What Is A Virtual Event Planning Company?

A virtual event planning company serves as the organizer, marketer, management, and coordinator for virtual and hybrid events. As full-service agencies, they eliminate the organizational burden of those who would like to host a virtual event, but do not want to contend with the logistical headache. They allow companies and individuals to focus on the fun of team building.

The Best Virtual Event Planning Companies

We’ve compiled our favorite seven virtual event management companies to help you host your next large scale virtual event with ease. These seven virtual event planning platforms also cover a wide variety of virtual team building needs so you’re sure to find an option perfect for your team. No matter what type of event you’re looking to plan, you will definitely find the perfect solution here!

1. Team Building Hub

Team Building Hub helps you create an unforgettable team building experience. With fun, one-of-a-kind games and enthusiastic hosts, each activity will make your team actually want to leave their Zoom cameras on. We offer interactive virtual escape rooms, online game shows, and online mystery games that challenge your team to communicate and think outside the box to win!

To book an event, all you have to is contact our events team and they’ll organize everything for you over the phone. From there, a host will guide your team through the entire experience!

Reviews:

“The virtual team building options are innovative, fun, and all-around awesome! Our employees really enjoy them and they have helped us maintain our engaging culture while working remotely!” – Paige L., Tokio Marine North America Services

“They put together amazing virtual experiences for us. Our employees loved it!” – Kathy B., SAP

2. Marco

Marco will help your team create a meaningful experience together. “We believe technology can build community – but shared brand experiences create a culture.” With this mindset, they focus on a cohesive, engaging, event with activities to bring your team closer and allow your company culture to thrive.

Marco also believes in hosting events for a cause. For a limited time, you can participate in an activity where the proceeds go towards a charitable cause. Using Marco, you can create a custom experience for your team.

Marco offers a quiz on their homepage to help tailor a custom experience perfect for your team!

Reviews:

“Marco has become my go-to partner for curated, thoughtful, and fun team experiences that keep our distributed organization connected and inspired.” – Jenn Cornelius, Ritual

“The bar for an experience that employees truly enjoy, is high. And in a distributed world, it’s a more difficult target than ever. Marco is the rare firm that understands and delivers on this.” – Hunter Horsley, Bitwise

3. Evee

Evee works with you to plan a seamless, fun event designed to bring your team closer together. Through Evee’s extensive, curated network of event partners, you can easily create a virtual team building event. They work to streamline the various, complicated aspects of an event, from guest management to location coordination. This way, all you have to do is show up, log in, and enjoy the event! 

One unique feature Evee offers is a financial management service. With that, you can optimize your available team building budget and receive a visible ROI that goes towards maximizing your team’s engagement. Evee’s software allows you to customize and style things according to your company’s branding. That means you can make the event feel personal down to the final details.

Reviews:

“Evee has incredible corporate experiences, and makes my life easier by handling registrations, event reminders, and personalized customizations that are burdensome to handle on top of my regular job duties.” – Nanci Thomas, Sr. Executive Assistant at OfferUp

“Evee was so fun to work with in helping us put together fun vendors for our marketing offsite event! They helped increase our average virtual event participation by over 80%!” – Sarah Parks, Events Manager at Hulu

4. Access Elite

A happy team is a healthy team. Access Elite works to help your team be their best by making wellness a priority. As the first well-being-driven platform, they offer comprehensive physical, mental and emotional support, wherever your team might be.

On their platform, you can sign up for different types of mindfulness-related activities like yoga, kickboxing, meditation, and Pilates. If you’re looking for holistic team-building options, Access Elite is for you.

Reviews:

“I thought it was super successful. Huge win on the number of people that attended!” – Joanne, TCW

“I am so excited. These virtual health fairs are so needed right now and we should always have them. Normally we have health fairs in remote areas through the nations, but this a great way for the organization to be connected at once.” – Nuvision Event Executive

5. Host Events

For a collection of interactive experiences, try out Host Events. Through live events and a commitment to customer service, this company aims to provide truly memorable experiences. Their event activity options include virtual happy hours, games and adventures, health and wellness options, food features, art-centered activities, and charitable activities.

