Overview
e.Republic is the nation’s largest media and research company focused exclusively on state and local government. We bring together the public sector and the private sector with the underlying goal of “making government better” through the innovative use of technology.
Supernova Award Category
Next Generation Customer Experience
The Problem
e.Republic organizes Digital Government Summits across the United States to connect the public sector with their peers and vendors. With government leaders seeking best practices, insights and strategies during the pandemic, that connection had never been more vital as we pivoted to virtual events in 2020. As we faced continued COVID-19 restrictions this year, we needed to make sure that our market-leading events were still innovative and indispensable.
The Solution
We surveyed over one hundred veteran advisory board members in more than thirty states and the clear consensus called for virtual events. As state and local governments require an elevated level of security, we built a custom events platform on top of Zoom for Government’s FedRAMP-certified platform bringing together gamified behavioral nudges and event challenges, virtual exhibits, a dynamic agenda and an interactive virtual networking solution.
The results
Although we have organized our Digital Government Summit events for several decades, we are now able to rely upon metrics data in a meaningful way. We are able to provide data to our partners to capture the full spectrum of audience participation with their brand, while still balancing attendee privacy concerns. The “gamification” clearly nudged public sector attendees towards more interaction than in the past—up to almost 10x more engagement than with some 2020 events.
Metrics
We saw a 42% increase in average attendance across the first five virtual events in 2021 compared to live events in 2019. Further, there was an average 128.96% increase in engagement with our partner content.
The Technology
Zoom for Government, Wonder.me and our own internally-designed event hub and gamification engine.
Disruptive Factor
With digital event fatigue setting in, e.Republic set out to build an entirely different event experience on the best-in-class and most secure video engine – Zoom for Government. Our event infrastructure is designed to enable region-specific challenges to nudge behavior and reward users with gift cards or a charity donation.
Shining Moment
It was a major accomplishment to pivot more than 40 nationwide events, normally spread out over the course of a year, to just five months in 2020. Our events managers and coordinators proved that they were resilient and flexible. With the addition of gamification and metrics in 2021, we were able to provide even more value and insight, furthering our company’s mission to “make government better.”