Tag Archives: Live Chat

Pros & Cons of Generative AI to Boost Chat Engagement

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Chatbot adoption has rapidly increased over the past decade as businesses seek to improve efficiency and service. 

The first generation of chatbots used simple scripts and automation to provide preprogrammed answers to common questions. That innovation added value and eased burdens on support teams. 

The next evolution of chat technology and AI will be completely different. Generative AI allows chat to engage audiences, suggest products, and more. While we’re excited about generative AI, it’s smart to consider the pros and cons of AI chat so that you can choose the right path forward for your business.

What Are The Pros and Cons of Chatbots?

Chatbots have exploded in popularity since their widespread adoption started a few years ago. Business Insider states, “consumer retail spend via chatbots worldwide will reach $142 billion—up from just $2.8 billion in 2019.” 

Traditional Chatbot Pros

The billions of spending from chatbot interactions are driven by two primary advantages:

Availability

Chatbots can run 24/7 on your website so that consumers can get answers whenever convenient.

Speed

Chatbots can respond quickly to questions by using decision trees and scripts. This approach means customers don’t have to wait on hold in lengthy phone queues.

Traditional Chatbot Cons

While chatbots have a lot to offer, this technology has some things that could be improved. 

Complex Troubleshooting

If a customer has a novel or rare problem, it’s unlikely that a chatbot will be able to help them. In these situations, chatbots are usually programmed to refer a user to chat together with a human agent.

Empathy

Chatbots are usually unable to express meaningful empathy or engage an angry customer. For example, a customer might be upset about a delayed delivery. A shipping delay may be outside of the company’s hands. Meaningfully engaging an angry or disappointed customer will likely be beyond a chatbot’s capabilities. In other words, a chatbot is likely unable to “read between the lines” when faced with a significant customer concern.

Contributing To Revenue

The majority of chatbots are focused on customer service. Delivering excellent customer service can increase loyalty and support long-term revenue. Directly selling a new product is beyond the scope of many chatbots.

Advantages of Generative AI Chatbots

Generative AI is a subset of artificial intelligence designed to generate human-like responses. 

Unlike traditional chatbots that rely on preset responses, generative AI learns from customer queries, data analysis, and natural language processing to create contextual responses that are more relevant and accurate. Integrating generative AI with chatbots can improve the quality of interactions, reduce response time, and increase customer satisfaction.

Generative AI Chatbot Pros

Personalized Responses

With the help of machine learning algorithms, chatbots can analyze customer data, such as their previous purchases, search history, and preferences, to provide tailored recommendations and support.

Brand Based Responses

The best generative AI technology is based on quality data. For example, you might train an AI system only on your company’s website. This training approach means an AI chatbot is more likely to provide on-brand responses to customer questions rather than generic ones.

Generative AI Chatbot Cons

Training and Testing

Generative AI technology is relatively new. As a result, it takes relatively more experimentation and effort to make this technology work compared to traditional chatbots.

Chatbot Misuse and Bias

Human misuse and abuse of chatbots is a known problem. For example, the Microsoft chatbot Tay was “trained” to express highly problematic comments, which upset many people. In addition, bias is a problem for chatbots. Consider Amazon’s HR machine learning technology which systematically undervalued female applicants because the system was trained on a data set of overwhelmingly male employees.

The tremendous power of generative AI means these problems will be overcome. As this technology matures, offering live chat experiences for your users is smart.

The Hybrid Approach To Chat And AI 

Today, the best way to use AI is to integrate it with other chat experiences. For example, use live chat support staffed by employees when you have a major live shopping or live streaming event. 

In those circumstances, unexpected problems or questions may happen, so having an employee available to respond makes sense.  Chatbots can pick up the slack and support customers outside regular business hours and events.

Arena AI Concierge for Publishers, Content & Affiliate Commerce is here. Request early access.

Two Ways To Increase Customer Engagement With Live Chat & AI Chat

Now let’s focus on how using a live chat platform can boost engagement and improve the quality of your chatbot interactions.

1. Drive Higher Engagement With Live Chat

Whether you seek to grow an audience, make sales, or drive lead generation, all those goals rest on engagement. If people leave your website seconds after arriving, it won’t be easy to connect with them in any way. Live chat, especially with live events, gives customers an excellent reason to stay on your website.

There are two ways you can drive engagement and keep users on your website longer with live chat. First, allow customers to interact with their friends in a live chat room. For example, you might run a virtual event for sports fans where people can ask questions of their favorite athletes. That’s not all. You can also run occasional special invitation-only events for your customers featuring exclusive guests.

Arena Live Chat makes these live events more engaging, so customers will happily stay on your website longer. That means you will have more opportunities to use conversion cards to encourage purchases and other conversions. The opportunity to interact with like-minded people through live chat is something special that chatbots can’t offer.

Are you running a live virtual event for the first time? Use the virtual events checklist to prepare and run your event.

2. Use Live Chat Data To Improve Chat Bots

Your chatbots are only as good as the data used to power them. When you first set up a chatbot, it makes sense to start with basic questions and answers like the following:

  • What is the status of my order?
  • How do I request a refund?
  • How do I register for events?
  • What are the company’s hours of service?
  • How do I contact sales?

These initial basic questions will help you to get started with your chatbots. Over time, your customers may ask other questions specific to your company or changing situations. In 2021, many companies have been negatively impacted by supply chain delays and problems. By default, a chatbot will not be able to address these questions. However, your employees may notice more customers asking about supply chain problems. In that case, take that live chat feedback and use it to improve your chatbot.

Review the following steps every month to ensure your chatbots keep improving over time.

Review live chat transcripts

Review transcripts of live chat sessions on your website to see what kinds of questions customers ask. If you have many chat sessions, use the following tip below as an alternative.

Survey live chat staff for their views

Reviewing hundreds or thousands of live chat sessions to improve your chatbots may be challenging for your organization. In that case, reach out to your employees via a survey and ask them about the most common questions they encounter.

Test new additions to your chatbot

Develop updates for your chatbot based on the new questions and answers you encounter through live chat sessions. For instance, you might add tech support questions and answers if your company offers live-stream video sessions.

Over time, you can make your chatbots more capable of addressing common questions. Your employees will have more time and energy to solve new products, influencer promotions, and other creative solutions.

The Fastest Way To Add Chat To Your Website 

Integrating generative AI with chatbots and live chat platforms provides businesses an efficient and cost-effective way to improve customer experiences. With personalized recommendations, robust security features, and automated responses, businesses can build loyal customer relationships, gain more leads, and increase revenue.

Adding a Gen AI chatbot to your website can take a lot of testing. You have to think of the most common questions, test the chatbot and then make improvements.

What if you need a way to drive higher engagement this week? Installing Arena Live Chat is a good option. You can install Arena Live Chat in less than 10 minutes on most websites.

11 Most Popular Instant Messaging & Chat Protocols

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Offering an online chat service to your audience is a powerful way to increase engagement. Chat protocols play a crucial role in enabling real-time communication by providing a safe space that allows messages to be transmitted instantly between users. These protocols also define the specific rules and formats for these exhanges, ensuring that messages are sent and received efficiently and securely.

Staying updated with the most popular chat protocols is essential for both developers and businesses to ensure compatibility, security, and optimal performance. By keeping up with these advancements, businesses can provide more reliable and efficient communication tools, meet the growing demands of users, and stay competitive in the market.

Learn more about different instant messaging systems and find out which one suits your needs best.

Three Ready-to-Use Chat Apps

There are significant disadvantages to using an open messaging protocol (i.e., an open standard for messaging). This kind of technology often requires significant development effort and testing, and that’s fine if you’re interested in developing your software, but isn’t very practical when you have a tight deadline.

What if you need to offer a real-time chat experience by tomorrow? That’s where these three chat apps come to play.

1. Arena Live Chat 

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  • Advantages: robust message interface for groups, Chat API, and moderation features. Arena is one of the first chat services to offer AI functionality!
  • Disadvantages: in July 2023, there is no iOS or Android app for Arena’s Dashboard. Fortunately, Arena is lightweight and fast, so it works beautifully in a mobile browsers.

Arena Live Chat is a chat client designed for groups and events. It is designed to be lightweight and easy to install and configure. If you are running hybrid events or online events to engage your employees or customers, Arena Live Chat is a great choice.

With features such as polls, Q&As, GIF reactions and moderation capabilities, Arena Live Chat is a powerful community chat software for brands and publishers looking to grow their audiences.

2. Facebook Messenger

  • Advantages: integrated with Facebook, so there is no need to set up additional accounts, supports video chats and payments between users.
  • Disadvantages: some features, such as payments, are only available in certain countries, some users are skeptical about Facebook’s privacy track record, and may drain mobile device batteries fast. It is not an open messaging protocol, so it has development limitations.