Host Events also offers seasonal events, which is perfect if you’re looking for something more specific with the time of year. Seasonal events can include themed cocktail happy hours, themed painting activities, or a cooking class with seasonal food items.

Reviews:

“We took a chance on HOST Events this past spring and booked five different team activities for our company. The response from our employees was so positive and we just came back to book multiple team events for the holiday season.” -Jessica Pieroway, Google review

“Zoom fatigue is real, but this company is the remedy to that. We used them for a corporate event and it was not only super easy to set up…but we were able to customize it for our little group. The actual event was really fun, and the hosts were engaging….” – Toni-Ann Daly, Google review

6. Boombox Events

With a sizable amount of team building options, Boombox Events is a great virtual event planning company for your next private online event. They have events and activities focused on different categories like entertainment, wellness, price, and holiday. Boombox will happily help you book and coordinate your event in minutes.

Reviews:

“Convoso’s Magnificent Marketing Team had a great time this week with “The Amazing Cyberspace Race” Holiday Edition, traveling the [virtual] world, and challenging our resourcefulness as we solved clues…. Thanks to our hosts and Boombox!” – Convoso

“How FUN was this virtual holiday social event we had at Cyware this evening?! Boombox hosted the event and sent everyone kits to make 2 festive holiday cocktails and we had an awesome mixologist from The Mixologer who mixed drinks with us” – Melissa Pirro, PHR, Cyware

7. Kapow

With Kapow, you can seamlessly find, book, and manage small corporate events. Kapow is perfect if you’d like to plan multiple activities for a singular event without having to juggle booking information for numerous companies. 

Reviews:

“The wine and cheese tasting event was absolutely fantastic! We had a great turnout of key customers and decision makers that could not say enough praise on how they enjoyed this.” – Megan, Splunk

Why Should You Use A Virtual Event Planner?

Simply put, virtual event planning companies make your life easier. They do the work of putting together an event for you. This means that you don’t have to sift through countless online team building activities. They’ve already collected, categorized, and ranked activities that will be worth your company’s time and dollars.

A planner skilled in events, virtual and in-person, understands which types of activities work to keep an audience engaged. They can also help synthesize calendar dates, financial payments, and activity information in one place. Rest assured, a planning company takes care of the headache so you can take care of your team. For feedback, try asking your team how they felt about all of the activities post-event. That way you can determine if the company you used to plan your event was helpful or not.

Don’t forget to ask about live streaming! Companies can live stream the session or record for those unable to attend at the same time across the globe depending on the size and length of the event!

Check out these virtual events you can plan!

• Virtual Company Celebrations
• Virtual Awards Ceremony
• Virtual Holiday Party

Need more help planning?

While Peerspace doesn’t offer virtual tooling or games, what Peerspace does offer are physical spaces to gather your team IRL, regardless of your chosen cadence. Book a Peerspace by the hour and choose from our unique venues in cities worldwide: – Meet and collaborate in a high-tech loft. – Create together in a funky studio. – Celebrate your wins on a swanky rooftop. Either way, Peerspace enables virtual teams to ditch Zoom for a day and gather as a group in person.

The post The 7 Best Virtual Event Companies (reviews included!) appeared first on Team Building Hub.

Tool Table of Contents

• Goal Setting
• Virtual Meeting Platforms
• Joint Calendars
• Paperless Post
• Activities
• Intentional Encouragement
• Google Forms

1. Goal Setting

Before choosing an activity or event, think about your desired outcome. Picking a goal will help you narrow the focus of your activity and choose options that will best meet your team’s needs. Here are just a few goals that many companies are seeking to accomplish with virtual team building.

• Increase Camaraderie and Rapport With Colleagues
• Create Challenges and Foster Creativity
• Build Relationships Through Teamwork

2. Virtual Meeting Platforms

There are a variety of available online platforms well-suited for team building. Take into account what your goals are and which online software has the necessary features for your chosen activity. Different virtual platforms offer options like co-hosting, breakout rooms, moderation tools, and screen sharing.

Google Hangouts is popular for its integration capabilities while one of Zoom’s best features is its breakout room capability. However, if you already have a preferred method for your group meetings, it’s best to use that platform because coworkers will already understand how the system works and you can get to the fun part of team building!

