Host a Virtual Seminar and Accredited Event with Rally Point Webinars

Client Profile

Large assurance, tax, and consulting firm in the United States. A member of the Top 50 accounting firms, its 800+ employees are segmented across different practice specialties, such as accounting for healthcare, not-for-profits, technology, etc. 

VIRTUAL Seminar GOAL

A number of practice groups within the accounting firm each host an annual seminar for practice leaders to share information with clients and prospects, and for others to earn CPE credits. These are the hallmark events for many of the practice groups each year. 

Virtual Seminar Summary

During Covid, the accounting firm decided to bring many of its annual seminars online. Each seminar featured roughly five content sessions with approximately 12 speakers. Since attendees were earning credits toward certification for each session, they needed to be present for the entirety of each session. Sessions were designed to be fun and interactive to keep attendees engaged.

Rally Point Webinars’ Virtual Training Difference

• Rally Point Webinars facilitated the virtual seminars to ensure attendee participation and proper tracking. Attendees were required to answer multiple poll questions within each session to earn credits. Rally Point Webinars’ platform enables accurate reporting on attendance and poll voting for accreditation purposes.

• To prepare speakers for the virtual seminar, Rally Point Webinars worked in collaboration with the firm’s marketing and IT teams to set up dedicated presentation rooms in the main office and several satellite offices, equipped with the proper lighting, audio, video, Internet, background, and backups. For those speakers who couldn’t travel to an office for the seminar, Rally Point Webinars worked with them directly to stage their home offices, ensuring a professional, high-quality presentation.

• Rally Point Webinars tailored the virtual seminar room to the speakers’ personality or content session’s theme. For example, for more extroverted and experienced speakers, Rally Point Webinars enables public and one-to-one private chats during the presentation and enables live streaming of attendees to ask questions and participate in the conversation. This creates a more interactive experience for the audience. Conversely, for the more introverted speaker, Rally Point Webinars can limit, or entirely close off, the interactions so the virtual seminar presentation is more one-way. Meanwhile, in a private production area behind the scene, Rally Point Webinars’ team works with the marketing team to vet the audiences’ questions before sending them to the speakers, enabling the accounting firm to decide what to address.

• Most importantly, Rally Point keeps the virtual seminar engaging! In this example, attendees participated in raffles, such as the Wheel of Attendees: As a reward at the end of certain sessions, the wheel would spin on screen and the attendee it landed on would win a prize, such as a Visa gift card, Apple AirPods, etc. Other fun elements such as interactive polls set to music, as well as laughter and applause sound effects, ensured the audience was enjoying themselves while learning, and the accounting firm was strengthening its brand and generating growth opportunities. 

• Following the shift from in-person to virtual annual seminars in 2020, the accounting firm saw a threefold-to-fourfold increase in attendance and geographic reach across the corresponding practice areas. The attendance, engagement, and positive feedback was so impressive that the practice leaders and marketing and sales teams decided to keep many of the seminars virtual going forward!

Questions about hosting a virtual seminar and accredited event for your business or professional services company? Contact Rally Point Webinars today.