Virtual Events Saved Our Community, And Revolutionised Our Business
Once upon a time, long, long ago, when Zoom was just the word we used to describe the sound of fast cars and rockets, a night in and online with friends, instead of out with them in person, was, to say the least, inconceivable to most of us.
With Citysocializer we had, over a decade, honed the art of connecting people through real-world events and, via our platform, turning those connections into authentic and long-lasting friendships, underpinned by our vision “to create happiness, wellness and belonging through purposeful events and community.”
City’s can be the loneliest of places, even for the most sociable of us, and Citysocializer is where hundreds of thousands of people have found solace, particularly when arriving in a new city, often staying on the platform to join events long past making the new friends for life that we promised, because the community became like their family.
As an events-based company, reliant on the hospitality and leisure industries and people wanting to engage with and meet new people, clearly the pandemic and the resulting lockdown and social distancing was going to hit the business really hard.
Without knowing how hard, we decided that, at the very least, we had to try and help our existing community — the majority living alone in cities away from family and friends — to survive the isolation of lockdown and keep them connected.
Staying true to our vision in a time of crisis helped us enormously to figure out the path ahead and we acted quickly to develop a program of virtual social events, recruiting the best from the network of event hosts we had from within the community to help us with this, and making rapid UI and feature changes to adapt to the new and, what we considered at that time to be, “interim” model.
Within a week of the UK officially locking down we had a ready-to-go program of fifty virtual social events a month ready and available for people to join and within the first few weeks, seeing the number of event bookings per person sky-rocket, we added virtual fitness classes and learning workshops to our offering.
Today there are over one hundred virtual events a month being hosted via the platform by a combination of community and commercial event hosts and over the last eight months, our baptism by fire into the world of virtual events, virtual event management and hosting, has given us a whole new perspective.
What we’ve discovered is that, although the chemistry and more holistic user experience of real-world events cannot be replicated virtually, there are numerous ways that virtual events have revolutionised our business including:
- We’ve been able to expand our value proposition and reach nationally and internationally almost overnight with zero additional cost.
- We can be more creative about the variety of events and experiences we can offer as lower overheads and costs to deliver these virtually.
- Virtual events are a no/low-hassle way for new users to ‘dip their toe in’ to Citysocializer without committing to attending an event in person off the bat.
- Personally connecting with our community via our own virtual events has helped develop even stronger brand loyalty.
And with 8 out of 10 of our community stating they would want virtual events to continue alongside real-world events once the pandemic is over, it is clear that the benefits do not stop there.
So, although the disruption of the Coronavirus crisis has been the biggest threat to our business, it appears it may also be our biggest opportunity.
- Sanchita (CEO & Founder)
