SugarCRM Sales Kick Off (SKO) was a 4-day event. The objective: educate, enable, and bring employees from the sales team together to get them excited and informed about new brand messaging and company updates. The event was delivered on Social27 Virtual Event Platform and our virtual event gamification features were the star.

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Average Time Spent per Day per attendee: 191 minutes per attendee over the course of 4-days

Days of event: 4

Number of attendees: 842

Number of Sessions: 65

Participate in a Little Friendly Competition with Virtual Event Gamification

Virtual events don’t have to just replicate a Zoom call – they can be so much more than that.

SugarCRM can tell you firsthand. With 3 virtual events under their belt, they were looking for a new virtual event platform that was able to give them the engagement and excitement they so badly wanted for their attendees to experience.

And with their annual Sales Kick Off (SKO), they had a few goals that were at the top of their list.

It was important that Sugar’s SKO:

  • Educate their attendees to go out and be successful salespeople
  • Not limit their attendee’s interactions with content, peers, and partners (sponsors)
  • Push all new sales messaging
  • Create a downright fun experience

Nothing got SugarCRM’s sales and marketing team members engaged like gamification features: Points, Badges, and the Leaderboard.

“One of the great things to come out of this year is the realization that going virtual reaches a ton more people and costs less. So, no matter what kind of event you design, if you boil it down, you basically want to have a meaningful engaging experience with as many people as possible. Whatever the model is, virtual or hybrid, you’re always going to be more successful than just an isolated in-person event.” – Kari Finn, SugarCRM Corporate Marketing Consultant

Sales Kick Off (SKO)

With this year’s SKO, SugarCRM was able to keep their attendees engaged with their event sponsors, sessions, fellow attendees, and more like never before.

Not only did Sugar ensure their keynote session was captivating to set the overall tone of the event, they also hired professional sales trainers for breakout sessions, created an inspiring montage of customer interviews, and held panel discussions for attendees to learn and engage with.

This inspirational and educational content helped Sugar get their attendees pumped up for new messaging and sales directives and made the event so much “more than a PowerPoint and a talking head” (Kari Finn, SugarCRM Corporate Marketing Consultant.)

Virtual event attendee customer review
“Social27 Inc. Kudos for an amazing product experience that the SugarCRM team had with your platform. It was my first virual SKO and I am afraid I may never see the inside of a hotel lobby bar again!” – From Dennis Smith, VP of Sales – Mid Market at SugarCRM

Networking and Usage

  • Chats sent: There were 5,321 moderated and unmoderated chats sent from attendees during live and on demand sessions.
  • Connections made: Overall, there were 5,275 connections made between attendees at the event.
  • Hello World!: There were 75 attendee uses for recording an intro video via Hello World!.
  • Total Points and Badges earned: Over the course of 4-days, there were 879 Badges earned amongst attendees with a total of 477,450 Points.
  • Overall sponsor microsite visits: There were 3,637 Exhibitor Booth Microsite visits at the event’s Expo Hall.

In order for attendees to be fully engaged at a virtual event, they need much more to do than watch sessions.

With Social27 Virtual Event Platform’s extensive platform features, attendees were immersed in SugarCRM’s SKO (and earned Points and Badges) at every turn.

It’s no surprise that utilizing gamification, such as Points and Badges, became the feature that was utilized most on the platform amongst Sugar’s salespeople.

Let’s see why.

Virtual event attendee customer review
“Going into this, I was a skeptic – unsure that this could live up to the hype of being surrounded by my colleagues and our partners. I am happy to say this SKO exceeded my expectations with consistent valuable content, a killer platform dedicated just to sales kickoff provided by Social27 Inc. and some dope swag.” – From Courtney A Evans, Account Executive at SugarCRM

Social27 Virtual Event Gamification

 Points and Badges are distinctive features on Social27 Virtual Event Platform that allow attendees to gain virtual ‘Points’ and ‘Badges’ for completing a set number of actions or activities. The number of Points and Badge design or type, as well as what attendees earn from gaining the most Points and Badges, is determined by the event owner.

Points and Badges can be used to promote gamification, as well as motivate users towards a set goal.

Attendees can then show off (and maybe brag a little bit about) their Points and Badges on their My Profile page and on the event Leaderboard in the Networking Lounge page.

At SugarCRM’s SKO, virtual event gamification allowed Sugar to incentivize attendees to engage with fellow peers, event content, and sponsors with prizes. Attendees could earn prizes for:

  • Visiting all of the event sponsors microsites (the Super Star Badge)
  • Hosting a Roundtable or Boardroom (the Champion Badge)
  • Connecting with other attendees (the Trend Setter Badge)
  • Engaging with sessions, or all sessions (the Moonwalker Badge)
  • And more

They even allowed Sugar to tie Points and Badges to fit with the brand’s new messaging to tell their overarching event story.

SugarCRM's thematic badges paired with the points required to receive them and the actions that trigger those points.


Virtual event attendee customer review
“Wish I could say this was the final result from our company’s Sales KickOff on Social27 Inc. The unfortunate reality in the comments 😄 #gamification #sales #salestech #onlineevents Hint: Chandan Chirag was the actual winner and had A LOT more points!” – From Stephanie Becker, CX Specialist at SugarCRM

Outcomes from the Event

Shifting entirely to a virtual event experience can be rewarding not only for your attendees, but for your organization too – and SugarCRM can tell you why.

By shifting to a virtual event platform that fit all of their objectives to push their messaging and keep their attendees entertained, Sugar was and will be able to reach more people and in an inspiring way.

And because SKO was such a smashing success all around, Sugar plans to have virtual aspects as permanent fixtures for their SKO’s going forward.

Social27 Virtual Event Platform helped Sugar feel more confident about the shift to not only virtual events, but to hybrid events in the future (as soon as 2022!)

“Our CEO said that this was one of the best sales kick off events that he had ever attended. And not just from virtual, just overall. We got that from a lot of people… Yes, it was the content and all that stuff, we believe it was also the platform and the design and all of that.” – Allison Brown, SugarCRM Event Marketing Director

Thinking About Hosting Your Own Virtual Event?

Want to create a virtual event experience that wows your attendees, all while providing return on your investment?

We can help you get started on your virtual event journey today.

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Bring the best part of in-person events to the virtual world with Social27 Virtual Event Platform.

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM is an award-winning CRM with fans in 120 countries. Our commitment to creating customers for life has landed us in first place in the 2021 CRM Emotional Footprint Awards by Software Reviews—a ranking based entirely on user input. Now organizations ranging from universities to banks to global technology companies are seeing what happens when you let the platform do the work.