college group that brings together students, alumni, and industry leaders interested in technology and startups. Past speakers at the organization’s events include leaders from Fusion Fund, Khosla Ventures, and LinkedIn.

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Stanford BASES offers a variety of events, including sponsored events (1-2 per month) and other types of events. The Stanford organization typically attracts 20 to 40 participants per event, though some draw even larger crowds.

To find out what it’s like to run so many student events, we contacted Steven Pu, director of business development for the organization, for his insights.

“Fireside chats are one of our most popular event types. These 60-minute events usually involve 30-40 minutes of a panel discussion or a keynote. The remaining time is dedicated to question-and-answer interaction with attendees,” Pu explained.

Running digital events brings some challenges. “It is sometimes a struggle to make Zoom events engaging and interactive. In an event with 30 people, it’s common for only five people to have their video camera on,” Pu shared. In addition, the pandemic years forced many organizations to switch to digital events, and some people have become tired of these, and many students currently prefer in-person events.

Stanford BASES relies on a few essential tools to stay organized. “The key technology and tools we use to run events include Zoom, an email, and occasionally iMessage. Stanford provides the Zoom account and email list,” Pu shared.

On the East Coast, Penn Blockchain has quickly become one of the most successful student groups focused on blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. The organization also offers several types of events, including a large annual event. To discover more about Penn Blockchain’s event strategies, we sat down with Richard Ou, one of the group’s organizers.

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“Penn has a very entrepreneurial culture which helps to make it easier to launch and grow groups like Penn Blockchain,” Ou explained. Penn Blockchain is a larger student organization with different units dedicated to research, investment, and technology. These various departments make it easier for students to find an opportunity to contribute and learn.

“We’ve used multiple tools to organize our events. Initially, we used Telegram for the organization because many people in the blockchain community already use Telegram. Our community didn’t like using Telegram to engage in larger group discussions.

Even though Penn Blockchain has experienced organizing a large annual event with more than one hundred speakers, numbers aren’t everything. “It’s easy to be misled by focusing on the number of attendees. Larger attendee numbers may mean there is a reduced chance of connections. The true goal is to benefit the university community and drive opportunities for students.”

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The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is home to many researchers, technologists, and engineers advancing technology. The Caltech Entrepreneurship Club is a powerful way to bring together students interested in the challenge of starting and running companies. We spoke with Bryan Gerber, who is studying for a Ph.D. in genetic engineering and is a club leader, to find out how they engage students.

“We host several types of events for our community, including a fireside chat, panel discussions, and speaker events. We’ve found that 60-minute duration is the sweet spot and typically have between 30 to 50 people in attendance,” Gerber commented.

Recently, the Club organized a Biotech Startup panel with a panel of accomplished professionals and approximately 50 attendees.

Amanda Cashin, Global Head Illumina Accelerator
Ben Wang, Co-Founder Chimera Bioengineering (CAR-T cellular engineering)
Tatyana Dobreva, Co-Founder ImYoo Inc. (Single cell RNA sequencing immune cells)
Jerry Chen, Founder HubSeq (Sequencing data computational pipeline)

“We use several tools to run our events, including Google Forms, Zoom, and the Caltech email listserv. For internal organizations, we use Slack. I have seen some people using WhatsApp and Messenger – these apps don’t seem a good fit for our needs,” he added.

Bryan also shared a few best practices to maximize audience engagement in events.

Use Calendar Invitations

Sending a calendar invitation to registered attendees is an excellent way to lift attendance. The Caltech Entrepreneurship Club has found that calendar invites help to push attendee show-up rates to 33% to 50% of those who register.

Invite The Audience To Submit Questions

On the event sign-up form, the Club asks people to submit questions for the guest speaker. This tactic makes for better events in two ways. First, it directly connects the attendee’s interest to the event. Second, soliciting attendee questions in advance eases the burden on event organizers to come up with questions.

Event Scheduling Best Practices

The Caltech Entrepreneurship Club has found two weekdays to result in the best attendance: 12 pm to 1 pm and 4 pm to 5 pm. These are times of the day when many students welcome a break and the chance to interact with other people.

Build A Large Pipeline of Staff

Running influential events takes care and planning. “It’s important to get many people interested at the start. Over time, we find out which people can run events and use our process,” Gerber explained. Generally, it is easier to get people started with hosting events.

This best practice applies to other settings. You might start with one or two people responsible for planning and running events. Recruiting additional staff over time is also wise because it allows you to keep events running smoothly if unexpected events affect your primary team.

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King’s College, based in London, is one of the UK’s top 10 universities. The King’s College Business Club has been active in helping students discover business opportunities and network for years through its events. Michael Tye, president of the Kings College Business Club, shared a few best event best practices with us.

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Solve A Problem For Your Audience

One of the club’s most successful events was a CV/cover letter workshop. The event featured guest speakers from several management consulting firms, including Accenture, Deloitte, Strategy& and EY. The event drew over 200 virtual attendees. “The feedback received was fantastic,” Tye commented.

Many Generation Z university students have their eyes on career opportunities, so the workshop attracted considerable interest. Consider applying a similar event format to help your attendees solve a problem. For example, a SaaS company might run a workshop with expertise provided by third-party partners.

Offer Small Group Experiences

Getting lost in the crowd is a significant risk when attending a larger event. Fortunately, there is a way to address this problem: breakout rooms proactively. “I would recommend taking advantage of breakout rooms to create a more interactive session in smaller groups,” Tye added.

Some online event platforms support breakout rooms directly. If your platform doesn’t offer that capability, the alternative is offering smaller group experiences. For example, organize a live chat session limited to 10-15 people and share it as a private invitation.