Facebook Messenger is one of the most popular live chat platforms in the world. According to one estimate, there are over one billion Facebook Messenger users today. Since it offers so many features, it is no surprise that Messenger is a relatively large app – it takes over 100 MB in storage in most cases.

From a marketing perspective, Facebook Messenger is interesting because there are third-party services that make it easy to create chatbots. This business approach to Facebook Messenger can boost your lead generation and improve basic customer service. For brands with a large Facebook following, Facebook Messenger has much to offer.

3. Google Messages

  • Advantages: the chat client supports private messages, group chats, payments, and searching for information on businesses (e.g., restaurants)
  • Disadvantages: some users have complained about a poor search experience and glitches with video calls.

Initially launched in 2014, Google Messages has gradually become one of the most popular messaging apps. Also known as Messages by Google, the app has an estimated 1 billion installs. In 2021, instant messenger added support for an end to end encryption.

Google Messages added support for rich communication services (RCS) in 2019. This enhancement means that the app no longer relies on the cellular network. Google Messages does not require a mobile app – the chat client is available through a browser. Adding support for RCS makes Google Messages more competitive with Apple iMessage.

What if you want to use an open standard for messaging? The following real time chat protocol section introduces you to some of the best options on the market.

Popular Instant Messaging and Chat Protocols

These protocols and services offer different capabilities and require different levels of effort to implement. Some, like IRC, are relatively easy to set up. Most of the other protocols take more effort.

1. WebRTC – Web Real-Time Communication

  • Advantages: WebRTC is open source (initially developed by Google), the protocol has relatively sophisticated sound capabilities, and third-party apps can be developed using the protocol.
  • Disadvantages: it is a relatively new protocol, and there are relatively few online services based on it.

Launched in 2011 by Google, WebRTC is a communication protocol built for web browsers. The protocol supports video calls, but this functionality requires a separate server. The protocol has significant appeal for software companies looking to build their online services.

2. WebSocket

  • Advantages: allows two-way communication faster than the HTTP protocol. It is a lightweight protocol with a 2-byte cost (much less than HTTP), so it is an excellent choice for users concerned about speed and performance.
  • Disadvantages: the reliability of WebSocket is limited by the user’s Internet connection.

Among today’s communication protocols, WebSocket is relatively well established. It was launched in 2008 and started to attain widespread adoption in 2010. WebSocket relies on a TCP connection.

3. IRC – Internet Relay Chat

  • Advantages: long considered one of the oldest and most reliable messaging services in the market, some support for file sharing.
  • Disadvantages: no support for video calls, voice calls, or other advanced features, a declining number of active users.

IRC is often considered the chat platform that made the rise of messaging platforms platform. Established in 1988, IRC is one of the oldest Internet services. According to one estimate, IRC once had over a million users in the early 2000s. While IRC still has some niche uses and specialized communities, it is much closer to email in spirit than a true chat platform.

IRC’s long-term success as a real-time text messaging platform is nonetheless remarkable. If you are building a chat app (or online community) from scratch, studying the longevity of Internet Relay Chat may be worth the time. Remember that the platform was initially developed before broadband Internet access was widely available, so it is not an excellent match for today’s network capabilities.

4. XMPP: Extensible Messaging and Present Protocol

  • Advantages: XMPP is an open, flexible protocol and offers a decentralized architecture. Setting up XMPP on corporate networks (instead of the Internet) is also possible for added security.
  • Disadvantages: it lacks QoS (quality of service) support, so voice and video call performance is not the same as top-of-the-line VoIP services. In addition, there is no single official client you can use to access the protocol.

XMPP is a modern instant messaging protocol that supports popular chat functionalities like voice calls, video calls, and file transfers. You can build a chat application or instant messengers based on XMPP.  Depending on your goals, you could build consumer software or a corporate chat app based on this protocol.

As a form of communication, XMPP can support various uses and optional features. Since it is much less well-known than apps like Google Talk or Facebook Chat, you may have to plan for additional training time to help your users adopt the platform.

5. MQTT – Message Queuing Telemetry Transport

  • Advantages: this messaging protocol is excellent for battery-powered mobile devices. MQTT also has high reliability in delivering messages. The lightweight protocol requires minimal CPU resources, best suited for small, low-power applications.
  • Disadvantages: no support for video calls, minimal security support, and relatively low speed and latency.

Unlike the other messaging protocols covered above, MQTT is best suited for a specific type of device. MQTT is best used for Internet of Things (IoT) devices and applications. For example, an industrial device at a factory might need the ability to send messages about the temperature or pressure of a specific piece of equipment. MQTT is an excellent choice for that use case. MQTT is not a good choice for consumers.

The relatively weak out-of-box security features are another drawback. Fortunately, this problem can be mitigated by working with security providers. If this drawback is neglected in your implementation, you may introduce more risk into your environment.

6. SIP/SIMPLE

  • Advantages: SIP is an open standard compatible with several vendors, it is relatively flexible with the option to support text and video messages, professional oversight by the Internet Engineering Task Force.
  • Disadvantages: it is a basic protocol rather than an instant messaging app, so users cannot download it and immediately start using it.

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a well-established messaging protocol that has been around for several decades. SIMPLE is a specific implementation of SIP called “Session Initiation Protocol for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions.”

The SIMPLE protocol approach to instant messaging offers both session mode and non-session (i.e., page mode) approaches to messaging. In addition, the SIP SIMPLE protocol also supports presence which means you can detect when users are online. The protocol doesn’t offer built-in support for features like buddy lists (also known as contact lists) or message histories. Therefore, it might be a good option for consumers.

7. AMQP – Advanced Message Queuing Protocol‍

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  • Advantages: supports secured connections with SSL, supports QoS for message delivery, and simple peer-to-peer delivery.
  • Disadvantages: higher bandwidth requirements than other protocols; it is also not backward compatible with older protocol versions.

Announced in 2003, AMQP has an unusual origin: a developer at JPMorgan Chase created it. Other companies, including Microsoft, Progress Software, and Bank of America, became involved in the protocol. Like the MQTT protocol, AMQP runs on the TCP layer of the network.

AMQP’s corporate background means it offers a good foundation for sophisticated applications. AMQP may be a good choice for communication between machines in business communications. The AMQP approach to instant message delivery emphasizes delivery and reliability. As a result, it is a good choice for enterprise instant messaging where accuracy is paramount, like financial use cases.

8. RCS – Rich Communication Services

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Offering an online chat service to your audience is a powerful way to increase engagement. Chat protocols play a crucial role in enabling real-time communication by providing a safe space that allows messages to be transmitted instantly between users. These protocols also define the specific rules and formats for these exchanges, ensuring that messages are sent and received efficiently and securely.

Staying updated with the most popular chat protocols is essential for both developers and businesses to ensure compatibility, security, and optimal performance. By keeping up with these advancements, businesses can provide more reliable and efficient communication tools, meet the growing demands of users, and stay competitive in the market.

Learn more about different instant messaging systems and find out which one suits your needs best.

Choosing the Right Chat Service: Factors to Consider

Choosing the right instant messaging system for your business is an important decision. No single chat protocol or app is suitable for every purpose.

Use the assessment criteria below to help you discover the best choice for your needs. For additional insights on deciding whether to buy or build a chat service, see Arena’s article Chat Protocols and Apps: Should You Build or Buy? for additional insights.

Does the Chat Service Have AI Capabilities? 

Since ChatGPT arrived in late 2022, AI has become a revolutionary capability. In a chat service, AI can be used in several ways. You can use it to develop questions and encourage discussions. You can also train AI using chat content if permitted by your policies. We’re still in the early days of the generative AI revolution, so make sure your chat service supports this exciting new technology!

Chat Emphasis: Private Messaging or Group Events?

When you compare different chat programs, a key difference quickly becomes apparent. Many chat apps emphasize private conversations between two users. Like Arena Live Chat, other chat services focus more on chat windows for events. That’s not all. Arena Live Chat also offers one on one messages between users.

How Easy Is Installation And Setup?

Few users (or companies!) have the patience to learn a complex chat protocol. Given your other technology projects, asking an IT department to spend weeks or even months learning how to use WebRTC or MQTT may not be realistic.

Instead, choosing an easy chat solution for companies and end-users to access is best. Arena Live Chat is explicitly designed for fast installation. Most companies install it on their website in less than 10 minutes.

What Is The User Experience Like?

The user experience is vital in chat services. Your customers will spend a lot of time interacting with friends (and your employees) through chat. Therefore, investing time upfront in testing the chat app is crucial.

Specifically, we recommend asking non-technical employees to test the chat app. If they have significant difficulties using the chat app, try something else! If your customers have problems using your chat app, they will simply give up and use a different method – like email or phone – to contact your business.

How Does The App Ensure Security?

Security risks are ever-present in the online world, including chat apps. When you give your users a chat window, some people may view that option as an effective attack opportunity. There are a few ways to mitigate this threat to avoid endless security investigations.