3. Joint Calendars

Wrangling together a group of people is pretty much impossible without some kind of team building tool that can sync up calendars. With a joint scheduling system, like Google Calendar, you can create an event, determine what times individuals have available, and automatically send email updates about the event.

When it comes to actually scheduling your event, consider what date and time will make the most sense for everyone, depending on how much time you’ll need for activities and different time zones. For best results, plan it on and during a workday, as that’s most likely to fit into everyone’s schedule.

4. Paperless Post

Sending out an invitation makes receiving notice about a team building event so much more personal than a generic email. One fun way to do that is through  Paperless Post. They offer “polished designs you can customize and send in minutes!” This reinforces the fact that this scheduled activity is going to be a fun, special time and not a mundane work meeting!

In the invitation include the date, time, location or virtual video meeting link, and other relevant details.

5. Virtual Team Building Activities

The team building tool you need to keep the event is some virtual team building activities! Below are a few suggestions that work well to bring team members together and create bonds.

Icebreakers

Icebreaker activities are perfect to get people chatting and feel some quick connections. Check out these icebreaker questions to ask or try on of the following ice breaker activities!

1. Two Truths And A Lie: This classic team building game asks team members to present three “facts” about themselves, one of which is actually not true! Everyone else in the group must figure out which is the lie.
2. Two-Minute Network: Split the group into pairs and send them to breakout rooms with a specific question to ask each other. Each group will have two minutes to answer each question. When the timer is up, they’ll switch partners and ask a new question.
3. One Common Thing: This easy game requires everyone to have a list with each other’s names on it. Next, you’ll want to set a timer and allow team members to find a similarity between each other. Team members can’t use the same similarity, encouraging them to learn new things about each other.

Virtual Games

If your team already knows each other, you can play games or choose activities that aren’t as focused on getting to know each other. Here are a few of the top-rated team building activities we recommend!

1. Virtual Trivia Games: In this easy activity, have someone ask trivia questions and participants raise their hands to answer! You also don’t need to come up with questions when you use a free tool like Random Trivia Generator. Look here for more virtual trivia game options.
2. This Or That: This fun game includes one player choosing an object, place, or concept. From there, team members will ask questions in this or that format to help figure out the answer. For example, “Is it a big city or a small town?”
3. Robbery Artist Sketch: Split your co-workers into two teams. Each team will choose a leader who will be shown an image of a face. The leader must describe the face to the team, who will then sketch out the face as best they can. The team that has drawn a sketch that most resembles the face described wins!
4. Mini-Scavenger Hunt: Split your team into two groups. One person from each group will be the leader, and they’ll come up with a list of items that are related to the given theme or topic. Team members must go around and find as many virtual scavenger hunt list items before returning back to the starting point. For a completely themed version, try a virtual museum scavenger hunt.

6. Intentional Encouragement

If you’re not excited, your team won’t be either! The best way to increase participation is to keep your team enthusiastic. Here are a few ways you can do this:

• Give lots of encouragement when people try new things. Think of yourself as a coach rooting for everyone to be a winner! Give the team a thumbs up!
• Keep the same energy level throughout the game or activity. No one wants someone who checks out halfway through the activity.
• One way to keep yourself engaged is to take notes during activities. Write down observations you make during the activity so you can tweak anything for your next fun virtual team building activity.

7. Google Forms

Once an event is over, asking for feedback can help you see what worked and what didn’t. Google Forms is a great team building tool that allows you to send a customized survey to participants where they can anonymously submit their responses. Gathering feedback is essential so that you can make sure your team gets the most out of each virtual team building activity!

Final Thoughts

Team building tools make team building more successful and fun for everyone involved! The right tools also allow people to participate without being tied down by physical limitations like location. Learn more about team building activity options from Team Building Hub!

The post 7 Essential Team Building Tools appeared first on Team Building Hub.

What is a Virtual Holiday Party?

A virtual holiday party is just like a regular office holiday party but hosted online for hybrid and remote employees. This may require a bit more intentional planning than holiday parties of the past, but it can still be a fun, memorable experience for your remote team! 

