This month, we welcome Lisa Schulteis Founder of ElectraLime Marketing, a virtual/hybrid event production company, and Founder of YourEventMarketplace, a marketplace for event professionals. Let's jump into her interview!
Introduction
Lisa is used to the event industry. Her experience comes from being in the industry for over 10 years. She worked with Fortune 500 companies, organizations, and different associations. She knows a thing or two about planning an event!
She combines her systematic processes with her digital marketing experience to completely customize and manage each event from start to finish. She is both the event producer and the event manager for each event. From virtual summits to large corporate events and full-scale conferences, Lisa provides the expertise to identify the right virtual/hybrid stage to share your unique messages.
Every event industry leader knows that keeping up with the different trends or monitoring the latest pandemic restrictions is just part of the job. When asked how she keeps up with industry trends, Lisa stated, “I monitor different websites, attend event industry related events as well as have memberships with different event-related organizations.”
How does she adjust to the ever changing event industry?
Being super involved is the best way for Lisa to stay on top of the constant changes in the industry especially during post pandemic. She did not wait around for the pandemic to go away, she pivoted and kept adjusting to the constant challenges. “We were producing virtual and hybrid events before the pandemic and in fact, I was onsite for a hybrid event when the US shut down. We converted that event from hybrid to virtual over the weekend and then I flew home.”
With her hard working effort and flexible skills, she created a spark. She stated, “After that, we became busier than we ever had been as we were getting requests for virtual event production from new clients as well as having virtual event platforms reach out to us to outsource platform builds as their teams were maxed out.”
The event industry was definitely rattled when the pandemic forced everyone to go from in person to virtual. She expressed how that was one of their biggest challenges; educating their clients on the new world of virtual. We all remember having to learn how to share our screen or connect or microphone last minute. She used her virtual skills to focus on helping her clients choose the right tools/formats to create engagement for their attendees.
Lisa and her team have always primarily been focused around virtual/hybrid and it has not changed post-pandemic. When asked how they are making their strategy successful, she stated, “We focus on the three ‘E’s’…excitement, engagement, and experience. How can we get our attendees excited about the event, how can we engage them during the event, and how can we provide them with an experience they won't forget.”
Rather than give each of her clients the same strategy, Lisa provides a customized plan for each part of the event journey because each attendee is different. She provided examples stating, “We have had events where organizers picked up the phone to personally invite attendees and received a 98% attendance rate.”
Every event industry professional understands the stress of attendee’s showing up to their event and engaging in that event. When asked to further elaborate on how she helps her clients attendee’s engagement, she stated, “For engagement, we look at everything from networking to content... because if the content isn't good, your attendees won't be engaged and worst yet... won't want to return next time. Experiences? That is the fun part. We bring in experiences that use as many of the attendees senses as possible to give them something they won't forget - which also engages them at the same time.”
Her best advice...
Flawless execution is Lisa’s zone of genius as proven in her successful event industry career. At the end of our interview, I asked what is the best advice you could give your fellow event professionals. She said, “Always have a backup plan. We are still seeing live events move to virtual or cancel altogether. If you plan for a hybrid event, you are already one step ahead if you have to change the event to virtual."