Covid-19 may have accelerated our adoption of virtual events, but they are here for the long run. While virtual events afford us much flexibility and convenience in organising and attending the events, it poses a challenge in fostering organic conversations and networking opportunities between attendees and speakers. Whether it’s before the event starts, in between speaker sessions, or during meal breaks, these conversations are ones that enrich an event attendee’s experience.
If virtual events were to take centre stage in the long run, we need to find a way to replicate the same level of organic interactions between attendees. We’ve been able to do this through our various live interactive sessions such as Q&As, Polls, and Quizzes, but our product team was hungry for a way to bring audience engagement further.
That’s why we’re excited to announce our very own Live Chat feature!
Whether you’re running livestreams, on-demand webinars, watch parties, or online meetings with Pigeonhole Live, you can add a chat session on the side and let your attendees connect and engage with each other.
What you need to know about Pigeonhole Live’s Chat feature?
Pigeonhole Live’s chat is designed to be intuitive, simple, and scalable across all platforms, devices, and event sizes. It’s also built to work seamlessly with our third-party video integrations so attendees can chat while watching livestreams and on-demand videos.
Text and emoji
Attendees can easily start conversations and connect with others by sending text and emoji messages from any device and browser.
In-line replies
Attendees can reply to a message in the chat to start a conversation thread within the main chat. This allows attendees to start focused micro-discussions without disrupting the main conversation flow.
Chat Mentions
Attendees can also engage each other directly by mentioning other attendees by name in messages using @name. Attendees whose names have been mentioned in a message will receive a notification to scroll the message.
At the same time, Pigeonhole Live’s chat also affords much flexibility and choice for organisers, allowing you to run chats the way you want to.
Message Filtering
Organisers also have the option of exercising moderation in their chats by enabling Message Filtering during the setup or anytime after the chat has started. Once enabled, all messages sent by attendees will first appear on the Admin Panel, where event admins can choose to Allow or Dismiss the message. Only messages Allowed by the admin will appear in the chat on the Audience Web App.
Embed Chat in your selected space
Easily take Pigeonhole Live’s chat to where your audience is by embedding the chat as an iframe in your intranet, event website, and livestream or webinar platform. Simply select the chat session and customise it’s dimensions, and an embed code will be instantly generated for you.
Access to comprehensive chat Insights
Organisers can access aggregate engagement data as well as individual messages at the Insights tab or download a comprehensive Excel sheet to analyse important data points. The Excel sheet comes with a complete report of all chat messages and replies for an extensive post-event review.
Anonymity and Identity
Organisers have the option of making registration mandatory or running chats anonymously. If organisers choose to allow anonymity to be enabled in chats, they wot be able to trace a message back to a specific attendee.
However, if organisers choose to disable anonymous messages, then attendees will be prompted have to create a profile on Pigeonhole Live, and their profile information will be automatically imported into the chat they participate in.
To learn more about allowing anonymity in chats, read this article.
Use Chat to create chatter, buzz, and engagement
Pigeonhole Live’s chat is the perfect solution to power organic and vibrant conversations alongside more structured engagement formats such as Q&As, Polls, and Quizzes, for various virtual events. Here are a few inspirations to get you started:
Lobby chat rooms
Setting up lobby chat rooms is a great way to power networking and conversations among attendees and speakers before and in between live sessions! It’s common for attendees to network and connect with each other over coffee and sandwiches before the start of an in-person conference. Similarly, hosting lobby chat rooms allows attendees who log in early for the event to chat and get to know their fellow attendees and immerse themselves in the event experience.
With Pigeonhole Live you can easily set up several lobby chat rooms within the Agenda and even group chat sessions with Q&As or Regular sessions to create break out tracks which helps attendees navigate easily to their chat rooms of interest.
Chat n’ Watch parties
Whether you’re watching eSports, live performances, or product launches with your online community you can easily embed Pigeonhole Live’s chat onto your platform or host the livestream on Pigeonhole Live and keep the conversations flowing as you watch.
Make use of Pigeonhole Live’s other engagement tools such as Polls and Quizzes alongside the Chat to add more engagement to your watch parties!
Webinars
We learn better together – so adding chats to your on-demand or live webinars, training, and demos creates a better learning experience for your audience. Chats allow audiences to ask questions and help each other out along the way by sharing additional resources and expanding on discussion points in stress-free and friendly conversations.
Live Chat is available on Captivate and Enterprise Pigeonholes.
If you have any feedback on Live Chat, drop us a note at productteam@pigeonlab.com.
