I last wrote about Unisfair over a year ago, see: Virtual Environments for Business: Unisfair. They create virtual environments designed explicitly for business clients that provide ease of use. I recently spoke with Joerg Rathenberg, their Senior Director for Marketing. Unisfair has been in the business of virtual environments since 2000 and they are now on Release 8 of their virtual environment platform. Joerg said they now use the terms virtual engagements, rather than events, as the Unisfair platform supports ongoing activity and interaction, rather than simply enabling one-time events – although they do that too.

Joerg said that virtual events are becoming increasingly popular. Marketing Sherpa reported that they have achieved the largest percent increase in usage for marketing compared to all other channels, including search, websites, trade shows, and newsletters. He described it as a perfect storm for virtual engagement. The marketing budgets cuts, the desire to go green, the rise of web 2.0, the increase in distributed markets, the longer sales cycles, and the limitations of traditional webinars all feed into this increase in usage.

Unisfair is prepared for this shift as it is set up to support continuous engagement. This can occur around a specific event but it is not limited to the time sequence of the event. When you first enter a virtual environment, you arrive in the main hall, allowing access to all event locations and activities. You are greeted in the main hall by a virtual host who can take on the appearance and voice of a real person, rather than an avatar. You can register live or in advance and then be notified by email. The image below provides an example of the quality of the graphics.

Other components include the exhibition hall that hosts booths that can be organized in groups. Each booth includes communication capabilities for live interaction, as well as a kiosk for product information. The people in the booth know all the profile information about each attendee when an attendee enters the booth. This is one of advantages of the virtual world over the real world. Another is the virtual briefcase that participants can fill with presentations and collateral, as well as contacts, messages and invitations. The entire content can be exported as a simple zip file. I wish I had this at real conferences.

A networking lounge serves as a central meeting place, where attendees can exchange knowledge and ideas. Each attendee has their own virtual business card and can connect with others using networking and interest matching tools. . Live polls and surveys can be used by organizers and sponsors to enrich participant profile and engagement data. The resource center is the central content repository for attendees to select from all available event materials. Here is a sample networking lounge.

Joerg said that firms can create their own individual environments with point and click customization. You choose from an array of predefined themes and upload real images of your staff to let real people represent your company at your booth. Unisfair also provides an Engagement Index that measures the level of engagement for each participant and lets you rank your leads for appropriate follow-up. This is another potential advantage of the virtual world. There are performance metrics that allow you to assess ROI and lead conversion rates. You can also choose to add your own qualification criteria to generate exactly the types of leads you want.

Joerg said that some companies are using Unisfair for as a collaborative space inside the enterprise. For global reach inside or outside the enterprise, you can set up events so they go through different time zones and change languages and format as they make these changes. Joerg added that will be adding integration with Twitter and Facebook soon so people can leverage their networks in these tools while engaged with Unisfair. I can see why this virtual platform makes increasing sense in today’s market and changing technology landscape.