Boost Engagement With Impressive Guest Speakers

The right guest speaker can play a major role in driving higher engagement. The Kings Business Club has brought in professionals from consulting firms and senior executives from J.P. Morgan. The club has also had good results inviting startup leaders.

Look for experts and influencers your audience respects to grow your attendance and engagement. By the way, you don’t have to create the expert guest list alone. You can also ask your audience for guest suggestions. If you can meet those requests, your audience will love you!

For our final profile, we decided to explore mental health. Why? Many people in Generation Z face significant mental health struggles.

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The American Psychological Association (APA) reported that Gen Z is likelier than other generations to report their mental health as fair or poor. Significant stressors for Gen Z include mass shootings, climate change, and sexual assessment, according to APA research.

Shreyaa Venkat and Esha Venkat founded a 501 C3 nonprofit organization called NEST4US. The organization has brought together over 5,000 volunteers to deliver events and services to participants in more than 30 countries.

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The organization recently hosted a mental health workshop for students. We asked Shreyaa Venkat to share her thoughts on running influential virtual events for students.

Leverage A Variety of Digital Tools

“Zoom has been our primary platform due to its routine exposure among our target population—youth— especially with the surge in utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Shreyaa Venkat shared.

While Zoom has been important, Vankat also shared that social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn have proven vital for running the group.

Supporting Online Community Growth

Getting to know somebody you only interact with through a screen can be challenging.

Fortunately, that challenge can be overcome with proper planning. “We always make sure to incorporate ice-breaker activities, insightful discussions, Q&A sessions, interactive games, and team-building exercises throughout every one of our events,” Shreyaa Venkat commented.

Use A Variety of Digital Event Sizes and Formats

There are many types of online event formats that work for everyone. “Our online events include workshops, summits, conferences, social media live sessions, focus group discussions, web series, and professional development sessions,” Shreyaa Venkat explained.

Applying Gen Z Online Community Insights To Your Organization

Your organization may not focus exclusively on Gen Z, and you may have different resources. Despite those differences, there is much to be learned from Gen Z’s approach to virtual events.

Include Video In Your Online Events

All the people we spoke to mentioned using video tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Look for ways to include live video in your online experience.

Invite Your Community Into The Event Process

Developing the initial vision for your event is a great start, but don’t feel like you have to think of everything. Ask your audience to contribute questions before, during and after the event. Taking the time to address as many questions as you can is a great way to build engagement.

Use Tools and Platforms Gen Z Likes

Hosting events on your website with live chat may be your goal. However, it’s important to consider the platforms that your Gen Z audience already likes and uses. For example, many crypto enthusiasts use Telegram. Your audience might like Instagram.

Find out where your audience hangs out online, build a presence and invite them back to your website, where you can use Arena Live Chat to engage them directly.

Focus on High Engagement, Not Just Numbers

Registering a thousand people for your event sounds impressive, but that’s just half the story. It can be more challenging to deeply engage larger audiences. Don’t hold back from holding small group style events like panel discussions and fireside chats with Gen Z. Holding a series of events capped at 25-50 people may be just the approach you need to create a foundation for long term engagement.

How To Build A Community On Your Website

Building an online community on your website is easy with Arena. Find out more about how to create a community experience right on your website.

Setup A Second Screen Experience In Less Than An Hour

Posted on May 2, 2023 by Arena

Second-screen experiences are a powerful way to engage your audience deeply. Instead of fighting multitasking and digital distractions, an effective second-screen experience works with these audience viewing habits.

From your audience’s perspective, a second-screen experience has two elements: viewing experience on a primary screen (typically a TV) and using a secondary screen (e.g., a tablet, laptop, or smartphone).

Offering a second-screen experience is particularly important in a few cases. Enjoying a second screen is very popular with Gen Z and Millennials, who spend hours online daily. Also, a second-screen experience can augment a primary screen experience.

Alternatively, you can use a second-screen experience to build your piggyback audience style – offering commentary and additional information about the primary screen experience.

For your second-screen experience to succeed, it has to be grounded in strategy. Use our quick strategy planning process to verify that a second-screen offering is a good fit for your

Building Your Second-Screen Strategy

The following strategy is intentionally designed to be fast and easy. It is designed to help you answer two questions. First, is a second-screen experience a good fit for your business goals right now? Second, this process will help you plan your first few second-screen experiences.

As your second-screen experience grows, you can integrate this offering into your standard digital planning processes.

1) Choose A Goal

Focus is your friend when planning a second-screen experience. There are typically a few common goals most second-screen efforts advance:

Audience Engagement
Audience Growth
Advertising Growth
Conversions

Generally speaking, achieving audience goals (i.e., audience engagement or audience growth) is an easier objective to pursue when you first get started offering second-screen experiences..

2) Find Your Angle

When you offer a second-screen experience, you are competing against other sources of entertainment for your audience’s limited attention. In a best-case scenario, your audience is already switching back and forth between their primary screen and what you have to offer.

Your angle – or unique value proposition – may be to offer the best and fastest commentary on a breaking news event. Or your might focus on timing – being the first to offer pre-event coverage.

The best part is that second-screen experiences – especially those based on live chat and live blogs – are flexible. You can change the timing, format, and concept later if you find out that your initial idea doesn’t hit the mark.

3) Review Audience Behavior

Looking at the recent audience discussions on social media is a powerful way to generate ideas. For example, are fans creating meme images around their favorite moments? Or are people focused more on speculating about the twists and turns of a story?

Understanding existing second-screen behaviors makes it easier to refine your second-screen experience. If you’re hosting a social experience – like a live chat on your website – the shape of the experience will be determined partly by your audience and the host. Having some prepared questions, talking points, and even special guests can help to keep the event moving.