A common way to enhance security and privacy concerns is to rely on end-to-end encryption. In addition, you can apply controls to your user IDs. By requiring users to register before joining a chat experience. Finally, don’t rely on the chat window to do all the work. It is also essential to provide security training to your employees to provide a security-conscious experience to end-users.

How To Add a Live Chat To Your Website Today

Now that you know about the most popular chat protocols and chat clients on the market, you have a choice. The first option is to choose a messaging protocol, select a client and spend time customizing the chat app. This option is a good choice if your company has significant technology development resources and the desire to create highly customized solutions.

The second option is to select a fast chat service that is easy to install and requires minimal setup. Find out more about how Arena helps brands and publishers grow their audience.

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The 11 Most Secure Chat Apps

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Finding a reliable, secure messaging live chat app has never been more critical. Whether for personal use or business communication, ensuring conversations are private and protected from malicious actors, who regularly attack internet services to obtain confidential information. Security features like self-destructing messages and various encryption methods have become more popular.

The Importance of Secure Live Chat for Building Community

Having a secure live chat on your website is essential for building an online community because it fosters trust and safety among users. Secure live chat ensures that all communications are protected from unauthorized access, maintaining the privacy and integrity of user interactions. This is crucial for creating an environment where users feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and engaging with others.

A secure platform not only protects sensitive information but also enhances the overall user experience by preventing spam, harassment, and other malicious activities. By prioritizing security, you demonstrate a commitment to user safety, encouraging more active participation and fostering a strong, loyal online community.

What Makes a Live Chat App Secure?

Security in chat apps is determined by various factors, including end-to-end encryption, data storage policies, and additional privacy features. Here’s what to look for:

End-to-End Encryption

End-to-end encryption ensures that only the sender and recipient can read the messages, with no possibility of interception by third parties.

Data Storage Policies

Secure chat apps should store minimal data on their servers, and any stored data should be encrypted.

Privacy Features

Look for features like self-destructing messages, password protection, and two-factor authentication.

Moderation Features

Make sure your chat app comes with moderation features. Ideally, you will be able to select users to act like moderators, block any misbehaving users and insert a profanity filter, that will allow you to block certain words from appearing in the chat. Learn more about moderation here. 

To understand which live chat platform works best for your needs, continue reading our analysis of the most secure chat protocols available.

Most Secure Chat Apps

1) Arena

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  • Platform: Web.
  • Security features: end-to-end encryption, SSO, moderation features, spam and profanity filters.
  • Cost: Start with the free plan to see if Arena is suitable for you.

Do you need a secure live chat platform for a group of users? Whether is to enhance engagement during live events, transform e-learning classes or offer second screen experiences to viewers, Arena Live Chat is a great solution to bring live chat to your audience. Among other personalization features, you can restrict access to a chat event through registration so only approved participants can enter.

Arena is trusted by brands of all sizes, like Mary Fulton Fit, a small yoga studio in California, and Fox Sports Australia, part of a giant global-scale media company.

2) Signal

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  • Platforms: Mobile App and Desktop App (Windows, iOS, and Linux).
  • Security features: end-to-end encryption, self-destructing messages, and screen security features.
  • Cost: free

Signal is often considered the top secure chat platform in the secure chat app category. For an extra layer of security, Signal minimizes the amount of data it collects from its users. This means less information is at risk in the event of a hack or other data disclosure. Other companies may have taken inspiration from the Signal messaging platform source code to improve their products.

There are some downsides to the product. Since the product is entirely free, the sustainability of this secure chat software is questionable. In addition, Signal makes it easy to send messages to people in your phone contact list. However, the full benefits of the Signal protocol are only available if both users use Signal. As a result, Signal is not a good fit if you need to accommodate non-mobile users.

3) WhatsApp

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  • Platforms: Desktop, web and mobile.
  • Security features: end-to-end encryption, two-step verification, encrypted backups, single view photo/video/audio.
  • Cost: free.

WhatsApp is one of the most popular chat apps, with approximately 2.4 billion users as of mid-2023. The secure chat platform supports text, audio calls, and video calls. In addition, the app offers end-to-end encryption features, a key feature for privacy advocates. Also, WhatsApp supports group messaging for up to 1,024 participants.

There are some drawbacks to WhatsApp, including the fact it has been blocked in some countries like China, North Korea, and Syria. In addition, the app does not support self-destructing messages, so users will need to keep that limit in mind. Finally, the app requires a user to know another user’s phone number. As a result, it is more challenging to use WhatsApp for online events, especially for users who prefer to join via desktop.

Since WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, a social media giant with a poor online privacy record, there might be better choices for confidential chats.

4) Telegram

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  • Platforms: Desktop and mobile apps.
  • Security features: optional end-to-end encryption, self-destructing messages, two-factor authentication.
  • Cost: a free version and Telegram Premium (offers faster speeds, increased storage, and removes ads)

Telegram is an open-source, free-to-use mobile app with hundreds of millions of users. The app has received positive reviews as a secure chat app. In addition, Telegram supports larger groups and channels with up to 100,000 members. The messaging app also lets you share your live location, making it easier to meet up with friends in person.

That said, Telegram has some limitations. From a security standpoint, the chat app lacks end-to-end encryption in all of its messaging. End-to-end encryption is available for special secret chats on the secure chat software.

Unlike Signal, Telegram collects contact information from users. The chat app’s free tier includes ads. Consider carefully whether the app’s ads align with the chat experience you want to offer your audience.

5) Voxer

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  • Platforms: Web, iPhone, and Android.
  • Security features: end-to-end encryption, private chats, secure data storage.
  • Cost: there are three user plans: personal ($0), Pro ($3.99 per user per month), and Business ($6 per user per month)

Voxer is a chat app that became popular for sending voice messages. In addition to recorded audio messages, Voxer also supports group chat functionality. Unlike most secure apps, Voxer provides additional functionality for paid accounts., such as Dropbox integration for pro accounts. The business plan suits teams of over 20+ users and organizations that need additional administrative controls.

There are some downsides to the app. Some user reviews have encountered privacy problems. Other users have commented on the significant amount of notifications generated by the app. The app also appears to request access to all contacts on a user’s device, a request that may cause security concerns.

6) Facebook Messenger

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  • Platforms: Desktop and Mobile.
  • Security features: end-to-end encryption, single view messages, secure data storage, multi-factor authentication.
  • Cost: the app is supported by advertising.

Owned by Meta, Facebook Messenger supports text chat, calls, and file sharing. In addition, the secure chat app offers support for group chats, which has become popular over the past few years. By default, all Facebook users have access to Facebook Messenger, making it one of the most popular chat apps globally.

There are significant downsides to using Facebook Messenger. The app asks for access to personal information and is supported by advertising. For privacy-conscious users, there are better choices than Facebook Messenger. Business users, in particular, should look for other options that emphasize security and privacy to a more significant extent.

7) Pryvate Now

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  • Platforms: mobile app.
  • Security features: end-to-end encryption, anonymous messaging, secure data storage, no data logging.
  • Cost: Pryvate Now is available in free and business versions.

Like Signal, Pryvate Now is a secure messaging chat focused on encryption. The app’s encryption features combine high-end AES 256-bit encryption and RSA 4096-bit protection. Also, secure chat software can protect the user’s IP address through masking. Like WhatsApp, Pryvate Now also offers voice calls and video calls. For security-conscious users, Pryvate Now offers compelling choices.

Compared to some of its more popular secure chat apps, Pryvate Now has a less polished user interface. That’s a major downside if you want to use the app to grow your audience. Pryvate calling is limited to other Pryvate users. In addition, the support options available to Pryvate users are relatively limited, even for the business plan. Pryvate is a good choice for individuals and companies that want to maximize privacy over everything else.

8) iMessage

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  • Platforms: Apple products like the iPhone, Mac, and iPad.
  • Security features: end-to-end encryption, secure data storage, authentication, automatic encryption.
  • Cost: none – it is a built into multiple Apple products.

Apple’s iMessage service is sometimes viewed as Apple’s answer to SMS messages. In comparison to text messaging, iMessage has several notable advantages. Apple Messages gives users significant control over settings, including read receipts and message retention. Carefully configuring these settings can help to reduce your security risk. Further, it is easy to back up iMessage messages to iCloud. That’s a significant feature if you rely on iMessage to conduct business interactions.

There is an important security limitation to keep with Apple’s encryption. iMessage supports end-to-end encryption when messages are sent between iMessage users. However, the message is not encrypted if an iMessage user sends a message to a non-iMessage user, like a person with an Android phone. Less than half (48%) of Americans use an iPhone, so relying on Apple-exclusive security protections is a major limitation.

Curious to see how Apple handles requests from law enforcement? The Apple US law enforcement guidelines have some answers.

