As a veteran of running GTW webinars and now running our first virtual event, i would strongly discourage you from using this tool for anything other the simplest type of one-day event with a handful of sessions - and low stakes.
I have been shocked at GoTo's low standards for launching this product, leaving in it landmines that have thrown me for a loop and left me scrambling to keep my event from falling apart. The biggest problems relate to your questions:
- There are no tools to help panelists after you have sent them an invitation. GTW emails are famous for landing in Junk or Promo folders in an inbox. But when panelists say they don't know how to join, you can't send them another link to join the session. You can't send them a reminder email. You may be able to achieve the same effect by removing the person and adding them back, but is that really a feature?
- No tools for sending emails. They have literally hard coded a few basic emails into the platform and they will be sent to your panelists and attendees -- with the wording, format, and branding created by GoTo developers, and at the times they have pre-determined -- whether you like it or not. You can't shut them off, you can't edit them. They are going to your audience when GTW decides, so accept it.
- Related to #2, if you have a multi-day event, good luck reminding your audience to come back another day. Make sure you are ready to use your own email service to send mailings out to the registrants so they don't forget. But even then, you can't remind them what link to use to join. Best I could figure was to remind them what the subject line was for the initial invitation email, then ask them politely to click through on that.
- We've had complaints from viewers that simulive sessions did not play in full view. I have not fully confirmed this but I would not doubt that this doesn't work correctly.
In all, it appears GoTo has launched a product where they added interesting new multi-day, multi-session features but then added landmines in areas in which you thought you could trust them - admin tools for panelists and attendees. Do not use Virtual Events unless you love the panicked feeling of having no control over your audience or your panelists. I am super disappointed that a product management team could see this as an acceptable standard when launching a new product. This is a beta product at best and has no business being pushed as a fully formed solution to paying customers.
