Notified Event Cloud [Review]

Disclaimer: Skift Meetings receives a fee to review this product. The content below is verified for accuracy and aims to provide an objective look at the product’s key features, potential uses, and pricing, among other factors.

Notified Event Cloud is a full-stack event technology platform with registration, content management, mobile app, and custom data integrations for virtual, hybrid, and in-person events, plus the option to include on-site creative and production services.

What Is It?

Notified Event Cloud includes a full suite of tools for planning and producing digital and in-person events: a registration system, mobile app, content management system, webcasting, exhibitor management, attendee engagement capabilities, meetings management and tools, and staff scheduling. The platform offers an annual subscription plan, which includes full-year access based on the number of users who will interact with the content.

Main Feature Categories

Customizable templates: Notified Event Cloud offers pre-designed templates, delivering plug-and-play layouts that can be branded to match each event’s look and theme. Additionally, organizers can customize the navigation layout based on each event.

Accessibility and inclusivity features: The company is focused on making digital events welcoming to all audiences. For example, an automated grading scale helps alert organizers if a chosen color scheme will present challenges for participants with vision issues. Additionally, organizers have the ability to use a blind grading system in their speaker portal to eliminate speaker information (race, gender, and name) and approve or reject session proposals solely based on content.

Access restrictions: The program view can be customized by the type of viewer to help control who is able to see what. For example, members of the media may only be able to access a portion of the program, or VIP guests may see some exclusive sessions that are not visible to others. The same type of access restrictions provide back-end flexibility as well, limiting what speakers, exhibitors, sponsors, and staff members can see and edit in the lead-up to an event.

Support for in-person event experiences: The Notified platform is designed to support in-person events, as well as hybrid and digital. When content is uploaded to or modified on the Event Cloud, it updates in real-time across all touchpoints, including the mobile app, event website, and digital signage onsite. The Notified Event Cloud acts as a centralized hub for collecting and managing all event data, including registration, session attendance, and evaluations. Tools and features that help to streamline the in-person experience while gathering data include badge printing, session scanning, and lead retrieval.

Exhibitor management across channels: Notified enables exhibitors to self-manage their experience, including uploading their company logo and description, as well as selecting their onsite booth location. The event organizer has the option to put an approval process in place before any changes are published on the platform.

Staff and meeting management: The Event Cloud staff management tool allows organizers to create workgroups, schedule shifts, and automate calendar updates for either onsite or remote staff. Similarly, the platform’s meetings tool can allow the event organizer (or any approved admin contributors) to schedule and update onsite meetings, with the ability to track the associated pipeline in one central hub.

AI-powered networking recommendations: The platform offers one-to-one meeting capabilities for digital participants, and it helps facilitate introductions with suggestions based on professional goals and interests.

Self-service and full-service options: In addition to self-service planning and management, the company offers full-service strategy, project management, and production services, including staging, decor, video production, and creative design. Notified provides global support and delivery for these services.

Review

Notified is designed to eliminate the need to work with multiple tech vendors. With built-in registration, gamification, content management, and mobile app features, the platform includes the spectrum of event technology tools needed to run an event from end to end. The platform is also capable of accommodating a large crowd: It supports more than 200,000 users concurrently.

One of the platform’s unique differentiators is a focus on co-creation with a Brainstorm tool. Participants can submit their own ideas for discussion and invite other participants to brainstorm with them in a pre-scheduled group video chat. In addition to arranging their own educational programming and interactive breakout rooms, attendees can set up one-on-one networking meetings through the platform. This feature can also be used to arrange video chat meetings with exhibitor and sponsor representatives. Beyond driving traffic to virtual booths, this functionality helps with assessing qualified leads as the pre-meeting request form can collect valuable data relevant to purchasing decisions.

Additionally, the platform is designed to meet the needs of hybrid events with product features that serve both remote and in-person audiences. Event organizers can utilize back-end solutions such as a waitlist function that allows attendees to reserve a priority position should a space open up at an otherwise fully-booked session. Additionally, speakers can submit requests directly through the platform to alert on-site AV professionals for day-of needs.

While the product name itself is relatively new, the team behind Notified has been in the event technology business for many years. The company is owned by Intrado, which acquired Hubb in August 2021 and rebranded its digital media business (including its hybrid event offering) to Notified in September 2021.

Who’s it for?

Notified Event Cloud is designed for any kind of organization that is leveraging a portfolio approach to events. The company’s business model – one subscription for an all-you-can-host-buffet of events – is built for the 365-day community-building that has recently been gaining traction in the event industry. If your company hosts regular webinars, training sessions, and other events in addition to larger annual gatherings, this tool can meet your end-to-end technology needs while also offering a bulk package deal.

Who’s it not for?

If your organization hosts only one event per year for 100 people or fewer, Notified is not the best option. Since all Notified packages work with an unlimited number of events and participants under a year-long subscription model, organizations with a limited calendar of activities and smaller attendance numbers may be better off with a solution designed — and priced — on a per-event basis.

