11 Audience Response Systems For Interactive Events in 2023

Audience interaction is one of the major goals for conducting events and conferences. As a speaker, you want to hook your audience throughout the session.

According to Microsoft, the person’s average time span is 8 seconds. Yes, you have merely 8 seconds to keep your audience hooked.

You don’t want them to drown your audience in boredom, check social media or interact with each other. After all, your existing audience is the one that will turn into a potential lead.

And the power of Word-Of-Mouth marketing is never going to be obsolete.

Interacting with your audience throughout the events and webinars using questions and answers, surveys and polls, or other methods has various benefits. First, it improves engagement with the audience by providing positive responses throughout the event.

Besides this, the organizer can gauge the learning of its audience through various quizzes and similar interactions. Most importantly, users can give quick feedback through pop-up surveys or e-forms right after the event.

However, you might need a dedicated set of tools to engage with your audience throughout the event. That’s when an audience response system comes in handy.

This post will discuss the best audience response system for interactive events.

What is Audience Response System?

An audience response system (ARS) is a tool that combines hardware and software to make the interactions between the listener and presenter a breeze.

Presenters can leverage a myriad of features to make interactive presentations. Instead of using the feedback forms after the event, presenters can collect and analyze the listener’s feedback in real time.

Most ARS platforms enable anonymous participation so that the listeners can interact seamlessly without hesitation.

What Features Should Audience Response System Have?

ARS systems facilitate the listeners and attendees to interact through a single interface. There are myriad features that you should look at when choosing the right platform:

#1. Word Cloud

Audiences can engage in a fun way with each other and the listeners using interactive word clouds. Let’s say you ask a question with options from your audience. Listeners can vote on their favorites. As the vote increases, the words will become even larger in size.

#2. Quizzes

ARS systems have a slide of decks of trivia and quizzes for creating interactive quizzes. Presenters can choose templates or create a custom quiz to interact and know more about their audience.

#3. Live Q&As

Social and live questions and answer sessions make it an even more fun way to know your audience. Attendees can submit the questions in real-time and get answers right away. Presenters can sort the most asked questions so that they get to answer the popular ones first.

#4. Live Polling

Like word clouds, ARS systems include the live polling feature using which presenters can seamlessly engage the attendees in a poll. Be it the general opinion or related to the company, users can gather the poll data and analyze it for various purposes.

#5. Team Games

Team meetings are fun with team battles. Audience response systems offer interactive team games with various team exercises to improve productivity and communication.

#6. Presenter Ratings

Audiences can also rate the presenters right after the event and leave feedback. Even if the event has multiple presenters, users can rate each individually, which can later be downloaded and analyzed.

Now that you know the bells and whistles of ARS tools, let’s check out the list of best Audience responsive systems for creating interactive events.

WeVideo

WeVideo is a well-known video-creating and editing platform for businesses. Besides this, their audience response system is one of the best in the industry.

It has all the essential features you would need to banish a boring event turning it into an engaging one. The brand provides a dedicated presentation product- PlayPosit. This product gathers feedback through live sessions, polls as well as quizzes.

WeVideo is perfect for taking online coaching or conducting team meetings. Along with the audience response systems, users can also leverage the green screen and pre-made video templates during live events.

Features:

• Presenters can control the flow and prompt them to give feedback anytime. Furthermore, they get to choose the timeframe of their response time.
• It works on any device including phone, laptop as well as mobile.
• It also integrates seamlessly with dozens of LMS platforms like Blackboard, Schoolguy, and other tech stacks.

The best part? It has a different set of features for businesses and e-learning. And obviously, different pricing plans for that.

Zoho Backstage

Zoho Backstage is tailor crafted for online events. This cloud-based software helps user plan and execute webinars and events seamlessly.

From setting up the event to tracking and getting insights, Zoho does it all.

The platform collects data enabling accurate analysis and subsequent follow-ups.

Users can also create an event website, run email campaigns and create customizable social banners to spread the word about their event.

Key features:

• Audience management enables quick networking using social interaction tools, polls, survey plugins, and 1:1 interaction.
• There are various video tutorials and webinars to help with the use of tools.
• Zoho also offers a mobile app for both android and iPhone users.

Zoho is perfect for running conferences with large volumes.

Vevox

Vevox is a cloud-based audience response software that offers features like polling and Q&A features to gather responses from the audience. Vevox works well for live events, virtual webinars, and pre-recorded sessions.

Audiences can submit the response directly from their mobile phones and tablets. Presenters can use features like word clouds, surveys, and polls to collect responses from the audience.

Key features:

• Users can embed Vevox in small and large event websites so that participants can engage within their communication channels.
• It can be integrated with various LMS and education management systems like Blackboard and Moodle that offer access to all the learning tools.
• The audience can anonymously answer the questions or put up questions increasing the engagement rate.

Vevox integrates seamlessly with platforms like Microsoft Teams and Presentation enabling real-time insights.

Slideswith

Slideswith is dedicated audience response software for large gatherings. It has every feature that you need to skyrocket your audience engagement rate and boost their response.

Slideswith offers various templates and slides for interactive in-person events, live conferences, and webinars.

