Is Event Management Software Important?
In today’s technology-driven era, events take on grand scales and potential. The change in technology and media have also resulted in the evolution of the planning of an event – starting from registration, reach, to promotion. It is in this scenario where Event Management Software becomes a vital tool. Event organizers around the world use event management software to successfully organize multiple stages of their events which includes event registration and event check-in, to event promotion and reporting.
There are hardly any major or minor events organized these days which do not take help of an event management software. Events are crucial more so for B2B marketing departments. According to a 2016 Forrester report, events constitute the highest marketing expense among the departments. There is a various level of assistance that such event management software can provide. Some event software only assists in event registration or check-in. Such event software has limited functionality.
This article, however, refers to the all-in-one online event management software often referred to as the event cloud or an event management platform. Such solutions are made to cater and meet all possible requirement of an event organizer and put more time back in their day.
Event planning software is used mainly for B2B or B2C professional events such as Networking events, Trade shows, Roundtables, Industry conferences, User conferences, Expositions Internal training. That said, its usage is not limited to only these kinds of events. There are various types of event management app. Categorizing them based on features, you can find ones which provide end-to-end solutions, others which act as event scheduler, those used for organizing web conferencing for online webinars among others, polling apps and event ticketing apps. A typical event management software includes the following elements: the creation of an event website, facilitating event registration and event marketing, building the attendee engagement app, providing reporting and analytics post-event and working on system integrations. All of these elements will be discussed briefly in the following paragraphs.
If earlier, the organizers used third-party website building tools for creating the event website, these days an event management platform comes with a tool providing an easy to use the template for creating the website of an event. An event registration tool is utilized for managing registration or ticket sales. When the event website and registration are in place, the next step focusses on driving the registration. Often, event management software comes equipped with a suite of event marketing tools for accomplishing this. Such tools work in tandem with the event management solution’s contacts management thus sharing only relevant information with to the concerned attendees. All these communications are carried on via easily created and elegantly customized emails.
Since participation is heightened by engagement, event organizers these days stress a lot on creating a personalized experience in order to increase customer and attendees’ engagement. Modern event management software thus often comes with attendee engagement app using which attendees can communicate, network and participate in your event. The Mobile event app allows your attendees to view the event agenda, customize their event schedule, learn about the speakers and the sessions, see the other attendees, send direct messages, participate in live polls, surveys, etc. among others. Besides, such information, in turn, will also provide insights about their attendees’ behavior and preferences.
The event management software allows for reading the attendees data in multiple ways. Apart from tracking how the attendees interact with the event mobile app, and which sponsors and speakers get the highest engagement, their reports on such event data can also be used to compare event analytics among other events. However, none of this data is useful until it is accurately, competently and securely shared with the rest of your team. Thus, your event management software will still require taking help from outside the scope of events, such as marketing automation software or a dedicated CRM.
If the previous paragraphs talk about what event management software does, the following sections discuss how event management platform benefits you, the organizers. Event management platform offers a single platform among your various teams apart from the event team, including sales and marketing, logistics, accounting, and travel management to manage the tasks and activities. This allows for smooth co-ordination among various units thus even if there is a change in one item; all the other related units are also alerted enabling quick and easy coordination among teams.
Moreover, event management tool automates certain event management processes thus cutting down on time spent by staff. Such practices will reduce the cost of operations to a significant level. An event management system allows for a small team to carry out multiple tasks with its help. In event organization, tools such as coding-free web template for building event website, self-service online registration, autoresponders and data management constitute some of the most time-consuming back-office processes. Thus, an event management software frees you from having additional contractors to delegate these works.
An event management software allows for easy creation of a database for you. Online registration ensures that participants provide their own details. The software, on the other hand, can sort the database and use that for targeted email marketing. Additionally, you can run analytics or carry out a survey on the database to discover insights based on participation, attendance, location, no shows, post-event analytics that can better your next events.
All in all, the modern-day organizers of events are benefited hugely by event management software. Apart from providing efficient data management, such software streamlines the organization of the events by providing business solutions right from the inception of an event, from planning to post-event stages. This kind of software helps in strategizing a more focused event marketing by looking after an expansive range of functions such as event registration, marketing, and reporting. However, most of such software are useful primarily for B2B or B2C events. You need event management software to save time, money to increase security and to reduce unnecessary difficulties which its integrated end-to-end functioning structure enables.
However, it is desirable that such software is reliable and easy to use, provided with a dedicated customer service team which keeps your event in. In other words, an event management software offers the best solutions to minimize the intensive labor that hosting an event demands.