The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) is a healthcare association that supports 34 independent BCBS Plans across the country. BCBSA works towards four key initiatives: integrated affordable healthcare, promoting healthier lives for members and communities, ensuring a convenient and seamless experience for customers and providers, and achieving market leadership in Medicare Advantage.

BCBSA has relied on Cvent as their primary event technology partner for several years, leveraging a number of solutions to support over 200 annual events. These include Registration, OnArrival 360, Event in a Box, Attendee Hub, the Event App, Abstract Management, the Speaker Resource Center, and more. 

While their largest conference, the National Summit, was typically held on an annual basis, BCBSA made the strategic decision to cancel their 2023 conference to better align with changing business goals. “We had new leadership and a new vision as to where we were going as an association,” notes Kara. “So we wanted to take a step back and make sure our events were truly supporting the goals of the association.” The team dove into qualitative and quantitative research to assess the needs of each plan, distributing surveys and completing dozens of interviews. They realized without the Summit, there were strategic gaps in content that would impact each plan. “That’s where we came up with the idea for the webinar series,” Kara says.

APPROACH

Enabling plan members through BCBSA webinars, powered by Cvent

The newly formed webinar series would serve three key purposes: to offer timely and relevant content, to keep the association top of mind, and to remain the primary source of content for any employees at the plans. “It was important to ensure we were really satisfying the needs of the plans, and our unique value proposition is that they can network and learn from others while also hearing from leaders in the industry,” Kara notes. 

To produce high-quality webinars, Kara’s team turned to Cvent Studio. This advanced video production solution helped easily capture and produce broadcast-quality video content for the webinar series. “Studio allowed us to have a really polished look, from using lower thirds to putting our branding into the webinar so you can see it’s part of the series, regardless of which webinar you’re viewing,” Kara says. 

They initially planned two webinars per month, not knowing how large their audience base would necessarily be. “Through Attendee Hub, we didn’t have to worry about having a cap on the audience, so that was a great benefit,” says Kara. While the initial feedback was positive, Kara’s team did not anticipate the overwhelming registration numbers they saw. “We only anticipated about 100 attendees per webinar, but our first webinar had over 4,000 registrants and over 2,500 live attendees,” Kara says excitedly. This is an increase of 2,400% over their initial projected attendance. She insists, “It is clear from these numbers that our plan employees appreciate the educational offerings we’re providing.” 

Driving efficiencies across BCBSA’s entire events program

Kara’s team continues to find ways to drive efficiencies across not only the webinar series, but their entire events program. “We’re always trying to look for ways to automate as much as we can,” she explains. “Even within the webinar series, we’ve been looking for ways to shorten the timeline from working with speakers to developing content.” For this reason, they’re now leaning into Cvent’s Abstract Management tool and Speaker Resource Center. Abstract Management serves as a central portal for all speaking abstract submissions, consolidating the process to save time and allowing event managers to easily track, review, and score submissions.  With an annual call for proposals, BCBSA can easily automate invitation, confirmation, and reminder emails to reduce workloads on their team.

The Speaker Resource Center also allows Kara’s team to easily coordinate speaker activities within a single portal. “Speakers are then able to upload all of their information directly into the Speaker Resource Center and everything will be in one place, which is going to save us a lot of administrative work,” Kara notes. Speakers can complete tasks and self-edit their profile, receiving automated reminder emails that take the workload off the BCBSA team. In addition to time savings, these solutions integrate with the rest of the Cvent platform, ensuring BCBSA maintains full visibility into all content and reporting.

Working smarter with event tech for in-person events

While the success of the webinar series is clear, Kara’s team has continued to execute in-person events in order to serve the needs of different plans. For these events, they continue to use Cvent as their central event technology platform. Kara explains that they do not have a central CMS and therefore rely on the event data Cvent provides as their source of truth. “This year we have worked to streamline our tech stack, eliminate transferring data and relying on integrations,” she adds. “We are trying to work smarter, and Cvent is allowing us to do that.”

This was not the only technology Kara’s team leveraged to help maximize efficiencies. She explains, “We realized it would save the events team a lot of time to use Cvent’s Abstract Management, Speaker Resource Center, and Attendee Hub since it all flows seamlessly from one to another.” Kara adds they also planned to use the Event App onsite along with session scanning to ensure attendees received CE credits. They adopted a similar approach for other smaller events, such as the Tax, Treasury and Finance audiences who also have CE requirements. “Because we produce such a wide variety of events at BCBSA, the Cvent services run the gamut and allow us to transform the work we do,” Kara insists.

LOOKING FORWARD

In the near future, Kara is excited to continue to grow the webinar series and create more personalized experiences for their audiences through differentiated content, particularly for repeat registrants. “It’s been really successful so far, and it’s been impressive that our numbers have been so much higher than we anticipated,” Kara says. “We’re looking for ways we can really diversify the type of content we’re offering, such as having sessions that are led by sponsors.”

Thanks to their investment in event technology, Kara’s team is excited about the possibilities on the horizon as they implement new offerings for their plan audiences. She credits their partnership with Cvent as a key part of helping to facilitate this journey. “With Cvent, there is always a creative solution to every problem,” she says. “We’re able to transform how we work with both internal and external stakeholders, and most importantly, we’re creating event experiences that will further our brand and leave a lasting impression on our members.”

PRODUCTS USED