4) Promote The Second Screen Experience

Once you have your second-screen experience planned, give yourself the time and resources to promote the experience properly. This is where your unique angle will help you to garner attention. If you have influencers or celebrity guests, invite them to join you in promoting the event.

5) Measure Your Success

The day after you run a second-screen experience, take some time to measure your results. Did you make progress toward your goal? If not, there are a few causes to explore, like insufficient event promotion, a lack of a unique angle, or failure to meet audience needs. Run at least 2-3 second-screen experiences before deciding whether or not to pause or abandon to pivot toward other ways of reaching your audience goals.

Download our white paper “Generation Z and the Rise of the Second Screen” and transform your engagement strategy today.

Set Up Your Second-Screen Experience In Less Than An Hour

Once you have your strategy, you can launch your second-screen experience in less than an hour. With some practice, you can set up a second-screen capability even faster.

The following techniques will help you to design a more engaging experience for your audience and get closer to your goals.

1) Build Multiple Social Sharing Opportunities

Word of mouth is one of the best ways to promote your second-screen offering. That’s why it is critical to have several social sharing opportunities. Start by choosing one or two social media hashtags for your audience. You might use a mix of general event hashtags (e.g., #SuperBowl) and ones you create for your purposes (e.g., #SuperBowlSuperFans).

2) Improve Integration With The Primary Screen

Maintaining a close link to the primary screen experience is vital to keep your audience engaged. To maintain this link, start by doing your homework. Watch previous episodes of the show or last year’s event coverage if possible. In addition, make sure you are watching along with your audience.

Developing significant expertise in some areas of film or television can be difficult, especially for a long-running franchise. Inviting a guest influencer with deep knowledge can help keep your second-screen experience, like a live chat session on your website, aligned with what’s happening on the primary screen.

3) Offer Rewards To Your Fans

Giving out rewards and prizes to your fans is a great way to boost interest. Aim to tie your giveaways to the primary screen experience for the best results. For instance, you might give away signed sports cards for the best comment or question during a live chat session.

Giving away your products as a reward can also work. A publisher might give away a free premium subscription to one live chat participant. That’s a quick way to make your second-screen experience more compelling.

4) Make Your Second-Screen Experience Highly Interactive

Put yourself in the shoes of your audience for a moment. They’re sitting on the couch watching TV and have their phones out. They’re likely focusing most of their attention on the primary screen (i.e., the TV). They’ll only look down on their mobile devices occasionally.

In that context, interacting with others needs to be simple and easy. Only some people will want to write out comments. This is where offering more interactive options comes in.

Use polls, social reactions, and links regularly so that your audience has more ways to participate. These interactive options are quick and straightforward, even if a participant only has a few moments to view their second screen.

Launch Your Second-Screen Experience Fast

Getting a second-screen experience up and running quickly is essential, especially if your offering aligns with a broadcast event. That’s why you need technology that is easy to implement – with no engineering support needed. Find out how Arena can help you build your digital community on your website.

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Customer Engagement Explained: Definition, Strategies & More

Posted on April 27, 2023 by Arena

Customer engagement is the new way to think about building trusting relationships with customers. It’s broader than related concepts like customer loyalty. Encouraging customer engagement makes your company more valuable for the long term.

What Is Customer Engagement?

Customer engagement is how your customers interact with your brand over time. A high level of engagement means customers are interested in new products, online events, and content that you release. Highly engaged customers likely spend significant time visiting your website and interacting with you online.

At its highest level, customer engagement means you have fans who eagerly introduce other people to your brand. This level of passionate engagement makes marketing more efficient because word-of-mouth efforts enhance your campaigns.

Customer engagement is also closely related to other ways of relating to your customers: customer experience and customer satisfaction. Let’s explore how these concepts connect further below.

Comparing Customer Engagement Vs. Customer Satisfaction

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Customer engagement and customer satisfaction partly overlap. It’s unlikely that a brand can achieve high customer engagement levels if satisfaction falls. The scope is a crucial point of difference between engagement and satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction often focuses on rating a purchase experience or customer service interaction. For instance, a customer satisfaction survey may ask buyers if their concern was thoroughly addressed when they asked for help.

In contrast, customer engagement goes beyond purchases and interactions with company staff. Customer engagement also considers if a person is acting as a brand ambassador. In addition, customer engagement examines how a person interacts with your online content and experiences.

Customer Engagement Vs. Customer Experience

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Customer experience and customer engagement are also related. Both can reinforce each other to increase revenue, reduce service expenses and lift a brand’s long-term prospects. Perspective and emphasis are key differences between these two concepts.

Customer engagement assumes that the customer is an active participant. Moment by moment, the customer decides how much time and money they want to spend with your brand.

Customer experience, in comparison, brings together the company’s departments and capabilities to design a consistent, integrated experience. For instance, robust customer experience ensures offline and online interactions are aligned in copy, offers, and strategy.

A robust customer experience journey makes it far more likely that customer engagement will stay high. The opposite is also true. A dysfunctional customer experience will likely cripple efforts to foster ongoing customer engagement.

3 Ways Customer Engagement Boosts The Bottom Line

Building and sustaining a customer engagement program takes effort and resources. So, it’s reasonable to ask what return you should expect. The return on investment from strong customer engagement takes a few different forms.

1.Improves Marketing Effectiveness

A highly engaged customer base makes it easier to boost the effectiveness of your marketing in a few ways. Engaged customers are more likely to refer other customers – a growth channel that is free for you. In addition, highly engaged customers are more likely to share a steady stream of data about themselves and their preferences. This stream of first-party data makes it far easier to create personalized marketing campaigns which are proven to deliver excellent results.

2. Improves Product Development

Changing or launching an existing product takes time and effort. Fortunately, customer engagement can reduce the risk of product development missteps.

