Ways to Generate New CME Revenue Streams with Your LMS

For many organizations worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a financial toll. Your medical association or society is likely no different. Many groups have demonstrated significant losses. For example, a recent survey from the American Society of Association Executives found that 34% of healthcare associations expected to lose $500,000 or more due to events being canceled because of the pandemic. Likewise, the Radiological Society of North America’s conference had to cancel its annual conference: it typically draws 45% of its revenue from this event alone.

There are also losses involving medical practices. In an American Medical Association study, 80% of physicians reported that practice revenue was still down in February 2021. When everyone’s revenue is down, it has a knock-on effect on how CME events take place.

What have been your losses? Are there any ways that you can recoup lost revenue from canceled events, for example?

In this post, we give you four ways to generate new CME revenue streams for your organization.

Go Outside of the Box

Pre-pandemic, you were busy planning your next CME event. Every component was in place. Your registrations were coming in, your presenters were booked, and your vendors were in place.

Then the pandemic struck, sending you scrambling. The event was canceled, and refunds had to be provided, causing you to lose an appreciable amount of revenue. Now you have to recover what would have been the benefits of your event and find ways to generate new CME revenue streams.

What happens next?

Take your event content, go outside the proverbial box, and go virtual. Pivot and convert your events and activities into online conferences, seminars, annual meetings, and other offerings to your attendees. When you move to the virtual format, you will have unexpected ways to generate new CME revenue streams. You’ll need technology to do this, though, and it could be as close as your CME office.

Proven Results from Other Organizations

You have now decided to go the virtual route but are still unsure of the results. Perhaps you’re wondering whether going virtual will suit your situation.

Virtual events will enable you to provide more content to more attendees than your live event potentially would have. Moving into an online format is among the ways to generate new CME revenue streams. Here are two examples of organizations that embraced the virtual model.

The American College of Cardiology (ACC)

The ACC faced the cancellation of its annual conference in the early days of the pandemic, in March 2020. The time that it had to pivot looked to be impossible: fifteen days to create an alternative. The event team developed a virtual model and chose twenty-four of their sessions to live-stream and pre-recorded the remaining content for on-demand access.

More people attended the conference than expected. Within thirty minutes of the session’s opening, 13,000 people logged in from around the world. The success continued. By the end of the three-day event, approximately 34,000 unique visitors had logged in for the live or the pre-recorded sessions. Around ninety days after the event, 63,000 unique users had logged in to access the conference’s content.

The ACC examined these results and defined “participation” as a user logging in and “engagement” as a visitor staying around for a while, using chat functions or discussing the content on social media.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)

Here is yet another example of the power of the virtual platform. The ASCO held its conference with 44,000 registered attendees. The event team measured their total content views, and the results were exciting. There were more than 2.5 million content views during the meeting. On social media, over 8,800 Twitter users posted more than 45,000 tweets using the #ASCO20 hashtag, generating 750 million likes, shares, and comments.

As these two organizations have demonstrated, there is great success in going virtual. They were able to bounce back from the confines of the pandemic and used various ways to generate new CME revenue streams.

Crank Up Your LMS

You’re now holding your virtual event, and it’s going well, even receiving more attendees than your in-person event. Of course, now you want to extend your CME content to acquire more event attendees and generate new revenue streams for your organization at the same time.

You can convert your CME content into packages for on-demand access. Offer up your audio and streaming video conference materials, using your LMS to do the work for you. Much like the ACC, you should plan on holding live webinars and pre-recorded events.

Your LMS enables you to discover ways to generate new revenue streams from your CME event content. You can convert your events and activities into enduring content. To do so, you can simply use your Zoom Meetings or GoToWeb meeting recordings. The recordings are available immediately in your LMS, so you won’t need to download, convert, or upload large files. The use of course cloning enables you to easily generate an enduring version of the meeting. You add the pre- and post-test and the evaluation, and then it’s complete and ready to go. You can also create audio files for greater reach.

An LMS such as EthosCE enables you to use e-learning software like Adobe Presenter, Articulate, and Captivate for comprehensive interactive learning experiences. You can earn revenue from your online event and build a revenue stream from your enduring materials.

Don’t Forget to Get the Word Out

As you’re planning your virtual event, don’t forget to provide discussion groups, breakout sessions, chat rooms, forums, and social media opportunities. Your attendees will have so many ways to interact with one another, and that can spell more revenue for you as the word gets out about your event, its CME content, and enduring materials.

When you announce your CME courses, be sure to let attendees know about your upcoming events and what will be on offer. Inform them about the pre-recorded sessions and the latest enduring materials that will be available. This can prove a great success in generating new CME revenue streams, especially attracting those who might otherwise not be able to attend the events. They can purchase your pre-recorded content.

EthosCE Helps You Generate New CME Revenue Streams

The COVID-19 pandemic has had all of us reeling from its effects. Amidst the canceled or postponed events, organizations have had to discover new ways to recoup lost revenue. They’ve looked to technology for assistance.

With EthosCE, you have a robust LMS platform that can help you live-stream your CME events, create pre-recorded sessions, and package your CME content for use as enduring materials. It provides you with the tools that you need to generate new CME revenue streams so your organization can successfully get back on track during this trying time.

At EthosCE, we understand the challenges of staying up to date and compliant with ACCME changes. We know how critical it is to get things done right the first time when it comes to team-based education and success.

To learn how EthosCE can enhance the continuing education of your healthcare teams, schedule a free 1-on-1 demo with one of our specialists today!