This guide to hosting a successful virtual or hybrid investor day outlines how to plan, structure, and execute an impactful event. You’ll learn:

• How to define your event’s purpose and goals
• Best practices for logistics and speaker prep
• Tips for maximizing engagement and reach

While Investor Days and earnings calls are not mandatory, they are increasingly expected of publicly traded companies. Especially those that are actively pursuing growth.

Planning and hosting a successful investor day – especially in a virtual or hybrid format – can be a powerful way to raise management visibility and credibility and to clarify your company’s value proposition and share growth strategy. Additionally, it can provide a key opportunity to reinforce relationships with current investors and analysts, and to build relationships with prospects.

Including a virtual component can put your Investor Day on a global platform, providing your company with the means to cost-efficiently deliver your story, at scale.

There are not many other conference calls, meetings, or events in the calendar where the stakes are quite so high as an Investor Day. There are many compelling reasons to make the effort, but your success will ultimately depend on a range of factors including the clarity of message, the quality of production and audience engagement.

Getting it right is a significant undertaking that requires investment from your management team. With your audience investing their time, as well, you don’t want to leave anything to chance. Great project management and expert technical support are critical.

1. Define the purpose of your Investor Day

Before hosting a successful virtual or hybrid investor day, it’s essential to define your purpose and goals clearly.

Like any good management process, you should start with ‘why’ and build from there.

Defining the purpose and goals of your Investor Day will ultimately influence who you need to attend – and influence whether you need an in-person, hybrid or fully virtual event. Your purpose and goals will also inform your agenda and content.

A caveat here is that your company should have something new and compelling to talk about to make it worthwhile for your audience to attend such as:

• An update on business milestones beyond what has been published on your website or any other previous communications.
• Educating the financial community about aspects of your company operations not typically covered as part of the statutory reporting calendar.
• A new strategic direction or significant changes to strategy.
• New management – or the opportunity to showcase the depth of your team beyond the CEO and CFO.
• Addressing any identified misperceptions.
• A new product announcement or acquisition.

Once you’ve defined your purpose, set out your goals and how you will measure success.

2. Logistics planning for a virtual or hybrid investor relations event

Whether you’re planning a hybrid investor presentation or a fully virtual investor meeting, logistics will shape the experience.

Who? Agree who needs to attend your event for you to achieve your goals.

Invite current shareholders, covering analysts and potential investors, but also consider marquee accounts, sell-side analysts who cover your company peers and investment bankers. You should also invite your board.

Identifying up front who you need to attend your Investor Day will be a critical factor feeding into the format of your event and where it should be held.

Where? Offline, online or both?

In-person events allow you to build relationships face-to- face. Your company HQ or other company site could be a venue option, especially if you need to build in a site tour or showcase a physical asset. (Though, with pre-recorded video options, this may not be necessary.) Convenience for your audience should be a key consideration in choosing a venue. So, you may consider a more central location, such as New York for your top institutional shareholders and sell-side analysts.

Take note, though, in-person components require significant resources to run effectively and, more importantly, can be inaccessible to investors who cannot travel to attend.

Fully virtual events can require fewer resources and can attract a broader audience of attendees and enable easy recording for replay on demand, but it can be more challenging to build relationships with individual attendees.

Hybrid events are now the standard and combine the benefits of in-person relationship building with the maximized reach of a virtual component. You’ll ensure quality of access to information and give your hard work a substantial shelf-life with web replays. Hybrid events are of course the most challenging to pull off logistically due to the demands of hosting both in-person and online audiences, but will undoubtedly deliver more reach and accessibility.

When? Scheduling your Investor Day

When selecting a date you’ll need to allow sufficient time to prepare for your Investor Day. Consider your company calendar to ensure you can give it the focus and resources it requires.

Schedule your event on a date that is outside of annual meetings and reporting season. You’ll also want to avoid public and school holidays. Consider March, May, June, September and November.

You’ll also want to avoid Mondays and Fridays. For maximized attendance Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the preferred days.

For an in-person event, plan a full-day agenda including a networking lunch and breakout sessions to make full use of the day for those who have travelled.

Online, our attention spans are shorter and we have more distractions to contend with. So, for virtual events, you’ll want to trim down the event to a half day. A morning start is preferred, though you should try to accommodate different time zones, if possible.

Assigning roles and responsibilities

If your internal team has all the expertise and technical skills you need to pull off a flawless Investor Day, you are the exception. Typically, you’ll want to enhance your team with the right Investor Relations’ experts, event & hospitality managers and production and technical specialists to make your event run as smoothly as possible, so that your team can focus on content and its compelling delivery.

Ensure you assign roles and responsibilities to your team, and select the right partners. Don’t let your Investor Day be spoiled by logistical snags. Make sure you visit any venue in advance, have the right A/V equipment in place, have any branding arrive in good time to be reordered if necessary, set up a day ahead of your event – and ensure the hospitality schedule is aligned with your running order.

