Training Industry Conference & Expo (TICE)

The online Training Industry Conference & Expo (TICE) sets the bar for virtual events in the learning and development (L&D) industry. Like many event organizers, when we realized the lasting impact of COVID-19, we once again shifted plans and set to work on developing an online experience that would match its in-person counterpart. The conference was completely rebranded to represent the high energy that we hoped would flow throughout the event's entirety so that, from the get-go, prospective attendees knew that our conference would be different from competing virtual events.

To promote TICE, we capitalized on our expansive audience of email subscribers (225K), through weekly emails and subsequent lead nurture programs, and website visitors (400K), through pop-ups and banner advertising. Speakers were also recruited to write articles and create videos about their sessions for content marketing purposes. These combined marketing efforts resulted in us beating our registration goal by 30%.

By design, TICE is a highly interactive experience, and helping our attendees and sponsors make connections in L&D is our top priority. To that end, our team thought outside the box to bring value to our sponsors in the virtual environment. Sponsors participated at every level of the event (i.e., in breakout sessions, keynote introductions, roundtable discussions, speed networking and more), in addition to receiving their personal Zoom meeting room and exhibitor booth webpage. We also encouraged sponsors' involvement in our pre-marketing efforts by encouraging them to write thought leadership content to be featured in weekly newsletters and to join the conversation on our LinkedIn event page. Our close collaboration with sponsors resulted in us beating our sponsorship revenue goal by 48%.