The Lincoln Center special events team successfully charted a path forward by creating engaging virtual experiences.

The team leveraged the zkipster guest management platform and its powerful and easy to use plug-and-play integration with Zoom.

Challenge: Host a virtual gala with 29 tables and guarantee a flawless guest experience

During the pandemic, the Lincoln Center team faced a nuanced set of challenges that their guest management platform needed to solve:

• In the absence of in-real-life events, the special events team at Lincoln Center wanted to bring their community together, support artists in their network, and offer a personalized donor experience.
• The team conceptualized a complex virtual gala with 29 virtual tables; hosting a one hour event at each table, assigning an artist per table, and asking supporters to invite friends and family to join them.
• Lincoln Center wanted to send on-brand, customized email invitations, ensure registration was private and secure, track RSVPs with zkipster, collect payments with their in-house portal 1ShoppingCart, and use Zoom to enable the gala virtually.
• The team needed a solution to manage virtual table allocation, capture new contacts, manage guest registration, and distribute custom links to join via Zoom.

Solution: A powerful ensemble of different features from zkipster and Zoom

Invites
Lincoln Center creates an event in zkipster, designs an email campaign with the plug and play Zoom integration, and links it to the shared table function.

Registration
When a new guest registers, they get added to their pre-assigned table in the zkipster seating feature and sent a personalized confirmation link to Zoom.

Check-in
Prior to the gala, guests receive a reminder email from zkipster with a link to the Zoom meeting that prompts them to join the host, artist and guests at their table.

Post-event
A post-event report includes guest RSVPs, their virtual check-ins, and a seating chart PDF with final table allocation including shows and no-shows.

"Making the jump from live to virtual has been seamless with zkipster, and we’re excited about new opportunities we have for flexible event formats."

TAMAR PODELL | LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

Next steps for Lincoln Center

For their Fall events, Lincoln Center will fine-tune their virtual workflows and explore zkipster’s session management feature to optimize virtual table allocation further. And they are looking into integrating zkipster with their main client database to ensure that all live, hybrid and virtual event signals funnel into one place.