With so many events moving online in the past few months, creators have had to be flexible. Being able to effectively organize and communicate your events is important, but so is choosing the right platform for hosting them.
With people all over the world looking to exercise and stay active from the comfort of their own homes, health and wellness services like gyms and spas have had to adjust to these needs. So how can brands move forward and keep their business booming in this unique time?
Avid Sports Medicine, based out of San Francisco, has seen success bringing their health and wellness classes online with Eventbrite’s Zoom integration. By connecting their online events to Zoom, their attendees are automatically sent a secure link to the Zoom meeting after registration, which has helped Avid streamline online operations and manage their growing audience.
Are you ready to start hosting online events? Create an event with Eventbrite’s Zoom integration today.
Finding the right platform
Founded in 2019, Avid Sports Medicine is a one-stop shop for taking care of injuries, pain, and other issues that can crop up with even the most active and healthy lifestyle. With a chiropractor, physical therapist, trainer, and massage therapist on staff, Avid offers comprehensive care for those who need it. Like so many other largely in-person businesses, they faced some challenges when the pandemic started.
“Before COVID, people were mostly coming in person,” says Veronica Jow, Avid’s Sports Medicine Physician. “We’d always been interested in having classes, and actually had some in-person classes before COVID.”
With the start of the pandemic, Avid needed to find a way to move classes online and effectively communicate with their growing audience, all while expanding offerings and finding new customers.
So how did the business adapt? The pandemic gave them a chance to develop a class model to fit the unique moment. “The opportunity arose to host a dance class in my office, which may seem like a side project, but a lot of what I do is promote wellness and movement in general,” Jow says. “So that’s how it all started.”
An easy and straightforward online attendee experience
Taking advantage of Eventbrite’s seamless integration with Zoom gave Avid a streamlined platform for hosting their classes, while making communication and directions for joining their online events easy. “The dance class was very popular, and there was no way I was going to just email all of [the attendees],” Jow says. “But they all needed somewhere to go to get class information and the link to the session, so sending emails through Eventbrite was really helpful for us.” When you publish your online event, Eventbrite automatically queues up a series of three customizable reminder emails: two days, two hours and 10 minutes before your event is scheduled to begin. These automatic communications help attendees easily find the information they need to join the event.
As Avid’s offerings grew, it was easy to manage frequent classes on Eventbrite. “We’re doing about two training classes a week,” Jow says.
With a reliable platform for hosting online events, Avid was able to take advantage of new business opportunities as well. “We started doing employer-based classes,” Jow explains. “So we do ergonomics classes, classes on neck and back pain, yoga, meditation — all sorts of things for employers who are looking for ways to engage their employees, who are basically stuck at home.” Zoom integration made it easier to create a variety of offerings without having to reinvent the wheel.
“The employee classes are all workshops, usually with a little bit of talking and a little bit of movement, all done through Zoom,” Jow says. The format of the classes fit nicely with Zoom’s moderation features, as Jow explains. “It’s funny to see people from the same company get on Zoom that maybe haven’t seen each other because they’re not on the same team — they kind of just wanted to chat,” Jow says.
Another benefit of Zoom? Privacy. “I think it helps people try new things,” Jow says, “because they have the security of being able to turn off the camera if they’re shy.” And while their employer-based classes come with a built-in sense of community, Avid is considering experimenting with Zoom’s audience engagement features to help grow that feeling in their open classes.
Eventbrite helped clarify the registration process for employer-based classes, since users had to be registered to attend the events. “I told employers, don’t send out a calendar invite, because then people are going to think they’re already signed up,” Jow says. “Whoever my contact is at the company, I do what they prefer, whether that’s meeting in-person and handling the sign-ups and sending out an Eventbrite link, or putting it in their newsletter of Slack channel, or whatever works.”
Through their online classes, Avid also got a better picture of their audience. “Employees would sign up through Eventbrite, which was good for me, because then I have their contact information,” Jow says. “So then I can continue to provide them with content and information about our business.”
Enjoying more benefits of using Eventbrite
Leveraging Eventbrite’s Zoom integration to sell tickets to their online classes helped Avid stay flexible during the pandemic. But according to Jow, it also offers other benefits, including:
Ease of communication. As Avid prepares to bring their popular dance class back, communication is key. “That was how I communicated with everyone each week, sending reminders about class times and how to sign up,” Jow says. “Because you can send emails through Eventbrite, everybody can just sign up right away, without having to click another landing page.”
Higher attendance and revenue. One benefit of hosting classes online has been increased attendance. “When we had our dance class going, it was a minimum of sixty people a week,” Jow adds, “and sometimes as many as a hundred and twenty.” As Jow points out, the pivot to online classes with higher attendance rates “absolutely” helped Avid increase revenue.
An expanded audience. Avid took advantage of Eventbrite’s integration with other platforms to drive audience growth and bring their messaging and content to more users. “With Eventbrite, we would create a Facebook event with links, and that’s another place where people might see your event,” Jow says. Adjustable ticket prices also opened classes up to more users. “We actually made our dance class a sliding scale so that it would be accessible to more people,” Jow explains. “There aren’t a lot of platforms where you can set multiple prices for the same thing.”
Avid Sports Medicine knows health and wellness. What they needed was a solution that would help them sell tickets, provide a straightforward attendee experience, and help them host engaging classes. With Eventbrite’s integration with Zoom, they found just what they were looking for.
See how Eventbrite’s Zoom integration can help you streamline your online events and manage your audience
