The modern Investor Relations Officer (IRO) is under pressure to do more with less. Whether you are involved with the next roundtable, roadshow, or investor day, you are expected to pull off these conferences on a smaller budget.
You can shave off costs in many different ways, but one decision stands above the rest. Ditch in-person meetings and host your next conference in the digital space. You might be surprised by how much this choice can save your company.
The Cost Effectiveness of Capital Markets Virtual Events
Like many companies, your team probably embraced digital meetings out of necessity during the pandemic. While some companies may want to put these dark days behind them, you should continue a virtual schedule.
According to the American Bar Association, virtual events are 75% less expensive to host than their in-person counterparts. That’s because you don’t have to pay for the rental space, event staff, security, travel, and food expenditures that come with traditional events.
Once you eliminate these overheads from your budget, you can focus on what really matters to your brand and shareholders. You can reinvest this saved money into better webcasting technology, high-profile speakers, or other areas of your IR program.
What Are the Added Benefits of Capital Markets Virtual Events?
Cutting a whopping 75% from your costs isn’t the only advantage to assuming a fully virtual capital markets events schedule. As mentioned above, you can invest this information into better technology.
Why do you need better IR tech? The investor relations experts at Q4 recommend digital engagements because of the information you collect. The latest webcasting tools deliver insights into your shareholder base that would normally be out of reach with in-person events.
With virtual events, your webcasting tools can reveal how your attendees interact with your platform and the content you share in real-time. These metrics include registration info and meetings; responses to Q&As, polls, and surveys; clicks on attachments; and playbacks on recorded videos.
This information is invaluable on the day of the event, as your team can adjust its content to reflect the interest shown online. However, it has an even greater impact later.
Through an IR tool suite like Q4 Capital Connect, you can consolidate engagement metrics collected from your virtual events with the rest of your IR systems. This makes it easier to compare your virtual performance to other touchstones of your platform, including your website, CRM data, and evaluation.
You’ll be able to see if certain behavior metrics during your event coincide with activity on your website or on the markets. These insights can help you better understand what resonates with your shareholders.
More importantly, it gives you a greater grasp of your investors’ needs. By tracking who interacts with your content and how, you can accelerate outreach to primed investors at the perfect time.
Bottom Line
Targeting and outreach remain the backbone of investor relations, especially when operating on a tighter budget. They are some of the most effective ways to underscore your value to your C-Suite, so it’s important you do whatever you can to improve these techniques.
Maintaining a virtual schedule can help you work better on less and invest in better tools to help you accomplish your goals.
