Event Management Software

All About Event Management Software

Event management software contains business solutions that cover many aspects of organizing events from the planning stages to the post-event phase. There are end-to-end systems which include tools for an event’s entire lifecycle. Other apps focus on specific processes pertaining to organizing an event including surveys and analytics, schedulers, floor planning, ticketing, and registration.

Why Should Event Management Software Be Used?

There are many benefits to using event management software. This kind of software can systematize or simplify processes in the back-office with regards to running a specific event. These solutions provide cost savings, accuracy, and efficiency from the pre-event, the event itself, and the post-event. We will discuss the following benefits of the software below.

Consolidation of Different Teams

Event management software includes one platform that coordinates all activities and tasks for not just your event team, but for other teams including travel management, accounting, logistics, and sales and marketing. It’s easier to associate all of the connected items across your business. Changes made to one item, as an example, can activate alerts on similar items, guaranteeing that everyone has the most up-to-date information. Situations which necessitate quick coordination between teams include a change in menu, increase in attendance, or a shift in venue.

As well as vertically from the manager all the way down to the field worker, this platform can also make communication clear and open. Managers will be able to see all aspects of their event operations, while ground crews efficiently work in-sync, circumventing inconsistent or conflicting outputs.

Lower Overheads

Your event operations will have top-down and across visibility, making it easier to keep budget caps, which will lead to higher returns and savings and be able to control expenses. Event management software is even good with automating some event management processes, resulting in less time spent completing these tasks. Staff time will also be reduced.

Furthermore, a small team will be able to perform numerous tasks with the help of a solid event solution. Tools such as autoresponders and data management, self-service online registration, and a web-builder that’s coding-free can achieve many time-consuming back-office procedures in organizing events. You will not only save time but money by not having to solicit extra contractors.

Other cost benefits include cumulative spending in order to receive better deals from suppliers and helping your business find the lowest-cost venue for your budget by scouring online sources thoroughly.

Smoother Workflows in Your Event’s Entire Lifecycle

Some event management software solutions will help you plan and promote as well as assist you with on-site operations and post-event evaluations. There are tools included for reporting post-analytics and surveys, event marketing, and event management. The tools take the burden of building your own database off of your shoulders. One example includes online registration which allows participants to enter all of their information instead of you. Your database can be sorted for targeted email marketing. Similarly, you can conduct surveys on your database that will find insights based on no-shows, location, attendance and participation, the ability to run analytics, or conduct post-event analytics to assist you in improving your next event.

It’s also faster and more efficient to find suppliers with event management software because it can send out requests to different vendors quickly. Quotes can be received within a few minutes up to a few hours.

With clockwork precision, on-site tools can allow you to do a walk-through of your participants. Online registration databases can sort non-paid and paid participants while printing the badges out all at once. Internet-connected laptops or mobile payment make on-site payments easier to process.

Event Marketing That’s More Focused

Long-term promotion is critical to the success of any event. Depending on its sophistication, years and even months before the event takes place, the solution can assist you with media and blog placements, mailing lists, online communities, and aggregating social media mentions so you can begin to engage with prospective participants. There are some solutions which involve using communication channels to get questions or feedback from potential participants, or you can create a mailing list for targeted and staggered email marketing phases as the event date approaches. Dashboards can provide you with an overall view of the marketing KPIs of your event including media pickups, leads, and number of participants along with a social media engagement level (shares, likes, mentions). You will be able to see how near or far you are on opening day from your target with combined data on the promotion of your event.

Efficiently Managing Your Data

Event management software can run post-event and real-time analytic insights, organize online registration information and sort the information for different email marketing campaigns. Centralized databases allow users to access the same data, which will eliminate misinformation. Various parties would be notified quickly of any changes to the database such as the program, venue, or number of participants. Reports and documents would be consistently updated all throughout the organization. Likewise, the time that would be needed to create reports for different teams, documents, or lists would become more simplified as each team would be able to refer to just one file.