Christmas, the most popular December celebration in America, is a traditionally religious holiday. However, it may be worth taking the individual members of your team into consideration. While there’s nothing wrong with Christmas, you may want to consider hosting a more general “holiday-themed” party to stay as inclusive as possible and avoid any team members feeling left out! 

No matter the exact theme of your party, the most important thing is to make it fun for everyone! Unsure how to do that? Don’t worry. Here are some awesome ideas and games to play for a holiday season celebration your team will be talking about until next spring!

How To Plan a Virtual Holiday Party

1. Send Out Invitations

First things first. You have to invite people to the party! Set a date and time close to the end of the year. If you can, try to schedule the event after big projects are wrapped up. That way no one is distracted or feels they can’t attend due to work obligations. To send invitations, you can always go with something simple and straightforward, like a G-Cal invite. However, if you want to make things a little extra special, try a digital invitation creator like Paperless Post or Canva!

2. Send Out Necessary Materials

Depending on the kinds of virtual team building activities and games you have planned, you may need to distribute materials to team members ahead of the event. Make sure to get those materials taken care of so that everyone can enjoy the party and participate!

3. Festive Outfits

The holiday season is all about fun outfits! Ask your virtual holiday party guests to log onto the Zoom call wearing their best ugly Christmas sweaters, Santa hats, winter holiday clothes, or just something cozy!

4. Make Cozy Drinks

The winter season is prime time for hot drinks. As part of your party invitation, ask team members to make a cozy drink to sip on during the event. You can also share some recipes with the team from Pinterest for themed hot drinks, like peppermint mochas or mulled apple cider. If you’d like to make things easier for the team, you can always send them a gift card to Starbucks or a local coffee shop.

5. Play Some Christmas Music

The right kind of music really helps people get in the holiday spirit! You can find curated holiday playlists on most every streaming service or on Youtube. However, to make the music more personal, ask people to submit their favorite songs ahead of time to make a playlist that the whole group is guaranteed to enjoy.

6. Corporate Christmas Gifts

Opening gifts together can be a super fun activity for your party. However, you need to actually send the gifts to team members to open together on camera! Make sure to choose a gift and order them well ahead of your party so they have a chance to arrive on time. Good gift options could be hot chocolate mix, a box of chocolate, Amazon gift cards, or company merch!

Virtual Holiday Party Games

1. Virtual Escape Room

If you’re looking to throw a holiday-neutral party, playing a virtual escape room is a must! Your team will have 60 minutes to escape an immersive adventure while collaborating quickly together. Everyone will have a blast putting their skills to the test solving puzzles, finding clues, and completing the mission before it’s too late! Games like this are great for strengthening team bonds, which could be especially important to keep your remote or hybrid team connected as people take time off for the holidays. Find a list of virtual escape room options here.

2. Holiday Game Show

For an event filled with word games, brainteasers, and endless laughter, playing a holiday-themed game show is definitely the way to go! Our Holiday Game Show will have your team both scratching their heads and holding their bellies as they work together to rack up points and earn prizes trying to be top-scoring on the leaderboard.

3. Cookie Bake-Off

Who doesn’t love having their home filled with the delicious scent of freshly baked cookies? The holidays are the perfect time to get everyone together for a no-competition “bake-off!” 

Before your holiday party, send out an email with an easy recipe that doesn’t require any expensive or difficult-to-find ingredients. Snicker-doodles or chocolate chip cookies are always great options!
While the cookies are baking, your group can go around, and share stories about your holiday traditions as children or talk about what you all love most about this time of year.

4. Mystery Game

While it may not be a traditional Christmas activity, an online mystery game is a great way to team build during the holidays! In one of these mystery games, your team is challenged to solve a crime in under 60 minutes! They’ll have to search the internet for clues, solve puzzles, and piece together the evidence to win!

5. Holiday Charades

Charades are a classic year-round, but they can be especially fun as a virtual holiday party game! Whether you play in teams or every man for himself, this activity is sure to get the whole team laughing. You can find charade prompts online, but here are a few to get you started!

