This article pertains to our "Legacy" Auction pages. As of December 2022, we are no longer offering the opportunity to purchase new Legacy Auction pages, and customers should utilize our new Auctions pages instead.
Please click here to schedule a call with one of our team members if you are interesting in learning more.
How can I best incorporate my auction into a livestreamed event?
One of the best ways to use our Essential Events and Legacy Auctions platforms together is to have a livestream fundraising event focused on compelling stories from your organization and constituents, and have that event book-ended by a week-long online silent auction.
During the livestream, we recommend that you keep your viewers engaged with your livestream content and to keep them on your Essential Events page. This allows them to focus on listening to your organization’s stories and hearing your calls to action to donate, as well as the updates on the progress of your fundraising efforts.
To help encourage auction participation, we encourage you to remind viewers to participate after the livestream is over and you may wish to preview some of the auction items available during the stream. This will help get individuals excited for what they would be able to bid on within your Legacy Auction, after your livestream is over.
The Essential Events software is designed to keep your viewers engaged on your livestream page, and focused on watching your livestream fundraising event, donating, and participating in chat. To maintain that engagement, when your livestream is “live”, the Essential Events page will temporarily hide the Auctions button - but will have that button reappear when the livestream status is set to “post-event”.
For more on that integration, check out our related guide here.
What if I want to include my auction as part of my livestream?
If you do wish to feature your auction as part of your livestream, we recommend setting it up as an online (also known as a “silent”) auction that you are just trying to drive traffic towards. This will allow your participants to bid at their own pace, and any auction-related actions would take place on your auctions page directly. To encourage people to participate in the auction, we recommend you use the livestream chat feature to drive activity towards your auction page.
Before your event, be sure grab the following URLS:
The URL to your auction
The URL to register as a bidder
The URLs to the top few items that you want to feature
(You can copy those URLs and paste them into a Word document, for easy accessibility during your event.)
During your event (when your livestream status is “live”) when you are ready to preview auction items that are available, be sure to encourage your attendees to sign into the livestream chat feature, so that they will be able to access those links mentioned above.
You’ll also want to be sure to let them know that the auction items can be viewed (and all bidding will be done) on a separate auctions page (and not on the Essential Events page or in the livestream chat itself!).
Before you preview any of your items, be sure to share the general link to your auction and the link for bidder registration, so your participants can easily access both. When you preview any auction items, be sure to also have your chat manager share the link to that specific auction item that you are featuring.
Can I stream a live auction directly through your software?
The livestream functionality of our Essential Events software does not support streaming live auctions where bidding takes place in real-time. Because a livestream is not “real time” and a time delay will cause problems when you try to do a live auction, we do not recommend using the livestream functionality of our Essential Events software to conduct a live auction at this time.
As a reminder, whenever you livestream it does not happen in “real time." There will always be some degree of “latency,” or audio and video delay. In other words, you should expect at least a slight delay between when you are speaking, and when your viewers will view and hear you speak through the livestream. It is not uncommon for the delay to be anywhere from 30-60 seconds, though this depends on the individual viewer and their respective internet connection.
For most types of livestreamed events through Network for Good, this delay does not create problems, since people will be donating throughout the event and you will still be able to thank them in chat or verbally after the donation has been completed. In those instances, chat participation can be more "casual" and more conversational. This is not the case for a live auction, where timing is incredibly important - the speaker or auctioneer would always be ahead of the audience, and the audience would not have a “synced-up” experience.
Because of this delay, we do not recommend using the livestream functionality of our Essential Events software to conduct a live auction, as it will create a poor experience for your auctioneer, bidders, and the individuals managing your page.