Event Management Software Types

There are many different kinds of event management software which are categorized by their feature set. The majority of the features are considered a type by themselves as well as independently packaged. The list below will not only explain the different types that are available but will answer questions related to how the software works:

1. Ticketing apps - Ticketing can be specific to a certain functionality or can be part of an event management system with increased functionality. This app not only allows you to see tickets online, but it also features some additional tools such as customization and attendance management.
2. Polling apps - This is a consistent tool many event organizers use, but they can have their own category. Live polling is a tool included with the apps that can provoke audience engagement either in a crowd or in a small room. The apps can display live graphs with real-time polling results that can reach a global audience by becoming assimilated into social media networks.
3. Web conferencing - This kind of software can come as a suite of different management tools or can fall under a category all their own. The tools that are available are specific mostly to online-only events like webinars and have features that can gauge anything from large conventions to small meetings.
4. Event scheduler - These kinds of apps not only allow your customers to do their own booking but feature availability in real-time. They can instantly communicate with you for certain requirements, allow you to pay online, and reschedule the date on the platform. This event tool can also help you avoid miscommunication regarding appointments, free you from having to manually process every booking, and get rid of scheduling conflicts.
5. Open Source - They’re limited to particular functionalities including a scheduler or form builder, but they are completely free to use. As your needs become more complex, there are a variety of free apps available that will let you transition to paid plans later on.
6. Front-to-end - That covers everything in terms of putting an event together starting from pre-event to event and the post-event. They give you the tools you need to streamline or automate field and back-office processes and include survey and analytics functionalities to provide you with insights into metrics such as revenues, expenses, feedback, and attendance as well as event marketing features that will assist you in promoting your project.

What Event Management Software Does

The next question people often ask is how event management software works. What does it do? The best way to find that answer is to ask about what the features are. These solutions will offer you tools to cover the stages of the arrangement, the event itself, and the after-event. We will identify some of these key features in this guide.

Tools for Event Marketing

The great thing about event marketing is all of the tools that are available for you to use. They can promote an event to solicit leads and reach a wider online audience. There are three different types of marketing channels including media and blog sites, email marketing, and social media. Some of these tools may vary, but the actual solutions themselves feature a basic event calendar, integrated mailer, and an event website mailer.

What the event web builder does is create the landing site for your online registration as well as your pitch. Similarly, many event solutions include plug-and-play builders that have drag-and-drop functionality, making it easy for anyone to create an event page without any issues. A few of these solutions include a mobile version, which is also a good thing to have in the age of smartphones. You will be able to access your web builder from any place, anytime.

For email marketing campaigns, mailers cull information from your online registration. You can send a variety of emails throughout all of the stages of your event with certain themes, fostering needs, sending a call to action or a reminder for early-bird specials, and encouraging feedback. You can brand your own mailers with merge fields personalized to give your message more engagement. As part of your media standards to backers, the mailer can display sponsorships or track data in real-time.

Integrated or built-in event calendars can show event-goers different programs planned across all of the event dates. Other solutions let participants click on specific programs or dates on the calendar where they are able to sign up for a space.

Registration For Online Events

The modification of entering registration information from a computer to participants is one of the best features event management software has to offer. Online registration makes all of this possible because participants can input all of their information straight into the database for the event. More sophisticated solutions permit multi-session or multi-track registration, allowing guests to sign up for the workshops or programs they would prefer to attend. These systems feature restrictions including a unique ID system or registration code for each guest to protect your data’s integrity against trolls and spam. On-site processing and event marketing can also be implemented into the database.

On-Site Event Management Tools

Onsite tools safeguard the fast processing and clockwork precision of guest appearances. In addition, cloud solutions can enable laptops with an internet connection to become self-service registration booths for attendees. Online or mobile payments empower guests to complete transactions with their own payment gateway or credit card, which allows your registration team to shift their focus towards checking their guests in. Labels and badges will be printed accurately from the main database.

Payments can be easily cross-checked from a portal online and invoices can be printed right away. The same goes for documents including agendas and brochures.

Some reports can be run in real-time on-site so you can keep a close eye on KPIs such as available slots, meal selections, revenues, and number of attendees. Live-stream tools can broadcast snippets of your event numbers or display all of the numbers to add some extra social engagement to your ongoing program.

Managing Your Database

Databases are a core function of all event management software packages. It pulls together analytics, mailing lists, on-site guest lists, and online registration. Be sure you look for export/import functionalities, cloud communication, workflow management, help desk, and sorting variants to extract different integration and metrics with strategic CRM business systems.

Managing Your Budget

Managing your budget is another very important feature that allows you to calculate your savings, re-estimate expenses, and monitor your funds. This module encompasses all of your transactions related to the event and accurately maintains your budget details from line items to high-level estimates for a precise ROI. The feature can track quotes or deals, payments being made, and also estimate the average cost per attendee to scale your estimates.