For example, you can ask your best customers for feedback on features and prototypes before launching them in large campaigns. In addition, early customer feedback can yield reviews, feedback, and other forms of social proof, which make it far easier to launch something new to the market.

3. Reduces Customer Service Costs

Highly engaged customers are often willing to provide help to other customers. For example, take a look at the forums dedicated to software.

It’s common to see experienced users provide tips and advice to other users on social websites like Stack Overflow. One should not expect customers to take on all customer service responsibilities, but every bit helps to ease the burden of customer service.

Customer engagement has the potential to boost profitability. It’s important to know whether or not your program is trending in the right direction.

7 Signs Of Healthy Customer Engagement

How do you know if your customer engagement efforts are working? The best way is to build a strategy and develop custom measures associated with that strategy. As a starting point, the following indicators will tell you if your customer engagement program is on the right track.

1. Your Loyalty Program Is Thriving And Growing

High levels of participation in loyalty programs are an excellent sign of customer engagement. If customers take the extra step to register in your program, activate offers, and so forth, they are engaged with your offers.

However, relying too heavily on a customer loyalty program can be misleading. A brand offering unusually lucrative rewards may see a short-term increase in loyalty program engagement. To provide a more balanced view, look at some of the other signs below.

2. Your Online Events Pull In Excited Participants

Look at the attendance numbers and quality of engagement in your digital events and experiences. It’s a good sign if you have a cadre of loyal customers who consistently join your events month in and month out.

You might measure the number of people who take action during live events (e.g., the number of clicks on your conversion cards using Arena Live Chat).

3. You Receive Positive Reviews

Positive reviews written directly by customers indicate that your customers like your product. In addition, a steady stream of positive reviews is an even better sign of a highly engaged customer base.

4. Customers Submit Feature Requests, Ideas & More

When customers reach out to ask for changes, such as feature requests in software or different colors in apparel, that is an excellent sign. Your brand can also encourage this type of engagement by seeking feedback in surveys, live chat sessions, and other venues.

5. You Recover Effectively From Most Complaints

This signal of effective customer engagement is associated with customer service. Simply put, it’s challenging to eliminate all customer complaints. However, a company that effectively responds to complaints promptly is more likely to retain content customers.

6. You Have An Active And Growing Referral Program

While this measure of engagement has drawbacks, it is an excellent sign of engagement. If you see consistent referral volume, that is an excellent sign of engagement.

7. Customers Are Interacting With Your Online Content

This sign of customer engagement is essential for publishers. A paying subscriber who never visits your website, downloads a podcast, or views a video is at a heightened risk of disengaging and leaving your community.

For non-publishers, interacting with your online content is also essential to track. A high level of engagement tells you that your content program is on the right track. In addition, interactions with your content are an excellent opportunity to generate first-party data.

Customer Engagement In Practice: The Customer Engagement Lifecycle

Lasting customer engagement is a lifecycle process leading to continuous improvement. Every time you go through the process, you can deepen customer relationships and trust.

1. Gather Data From Your Customers

Data gathered directly from your customers, also known as first-party data, is the foundation of customer engagement. When designing programs and initiatives for your customers, measuring your efforts and collecting feedback are vital.

The way you gather data from your customers also matters. Email and website analytics can automate some of this to see which pages and content drive opens, clicks, and user attention. In other cases, using surveys and other direct approaches to solicit feedback is wise.

2. Analyze Your Customer Data

Arena Personas (Beta) makes it easier to get a clear picture of your customer engagement across multiple channels like email, website, and chat interactions. Gathering all of that data in one place is the starting point. Your next step is to analyze the customer data. Use the following questions to get started:

What customer engagement patterns are we seeing (e.g., the highest-value customers tend to attend webinars and other live experiences)?
Are there any gaps or quality issues in the customer data (for example, do you need data from your customer relationship management app)?
Does this data help us make better predictions about purchases, referrals, and other valuable actions?

3. Develop Customer Engagement Tests

Reviewing customer engagement data is interesting. However, the data on its own will not drive growth. It’s crucial to take some well-thought-out risks using customer engagement data.

The tests could be small in scope, like creating a test around marketing copy that succeeded with your website audience and rolling it out on display ads. Or it might be more involved, like adjusting incentives to encourage past customers to return and make more purchases.

4. Observe The Results And Iterate

Once you have a few marketing tests in mind, allow some time to pass to gather meaningful data. Unless you have an extensive customer base, thirty days are usually enough time to pass.

Once you have the new customer engagement data in, review your test. Ask yourself whether your assumptions are correct or need to be changed. Once you have gleaned whatever insights you can, iterate on the process and start the lifecycle process again.

Customer Engagement Strategies

There are several proven strategies that drive higher customer engagement. To boost (or launch) your customer engagement program, pick some strategies to delight your customers.

1. Launch (Or Enhance) Your Loyalty Program

A loyalty program is among the best ways to encourage ongoing customer engagement. Retailers, airlines, and other companies have proven the value of these programs for years. Yet, you don’t have to build a complex program to get started.

Your initial program could start by offering premium content or products to members first. Another approach is to offer a discount or another incentive to registered members.

2. Encourage The Right Behavior In Your Online Community

Customer engagement is ultimately built up through individuals interacting with your brand positively over time. When your online community starts, setting expectations with your audience is essential.

Executing this strategy will generally have two elements: positive and negative. The positive element is to look for highly engaged customers and praise their actions (e.g., like their comments, send thank you messages, and so forth). This praise will help to encourage your customers to keep up the excellent work.

The negative element is to have a set of ground rules and live up to them on your standard. For example, a brand may have a strict policy against hate speech, profanity, and other “not safe for work” content. If a community participant runs afoul of these rules, take appropriate action, such as sending them a private message to stop the behavior or potentially banning the person from your community if the negative behavior continues.