Just like you use Powerpoint presentations, you can create Q&As, polls, and surveys using the pre-made templates and slides. Your audience can join the interactive events using the QR code or simply by URL.

Key features:

• You can edit the slides and add your brands and color schemes accordingly.
• Besides polls and surveys, it offers features such as Team building exercises, Live photo sharing, and word clouds.
• Slideswith allows up to 200 participants to participate in events.

Slideswith is an easy-to-use platform and doesn’t need any coding knowledge. The best part; it is free to use for up to ten participants.

Slido

Slido is an award-winning customer interaction tool for conducting virtual meetings and presentations.

Along with video conferencing, the platform offers integrated features like polls, word clouds, quizzes, and live Q&As to help them with interactive presentations.

Slido leverages real-time data to analyze customer responses and share them.

Key Features:

• Robust analytics feature that helps delve into customer insights like popular topics and active participants.
• Users can create an infographic from the data collected and share it with colleagues and social media.
• Users can present their screen or embed the tool within conferencing apps like Webex and Teams.

The platform runs on simple Powerpoint presentations without affecting the functionalities of the survey tools.

Poll Everywhere

One of the best tools for gathering instant feedback is Poll Everywhere. This platform can turn your boring event into a two-way conversation by integrating with PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, Google Slides, and conferencing apps.

Key features:

• It is a customizable software that offers custom branding and a professional look.
• Team leaders can set up organizational training and present within the company.
• Users can also create content for different teams and ensure faster workflow.

Attendees can seamlessly submit their responses through mobile phones. Furthermore, users can create teams from the team manager and assign roles to the team members.

Meeting Pulse

As the name suggests, MeetingPulse determines the pulse of your meeting. It is a comprehensive software tailor-made for designing and conducting interactive meetings.

Users can engage in various interactive events such as real-time surveys, polls, audience feedback, live Q&A sessions, raffles, and quizzes and gauge actionable data.

Key features:

• It integrates with a large library of tools like PowerPoint, Teams, Outlook, and WebEx.
• MeetingPulse offers a sentiment analysis feature. The audience can react or leave a comment in real-time using emojis.
• It also offers a 1:1 live chat system to interact with the audience in real time.

The major USP of this platform is that it is easy to use and allows for instant feedback collection. MeetingPulse is specifically designed for collecting feedback, conducting polls, and organizing team exercises.

Crowdpurr

Crowdpurr is a top-notch audience engagement software for creating interactive sessions like trivia, polls, and bingo. It uses gamification to create interactive presentations and boost audience engagement rates.

One of the most amazing features is their social wall. The tool aggregates all the Twitter and Instagram posts using a #hashtag for the event. This way, more users can engage and know about the event in real-time on social media platforms.

Key features:

• The platform offers a mobile-friendly interface for the audiences.
• The live leaderboard lets organizers analyze each participant and which one outranks the other.
• Participants can join the event using a simple QR or using a URL.

Presenters can collect the participant’s data which can later be exported and used. The best part? It is free to use for up to 20 participants.

AhaSlides

If you want to design perfect and engaging presentations with pre-made templates, AhaSlides is the right destination. It won’t be wrong to call AhaSlides as a perfect alternative to Powerpoint.

This platform is designed for all types of presentations; virtual, hybrid, and in-person.

With just a click, you can pick your favorite template and share it with the audience. Besides similar features such as word clouds and polls, AhaSlides also offer to brainstorm and sharing features to garner ideas.

Key features:

• The Spin Wheel feature allows participants to enter their names and contest into live quizzes, polls, and surveys.
• AhaSlides is free to use for up to 7 participants with unlimited questions and unlimited quiz creation.
• You can add or remove the time frames to your surveys and polls.

AhaSlides boast of its large library of templates and decks which require almost no editing. So you can click and customize it a bit.

Ombea

Ombea is a live feedback software that displays customer responses based on their opinion and expertise.

This feedback platform works seamlessly with Microsoft Powerpoint to display slides for voting and assessment.

Key Features:

• Users can instantly download reports in PowerPoint presentation or PDF format.
• The Group analysis feature segregates the audiences by demographics.
• Ombea is perfect for conducting class events as it gives students access to pass and fail rates and their performance.

Organizers can divide the audiences into teams and run quizzes on the go. Users can rank team performance and separate the top individuals.

Pigeonhole Live

Pigeonhole Live is an interactive audience response system that can be used for planning and organizing conferences. The major perk is its easy accessibility.

Key features:

• Attendees can access the live Q&A and surveys using just a link.
• Presenters receive detailed reports about the interaction between presenters and the audience.
• You can use real-time data that helps in the design and adaption of the presentation.

The platform allows participation from over 1,000 participants in the free version. Pigeonhole offers custom branding and integrates seamlessly with various platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, and Zoom.

Author’s Note

Audience response systems are the perfect elixir for boring events. Using such tools, even shy audience member can raise their hands and interact with the presenters. The tools help make the sessions interactive and boost engagement.

The audience response system keeps your audience interested by creating interactive and fun presentations. Incorporating branding and colors of your choice can bring lives to boring events and webinars.

Have fun with your webinars and turn them into something cool with these amazing audience response tools.

Next, check out the best quiz builder tools to engage more with your audience.