According to this document, “iMessage communications are end-to-end encrypted, and Apple cannot decrypt iMessage data when in transit between devices. Apple cannot intercept iMessage communications and does not have iMessage communication logs.” It is unclear if intelligence agencies have found encryption weaknesses or other methods to access the messages.

It’s unclear if Apple has the most secure messaging app, but the company is progressing in security. In June 2023, the company announced additional measures to improve Apple messaging security.

9) Threema

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  • Platforms: Web and mobile.
  • Security features: end-to-end encryption, no personal data required, anonymous messaging.
  • Cost: prices depend on the current version.

Threema is part of a newer generation of secure chat apps. Launched in 2012, the secure chat platform provides end-to-end encryption to users.

The app’s focus on privacy includes minimizing the amount of user data it collects. Threema does not collect the user’s phone number. The app also has a reasonably robust web interface, making it a good alternative to mobile-only secure chat apps.

The chat app also supports chatbots that have marketing and customer service applications. These specialized versions are possible because the app charges user fees.

As of mid-2022, Threema has a relatively small user base (about 11 million users) compared to other services like Facebook and iMessage. Therefore, you can’t assume your friends, colleagues, and family have the app. The relatively low adoption rate means this secure chat software may be challenging for audience engagement.

10) Line

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  • Platforms: Mobile app
  • Security features: end-to-end encryption, secure data storage, two-step verification.
  • Cost: the app is free.

Line has an unusual origin story. It was created in the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami that caused havoc in Japan. The app has three capabilities: Life on LINE (a medical assistance service), a Messenger App, and Services. We’ll focus on the Messenger App here.

The messenger app supports chatting, voice calls, and video calls. The app also provides social functionality like stickers, emoji, and group chat (i.e. OpenChat).

There are some downsides to relying on Line. In contrast to most secure live chat apps, Line offers various non-chat services such as shopping, job postings, and payments. From one point of view, Line’s diversity of services makes it more appealing to users. The downside is that the company may not be as focused on developing its chat functionality as other chat-focused platforms.

11) Wire

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  • Platforms: Desktop, mobile apps, and browsers.
  • Security features: end-to-end encryption, secure file sharing, privacy-focused design.
  • Cost: free personal version and paid business plans.

Switzerland-based Wire is a secure chat app with end-to-end encryption enabled by default. The app supports written messages, images, and file transfers. Wire’s security technology is based on Signal’s messaging protocol. The app registers users by email address instead of phone number, which has some privacy advantages. By avoiding phone numbers, Wire is more accessible to desktop users.

There are some weaknesses in using Wire as your primary messaging service. Archiving chat content from Wire is relatively tricky. The service also limits the number of users who can participate in a meeting. This limitation makes Wire less suitable for engaging audiences in events. Wire may not be the right service if you want to run a chat experience for a significant online event.

Choosing The Right Live Chat For You

Are you wondering whether to use a popular messaging app or a private messaging app? With privacy in mind, use this guide to essential features to find the right app for you.

Do you want to know whether to use a popular or private messaging app? With privacy in mind, use this guide to essential features to find the right app.

1. How does the app support AI technology?

Generative AI technology and large language models like ChatGPT are here to stay. These tools have the power to make your staff more productive! Before adding a secure chat platform to your organization, check how it leverages AI.

Generative AI in a chat tool is quickly becoming a must-have capability. Without it, your staff must work much harder to engage their audiences.

2. What IT security safeguards are offered?

Whether you call it secure encryption, an encryption feature, encryption protection, or IT security, safeguards are critical to keeping messages safe.

Specifically, check if the app uses both transit encryption and rest encryption. In addition, look for user-facing features like two-factor authentication to protect your data.

Tip: Business users should check if the app has received positive reviews from cybersecurity experts before using the app.

3. What information is gathered from app users?

To maximize security protection, your preferred messaging app should minimize the information gathered from users. Some mobile platform apps collect a user’s phone number and other data from mobile devices.

If the secure chat app you choose collects significant information, give your users something substantial. Offering an engaging live experience is a must. Use these tips to increase livestream engagement.

4. What platforms does the app support?

Some secure chat apps work in popular browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. Other apps are designed to work with mobile devices only. If multi-platform support is important for your needs, ask questions before using the app!

To maximize event usage, it is best to use a chat app that works with popular browsers like Arena Live Chat.

5. Is the secure chat app backed by a sustainable business?

Some chat apps emphasize that they are free to users for marketing purposes. It is wise to ask questions about these apps. If they are genuinely free to users, then the app maker will have to generate revenue in other ways, such as advertising. Unfortunately, relying on online advertising to generate revenue for a secure chat app may negatively affect privacy.

6. Is the chat app suitable for large events?

This feature is most important for business users and publishers. If you want to use large numbers of people in a chat room to engage your audience, only some of the chat apps covered above will be a good fit. The reason is simple: most secure chat apps are focused on direct messages, messages to distribution lists, and other forms of closed communication.

Arena Live Chat is designed to bring large groups together to share their passion for the news, community, and other events.

Start Your First Live Chat For Free

Starting your first live chat session for your audience is straightforward. You can then add Arena to your website quickly (it usually takes minutes) and launch your first live chat session. Learn everything Group Chat can do for you.

History of Online Chat: 1973-2023

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Online chat and chat rooms have come a long way in recent decades. In this quick guide to the history of online chat, you’ll find out where online chat started and how that history informed Arena Live Chat, AI and today’s chat experiences.

The Origins of Online Chat, 1970-1990

The first email was sent in 1971, and chat followed soon after. It was limited to universities, researchers, and governments. We see the first online chat emerge. 

1973: Talkomatic for PLATO system

Developed at the University of Illinois in 1960, this early computer network included chat rooms, email, screen sharing, and other networked features. The key development form PLATO was the launch of Talkomatic in 1973. Talkomatic supported multi-user chat interactions. The technology was limited compared to today’s tools – the application had a maximum of six rooms and a limit of five participants per chat room.

1978: Bulletin Board System (BBS)

Bulletin board systems (BBS) can be seen as social media before the Internet. The first BBS was invented in 1978 in Chicago. BBS users mainly used dial-up modems to connect to a BBS, post messages, and download files. By one estimate, there were thousands of active BBS systems active in the 1980s and 1990s before the Internet, as we know it, took over in popularity.

1980: CompuServe CB Simulator

The 1980s saw a significant leap forward, with online chat becoming more widespread. Compuserve, a critical early Internet service provider, launched CB simulator in 1980. This online chat service made history as the first chat service available to the public. 

1988: Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

The launch of IRC pushed the adoption of online chat much further. Internet Relay Chat – along with email – is one of the few Internet communication apps from before 1990 that remain in use today. IRC made history when it was used to report Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991. While IRC is still online, it has declined in popularity due to the launch of social media platforms.

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The popularity of online chat exploded in the 1990s as more user-friendly technology, marketing, and innovation made the Internet available to millions of people.

Online Chat In The 1990s

In the 1990s, web browsers became popular, bringing millions of people online. However, many people still had slower connection speeds, so text chat was the perfect solution. Chat messages are easy to transmit, which allows near real-time conversations. 

In the 1990s, chat rooms boomed, so it’s difficult to discuss them in depth. Instead, let’s look at some of the most influential services.

AOL Chat Rooms and AOL Messenger

In the 1990s, America Online (AOL) was a prominent Internet service provider. The company also became known for its popular chat rooms. The company offered unlimited access to its chat rooms to its subscribers. In 1998, the company made its instant messenger service – AIM – available to non-AOL subscribers.

MSN Messenger (1999-2014)

Released in 1999, MSN Messenger was another popular chat service. The chat app was widely perceived as a competitor to AOL’ AIM app. The app blended 1 on 1 messaging with some social networking functionality.   

ICQ

Launched in 1996, ICQ quickly acquired millions of chat users. The chat service was notable because it was available on multiple operating systems – Windows, Apple, and Unix. Text messaging between individual users formed the core of the app. At its peak in 2001, the app had an estimated 100 million users.

Customer Service Chat, Chatbots, and Arena: Today’s Online Chat 

As social media platforms grew in popularity in the 2000s, instant messaging apps lost some of their users. Despite that loss, chat and messaging remained popular features. One-on-one messaging (also known as private messaging) remained a key feature on Twitter, Facebook, and other social sites.

Three trends emerged over the past decade that shaped online chat as we know it today.

Customer Service Chat 

Online chat services started to move away from purely social and recreational uses with the rise of customer service chat. This chat service took off by promising greater speed than phone or email customer service. Chat service is also cheaper to provide – about 15-33% cheaper than phone support, according to one estimate. The cost savings is driven by the fact that it is possible for one rep to participate in multiple chat sessions in succession.

Streaming Chat Experiences

Chat and online experiences came together with streaming chat experiences in the 2010s. Across multiple platforms like Discord, Twitch, YouTube Live, and Facebook Live, users could come together and share their thoughts in text chat. These experiences often involved a shared video experience, such as watching a live stream. 

