Higher education events and classes come in all shapes and sizes. From public to private, virtual to in-person or hybrid, large or small… university events run the gamut. And while the process to plan an event or a class may be similar, the needs of each greatly differ. This makes a flexible event management software for universities and other higher education organizations a must for those with a large portfolio of events and classes.

While generic event management platforms have worked for higher ed organizations for years, they don’t always work to manage class registrations and payments. And departments are siloed, relying on multiple tools to manage a complex portfolio of classes and events. 

A good event management software for universities allows event planners and admins to streamline the planning process. It also helps to simplify the day-to-day of busy organizers. Event management platforms like EventUp Planner, can support higher ed institutions through the entire event lifecycle. From event/class promotion, to registration, to during and after the event (we’ll refer to classes as “events” for simplicity sake in the rest of this blog), EventUp Planner is there to truly support you. 

By hosting a range of events, colleges and universities can create a vibrant and engaging campus community that supports their mission and goals. If you’re like most higher education institutions, you probably host a wide range of events. You’re likely:

Here are some common types of higher education events that an event management software for universities and colleges can support:

With the right higher education event management software, you can create an event or class landing page, send invites, track RSVPs, manage attendee/student lists, take secure payments and communicate with attendees, all from one place. This can save organizers a significant amount of time and aggravation trying to manage everything from multiple places, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your event. You really can consolidate all of your Excel spreadsheets, Word docs, written lists, and multiple apps and softwares into one central source of truth with an event management tool like EventUp Planner. 

Improved Attendee Experience

By providing attendees with easy access to event information on a customized event landing page, plus a user-friendly registration process, organizers can ensure that attendees are well-informed and have a positive first impression of their events. First impressions are lasting! In addition, event management software for universities can help organizers collect feedback from attendees after the event or class. This allows you to identify areas for improvement and make changes for future events.

You can send automated invite emails out with event details and registration links to targeted groups from your existing database. Plus, higher ed event management software can help organizers promote events through social media and other channels. This helps you reach a wider audience and increases the likelihood of attendance. Attendees are more likely to register for and attend events with easy-to-follow event landing pages, a simple registration process, and email follow-ups with clear and timely event info. Those reminders will get them prepared and to your event on time.

By automating many aspects of the event planning process, organizers can save time and reduce the cost of involving multiple people and tools to stay on top of your event. In addition, event management softwares like EventUp Planner can help organizers better manage event logistics. This helps reduce the likelihood of costly mistakes that happen when event info and lists are scattered across multiple people’s computers and to do lists.

You can collect and store data in a centralized location that you can assign different levels of access to. Plus, organizers can easily track event metrics and use that data to inform future event planning. In addition, event management platforms can help organizers identify trends and patterns in event attendance and attendee feedback. This allows you to make even more data-driven decisions for future events.

We have shared in the past some tips to help event organizers to vet event management solutions. Some of these features are:

In addition to these must-have functionalities, there are some areas that are going to be especially important to higher ed institutions. Be sure to ask any software company you’re looking at if they have and and all of the following:

Accessibility features ensure equal access and opportunity for all individuals. They also create a more inclusive environment, provide a better user experience, enhance your brand reputation, and future-proof your website. By prioritizing accessibility, educational institutions can demonstrate their commitment to diversity and inclusivity. This also helps ensure that all individuals can participate in, and benefit from, your events. Be sure to ask if the software company supports the ADA through WCAG 2.1 AA compliance.

Hint: You can find tips on optimizing your higher ed event website here.

In today’s digital world, data privacy is an increasing concern for event attendees. From GDPR compliance, to data encryption, two-factor authentication (2FA), and more, the event registration software you choose should be able to meet and exceed all key security requirements to keep your attendees’ personal information safe and secure.

Secure payments—including contactless providers like Stripe, Microsoft, Apple, and Google Pay—allow for your attendees to pay for your event directly without concern. If attendees can no longer attend your event, the ability to manage refunds securely and efficiently helps build loyalty for future events.

Some education institutions utilize unified payment processing vendors, which may limit their ability to work with event technology providers. In this case, EventUp Planner allows customers to use our own Stripe account, solving this challenge for many organizations. 

Ask what options the software company has that will meet the sometimes complicated requirements of higher education.