3. Invite Engagement Through Online Experiences

Creating the right environment is another way to boost customer engagement. Your website can potentially be the center of your brand’s online community. With Arena Live Chat, you can run live events from your website efficiently.

Offering a live chat experience to your customers is one of the best ways to grow relationships at scale and, what’s more, this kind of experience tends to be very popular with Gen Z… You might already have a chat in place for customer service. While helpful in solving problems, one-on-one customer service chat interactions do little to grow your community.

Instead, looking for ways to boost your community through live events where like-minded people can come together is more powerful. For example, you might invite your customers to join an “Ask me anything” online event with your CEO to bring a more human touch to your brand.

The Easiest Way To Lift Customer Engagement On Your Website

Customer engagement is good for the bottom line, makes marketing easier, and gives your customers a social experience. To bring your customer engagement strategy to life, it’s crucial to have the right technology.

Installing Arena Live Chat on your website only takes a few minutes. Discover more about building your online community with Arena.

Grow Publisher Revenue Fast With Second-Screen Experiences

Posted on April 26, 2023 by Arena

Second-screen experiences are fast becoming one of the most popular ways to interact with content. Viewers watch the main action on a TV and then use a second screen – like a phone – to chat with others about what they’re watching or find more information.

Providing a strong second-screen experience is a compelling way to lift engagement. Increasing engagement is a worthwhile goal. Yet, what if boosting revenue is your number one priority? Second-screen experiences can directly help you increase revenue.

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Why Buying Broadcast Rights Isn’t The End of The Story

Buying broadcast rights, especially exclusive rights to marquee events like the Super Bowl or a hot HBO series, was a proven strategy. Exclusivity meant you were the only game in town for viewers, which helped to support high advertising rates. If you can afford such exclusivity, it’s a great strategy.

What if spending billions of dollars like Amazon for Thursday Night NFL football is out of the question for you? You can leverage a second-screen experience to piggyback on the popularity of a show or event. Content about an event – like a pre-game show in sports, red-carpet interviews at awards shows, and fan discussions – is proven to draw engagement.

All you need to get started is the right technology, like a live blog or live chat on your website, and something interesting to say! Fortunately, publishers live in a golden age of content creators and commentators. Almost every interest or category of pop culture today has influencers. So, invite a few influencers to participate in your live chat discussion.

Download our white paper “Generation Z and the Rise of the Second Screen” and transform your engagement strategy today.

4 More Ways Publishers Can Lift Revenue With Second-Screen Experiences

Once you start thinking creatively about second-screen experiences, there are five other powerful ways to lift revenue.

1) Increase Advertising Revenue With New Formats

Advertising revenue is the traditional key revenue source for major publishers. Having a second-screen strategy in place helps in two ways. First, second-screen experiences lift engagement, so you have more eyes on your content for longer. Second, second-screen experiences make innovative ad formats more effective.

Take interactive ads, for example. These types of ads are widely used on social media platforms like Facebook. Instead of passively viewing copy, images, and videos, an interactive ad lets the audience act. This can include taking direct action, like playing a mobile game or browsing different versions of a product (e.g., clothing size and color).

Interactive ads do some of the heavy lifting to convert a casual viewer into a potential customer. Therefore, publishers may charge higher rates to show this type of ad.

2) Direct Sponsorship

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While related to traditional advertising, sponsorship deals are different. Typically, a sponsor will get a premium placement. You can offer the sponsor the opportunity to have a voice in the editorial process. For example, a sponsor may be interested in having one of their staff participate in an online event like a webinar or live chat session.

Look at the event industry for examples of what you can achieve with direct sponsorship. Major conferences like CES offer multiple sponsorship opportunities for brands like a spot in the conference daily’s publication (CES Daily) and the CES Tech Talk Podcast. The event also includes intimate scale sponsorships for the CTA Member Lounge and CTA Member Party.

Adding sponsorship revenue to your publication is generally easier if you offer a discrete, unique event. For example, a publisher might have a dedicated team covering early Presidential primary elections. Alternatively, a publisher can run virtual events and feature one or two sponsors.

There are some downsides to direct sponsorships to keep in mind. Brands may ask for some exclusivity, so your offering and pricing need to reflect that. Further, the best sponsorship deals require old-fashioned dealmaking instead of programmatic platforms. The good news is that a successful sponsorship has the potential to mature into an ongoing relationship and bring revenue for years to come.

The second-screen way to implement direct sponsorship is to focus on sponsorship for the secondary screen. It’s easier to design and package a second-screen experience like a live chat session on your website vs. making changes to a broadcast.

3) Subscriptions

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Gaining more paying subscribers is one of the best ways to increase revenue in the long term. There are at least two ways to package subscriptions to appeal to the second-screen audience: premium add-on to existing subscriptions and creating a distinct subscription offering.

The premium add-on option is suitable for publishers with active digital subscribers. In this case, the approach is to offer an additional subscription option for second-screen users.

For example, you might offer pre-event and post-event coverage for significant business developments such as initial public offerings (IPOs). By limiting access to those with a specific subscription tier, the subscription also provides exclusivity. The potential to gain early information ahead of others is one way to attract an engaged audience, like investors, who thrive on valuable information.

What if you have no significant digital subscriber base? In that case, it’s vital to find more ways to distinguish your publication from other options on the market. Introducing a unique second-screen experience to your market may be the solution. For instance, your industry might not have a premium mobile app or mobile web experience available. In that case, a paid subscriber-only experience could stand out like a monthly event series.

4) Ecommerce

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There are a few ways to increase e-commerce-related revenue using second-screen experiences.

Affiliate Marketing

In contrast, to display advertising, affiliate marketing is a new category. Thanks to major players like Amazon, eBay, and others, the affiliate marketing market is already generating billions of dollars. By using affiliate links, a publisher can earn a commission by recommending products.

