As with local and regional speaker events, the number of attendees per virtual speaker event can vary widely, from more than200 persons to less than five persons. Such variation depends on program goals, format, and recruitment resources, as well as audience interest in the topic and speakers.

Although we’ve “done it all,” our firm endorses holding a large number of virtual events with an audience size per event in a range of six to 12 HCPs. This size provides every HCP participant the opportunity to ask questions and actively participate, and we believe HCP interaction leads to more effective virtual speaker events.

In terms of the drop-out (or no-show) rate for HCPs who pre-register for speaker events, the rate is similar for virtual and local events, which is to say, 50% or higher. Although such a drop-out rate is worrisome, with virtual programs we can usually overcome this with very high reschedule rates. Our experience shows that most HCPs fail to show because they momentarily become too busy, but they maintain interest in rescheduling. With virtual speaker programs, we (or the sales rep) can often re-schedule the HCP for another virtual event within a few days, or even as little as 30 minutes later. This can lower the effective dropout rate by 60% to 80%, which is significant. Local events, by comparison, do not offer the flexibility to quickly reschedule no-show HCPs.