Must Have Tech Tools For Your Virtual Summit & Why I Use HeySummit

Running a virtual summit takes a lot of work to organize all the moving pieces that need to seamlessly fit together. 

This includes email marketing software, payment processors, countdown timers for fast action offers, interview software, and webinar software. And we haven't even talked about how you'll actually set up and deliver the content on your event website. 

Tech is a big part of hosting and running a successful event, and while many hosts will try to string together a software or plugin for each action- I recommend using HeySummit which takes a lot of the legwork off your plate! 

HeySummit is what I've used to host all of my virtual summits and digital conferences. It's easy to set up and gives a professional and user-friendly experience to your speaker, sponsors, and your attendees. The number of tools and internal tech it provides helps me feel confident that all my tech will work seamlessly when I need it to! 

Top reasons to use HeySummit for your event:

• Offers a landing page builder that is easy to use and customize 
• Can create a coming soon page to capture pre/post-event emails. 
• Includes speaker dashboard with logins and tools for success. 
• Includes customizable email templates as well as individual custom emails you can create to send to specific ticket types.
• Integrates with many external tools for added features as well as Zapier for even more!
• Offers live chat boxes where you can easily create engaging talks for your attendees. 
• You can link to both live or pre-recorded talks on a variety of platforms including Zoom, Vimeo, and Youtube 
• It's easy to set up an affiliate program with the ability to use custom percentages for each person.
• Ticket setup is easy and has many options to make sure you get the exact ticket inclusions you need. 
• System wording is easily edited in the translations menu to further customize your event experience. 
• Ability to add custom images for each talk to be used in promotion and social sharing.
• Includes a place to store swipe copy for speakers and affiliates. 
• Has the ability to have several tiers of sponsorship visibility throughout the event website. 

I use HeySummit because I don't want to do extra work just to say I did it. I want to produce amazing events in the shortest amount of time possible with the best user experience - and that's what they offer. 

But HeySummit doesn't provide 100% of what you need to run a summit. It's a hosting platform. So to run a full virtual summit, you'll still need a few items beyond just this software and it's best to know what these are upfront so you can plan accordingly. 

Must Have Tech Tools For Your Virtual Summit 

Obviously, having a platform or website that you can run your virtual summit off of is uber important, but there are additional tech tools you'll need to plan and host a successful virtual summit that goes beyond HeySummit or even WordPress. 

Here are a few of the tech tools I suggest you look into when planning your event!

• Interview software: If your event will offer speakers the option to jump on a pre-recorded interview with you, then you'll need a tool that allows you to record these. For simplicity, we use Zoom most of the time but have also used LiveWebinar. 
• Online scheduling software: For pre-recorded interviews, you'll need a way to schedule these times on your calendar! We recommend tidy cal!
• Live Interviews/Panels: If you plan to have live interview sessions with speakers or a panel discussion with multiple speakers during your event, then you'll need a webinar platform and possibly one that allows multiple presenters to b on stage at once. Again Zoom is a good option, but we use LiveWebinar for these. 
• Email marketing software: While HeySummit does allow you to email your attendees from their platform, I suggest you use a separate email software like Flodesk- which is like $19 a month for unlimited everything! This will allow you to customize your emails, set up automation, and tag people into separate segments if and when needed after the event. 

• Landing page software: I gotta be real, the landing page builder on HeySummit can be a little rough to work with. So if you have one of their paid plans that allows you to create a landing page in something you're more comfortable with- I suggest you use this option instead. And while I've used HeySummit's landing page builder multiple times without much fuss, sometimes I like an external page where I can grab additional analytics and customize it to my heart's content. Kajabi is great for this, if you already use it, you can also use LeadPages or ThriveCart, or your main website's page builder if it allows. 
• A payment processor: If your event offers a paid ticket, you'll need something like PayPal or Stripe to process those tickets. I like to activate both because it's surprising how many people actually pay with their PayPal accounts! 
  

• Video editing software: We use iMovie which works just fine for adding bumpers and taking out small clips. 
• Graphic design software: I'm not a graphic designer, so I just use Canva which works perfectly well for me. It does what needs to be done, plus some and it's super easy to use, share, and give other people access to if needed! This is what we use for creating all logos, graphics, and promo material. 

These are just a few of the tech tools I suggest you look into when planning your event, of course, you can always go super over the top with tech- as I sometimes find myself doing when I spend too much time on places like AppSumo, but sometimes it's best to stick with the basics. 

For more tech tools- check out My Virtual Summit Tools & Resources