The second-screen angle to affiliate marketing is to tie an affiliate marketing offer to something happening on the audience member’s primary screen. TV events with a significant celebrity presence – like the Emmys or Oscars – offer plenty of opportunities. For example, you might promote celebrity collectibles for sale at the high end (e.g., signed prints or posters) or lower-priced products (e.g., custom t-shirts produced at scale).

Affiliate marketing isn’t for every publisher, however. It best suits publishers reviewing, ranking, and discussing consumer products like the Wire Cutter.

Publisher Ecommerce

Some publishers have online stores selling apparel, accessories, back issues, and special prints. Selling more of their products – beyond traditional subscriptions – is another way to lift revenue.

To make your online store more appealing, look for ways to make a unique offering tied to a second-screen experience. For example, you might offer a discount code that leverages a plot point (e.g., the death of a character) in a significant streaming show. That kind of promotion has the virtue of being relatively simple to design and launch. The downside is that tying a promotion to an event like that has a short shelf life.

As you become more comfortable spotting and leveraging second-screen experiences, use several of these strategies in concert to keep growing.

The Indispensable Foundation For Second-Screen Revenue Growth

There are multiple ways for publishers to boost revenue by leveraging second-screen offers and experiences. All of these strategies rely on having a few core ingredients, like having a highly engaging website. Adding Arena Live Chat to your website is one of the best ways to make your website more interactive. Discover more about how to build a thriving online community right on your website.

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Tips For Publishers To Get More Traffic

Posted on April 24, 2023 by Arena

Google’s live badge feature is a great opportunity to promote your live online event. You’ll find out what the live badge is, how to use it easily with Arena and how to keep your online audience engaged.

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What Is Google’s Live Badge?

Google’s “Live” feature is designed to highlight organizations that provide the latest and greatest news coverage. For example, some news publishers used this feature to highlight their coverage of the President’s State of the Union address. It’s not limited to political news. It’s a proven way to drive more traffic and engagement for almost any kind of publisher.

Once you have the LiveBlogPosting markup in place, your live blog coverage has a chance to appear in the Google search results. Specifically, your live blog may be featured with the “Live” badge. This means that your coverage has a chance out prominently in the search results.

Leveraging this opportunity in Google search is easy. Simply add the LiveBlogPosting markup to your live blog page. Adding this markup is just the first step – it makes your page eligible to show up in Google with the coveted LIVE badge. That badge is powerful because it highlights your content above the regular search results which means more clicks and engagement on your website.

Like any other aspect of Google search, meeting the technical requirements to be indexed and displayed is just the starting point. It’s even more important to plan and run your live coverage so that it draws engagement. Before we can get to that step, let’s take a look at how Arena can help.

How Arena Makes It Easy

Adding Arena Live Blog to your website is one of the easiest ways to create a live blog. In just a few minutes, you can install live blog and set up your first live chat. Just follow these steps to get more organic traffic to your live blog.

1) Sign up for Arena Live Blog. It’s free to get started!

2) Set up a Live Blog for your website

3) Launch your live blog

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When your live blog is published and goes live, the live markup is automatically turned on. Your content will have a chance to appear alongside other publishers on Google’s Top Stories widget.

5 Tips To Make The Most Of Your Live Badgees To Maximize Your Live Badge

Live blog coverage has the potential to draw significant traffic for publishers. Use the following tips to position your live blog for success.

1) Review Your Past Coverage For Trending News Expertise

Look at the content you’ve published int he past 12 months to see which topics drove the greatest engagement on your website. Once you have this list, identify the events that are predictable. For example, elections and sports events (e.g. March Madness for college basketball) are events that tend to draw intense audience attention.

2) Create Some Of Your Live Blog Content Ahead Of Time

During a breaking news event, your audience may expect hourly updates (or even faster in some cases). Producing up-to-the-minute coverage can be exhausting. Work with your team to create a handful of updates in advance to reduce the burden on your team. For example, you might create short bio posts on the key people involved in an event (e.g. the top 2-3 athletes for each team).

3) Use Social Media To Promote Your Live Blog

As you count down toward the topic of your coverage, start promoting your live blog coverage to your audience. For instance, tell your audience about the prework you’ve done to create great coverage (e.g. “we’ve invited a panel of 3 VIP guests to offer their thoughts as the election unfolds). In each of these updates, remind your audience when the live blog will go live.

4) Gather First-party Data And Permission For Your Next Live Blog Event

One of the best ways to grow your audience and engagement is to offer live blog coverage regularly. As you build a reputation for offering quality, up-to-date content to your audience, each live blog you run will help to grow your audience further.

As a rule of thumb, give your audience at least two opportunities to sign up to be notified about future live blog events. Offering this call to action at the mid-way point and toward the end of the coverage is a good starting point.

5) Reserve Some Capacity For Unexpected Live Blog Opportunities

The previous tips assume you are creating a live blog for an event known in advance. News stories are not always easy to predict, though. For example, who would have predicted a war starting in Europe in 2022?

Creating a live blog in response to an important news story, especially one that surprises the world, can grow your audience substantially. The downside is that these events are tough to anticipate. The best way to prepare for these opportunities is to keep some slack in your editorial team each week so that you can run a live blog when events come up.

Get Started With Live Coverage Now

It’s tough to predict the next trending news story. What you can control is your preparation! Take a few minutes to discover how Arena Live Blog can help you to grow your audience. On most websites, it only takes a few minutes to install Arena Live Blog.

