There is a pressing need for companies across industries to transform customer engagement through virtual and hybrid event experiences. To accelerate the move toward this new era of engagement, ON24 introduced breakout rooms in ON24 Virtual Conference, a leading solution used by some of the world’s most recognized brands for large-scale online conferences, tradeshows, and multi-day events.

Available this week for early adopters, ON24 Breakouts allows marketers to create deeper engagement opportunities within their virtual conferences – from peer-to-peer networking and group meetings to one-to-one conversations with sales – to convert more of their prospects into customers. Breakouts for virtual conferences builds upon early customer success using breakout rooms in ON24 Webcast Elite webinar experiences.

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“ON24 introduced breakout rooms in ON24 Virtual Conference for marketing and sales teams to create deeper engagement opportunities with attendees, capture rich audience data, and convert more prospects to customers during virtual conferences.”

“The ability to collaborate face-to-face using breakout rooms during a virtual experience provides more ways to engage audiences and enhance the attendee experience,” said Dean Shaw, global webinar program manager at SAS. “Speakers can interact directly with attendees and marketing can better gauge an individual prospect’s interests to potentially generate more qualified sales leads.”

Companies are shifting to digital-first, hybrid engagement strategies to reach broader audiences and connect with prospects in more impactful ways. With breakout room functionality in ON24 Virtual Conference, marketing and sales teams have more opportunities to engage audiences during and after virtual conferences and hybrid event experiences.

Attendees can seamlessly move between the virtual conference and more intimate virtual environments like one-to-one chats, scheduled group presentations, attendee networking, and Q&A sessions – all with a single click. By expanding customer engagement with speakers, attendees, and sales in different two-way experiences, marketers can capture more engagement data such as topics of interest, meetings attended, and interaction time with speakers to better understand buying readiness and accelerate the customer journey.

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Companies can also drive hybrid engagement with virtual and physical audiences by giving attendees the same interactive experience using hybrid breakouts. Digital and physical attendees can join the same group networking rooms to meet, discuss topics with speakers, and learn about sponsors and partners alongside in-person attendees. And marketing teams can capture the same first-person engagement data across both physical and virtual attendees.

“Our mission is to transform the way businesses drive revenue and customer engagement through digital-first, hybrid experiences,” said Sharat Sharan, CEO of ON24. “Companies can deliver different two-way engagement opportunities no matter the type of event, virtual or hybrid. This gives customers flexibility to generate audience engagement and drive higher conversion with prospects.”