Pricing and Plans

Notified’s pricing plans start at $7,000 USD. While further dollar-figure values are not publicly available, Notified does provide information on the structure of its pricing plans. The company currently offers three package types for its Event Cloud solution: Expand, which is an entry-level option with a limited list of features; Evolve, a step up with more tools like a mobile app, speaker portal, and one-to-one meetings; and Enterprise, the most comprehensive suite of tools including a poster gallery, staff scheduling, and custom integrations. To get a better idea of which package might be a good fit for your event needs, you can book a demo for more information.

Features

Customization options:

• Choose from existing templates and upload branding and images to customize the appearance.
• Choose from a range of fonts and color schemes, or upload your own typography.
• Design branded lobby environments to showcase supporting sponsors.

Administrative back-end control:

• Assign graders (designated staff or contributors who can provide feedback and comments) to content for abstracts, sessions, and other programming.
• Use blind grading to hide speakers and eliminate unconscious bias from the session selection process.
• Organize sessions into categories with conditions attached, such as limitations on the number of sessions that an attendee is able to book within a given type (this feature can be useful for session categories that are particularly popular, effectively reducing the likelihood that early birds will block off all the most high-demand sessions)
• Manage documents and workflow around session resources that will be published and available to attendees.
• Select from a wide range of video options – Vimeo, YouTube, pre-recorded video uploads, Microsoft Stream, Restream, and others – to manage live streams and on-demand content.
• Set what will be available on demand.

Sponsor and exhibitor dashboards:

• Allow sponsors and exhibitors to update marketing assets with approval requests to verify accuracy of information prior to going live.
• Set guidelines for resources – requiring a .JPG or .PNG, for example – to automate acceptance/rejection of submitted materials.
• Include a floor plan with the ability to choose a booth setup.

Attendee engagement:

• Give attendees the chance to react to comments and content with emojis.
• Assign a moderator to monitor and approve comments.
• Allow participants to add their own activities to the program with the Brainstorm feature.
• Recommend new connections with an AI-powered matchmaking tool that pairs attendees based on shared goals and interests.
• Facilitate one-on-one meeting requests.
• Invite participants to share thoughts on a social wall and make personalized posts using a photo booth.

Attendee personalizations:

• Let attendees turn on/off visibility controls with their agenda selections and other engagement data to determine their own privacy permissions.
• Sync session schedules with Outlook and Google calendars to help offer reminders outside the mobile app.
• Convert event website into attendee’s preferred language automatically.
• Allow attendees to select/update time zone settings for simple scheduling.

Gamification:

• Create different badges and incentives for attendees based on the day of the event or the entire duration of the program.
• Display the leaderboard to encourage competition.
• Award prizes to online and in-person attendees.

Device-agnostic flexibility:

• Access content from desktop, mobile, or tablet.
• Send notifications and alerts through the mobile app or the desktop version.

Internal collaboration:

• Create workgroups and assign tasks and permission levels to team members to review content.
• Get real-time visibility into who is working and what they are doing on-site.

Speaker portal:

• Upload resources and sign speaker agreements via an integration with DocuSign.
• Update specific titles and information for sessions.
• Assign different levels of permission for speakers, and lock content you don’t want changed.
• Hide certain material from view.
• Allow speakers to submit in-room logistics requests.

Collect data:

• Measure how many one-on-one meetings are booked vs. how many actually take place to understand whether demographic information contributes to follow-through rates – which can in turn help to direct the most valuable matchmaking recommendations.
• Follow real-time analytics to understand which moments in a session are highs and lows in terms of reaction and engagement.

Pros

Unlimited number of events: Notified’s user-based subscription model is ideal for organizations that want to host more events without worrying about what adding another date to the calendar will do to the annual budget.

Focus on accessibility: The platform’s focus on removing barriers to digital participation can help ensure that a program is available to everyone who wants to participate.

Brainstorming: Giving participants a say in what’s on the program helps organizers understand the topics and trends they may have missed when developing the event’s educational/content strategy, and it lets the audience have some control over the content.

CRM and web analytics integrations: Notified helps sync with a range of marketing technologies — Salesforce, Marketo, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics and more — to make sense of event data.

Cons

Additional service fees apply for certain features: Some benefits — a social wall, photo booth, and a poster gallery, for example — incur additional service fees.

No piecemeal offering: While the annual access pass can be valuable for an organization’s budget, it can be a big commitment for those with a limited number of events that cater to small groups. Consider how many larger (100 attendee +) events you will realistically host to gauge whether a user-based model is right for your business.

IN CONCLUSION

Notified offers attendee-facing tools that keep audiences engaged and back-end tools to fuel event team collaboration and create efficiencies. The end-to-end event platform offers organizations looking to host a large number of hybrid events an all-in-one solution that can eliminate the need for other technology vendors.

Disclaimer: Skift Meetings receives a fee to review this product. The content above is verified for accuracy and aims to provide an objective look at the product’s key features, potential uses, and pricing, among other factors. If you have any questions please use the work with us section.