3. Confirm your agenda and speaker line up for a successful investor day

Your agenda should ensure that you fulfill the purpose of your Investor Day.

It should deliver all your key messages within the allocated time, with a running order to suit the delivery medium and meet audience expectations of the event.

Determine your key messages.

In developing your key messages, refer to your goals and consider how you would like to see this translated in the analyst notes the next day.

You’ll need to consider the current understanding and perceptions of your audience. Have your IR expert or firm ask sell-side analysts about any issues or topics of interest in advance, and ensure your team is well-briefed and any feedback is addressed in your prepared remarks.

Build your agenda.

Don’t try to do much or your key messages will get lost. Allow 20-30 minutes to build a narrative around each key message and consider how to best drive it home with story-telling aides.

Visually package your data into graphics, make use of pre- recorded video for complex presentations and introduce product or site videos.

Allocate specific time and running order for each item on the agenda.

Decide who will build and deliver each presentation.

Next select your presenters, remembering that Investor Days are often the only time investors will have access to management. This presents a key opportunity to showcase the quality and depth of your management team.

Depending on your organization, this could include department heads from Operations, Product Development, Business Development, Sales and Marketing.

Decide who will prepare each of the presentations, and set a strict timeline for the delivery of drafts and final presentations to allow for review, touch-ups and rehearsals.

Keep everyone on the same script.

Your speakers are likely subject matter experts in their own rights but may require some prepping to keep focused
on the business wins and advantages rather than going into technical details. Avoid the use of jargon and ensure technical competitive advantage is described in agreed business terms. Support your presenters with a script where needed.

Decide how you will facilitate Q&As.

With advancements in tech, there is now more choice in how you choose to facilitate questions and answers.

You can permit live questions with in-room and virtual microphones, or you can choose to ask your audience to submit written questions to your moderator for collation and prioritization.

Whichever format you choose, ensure you leave ample time for questions. It’s best practice to allow at least 30% of a speaker’s session for Q&As at the end of each presentation, agreeing in advance who will field section questions on which topics.

Explain in your housekeeping at the start of the event how Q&As will work. For example, ask your audience to submit questions during each presentation, to be answered at the end of that session. The role of moderator (not presenter) will be to refine, condense and prioritize the questions fielded to the presenter or other nominated speaker (pre-agreed).

In your briefings with your IR expert, it is best to anticipate questions and prepare responses. Practice Q&A sessions in your dry runs.

Make it interactive.

Especially with virtual and hybrid formats, introduce multi-media to maintain engagement. Make use of polls and chat box, and provide access to a portal to view pre-loaded assets to accompany presentations.

4. Executing your virtual or hybrid investor day strategy

A well-executed investor day strategy ensures your message resonates with both in-person and remote stakeholders.

Invites

Your invite should include the top-level agenda details of the expected speakers, critical topics of discussion as well as unique aspects of the event format that will maximize the value of the event for in-person attendees (site visits, product demonstrations, breakout sessions, Q&A opportunities, and management interaction).

For the best chance of securing your audience, send out invites 12 weeks in advance of the event.

Build an event portal/microsite

Your audience will now expect online registration and an event site or portal with further detail. Provide a branded microsite for invitees to register, view agenda and other materials such as speaker profiles ahead of the event, watch the presentations, and join private meetings and break-outs.

Link in with your CRM to automate follow-ups for those who haven’t responded and schedule automatic event reminders ahead of the event.

Dry runs

Your event team and presenters should meet regularly to practice delivery for timings and to ensure prepared remarks are not too long, or too short – and the key messages are coming through.

It is best to have your IR expert or firm at these meetings to ensure that all involved are aware of current perceptions and concerns and to help anticipate any additional questions at each practice session.

Speakers should also be familiar with any limitations on disclosure – again it is best to ensure your dry runs include someone experienced in investor relations to guide speakers on this front.

Rehearsal

Rehearsals are essential to delivering a polished virtual investor meeting that reflects your company’s professionalism.

Make sure you have a full-dress rehearsal the day before the event, including a technical dry run.

If you are hosting an in-person element, make sure the rehearsal is on-location and using the same audio-visual equipment you will use during the event.

Also allow time for a quick update to the full team on the morning of, for any last minute updates.

To ensure the success of your Investor Day, meticulous preparation and seamless execution are paramount. By following these guidelines, you can create a compelling and well-organized event that effectively communicates your key messages to your audience.

For comprehensive support and expert guidance in planning your next Investor Day, contact OpenExchange. Our experienced team will assist you at every step, ensuring a smooth and impactful event that meets all your objectives.

Reach out to us today and let’s start planning an Investor Day that will leave a lasting impression on all your stakeholders.