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5 Reasons Gen Z Audiences Enjoy Second-Screen Experiences

Posted on April 20, 2023 by Arena

Generation Z – those born between 1997 to 2012 – are a perfect fit for second-screen experiences. Appealing to Gen Z preferences matters because they’re already 20% of the US population. Meeting their needs and expectations is vital to maintain and grow your audience.

What Is A Second-Screen Experience?

A second-screen experience means switching back and forth between two different screens, usually digital devices. The best second-screen experiences share two aspects: two different devices and audience behavior.

A second-screen experience starts with using two screen devices. For example, you might watch a show on a streaming service on your TV and then discuss it with friends on your mobile device.

However, switching back and forth between devices isn’t necessarily a sign of high engagement. For example, a viewer who checks their email during a TV show’s commercial break is relatively disengaged. In contrast, a viewer who uses their device to find out more about an ad is more likely to get invested in advertising.

Attracting and keeping Gen Z’s attention to a program takes more than excellent writing, acting, and more. Success requires leveraging second-screen engagement strategies. In a previous post, we covered popular second-screen engagement strategies.

Download our white paper “Generation Z and the Rise of the Second Screen” and transform your engagement strategy today.

The 5 Reasons Gen Z Audiences Love Second-Screen

Gen Z’s enthusiasm for second-screen experiences and engagement is positioned to grow further for a few reasons.

1) They’re Passionate About Social Media

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As digital natives, Gen Z’s passion for social media is well documented. As of 2022, the top two most popular social media platforms – as measured by the number of hours spent per month – for this demographic are TikTok (23.6 hours) and YouTube (23.2 hours). Video and social connections are the common denominators between those platforms.

This means that Gen Z audiences are likely using social media while watching TV and other screen experiences. View that habit as an opportunity to connect with them while they’re watching.

2) Multi-tasking Is A Default Gen Z Behavior

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Multi-tasking – or rapidly switching between tasks – is another common Gen Z habit. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Gen Z view multi-tasking as an “essential life skill” compared to 51% of Boomers. This tendency has its advantages and disadvantages.

For brands and publishers seeking to grow Gen Z engagement, multi-tasking means offering a varied experience is essential. Expecting Gen Z to stay focused entirely on a single screen (or any activity) for a full hour is probably unrealistic.

Lean into this multi-tasking behavior by offering Gen Z audiences several ways to engage with you. For example, offer a live chat experience on your website to supplement the audience experience. For example, a chat experience focused on the World Series is a great way to keep viewers engaged in the action, even when the broadcast is on a commercial break.

3) Gen Z Audiences Expect Personalization

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Personalization is a default experience for many digital experiences like online shopping, social media, and other platforms. A 2023 study of more than 1500 Gen Z respondents in Europe found that 45% of Gen Z expect personalization. That’s not all. Almost half (45%) of Gen Z will leave a website if it doesn’t predict their needs and cater to them.

Meeting the demand for personalized experiences with a single screen – like a TV alone – takes time and effort. Even the big streaming platforms offer limited personalization, such as customized recommendations. Tailoring content suggestions is necessary, but more is needed to connect with Gen Z. To connect further with Gen Z audiences (and earn first-party data), see our post: 5 Ways Publishers Can Build Their Gen Z Audience And Earn First Party Data.

Personalization must also extend to advertising. Without relevance, Gen Z is likely to tune out completely. A second-screen experience is one way out of this dilemma because a second-screen (i.e., a mobile device or computer) can leverage valuable first–party data to deliver more personalized experiences.

Fulfilling Gen Z expectations for highly personalized experiences is only possible with robust data. If you’re new to the world of first-party data, see our guide: What is first-party data?

4) Gen Z Is The Same-day Shipping Generation

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In 2015, Amazon launched same-day shipping for 14 cities across the US. That means that Gen Z were teenagers or younger when this new level of instant gratification became widely available. For comparison, prior generations were used to waiting much longer – weeks for mail-order purchases – for purchases to appear.

It’s not just a question of shipping expectations. Generation Z audiences are unlikely to sit through long waits. This has a few implications for designing second-screen experiences.

TV to second screen transition

Gen Z audiences expect instant gratification when they see something they like or want to discuss. In many cases, social media platforms provide that social outlet.

Website/App speed

Speed is critical if Gen Z sees an ad or finds your website differently while viewing their primary screen. In a second-screen context, Gen Z users will rapidly switch between your website on their phone and their other screen.

A live chat experience on your website is a great way to capture Gen Z’s attention in these situations. Ensure your live chat solution is lightweight and fast, like Arena Live Chat.

5) Gen Z Expects Innovation

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Gen Z’s expectations for innovation are significant for a few reasons. Since they’ve grown up in the digital era, they have seen rapid development. Many in Gen Z may not see the original 2007 iPhone as particularly innovative because smartphones have been commonplace for most of their lives.

Well-crafted second-screen experiences have been around for a few years. Yet, these experiences are far from universal today. That means there is still a tremendous opportunity to deliver innovation and novel experiences through second screens.

Use a second screen to offer better marketing campaigns – see an ad on TV and then customize the product before ordering it on a smartphone. Alternatively, live broadcast events can use feedback – like chat comments and voting in polls – to shape their programming. For example, picture a Reddit-style “ask me anything” interview where the audience upvotes their favorite questions for a celebrity.

How To Unlock Gen Z Engagement Faster

Meeting Gen Z expectations like instant gratification, innovation, and more might feel challenging! There are ways to make it easier, though. Add a live chat app to your website, and you’ll be ready to build an engaging second-screen experience soon. Find out more about building a digital community with Arena.

High CTR Display Advertising Best Practices

Posted on April 18, 2023 by Arena

Winning in display advertising is hard because most people don’t notice these ads. One industry study estimated that 86% of consumers experience “banner blindness.” This finding is troubling for advertisers and publishers.