With tools like Chat Analyzer, brands can see how their organization and products are being discussed by users in Twitch chats.

Chatbots

The success of delivering customer service through online chat prompted a question: could computers do more of the work? The rise of chatbots – a kind of automation that relied on scripts and simple automation – provided the answer. These automated chat experiences show that many repetitive questions (e.g., what’s the status of my order?) could be handled through automation.

Using scripts to handle routine questions, chatbots helped companies redirect customer service staff to address complex issues. 

Arena Live Chat

The launch of Arena in 2017 took the history of chat in a new direction. Arena’s live chat brought the social experience of chat rooms back in a new way. 

Brands and publishers can now engage their customers directly on their websites. Social media platforms increasingly struggle with disinformation and toxic content, so people are hungry for alternative ways to connect online. Arena also made live chat more accessible since it is a lightweight application that can run on almost any website.

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What Is The Future of Online Chat?

Artificial intelligence and the need to connect with others beyond social media are two significant trends for the future. Large language models like chatGPT show that chat-style interactions with AI have exciting potential. In some ways, chatGPT brings together a search engine experience with chat.

AI chat experiences are powerful. These technologies are in their early days, so it’s difficult to know how they will used. For example, AI chat tools may be useful in facilitating brandsafe discussions and moderating conversations. AI chat may also play a role in growing online communities and easing the burden of community management. 

Connecting with other people is the core of online chat. The first chat platforms succeeded because they offered group and 1-on-1 messaging. The social need to connect through chat isn’t going anywhere. Instead, we will see the growth of online chat experiences on many different websites.  We look forward to sharing more insights exploring how AI and people can come together to offer exciting digital experiences.

Harnessing The Power of Chat For Your Website

The history of chat has seen many technologies come and go. What hasn’t changed is the desire to connect with other people. Brands seeking higher customer engagement are vital to give your audience a place to connect. Find out how to grow a digital community on your website with Arena.

Customer Engagement Explained: Definition, Strategies & More

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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.

What Is Customer Engagement? | Arena

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The age of treating every customer the same is coming to an end. Thanks to Amazon, Netflix, and other digital community platforms, customers expect a personalized experience that reflects their interests. Without that, customers will start to view your brand as out of touch.

The good news? New strategies and technologies are making it easier than ever to connect with your customers. Before jumping into the specifics, stepping back and clarifying customer engagement is essential.

What is Customer Engagement?

A brand with strong customer engagement is one where customers have a deep, ongoing relationship. Instead of passing website visitors who forget about your content, highly engaged and loyal customers are different. They look forward to coming back to your website repeatedly. Many of them will even become ambassadors by sharing your content and reports on their social media profiles.

In other words, customer engagement is like having a group of trusted friends who would miss you if you were gone. Customer engagement helps brands develop customer loyalty, which will sustain your brand through disruption and downturns.

Why is Customer Engagement Important?

Customer engagement strategies are critically important for several reasons. Let’s dive right into them.

Reason 1: Customers Value Experiences, Not Just Products

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Recent research from Salesforce found that 80% of customers value the experience of interacting with a brand. Your customers might use your products differently, according to their own interests, expectations and preferences. That means that offering a personalized experience is essential.

If the customer experience is boring or disappointing, achieving significant growth will likely be very difficult.

Reason 2: Governments Are Changing The Rules

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Many people around the world are upset about how their personal information has been handled by digital companies. As a result, governments have imposed significant controls, fines, and laws that penalize companies that fail to protect companies. For instance, California and the European Union have imposed significant consumer rights and company obligations relating to personal data.

When your company focuses on customer engagement, the entire process tends to be transparent. Your customers will see that you’re gathering information from them and using it to provide a rich experience. In contrast, other strategies, such as relying on third-party cookies, are perceived as being less transparent.

Reason 3: The Decline and Fall of Third-Party Cookies

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Engaging customers is all about developing a direct relationship with your audience. It’s a significant change from marketers’ strategies for over a decade: third-party cookies.

For years, marketers have relied on this data to track customer activity across the Internet quietly. While powerful for brands, this type of individual behavioral tracking has prompted significant privacy concerns. As a result, Apple has removed support for cookies from their browser. By 2024, Google Chrome – the world’s most popular browser – will also remove support for third-party cookies.

The end of third-party cookies means that your brand has to find other ways to achieve growth, like customer engagement,

Reason 4: ROI Personalized Experience

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We saved the best for last: customer engagement and retention strategies deliver far greater ROI. How? Personalization can lift ROI on marketing significantly – McKinsey found it can drive a 10% increase in sales. First-party data, provided directly by the customer or audience member, is one of the most reliable ways to gather accurate data to fuel personalization.

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Want to explore first-party data further and use it to increase revenue? Our explainer post has you covered: What Is First-Party Data?

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Fortunately, there are some barriers to entry to delivering these kinds of experiences. That’s good news for you. Investing in customer engagement now gives you an edge over the competition.

Your marketing, content, and offers will be seen as much more relevant. That means more clicks, shares, and revenue without relying on third parties like social media platforms.

Customer engagement is robust and has a lot to offer. Yet, these benefits might seem a bit abstract. That’s why we’re breaking down the concept and looking at it in three primary use cases: publishing, marketing, and sales.

Effective Customer Engagement Strategies

Customer Engagement for Publishers

Most publishers earn most of their revenue from advertising and paid subscriptions. To achieve both goals, converting anonymous website visitors into registered users is vital.

There are several ways to apply customer engagement to your publishing business. For simplicity, assume you are focusing on boosting engagement with paid subscribers because you want to lift recurring revenue. The following strategies can help you to lift engagement.

Offer Small Group Experiences

Loneliness had already become a major social problem before the pandemic arrived – today, 1 in 3 Americans are lonely, according to Harvard. Publishers can lift engagement and offer chances to connect through small group experiences.

The concept is simple: invite subscribers to a “fireside chat” style event and limit attendance to 20-30 people. Running a smaller group experience makes it far easier to focus your content and allows your audience to meet like-minded people.

Offer Multiple Incentives For User Data

Maintaining high customer engagement means staying relevant to your audience even as their needs change. That means the standard approach of gathering audience preference and interest data at registration isn’t enough.

The solution is to give your audience more incentives to share data with you regularly. For instance, you might offer to extend your paid subscriber’s subscription by three months if they agree to participate in 3 short online surveys over 90 days. Beyond free access, some in your audience might be interested in sharing their insights with you if there is a prospect of being quoted or included in your coverage. Experiment with multiple incentives to see what connects best with your audience.

If you’re not in the publishing business, don’t worry. We’ve got your needs covered in the following two sections.

Customer Engagement for Marketing

Some, perhaps most, of your website visitors will not be ready to buy the first time they land on your website. Your website will likely be forgotten if you fail to offer an appealing experience. Here are some ways you can make your website more engaging for customers.

Use engagement technology on your website

Social experiences for your audience – like asking questions and reacting to others’ comments – can happen right on your website. There’s no need to rely on social media platforms as your only way of building an online community.

Installing Arena Live Chat on your website is a great way to make your website more engaging. You can install the software and launch a chat session in just a few minutes. The best part? You keep the audience’s attention focused on your website, which means more chances to earn conversions.

Create real-time experiences for your audience on your website

Live experiences like live shopping, live streaming, and even watching other people play games on Twitch are powerful ways to drive attention. There are multiple ways to draw significant attention. You can publish long-form content, including articles, videos, and podcasts. Engaging content is often the spark that draws the audience’s attention to your website.

You can also deliver interactive experiences for your audience. These experiences give people a reason to return to your website repeatedly. For example, you can use Arena Live Blog to provide coverage of a major industry event like CES if you are in the electronics field.

Customer Engagement for Sales

Customer engagement for sales is critical for any business focusing on long-term customer relationships. Use these strategies to keep your buyers coming back for more and more.

Enrich your loyalty program

Points, discounts, and other traditional incentives are all proven ways to keep customers buying. Unfortunately, standing out in the loyalty space is getting more difficult.

The average American had 7.6 active loyalty membership memberships in 2022, according to Statista, while the average number of total memberships was 16.6. That means that nearly half of loyalty program members are inactive!

One solution is to offer memorable experiences for your loyal members, like online events. For instance, you might invite your “VIP customers” to have early access to products in development or place custom requests. Going the extra mile to give your best customers something special can help to lift engagement.

Invite customers to share their experiences

You’re probably already encouraging reviews, recording customer interviews, and publishing case studies. Another way to invite your customers into your growth efforts is to shine a spotlight on your customers in digital events. For example, invite a few of your top customers to a panel discussion and leverage Live Chat to encourage discussion.

Using Arena For Customer Engagement

Highly engaging content and a deep understanding of your audience are crucial to customer engagement. Empowering your team with the right tools to create digital experiences for customers is crucial. Arena Live Chat makes building a digital community on your website easy. Learn more about using Arena to grow an online community for customer engagement.

