6Connex Appoints Luiz Martins as Chief Marketing Officer

Cloud-Based Virtual Events Company 6Connex Hires Top Marketing Executive to Support Rapid Growth

6Connex, the global leader of cloud-based virtual events, today announced Luiz Martins joined the thriving software company as Chief Marketing Officer. Bringing 25 years of sales and marketing leadership experience in the technology industry, Luiz will spearhead all marketing efforts and help strengthen the brand as 6Connex continues to grow in size and expands its client base.

“From my first conversations with Ruben and the team, I was excited about the opportunity to grow the 6Connex brand. The international demand for virtual event solutions that can effectively reach customers, talent, and internal employee communities globally has been growing exponentially, and this is intensifying as companies have switched to online event formats during the pandemic. The 6Connex virtual events platform leverages state-of-the-art features and functionality to enable teams to connect with target audiences worldwide, and I’m eager to showcase the team and the technology,” commented Luiz.

Before joining 6Connex, Luiz served as VP of Global Marketing at Esko, a $1B Danaher operation, where he led a global marketing team and had direct responsibility for P&L in LATAM. He has also held leadership positions for other multinational companies such as 1WorldSync, where he developed a proven track record of driving innovation and market adoption across the technology and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products.

“We are excited to welcome Luiz and his impressive industry experience to our growing 6Connex team,” said Ruben Castano, CEO of 6Connex. “Since March, our virtual events business has grown by more than 20 fold and our employee team has tripled in size. We know Luiz will be an important player in our continued expansion by building more corporate awareness and strengthening our internal resources.”

Earlier in his career, Luiz was a partner and manager for a startup company funded by J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley. Prior to this role, he was a sales director for Mitsubishi Americas for 10 years, where he established distribution and grew the market share for technology products.

Luiz holds a bachelor’s degree in business and an MBA in marketing from Escola Superior de Propaganda eMarketing, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

To meet customer needs and deliver on its aggressive product roadmap, 6Connex also hired Henry Tran as CTO in June. Henry is overseeing the company’s product strategy and development and is leading the engineering and infrastructure teams.

Your business must go on.

But in what may be the start of a new normal for companies worldwide, your workforce is likely remote to prevent transmission of the COVID-19 virus. 

The good news: you’re not alone.  Globally, employers are implementing social distancing practices at the workplace. These include reducing the number of employees in the office, asking employees to work from home, prohibiting access to common areas within offices, restricting office visitors, and using virtual environments for communication and collaboration.

And even better news: there’s a wide variety of tools and technology to help virtualize office environments and enable teams to continue to work well collaboratively and simultaneously.  A 6Connex Sales War Room, for example, is a fantastic virtual environment that allows sales leaders to check in anytime, anywhere to a digital command center that tracks real-time progress to goals for every business segment.  Teams worldwide receive continuous deal updates and alerts, in addition to having access to an easy, virtual way to collaborate on sales activities such as scenario modeling.

Other tools, such as e-Learning, are perfect for training internal teams or customer user groups alike.  At 6Connex, our e-Learning environment is user-friendly, easy to set up, and most importantly, available across a wide variety of devices and operating systems to ensure everyone on every device has equal access.  Attendees receive real-time feedback during their training course, and management can get up-to-date analyses on how courses are performing, as well as track the progress of individual participants.

And on a day-in, day-out basis, companies can’t beat live event streaming as an online alternative to in-person conferences and meetings.  In fact, virtual events,with deliberate planning and excellent facilitation, can be very effective, and 6Connex has been working with customers worldwide to move various AGMs, stakeholder meetings, conferences, and business events online.  While the obvious benefit is that these meetings have been able to take place as scheduled, many of our customers have also been pleased to discover that in moving their events to a digital format, there are ancillary advantages including:

  • Increased attendance
  • Improved engagement
  • New and creative opportunities for brand promotion
  • Automatic creation of Videos on Demand (VOD)

So if you, like many, are promoting social distancing and transitioning the meetings and events on your calendar to digital formats, here are three best practices to keep in mind:

1.     Pick the right solution.

Virtual events can take many different forms, and the right virtual event provider will have multiple solutions from which to choose.  For example, are you hosting a meeting?  An event?  A training program?  When you’re planning an online event, think about what you want your user experience to look like.

Webinars

If you expect attendees to mostly just listen, a webinar is probably your best option.  A webinar format is similar to a lecture or presentation. They’re ideal for sharing content with large audiences and may be open to the public. Typically, webinar attendees do not interact with one another. Though 6Connex provides features like a Q&A and polling to enable additional engagement, your average webinar adopts a ratio of one or two speakers to many attendees.

Virtual Events

On the flip side, if you’re inviting a large audience and you’re expecting more back and forth communication between them, a virtual event might be the better option.  With a virtual event, you can host interactive sessions and invite lots of audience participation.  You can even create an event environment with various “break out rooms,” where participants are assigned to virtual side sessions and can then reconvene for a main meeting.   

Video Conferences

A web-based video conference most closely resembles a face-to-face meeting and is likely appropriate when the main purpose of your event is real-time, internal communication and collaboration.  Participants can connect to the video conference from their desktop or device, and all participants can see and hear each other.  Video conferencing is most useful for board meetings, company announcements, and team meetings where it’s critical for participants to see each other, present, and work as a group efficiently.

e-Learning

And if the goal of your meeting or event is training, then an e-Learning platform is probably the way to go.  With e-Learning, you’re recreating the classroom environment, complete with characteristics like instructor-student interaction, Q&As, discussions, games, collaborative projects, quizzes, etc., but the instruction takes place online.

2. Be Prepared

Let’s face it: this is a best practice for any meeting regardless of whether it’s taking place in person or online.  Create an agenda for your virtual meeting or event and distribute it in advance.  (Tip: include it in the calendar invite.) If you’re new to virtual meetings and you’re using a virtual platform for the first time, be sure to take it out for a test drive and make sure there aren’t any connectivity issues. Also, be considerate of attendees’ different time zones and schedule the event at a time that’s reasonable for all participants.  The goal is to host an effective event, and if you take time to prepare, chances are your attendees will be prepared as well and you’ll maximize your event ROI.

3. Utilize Interactive Features

No matter which platform you use or event format you choose, be sure to take advantage of all of the engagement features that come with it.  For webinars, virtual events, and e-Learning in particular, tools such as chat boxes, Q&As, polls, and more are not only well received by attendees, but they allow you to track participation data so you can see how well your audience is responding to the digital format.  And with social distancing required in some states for at least the next three weeks, this data will enable you to improve your digital events for the longer-term.

Options in the Wake of Coronavirus

While in-person interactions and meetings greatly contribute toward building relationships and fostering collaboration, virtual environments can go a long way to replicating this while still enforcing social distancing, whether the goal is internal communication, sharing thought leadership, or training new employees (because some of us are still hiring!).

Still have questions? Contact a 6Connex product specialist to learn about our online event consulting services or get a demo today!