• Building a snowman
• Rudolph leading Santa’s sleigh
• Building a gingerbread house
• Opening a present

6. Name That Holiday Tune

Name That Tune, is an easy and fun alternative to karaoke if your team loves music but isn’t keen to sing in front of each other.

To play Name That Tune, have one person serve as DJ on the party’s video call. Then, have them play the first few seconds of a popular holiday song. The first person to type the correct name of that song wins! Your fingers will have to fly if you want to score those points!

7. Gingerbread Decorating Contest

Head over to Amazon and grab everyone on your team a gingerbread house kit like this one. Send it to each team member a few days before the holiday party and let them know they’ve been selected to join the biggest gingerbread house decorating contest your office has ever seen!

Set up a nice prize for the winner (perhaps a gift card or the opportunity to choose the theme of the next virtual office party) and tell everyone they have 30-minutes to create the most epic gingerbread house possible!

8. Virtual Murder Mystery Party

Winter holidays aren’t usually the time people think about murder mystery parties. However, it can be a really fun and unique game to play together. You can play Night of Mystery’s Ho-Ho-Homicide and find other virtual murder mystery party options here.

9. Who’s Most Likely To…?

Who’s Most Likely To is a great game for teams who already know each other pretty well. To play, you give out prompts like “Who’s most likely to still be logged on to work at midnight?” and then the group picks the person they feel is most likely to do that thing. Easy! Here are a few holiday prompts for you to use at your virtual holiday party!

Most likely to…

• win in a snowball fight
• go all out with their Christmas decor
• put off buying gifts until Christmas Eve
• know all the names of Santa’s reindeer
• think their ugly Christmas sweater is actually pretty cute
• start listening to holiday music in October
• leave their tree up until February
• know all of the gifts in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” song

10. Holiday Pictionary

Holiday Pictionary works just like regular Pictionary only the team will be trying to guess Christmas-themed things! While the game may be easier if people are excellent artists, it’s much more fun if they’re not! You can split up into teams if you’d like the game to be competitive or just have everyone laugh together trying to guess what in the world co-workers are drawing. Find holiday Pictionary prompts here.

Virtual Holiday Party Activities

1. Ask Holiday Ice Breaker Questions

Depending on what kind of virtual holiday party you’re throwing and the activities you choose, there will be ample time to ask the team Christmas ice breaker questions! These are great to avoid awkward pauses, keep the conversation flowing, and help team members bond.

2. Holiday Happy Hour With Sourced Cocktails

Dependent on your location, and your team’s dynamic, you can take advantage of Sourced Cocktail’s Virtual Happy Hour Program. First, set up a meeting with one of their mixologists. Then, let them know what your team is interested in. Afterward, they’ll package up everything you need to craft the perfect cocktail!

Don’t forget to make sure that all your party guests are comfortable drinking alcohol. If there’s someone who doesn’t drink, you can ask them if they’d be comfortable with a “mock-tail” option instead!

On the day of your virtual holiday party, your personal sourced mixologist will meet you on Zoom to teach everyone how to make their cocktail while playing some fun virtual trivia games!

3. Share Christmas Gifts

It’s better to give than to receive right? An easy activity that requires zero planning is asking everyone to share one thing they got someone else for Christmas! An activity like this is great if you’d like your virtual holiday party to have opportunities for people to bond and chat about holiday things while they also work on another activity, like wreath decorating or ornament painting.

4. Wreath Making

Taking a wreath-making class is great for crafty teams or those who prefer non-competitive opportunities to spend time together. It also gives teammates a unique gift to put on their door once the party is over! To extend the festivities, people can share a pic of their wreaths on their front doors.

There are numerous virtual wreath-making classes to choose from that utilize different materials, so you can take your pick on which type might best suit your team. You can also just compile and send out decorating materials if you’d prefer to not take an entire class dedicated to the activity. To keep the conversation moving, ask guests to share their holiday traditions!

5. Ornament Painting

A hand-painted ornament is a timeless keepsake that team members can treasure forever. You can purchase plain ornaments and painting kits online and send those to the group. Then let your team get creative! Afterward, have everyone show off their ornaments and explain what they painted.