Customer Engagement vs Audience Engagement Strategies

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The customer engagement vs. audience engagement debate is growing. The reality is that most businesses need to grow their audience and customer base. The strategic choice is to decide how to cover types of engagement and allocate your resources appropriately. 

What Is Audience Engagement?

From a marketing perspective, audience engagement refers to people who have interacted with your online presence in some depth. Think about an audience at a concert – you’re only part of the audience if you see most (if not all) of the performance. Likewise, your online audience excludes people who bounce or visit your website once and never return.

Audience engagement is the art and science of drawing website visitors to consume multiple pages or content assets. Ideally, audience engagement also has a social aspect. Again, think of attending a performance. You might go to an event with a friend and have the chance to meet other people who share similar interests. 

Translating audience growth to revenue depends on your business. Publishers earn more from audience engagement right away because a more engaged audience views more ads. Other businesses are more likely to get more leads and conversions from a high audience engagement. 

Engaging your customer base overlaps with audience engagement, but there are also some key differences.

What Is Customer Engagement?

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Customer engagement is focused on building a deeper relationship with your customers. This might include using a loyalty program to encourage more purchases. In addition, customer engagement also includes gathering first-party data from your customers. For example, you may use data to better understand the content, pages, and online experiences that customers experience before making a purchase.

Since customer engagement focuses on people who have bought before, it is closer to revenue. After all, a customer has already taken the leap of trust to buy once. If they’ve had a good experience, inviting them to buy again is easier.

The challenge with customer engagement is balancing maximizing revenue and enriching the relationship. If your customers only hear from you during a sale, some may tune out. Alternatively, brands that show appreciation for customers through events, sharing content, and seeking feedback are more likely to build a trusting relationship.

Assessing Your Need For Audience Engagement And Customer Engagement

Most companies need audience engagement and customer engagement strategies to achieve their growth objectives. Audience engagement helps to replenish the top of the marketing funnel (and grow advertising revenue for publishers). Customer engagement gives you the tools to develop loyal customers for the long term.

To decide which mix of audience engagement vs. customer engagement to pursue, take a moment to assess your current situation with the following maturity self-assessment.

Audience Engagement Maturity

Reflect on these audience engagement questions to determine your strengths and weaknesses in audience engagement.

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1) Do you have audience engagement growth metrics established?

2) Are you gathering more first-party data directly from your audience month over month?

3) Does your website offer community experiences like online events regularly?

4) Are you communicating with other stakeholders regularly to demonstrate the value of audience engagement?

5) Do you have audience engagement solutions like Arena Live Chat and Live Blog available?

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If you answered yes to most of the questions, you have a highly engaged audience. In that case, shifting your focus to customer engagement is wise. On the other hand, if you answered no or weren’t sure about the questions, audience engagement should probably be your primary focus.

Customer Engagement Maturity

Assessing your customer engagement maturity starts with exploring the following questions with your team.

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1) Do you have a customer loyalty program that rewards engagement and purchases in some way?

2) Do you know your customers better today than you did a year ago regarding data?

3) Do you regularly tell your customers that you appreciate their business?

4) Do you provide special experiences (e.g., early access, discounts, online experiences) just for your customers?

5) Do you have a customer data platform (i.e., CDP) in place to organize all of your first-party data?

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The maturity level for customer engagement is similar to the audience engagement outlined above. If you answered yes to three or more of the questions, you have a high level of customer engagement maturity. If you were unsure of your answers or had two or fewer yes answers, your customer engagement maturity has significant room for improvement.

How To Use Online Experiences To Grow Engagement

We have some good news: Whether you see greater audience engagement or customer engagement opportunities. With some tweaks, you can use similar tools and strategies to lift both kinds of engagement. Let’s consider two scenarios: increasing audience engagement and lifting customer engagement using online events.

Boosting Audience Engagement Strategies

You must offer something new and attractive when your audience is not large or engaged enough. The harsh reality is that your audience members have many other online options for connection, learning, and entertainment. The following ideas can help you to lift engagement.

Partner With Influencers In An Online Event

Influencers are celebrities for a specific niche or interest. Since influencers spend their time growing their audience, they have the know-how to help you. Depending on the size of your audience and resources, you can offer different forms of payment to an influencer to run an event with you. Add Arena Live Chat to your event so your audience can easily ask questions and connect with other participants.

Leverage Breaking News

Breaking news events offer a potential shortcut to growing your audience quickly with Arena Live Blog. If you can be the first to offer coverage or offer something uniquely different than others, you can stand out. For example, consider Nate Silver’s election coverage. His approach to offering a data driven approach to election coverage and politics helped him to build an audience.

Lifting Customer Engagement Strategies

Growing customer engagement through online experiences is different in terms of focus. Instead of throwing the doors wide open, customer engagement works best when focused. Here are some examples to get you started.

Customer Appreciation Experiences

Many companies organize an annual customer conference. However, running a full-scale live event may not suit your goals or budget. Instead, an online event focused on customer appreciation can work even better. For example, a B2B company may have many ecommerce customers. Consider inviting a small group of ecommerce company owners to an exclusive “fireside chat” where they can network with each other and meet an engaging guest speaker.

Early Product Feedback Events

Another approach is to invite your customers into the product development process. When you have a prototype product ready, invite VIP customers to see it. Let your customers use the beta product for free. They’ll feel appreciated by giving them early access and acting on their feedback. You’ll receive helpful comments that can also help you launch the product.

Reach Your Engagement Goals With Arena

Whether you want a larger audience or more excited customers, investing in engagement can help. Use Arena Live Chat and Live Blog to offer interactive online experiences directly through your website. Build your community right on your website with Arena!

7 Customer Engagement Trends For 2023

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Marketers are worried in 2023.

Economic worries and disruption in online advertising mean previously reliable strategies and playbooks aren’t delivering results. Navigating these trends will be challenging! Charting your path forward is much easier when you know the significant trends impacting online marketing and advertising.

Trend 1: Advertising Spend Faces Efficiency Pressure 

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Multiple companies are reporting falling spending on online advertising over the past few months. eMarketer recently cut its forecast for US digital ad spending by $5 billion, down to $278 billion. The pullback on spending is hitting Google, which reported falling advertising spending in several segments at the end of Q4 2022.

Cutting advertising spending is a common strategy whenever there’s economic uncertainty. It happened last in early 2020 when the pandemic rocked the world. 

At the same time, the need to drive growth and get more customers isn’t going anywhere. To retain your advertising budgets and stretch them further, get proactive on efficiency and engagement.

Reassess Your Brand Vs. Direct Response Allocation

Brand-building advertising is powerful for growing a company in the long term. However, it can take a lot of work to show immediate results with that style of advertising. In the short term, consider shifting more resources toward direct marketing to harvest more results.

Tighten Up Funnels And Performance Attribution

Online advertising channels and strategies vary in how easy they are to measure. Now is the time to look at your campaigns and see which ones are bringing in results. Consider pausing campaigns with more steps and moving parts since these efforts are more challenging to track.

Trend 2: Focus On Anonymous User Conversion 

Anonymous website visitors represent a significant opportunity for brands and publishers. They have discovered you. Much of the hard work of acquisition and awareness building is done. The next step is to get to know your audience better.

The way forward is to focus more on offering value to anonymous website visitors. Don’t overlook classic strategies like discounts, buy one get one, and the like. Such strategies have worked for decades for consumer brands.

For publishers and B2B companies, there may be better choices than discounts to convert anonymous users. Instead, look at ways to package premium experiences available only to registered users. Online events remain one of the most cost-effective ways to draw audiences in.

Trend 3: Launch More Online Events

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It’s true that enjoying food and drinks with your customers in person offers a powerful way to build relationships. However, traditional events also require significant investment. Spending  $20,000 or $100,000 on traditional events or conference participation might not go forward this year.

The alternative to high-cost traditional events is to run more online events. Since online events don’t require venue booking and other elements, they are often much faster to run. Offering your registered users exclusive access to your online events is one compelling way to convert more browsers into customers.

To make the most of your online events, ensure you give your audience a way to connect and share feedback. Arena Live Chat makes it easy for users to ask questions, share thoughts and meet others. 

Trend 4: Multi-Disciplinary Marketers Will Win

The digital marketing world is complex. There are thousands of apps, many certifications, and skill sets to learn! Budget to hire additional staff, agencies and other support may get more challenging to access. Yet, marketing teams are still responsible for delivering growth within those constraints.

Developing multi-disciplinary marketers is the way to thrive through this uncertainty. This means identifying skills, strategies, and technical skills you lack today and working to develop them. One approach is to pair a traditional evergreen skillset like copywriting with a digital marketing skill like search engine optimization (SEO).

While growing new skills is valuable, keeping this growth focused on your goals is essential. For example, connect your drive to improve SEO skills with a tactical goal to get more conversions on your top 5 pages.

