Digital events hailed an 'overwhelming success'

In March, the Health and Safety Executive partnered with WBM to deliver a hugely successful three-day digital conference, powered by event technology software provider, Evessio. A respectable 400 attendees were originally expected to attend but 5,300 actually registered and over 3,000 delegates attended over the course of the three days – a 650% increase. The conference also facilitated over 500 meetings between delegates, sponsors and speakers.  

At the end of April, the Safety and Health Excellence (SHE) Awards were held in conjunction with the British Safety Industry Federation (BSIF). The digital awards, hosted by the Awards Room platform, powered by Evessio, were another huge success and a first of their kind to be held online.  

Ian Crellin, marketing manager for the BSIF commented,  “We were thrilled by the overwhelming success of the  BSIF Awards as part of the  SHE Awards and highly impressed with the usability of the digital software that allowed us to host the  awards  digitally for the first time. 

“The evening attracted more than 550 guests from the safety, health, fire and security sectors and was a fantastic networking event despite the change in format to previous years. Feedback from our guests was tremendously encouraging and has shown us the enormous benefits of holding a digital event.” 

While publisher WBM and both the SHE Awards and HSE are leaders in the health & safety market and have a long legacy of serving their sector with high-level events the popularity of the awards and digital conference surpassed expectations.  

Mark Sennett, CEO of Western Business Media, commented,  “The overwhelming success of these events has been fantastic and demonstrates what an appetite there is both for the content delivered, as well as celebrating the success of industry players. By hosting our events digitally, the number of attendees who could join was massively increased and the content reached a far wider audience than could otherwise have attended. 

“The networking opportunities for attendees were also a huge draw and having the facility to allow groups to meet throughout the conference was a real bonus. Feedback on the ease and simplicity of the Evessio software platform we used clearly demonstrated how popular it was with our attendees, really elevating the quality of the conference. 

“The Evessio team were incredibly supportive and on-hand throughout to ensure we maximised the opportunities the software offered and delivered a seamless user experience across the three days.”