The good news is that you have a tremendous opportunity to increase the effectiveness of your display advertising. There are two strategies to use – improving display advertising and strategies that go beyond traditional display ad methods.

Display Advertising: Best Practices To Create An Effective Ad

We’ll approach this discussion from the publisher’s point of view. Understanding these best practices allows you to sell more subscriptions, tickets, and products. Also, you’ll be better positioned to understand your advertisers’ needs and offer them a perspective.

1. Craft Your Copy

The copy in display advertising has significant constraints. Typically, display ads have very short amounts of copy: aim for ten words or less. With these constraints, focusing on a single, clear idea or offer is often best.

Since a headline can make or break a display ad, it’s natural to feel pressure to get it right immediately. That’s a challenging game to win. Instead, use the rule of 10. Write ten headline ideas for your display ads. Then step away from your ad and select 2-3 promising ads for your needs.

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As a starting point, focus your ad on either solving a problem or a benefit. Consumer brands often focus on sales and discounts because these are clear, easy-to-explain benefits. Simple benefit-driven headlines are proven to work. This type of headline should always have a home in your display advertising.

Direct benefits aren’t the only approach to winning display advertising. Focusing your display ad on a painful problem your audience is experiencing can also work well. The key is to express the problem in a specific way that clicks with your audience. For example, the headline “Worried about taxes?” is less compelling than “Worried about the April 18 tax deadline?”

2. Target Your Display Ad Effectively

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The best copy in the world will only succeed if it is aimed at the right audience. The best-targeting insights come from using first-party data. If a publisher has collected detailed demographic profiles (e.g., age, gender, income, and location) on their audience, targeting should be much easier.

Display ad targeting should also consider audience behavior and timing. For example, an audience segment that pays for a subscription may be more likely to pay for other premium content and experiences like events, streaming services, and other subscriptions.

At the same time, don’t write off non-subscription buyers in your audience. Highly engaged audience members that regularly consume your sports content might be excellent prospects for a sports apparel brand.

A thoughtful approach to timing the delivery of your display advertising can also lift your results. For example, displaying ads during the traditional 9-5 work day will likely attract a different audience than those displayed during off-peak hours.

Device-based targeting is another way to target your ad. For instance, you can target desktop-only, mobile-only, and both. Cross-device targeting is often helpful. A casual mobile browser may see your ad for the first time on mobile and then click when they see it again on the desktop.

Finally, keep programmatic advertising models in mind. Likely, your advertisers will not be selecting individual publishers directly. Instead, they may use platforms like demand side platforms (DSPs) to target demographics or broad interests (e.g., “beauty and fitness” or “home and garden”).

3. Choose Your Design and Layout

The right design and layout decisions can go a long way to increasing display advertising ROI. At a minimum, having mobile and desktop-sized images for your display ads is critically important. Ad sizes like 250×250 pixels and 200×200 pixels can work well on both screen sizes.

In addition to display ad size, placement is an important consideration. A display ad at the top of your homepage may be more difficult to target than one in a specific section, like business news. A display ad that faces less competition from other ads may deliver more significant results.

Large ad sizes may also drive up conversions. A 2019 study found that the best-performing ads were “leaderboards” (728×90) and the medium rectangular ad (300×250).

4. Adopt An Experimental Mindset

It’s unlikely that your first display advertising concept will become an instant winner. To succeed in display advertising, it is crucial to have the patience to test and experiment. For example, your testing might target demographic segments (e.g., Gen Z vs. Millennials) and offers (e.g., 10% coupon vs. offering a premium).

Some ad platforms offer responsive ad capabilities where different ad creative combinations can be tested quickly. If your budget allows, take full advantage of such automated testing. Just make sure that each test gets enough impressions over enough time.

Enhancing Your Display Advertising Results

A well-crafted display ad is table stakes to compete in the digital world. These ads may not be enough to attract attention, clicks, and conversions. Use the following strategies to increase your results further.

Use Arena Conversion Cards

Arena Conversion Cards are a powerful way to raise the effectiveness of your display advertising. Conversion cards can deliver CTR (click through rate) over 5% while traditional display ads typically deliver less than 1% CTR, which is a great benefit direct sales teams at publishers and media companies can leverage to drive revenue.

Arena Conversion Cards function like native display ads on your website. Choose your image, copy, and CTA button, and you’ll have your first conversion card style display ad ready!

Conversion cards deliver higher conversions for a few reasons.

First, conversion cards focus on getting conversions rather than other advertising goals like increasing brand awareness.

Second, conversion cards perform better than traditional ads because they are part of an online experience like chat where your audience has already shown they want to engage. Leverage this engagement to promote premium subscriptions, content or sponsored ads sold by a direct sales team.

Third, a conversion card can be pinned to the top of an engaging experience like a live chat or live blog. That means many people in your audience will see it while they are paying attention to your website.

Conversion cards are best used for two types of display advertising: direct sponsorships and marketing your products. For instance, a live blog focused on baseball coverage would be an excellent opportunity to have a conversion card for baseball products.

Enhance Audience Engagement With Online Experiences

Online audiences are easily distracted. That’s one of the reasons why display advertising delivers poor results. What if there was a way to keep your audience glued to your content and ignore other media for a time?

It’s possible when your website offers a compelling online experience. Hosting an online event with a live chat room is one powerful way to keep your audience hooked. For example, invite your audience to breaking news coverage with some of your top personalities. Once your audience starts to engage with your coverage by posting comments and questions, you have their attention! Adding a few conversion cards to the event can drive much higher click-through rates (CTR) than conventional digital advertising.

How To Quickly Increase Audience Engagement

Developing a more engaged online audience is critical for publishers. With high engagement, you can collect better data on your audience. That better data makes your publication more appealing to publishers. Find out how Arena can help you increase online engagement.