Trend 5: Growing Pressure To Deliver Efficiency In Marketing Departments

This trend is similar to the first trend – pressure on advertising budgets – but it has some nuances. The pressure on marketing teams to deliver better customer engagement results will take a few forms. Marketers may only be able to hire talent or retain some of the technology they had planned for.

It’s not just a question of marketing budgets facing greater scrutiny either. Sales and management teams may demand more support to deliver growth this quarter. The good news is that there are multiple tactics to deliver greater results in a short period.

Win Back Campaigns

Reengaging past customers is one of the best ways to grow on a budget. You probably have their details and permission to communicate with them. Make sure you use thoughtful targeting for the best results (more on this front in the next section).

Reassess Marketing Technology

Take a hard look at your current marketing technology stack, especially the older and more expensive apps. These assets may have delivered value once, but that may no longer be true if your strategies and target market have evolved.

Improve Internal Communication

Marketers usually focus their efforts on customers. As internal pressure increases, you must keep engaging your internal stakeholders. For example, aim to create a simple marketing dashboard that emphasizes the most significant wins of the month.

Don’t assume that other departments, like sales or executives, will automatically see the value of marketing. Taking a few hours a month to communicate marketing wins (e.g., “we increased order value by 10% compared to the previous month!”) is a vital way to maintain trust in marketing.

Trend 6: Targeted Engagement Campaigns Become Essential

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You have registered users, email list subscribers, and others engaged with your brand. The old playbook of sending the same promotion to everybody is less likely to work today. Launch more targeted engagement campaigns using the first party you have from your users, like the pages they’ve visited and emails they open.

Here are a few ways to design more tightly focused engagement campaigns:

Focus On The Next Engagement Step

Instead of asking for the sale immediately, ask yourself this question: what’s the most common next step people make after registering on our website? The answer could be attending a software demo. Or you might find that users tend to consume several pieces of long-form content. The objective is to go small – look for the next logical micro step in engagement and focus your efforts there.

Ask For Feedback and Ideas

Coming up with new and engaging ideas to inspire your online audience gets tiring. Fortunately, you don’t have to be the one with all the great ideas. Instead, develop 2-3 high-level content ideas and send them to your audience. Ask your audience which idea sounds most promising! 

For an in-depth exploration of leveraging customer questions and surveys in your marketing, see the book “Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Method to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy” by Ryan Levesque.

Invite High Potential Audience Members To An Event

Review your customer data platform to identify highly engaged prospects who have yet to buy. For example, create a segment of users engaged with your brand across two or three channels. In this case, smaller is better! Inviting 50-100 carefully selected people to an online event tightly connected to their interests.

Trend 7: Renewed Focus on Loyalty Marketing 

As economic uncertainty hits marketers and their budgets, there’s a greater demand to emphasize proven strategies. Growth may be challenging, so keeping current customers will become even more critical. The following steps can help you design better loyalty and retention campaigns.

Examine Customer Churn Triggers

Find out the top three reasons why your customers are leaving so that you can create campaigns to address those issues. For example, customers on an annual plan may feel surprised by an unexpected charge. To reduce this cause of churn, identify customers who are 1-2 months away from renewal and offer them additional payment options.

Reinforce Your Loyalty Program

In 2023, Starbucks announced changes to its loyalty program that devalued loyalty program points. In the past, airlines have made similar changes. Such changes make it harder to retain loyal customers. Also, such changes generate negative publicity that makes engagement far more complex.

Find out if your organization plans changes like these and see if you can pause or defer implementation to lift retention.

The Way To Lift Engagement Right Now

Growing an audience from scratch takes time and effort. Growing your website audience toward conversion. Find out how Arena can help lift engagement today.

First Party Data For Brands: Ways To Lift Revenue

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First-party data is quickly becoming the new opportunity to fuel personalization, customer engagement and online growth. Publishers are already starting to use first-party data to deliver customized experiences to their audience. For retail and ecommerce brands, there’s a tremendous opportunity to grow with first-party data. 

What Is First Party Data Anyway and Why It Matters

The best way to explain first party data is through a quick story. Imagine you’re running digital marketing at an apparel company and you’re looking for ways to sell more shoes this quarter. You have many different options and resources to choose from. One decision you’ll have to make upfront is what kind of data to leverage.

Consider planning your campaign by reviewing past customer activity. For example, you may look at website analytics to see which product pages are already receiving the most traffic. In addition, ask your customer service colleagues to summarize what kind of questions and complaints you get. All of this data comes directly from your customers, website visitors, and email subscribers. That’s all first party data.

First party data is often contrasted with another popular type of marketing data: third party data. For many years, digital marketers have used third party data for growth. Third party data is customer data generated by other companies. While this type of marketing data is popular, it’s becoming less useful for two reasons.

There are two reasons why companies are moving away from third party data. First, it is less transparent to consumers and can result in negative feedback. Second, Google and Apple are ending support for third party cookies (a popular technology that enables many third party marketing campaigns) in their browsers. 

First party data has multiple applications regardless of how you sell products. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most powerful use cases.

Retail and Ecommerce Use Cases For First Party

At its simplest, first party data is data that you gather directly from your customers, website visitors and others who interact with your brand online. Leveraging first party data makes it easier to achieve several sales and marketing goals.

Achieving Marketing Goals With First-Party Data

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Systematically using first party data makes it easier to achieve your digital marketing growth goals. 

Optimize Your Content Marketing Efforts

First party data tells you what content, links and assets your audience finds the most engaging. For example, start your analysis by reviewing your top 10 pages by traffic for the past 90 days. Ideally, focus on the pages that have driven the most conversions (e.g. purchases, website signups etc). 

Based on what you find, you can make better decisions about your content marketing strategy. An athletic apparel ecommerce company might find that their ultimate guide for marathon running drives the most conversions. Based on that insight, you may create more content to attract marathon runners to your website. 

Reduce Digital Marketing Expenses

Success in digital marketing requires the patience to experiment with new ideas, technologies and campaigns. The downside is that many marketing tests may not deliver significant results. When marketing budgets come under pressure, you may be asked to stretch your marketing dollars further. First-party data can play a powerful role in lifting marketing efficiency in the following ways.

Optimize Referral Campaigns

Word-of-mouth referrals are one of the most powerful ways to grow online. That said, sending out a blast message to your entire database is unlikely to work.

It’s far better to focus referral campaigns on your VIP customers – the ones who buy over and over again. First party data can help you identify your best customers which means you can create a far more targeted referral campaign.

Boost Loyalty Marketing Efforts

Many retail companies have loyalty programs because these efforts effectively encourage repeat business. The data you gather from buyers through your loyalty program is one of the most valuable forms of first party data. 

Analyze the buying patterns of your top customers and then use those patterns to inform your new campaigns. For example, you may find that 80% of repeat shoppers start by buying low-priced products. Use that insight and prepare a loyalty campaign to encourage one-off buyers to buy that product.

Increasing referrals and loyalty sales don’t require additional advertising so they’re a great choice when budgets are tight. You just need to focus on analyzing your customer data and executing campaigns based on those insights. 

Achieving Sales Goals With First-Party Data

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Some businesses are not focused on online sales. For example, industrial products, vehicles and enterprise software are rarely bought in a matter of clicks. In these more complex sales, first party data can support your sales goals.

Identify High Interest Sales Leads

Sales professionals only have so many hours in the day. First party data can play a role in lifting the efficiency of sales conversations. An analysis of first-party data can identify the prospects who are the most engaged with your content and may be open to a sales call.

Earn Attention With Relevant Content

Complex sales can take weeks, months or even years to close. Staying in touch with prospects during these longer customer journeys takes a lot of work! You can only send a “checking in” style email so many times. 

First party data can support the nurturing process. You can see which content your customers access in the lead up to purchase and afterward. As a result, you can craft follow up messages focused specifically on content that resonates with buyers.

From First-Party Data To Deeper Engagement

Simply gathering and using first party data will give you an immediate advantage in making sales and reaching your marketing goals. 

Ultimately, your goal isn’t really focused on getting data (even highly useful data like first party data). You want to build an audience of people who look forward to visiting your website regularly. An audience who finds insights, connections and experiences all through your company is one that will stay loyal. 

The secret to gaining first party data and deep engagement requires the right technology. That’s where Arena Live Chat technology comes in. You can install it in just a few minutes and get up and running. Discover more about how Arena can help you grow ecommerce revenue!

15 Virtual Event Ideas for Young Professionals

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There are several virtual event ideas that can help you engage your younger employees. Attracting and retaining young professionals is difficult because talented people have more career opportunities in today’s tight labor market. Virtual events have an important supporting role if your organization has the basics, like offering competitive compensation and flexibility.