Event Reporting

Event management software can run analytics anytime before the event, during the event, and after the event is over. This will enable insights to help you make a sound decision. Some of these solutions will let you report in real-time to assess expenses, attendance, and other important metrics and make necessary adjustments to keep your event on target. Reporting takes on many forms including drill-down details or summaries that can be shared with sponsors, partners, teams, and stakeholders. It’s also possible to track trends with the event analytics module to assist you in building one of your best practice sets. Finally, you can make your reports customizable so you can focus on more important metrics for other events in the future.

Feedback Surveys

Some event management software solutions will let you produce feedback for your event which will allow you to gauge the failure or success of your event to help shape future events. Personalized surveys can be created for targeted attendees. The issues your attendees raise on your survey will help to improve your event, while the merits you received from your feedback can be built on and replicated for your next event. This tool can also sort out contacts in your database who are engaging and divide them into possible leads for your CRM enterprise.

Things to Think About When You Purchase an Event Management System

There are many reasons to ponder when you purchase an event management system. Of course, price is one important aspect, but there are some other important things to consider before you purchase such a system:

• Social media - It’s important to use social media to get the word out about your event. There should also be support for or integration with social media posts or a live social feed. In addition, you can stream on YouTube or Facebook to add more depth to the coverage of your event while inviting more participants towards the tail end of the program. Live streaming can be either uploaded for SEO or converted to recorded content.
• Service and support - When you receive a new event management system, learning how to use it can prove to be quite challenging. Support is necessary to help your team transition into running events faster and more efficiently with the new hardware. Vendors should always provide support 24/7 or with a response time that is no longer than 48 hours.
• Ability to scale - You might be managing small projects right now, but one day you might want to grow your business. In this case, you want event management software that will grow along with your business to be able to handle more attendees, provide support for larger events, and include more features for logistics, marketing, and other factors. The pricing plans available will help you make a more informed decision about the solution’s scalability.
• Integration - You will rarely use this solution for processes related to the event. There's a number of business systems that have an impact on the data and workflows of your event such as accounting for financial and cost management, a help desk for addressing tickets, mobile payments for on-site registration, workflow management to approve processes and create task lists, and travel management that books transportation and rooms for all of your guests.
• Functionality - If you want to cover a portion of the event or all of the event, end-to-end will prove to be quite valuable in terms of preparation, the event itself, and after-event stages. They are useful for recurring or large events too. However, there are some solutions that don’t provide all of the tools you need. These tools are perfect for users who may have specific requirements or for small projects. If you are on a shoestring budget, though, you should only subscribe to the important tools you need for your event.

Types of Buyers

Depending on the size of your business, it’s imperative that you choose the right event management software for your needs. There are several buyer types to consider:

• Large enterprises - These are companies that specialize in large events and host on-site events often. The events are connected to concurrent online events that work in-sync with their counterparts offline. Your business should look for features that will bring offline and online event registration into line. They should also consider an event management solution with a suite of modules they can pick and choose from according to their needs.
• Mid-size and small businesses - Mid-sized establishments operate with up to 100 employees who specialize in a particular area. These companies need to consider a system that is best-of-breed and specializes in their role. One such example are businesses that hold on-site or online events. If you’re holding an event on-site, you will need features such as sessions management, barcode scanning, badge printing, guest list management, on-site visitor management functionality, and venue management. If you’re holding an event online, you need features such as event reporting, event marketing, online registration management, and ticketing.

Trends to Understand About the Market

One trend you need to understand about the market is big data analytics. Event organizers need to do more than just collect registration and attendee information in order to customize the experience for their attendees. There are numerous customer preferences which can be retrieved by tracking the online activities of their customers including their shopping preferences and posts on social media. Big data analytics let businesses study and aggregate the data so they can distribute personalized content to their users.

The other trend you need to understand about the market is beacon technology in attendee management. Beacons are based on Bluetooth low energy (BLE) technology that will go a long way with regards to personalizing the experience for your customers. Beacons can be used to welcome attendees walking into an event, followed by an app notification that opens a map up automatically to escort them toward the registration desk and through the event. Beacons can encourage and engage people to connect with other attendees which could increase registrations for events in the future.