When the operational restrictions of Covid-19 were enacted, animal shelters were forced to rethink their operations. While the most immediate moves included implementing online applications, scheduling, and electronic contracting, there quickly became a need to reimagine in person adoption events as virtual events. This blog post presents a guide to hosting virtual pet adoption events based on our experience helping shelters host events that have adopted over 10,000 animals.
Adopets responded to the need for virtual adoptions events by introducing an end to end solution that makes it easy for shelters to host an event, by themselves or with a group of shelters. While everybody would prefer to see adorable animals in person, one benefit of the virtual event format is that it opens access to a wider range of participants because the event is open 24/7 and because people can join from the comfort of their home. So, while we are all looking forward to the return of in-person events, it looks like virtual events are here to stay.
To find success with your virtual event think about 3 stages of the event—and approach each as an equally important part of your planning.
Stage 1: Pre-Event
Preparation for your event is just as important as your live event. The success of your event is dependent upon engaged shelter staff, building community awareness, and gathering a list of interested adopters. While much of your pre-event work will go into staff coordination and community awareness, it is vitally important to have a pre-event website where people who hear about the event can register to be notified when the event goes live. Additionally, if you are thinking about having an event with multiple organizations then you need an event site that supports multiple shelters.
- A pre-event page is a must. With Adopets built in pre-event page you will have a custom event page that includes your branding and key information about the event. With a built-in form for people to sign up for the event, you will make it easy for most interested constituents to get notified about the event.
- Start building community awareness early. Research from Markletic found that the promotion of your event should start about 4 weeks prior to the event date.
- Spread the word on your website. Banners on your website are easy to update and front and center to anyone who visits your site.
- Email will drive registrations. 76% of marketers say that email is the most effective way to drive registrations so be sure to create a dedicated email list for your event. We suggest a four email sequence including a save the date, followed by an invitation to register, a register now, and a final reminder. Be sure to include, event name, date, time, and CTA to register.
- Social media will amplify event awareness. 60% of virtual event organizers use social media to drive registration, so develop a promotional plan for Facebook, engage on Instagram, post on TikTok, and post on LinkedIn.
Stage 2: Live Event
One way to look at the formula for success of your event is: (community awareness + event experience = adoption outcomes). The live event stage is largely about the event experience but you will still want to continue to build community awareness. Following are some of the components of Adopets virtual event module which support event success.
- Provide for easy search, saving of animals, and adoption inquires. Your live event website provides the interface for potential adopters to find animals so it is important to provide for easy search of animals and filtering based on animal type, age, size, and other characteristics. Some adopters are not ready to adopt on first seeing the animal so it is important to provide for visitors to save animals to their favorites so they can talk about them with their significant other. When they are ready to adopt, your event site seamlessly integrates your online adoption questionnaire for easy completion.
- Automate communications with adopters. When adopters fall in love with an animal they want to know where they stand in the adoption process, and this can create a lot of manual work. Adopets Smart Responses automate communication for activities like confirming receipt of adoption inquires, inviting potential adopters to schedule a call or meet and greet, and even letting potential adopters know when an animal they inquired about has been adopter by someone else.
- Live support on the event site. To help events go smoothly Adopets offers live chat on the event site. This enables adopters to ask questions that would otherwise lead them to abandon the adoption process and provides for a good customer experience.
- Frequent Progress Reports – Keep your audience engaged and enthusiastic about your event with frequent updates on number of adoptions, and even donations made. Enthusiasm breeds enthusiasm. You can provide these update on your event site, your home page, and your social media pages.
Stage 3: Post Event
All the work you did during the pre-event lead up and during the event has hopefully led to positive animal outcomes, shelter awareness, and an overall successful event. At this stage you have an opportunity to highlight the event success, report results to sponsors, and follow up with interested adopters who did not yet find the right animal.
- Gather Metrics for Future Sponsors – As you grow your Virtual Adoption Events, you’ll likely want to engage sponsors for an even higher level of donations event over event. By capturing your metrics, number of page visitors, time spent on the event, communication engagement, you will be able to show your potential sponsors how smart a sponsorship invents truly is.
- Highlight Event Success – Once you have gathered your event data, it’s time to share the success.
- Create a newsletter dedicated to your event highlights, total number of adoptions, total number of donations, and number of attendees
- Feature pet and family connections from the event on social media, you can do this all year round to keep the energy and enthusiasm around virtual events high
- Gather testimonials from event adopters for use in shelter collateral
- Follow up with interested adopters. Virtual adoption events often generate 2x to 3x the number of adoption inquires verse actual adoptions. To make follow up easy, Adopets enables you to "favorite" adopters so that you can follow up with people who are good adopters but there was not an immediate match. You can use the favorite adopter feature to place animals that come in after the event.
With virtual interactions becoming more common place, even before the pandemic, shelters are finding Virtual Pet Adoption Events to be an effective way to engage their community in their lifesaving efforts. Having the right virtual event platform and a plan for the three stages of virtual events will position you for success. To learn more about how Adopets can help, click here, to request a demo by one of our product specialists.
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