How To Use This Guide

Selecting the right virtual event ideas for young professionals depends on a few factors. These event ideas take significant time, creativity, and effort. On the other hand, some of these event ideas are relatively simple and easy to implement. 

Keep your organization’s familiarity with virtual events as you explore this list. Companies that are highly experienced in running virtual events, online conferences and live streams may be able to take on more complex events. If you’re getting started with virtual events, then focus your efforts on a more straightforward event concept.

Virtual Networking Events for Young Professionals

For young professionals, producing networking events is critical. Put yourself in the shoes of a newly hired employee. They may have graduated a year ago and moved to a new city. They may not know many people or feel disconnected from others. Offering one or two virtual networking opportunities yearly is an excellent starting point.

1. Virtual Coffee Chats

This virtual event is best suited for companies that hire significant numbers of young professionals. For example, technology companies, professional services firms, and financial firms tend to hire large numbers of new graduates each year. In other words, this event is a good fit if your organization has a campus or college recruiting program.

Invite all young professionals who have been hired in the past five years to the event. Suggest an icebreaker game like two truths and a lie to spark the conversation.

2. Meet The Leadership Virtual Event

Many newer professionals are ambitious to grow their careers. One of the best ways to grow is to meet people who have already accomplished your career goals. Offering a “meet the leaders” networking event is smart. Invite the CEO and another few senior executives to an event and randomly mix them with young professionals.

Who knows – your CEO might see untapped potential in some of your new hires and put them on the fast track to contribute more to the company!

3. Virtual Industry Networking Events

As a young professional, it’s vital to network beyond your employer. After all, some of the best opportunities in life may come from partnerships and interactions with friends at other companies. With this event concept, consider crafting a guest list of young professionals from similar companies. For example, a young professional group at Deloitte might invite peers from other accounting firms like PwC, EY, and KPMG to a virtual mixer.

4. Virtual Networking With Guest Speaker

What if your prior efforts to organize networking efforts fell flat? It may be time to try a new strategy. This event idea involves inviting a special guest whose name recognition will draw in people. Depending on your network and budget, there are a few ways to execute this strategy.

Invite A Recently Promoted Young Professional

Sometimes, it can be challenging to relate to people who are very different from you. For example, a 25-year-old new hire might not relate to an executive who has been in the workforce for 25 years! The alternative is to look for a professional in the 25-30 year age bracket who has been promoted or earned an award. Invite them to give a short presentation to spark interest in the networking event.

Invite A Relevant Academic Expert

Young professionals, especially recent graduates, often look up to the expertise of professors and other academics. Reach out to your local college’s business school and ask if any of the professors are interested in giving a presentation to your audience. For the best results, suggest some topics like workplace communication, networking, or financial skills.

Virtual Company Book Club

Young professionals have a lot to learn about how your company works. Tap into that desire to learn by organizing a book club. For example, a group of young professionals specializing in technology might be interested in discussing the book “The Personal MBA” by Josh Kaufman, which covers many different business topics.

Young Professional Virtual Recruiting Event Ideas

Some companies, like Google and Apple, are overwhelmed with new job applicants every time they post a new position. The rest of us have to take a different strategy – offering to recruit events to connect with these potential hires. 

1. Virtual Company Tour

While remote and hybrid working arrangements are popular, the office experience still plays an important role. Young professionals want to see what your office is like and the amenities and have a sense of what it would be like to work at your location. 

A virtual company tour is a relatively simple event idea. In essence, you share photos and videos of your office location with virtual attendees. Depending on your comfort level, there are a few ways to execute this idea. For example, you could ask employees to submit a few photos of themselves at the office. Or you could take employees on a virtual tour by sharing a live stream video from a smartphone.

What if you have a small office? Combining this event idea with the next one on our list might be worthwhile.

2. Virtual Intern Fair

Completing an internship or two is a valuable experience to start your career as a graduate or student. It lets a young professional take your company for a “test drive,” and you get the opportunity to see them at work. Assuming your company has an intern program or an interest in starting one, a virtual intern fair is a helpful way to engage potential talent.

To market your company’s internship program, keep the following tips in mind:

  • Compensation: Intern pay varies widely. If your company can offer a competitive intern compensation package, that is a great point to highlight in this virtual event.
  • Experiences: potential interns are looking for the opportunity to grow their networks and earn valuable skills. Look for ways to present your program’s unique experiences, such as the opportunity to research emerging technologies or interact with management.
  • What Happens After The Internship: every internship comes to an end, so what’s next? Invite your past interns to speak about their experiences – did they get job offers or find other ways to grow your career?

3. Virtual Partnership Program

Competition for talent is heating up in many industries, including technology. It’s no longer good enough to rely on job postings or recruiters alone. Look for opportunities to partner with associations and programs. These organizations can also help your company achieve its diversity and inclusion goals. For example, reach out to organizations like Wonder Women Tech and LGBTQ Tech.

By partnering with a diverse professional organization, your company will have the opportunity to attract more qualified talent. This type of partnership event is most likely to succeed if your company can highlight relevant past hires and other efforts to engage diverse talent.

4. Online Hackathon Events

What if your company had the opportunity to see young professionals at work building something? That’s precisely what running or sponsoring a hackathon event can do for you! Many leading companies like Amazon, Capital One, Coinbase, Intel, and have previously sponsored hackathon events. It’s a powerful way to connect with ambitious creative talent in the technology industry.

There are two ways to execute this virtual event idea. The simple option is to partner with an existing program like Major League Hacking. Alternatively, if your organization has a substantive 

5. Online Charitable Events

Many companies have charitable programs and encourage employee volunteerism. These efforts are a great way to connect with community-minded young professionals. Traditionally, community service efforts were performed in person, like building homes or cleaning public areas. 

To bring your charitable efforts into the digital world, look for opportunities to give back that can be performed online. For example, education volunteers can digitally help tutor students in math, science, and languages (e.g., English as a second language). In addition, you might partner with an organization that supports new immigrants entering the workforce. 

Team Building Virtual Events For Young Professionals

The first few virtual events examples will help you recruit young professionals. Once they’re hired, employee engagement and growth become more critical. Use these virtual event ideas to help newer hires grow their networks, enhance team building and cohesion and bring fun to the workplace.

1. Virtual Happy Hour Event

Gathering together to enjoy drinks and food is one of the most popular ways to build cohesion with your team members. With a hybrid or remote working world, gathering in person isn’t always an option. As an alternative, invite your young professionals to a virtual happy hour. To make the event even more appealing, offer a gift card so that your attendees can bring their drinks. 

A virtual happy hour is one of the most straightforward virtual event ideas to organize because it is unstructured. The downside is that not all employees will be interested or available to join this event. That’s why we have a few more event ideas for you!

2. Virtual Murder Mystery Event

Want to give your young professionals the chance to channel their inner Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie? Give them the chance to exercise their problem-solving skills in a new way by organizing a virtual murder mystery. These group experiences have been brought into the online world with games like Red Herring Games’ Virtual Murder Mystery Parties. You can also work with a facilitator to make the event memorable. 

3. Virtual Comedy Hour

Solving a mystery isn’t everybody’s cup of tea… But laughter is good for everyone! Mayo Clinic research suggests laughter can help with stress relief. There are a few ways to put together this event.

Spotlight Your Employees

Young professionals don’t always get the chance to impact everyone at work. That’s why giving new hires the chance to share a comedy set can work so well. Of course, you might want to set a few ground rules, like keeping the company’s values and code of conduct, to keep the event safe and enjoyable for all.

Bring In A Virtual Comedian

Performing live comedy, especially when unfamiliar to you, can be stressful. If your employees aren’t interested in performing, there’s another way to bring comedy benefits to your company. Bring in a “corporate comedian” – these specialized entertainers know how to bring the laughs while engaging the needs of corporate audiences. Look at companies like Clean Comedians and Treuer Laughs to discover your options. 

4. Virtual Fitness Competition

Sitting at your desk all day is a drag, so this virtual event can help to solve that challenge. Organize a fitness competition for young professionals and see who can log the most minutes of activity over a month. While most fitness activities will take offline, you can bring people together for a few virtual event touchpoints. At the start of the competition, invite participants to a kickoff event and explain how the event works. When the competition is over, organize another virtual event and give out awards for employees who log the best results!

5. Virtual Worksgiving Event

Thanksgiving is one of the year’s most significant events. Young professionals might need to travel to be with their families for this event. A few days before the holiday, organize a virtual worksgiving event. During the event, invite employees to share how they mark the holiday. In addition, you could also focus on the gratitude aspect of Thanksgiving – what do employees feel grateful for?

For more inspiration and ideas on how to run this type of event, see this resource: How to plan a virtual Worksgiving for your employees.

Get The Right Technology To Engage Young Professionals

For your virtual event for professionals to succeed, communication and engagement are critical. Video chat is part of the story, but remember that not all employees want to use video all the time. Give your employees the chance to engage using chat! Learn more about Arena Live Chat.