6. Decorating Party

This can be a really special treat if you had to transition to working from home and your team is missing the office culture. The holidays are often a time of year that really brings everyone in the office together – desk decorating, passing out holiday cards, bringing in yummy treats…Missing out on that for the second year in a row can be a real bummer!

To bring a little taste of what everyone is missing, have a mini holiday decorating party together. Ask everyone to pick a room in their home to decorate or decorate their desk at home, or send out packages with everything they need to decorate their own stockings!

7. Wine Tasting

For a classier feeling virtual holiday party, try an online wine tasting. Companies like In Good Taste can help plan an entire wine tasting event and ship out all the different bottles and materials to team members!

8. Decorate Cookies

For many, decorating cookies is a Christmas tradition. Why not use it as an excuse to bond with co-workers and eat a delicious treat? If you’re feeling ambitious, you can have the team make colored frosting and cookies from scratch. Otherwise, you can have people use pre-made cookie and frosting options and just focus on the decorating aspect of the activity. Either way, it will be delicious!

9. Holiday Movie Night

First, email out a survey of popular holiday movies that are currently streaming and ask everyone to vote for their favorite one. Then, use the app WatchParty to stream the movie to everyone’s computers, so no one has to worry about scrambling to find the video or syncing up with each other! 

If you’d like to make your movie night a little bit more of a social event, have a cocktail hour before and/or after the movie. Everyone can share their other favorite movies and discuss their favorite parts, snack on holiday cookies and beverages, and settle in for a cozy night. Encourage everyone to bring their families to the show!

If someone wants to send a virtual gift, we suggest creating a “fake” email account to send it from so they don’t give the secret away. People can also send their virtual gifts through a designated moderator! We recommend setting a price limit for gifts so everyone stays within the same range.

10. Share Your Christmas Trees

A quick little activity the team can do is share Christmas trees with one another. You can turn it into a game by having team members anonymously submit pictures of their trees and then try to guess which tree belongs to who!

11. Secret Santa

Would a holiday party really be a holiday party without some good, old-fashioned Secret Santa gift exchange? This year, you can give Secret Santa a tech-y twist by using Elfster to determine who has who. Then, ask everyone to anonymously send their gift ahead of time. 

12. Christmas Scavenger Hunt

A Zoom scavenger hunt is not only a virtual team building opportunity but also an excuse for the team to take a break from sitting down! For a virtual scavenger hunt, give team members a list of items and challenge them to find them around their homes. The list can include things like a handmade ornament, Elf on the Shelf, or a stocking. You can also make it a race to see who can find all the list items first!

13. Paint By Numbers

Painting By the Numbers may seem like a childish activity. However, your team can create some pretty epic paintings with the help of a holiday-themed kit! With this “Santa Gifts” option, each team member receives a canvas, paint, brushes, a reference photo, hanger clips, and an instruction guide! Depending on how well they can paint within the lines, this is the kind of virtual holiday party activity your team will be able to keep for years to come!

14. Zoom Photo Booth

When the virtual holiday party is over, don’t forget to take a picture and commemorate the event! Have team members use a fun, holiday-themed background, flash their brightest smiles, and take a screenshot of the whole group! You can also email the photo to everyone later as part of a company Christmas card.

Virtual Holiday Party Frequently Asked Questions

What is a virtual Christmas party over Zoom?

A virtual Christmas party over Zoom is an alternative to an in-person holiday party, typically for a work team. Companies can host them to celebrate the holidays together, facilitate a virtual team building event, and engage a remote or hybrid team.

What are the benefits of hosting a virtual holiday party?

Hosting a virtual holiday party benefits your team by helping them bond, breaking the monotony of Zoom meetings, and encouraging deeper connections and better communication.

How can you make a virtual holiday party fun?

You can make a virtual holiday party fun by playing fun games and planning engaging activities. You can also ask team members beforehand via survey what kinds of things they would like to do for a virtual holiday party!

Share Happy Holidays Together

No matter where your team is in the world or how they celebrate the holidays, hosting a virtual holiday party is the perfect way to bring everyone together. Click to find more virtual team building activities.

The post 30 Virtual Holiday Party Ideas (2022) appeared first on Team Building Hub.