A lot of colleges and universities put on the same events each week, month and/or year. And many use event management software to manage class registrations. These events/clsses tend to be VERY similar to each other in terms of setup. So be sure you find a platform that makes it easy to duplicate events and edit details so you don’t have to start from scratch with each class or event you want to create and manage. It sounds like a no-brainer, but many platforms don’t make this easy. 

In conclusion, event management software for universities and colleges can be a valuable tool for higher education organizations. By streamlining the event planning process, improving the attendee experience, increasing event attendance, saving costs, improving data management, and making it easy to replicate what you’ve done for future events, event management software can help higher education organizations plan and execute successful events with ease.

Want to learn how EventUp Planner can support your portfolio of events? Contact our team to find out and see if EventUp Planner is the right platform for you!

It’s no secret that event costs are on the rise. So, can your corporate meeting planning software help you cut back? Naturally, organizations are searching for ways to reduce costs without sacrificing the quality or engagement they have become known for.

Achieving this might be easier than you think.

You no longer need to do everything manually nor rely on a large suite of costly digital tools to achieve a great event. In fact, modern corporate meeting planning software can help you optimize and automate processes so that you and your team can save time and resources over time.

One of the best ways to reduce costs is to streamline your existing processes. Here’s how choosing the right corporate meeting planning software can help.

One of the best reasons to use corporate meeting planning software is the ability to save your organization time—because, after all, time equals money.

By selecting one unified platform to manage all your event needs, the door is open to streamline and automate your team’s workflows. Say goodbye to switching between an email marketing platform, a website builder, and a ticketing platform, inevitably rebuilding assets from scratch each step along the way.

Instead, simply upload logos, fonts, and colours into your corporate meeting planning software and easily integrate them into all your materials. Thanks to flexible templates, your team can save these newly created on-brand websites and email marketing campaigns for use on future events.

The same goes for scheduling and speaker management. Rather than risk double-booking or other schedule conflicts, all-in-one software allows you to schedule your multi-session events with confidence. For example, schedule grids or drag-and-drop session slotters allow you to visualize your event and ensure you have everything in order.

When combined, these convenient automation and visual features help your team reduce errors and increase productivity.

Now that we’ve established that corporate meeting planning software increases your team’s productivity and saves time, we can discuss a more tangible benefit to your organization as a whole: the flexibility to scale easily.

The best software allows your organization to scale up or down at a moment’s notice. In a period of sudden growth, you can easily rely on your team to easily create multiple event workflows without needing to train additional staff, thus ensuring you can capitalize on your growth when it matters most.

In lean periods, the time savings unlocked by corporate meeting planning software can help staff multi-task and address other business needs. It empowers you to reallocate team or company resources where needed and give staff members larger event portfolios without overwhelming them.

Not to mention this extends past your staff to your third-party contractors. Where you may have retained web designers or developers in the past, the right software allows you to complete the same tasks in-house using an easy-to-use integrated website builder and email marketing tools.

With an easy-to-use interface that encompasses all steps of your event workflow—promotion, pre-event, day-of, and post-event—every member of your team will love the all-in-one functionality of corporate meeting planning software.

Using an all-in-one solution means your team will spend less time going back and forth with third parties, saving headaches and frustration. Not only does this reduce time waiting on correspondence, but it empowers your team to be self-reliant and efficient.

When everyone is empowered to contribute in their roles (instead of relying on the same few personnel over and over) productivity and morale increases. After a few successful events, you may even notice burgeoning creatives on your team who can execute terrific event websites and marketing, thus eliminating the need for your previously retained contractors.

The right software will also streamline your analytics and data reporting. Say goodbye to wrestling with multiple data sources and the increased risk of reporting inconsistencies. Instead, all your data lives in one place: an easy-to-understand dashboard that helps you visualize and gain insights on attendees, individual events, and your overall event portfolio.  

Consider sending surveys before, during, or after your event to gain valuable information from unbiased sources. On the best corporate meeting platforms, these surveys are fully customizable and can be sent to specific demographics—from stakeholders, to attendees, to featured guests, and more—so that you leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of a better event experience. 

Collect marketing insights from popular third-party sources (e.g. Google Analytics, social media tracking pixels, or UTM tags) and see all of your data in one place in your software’s analytics dashboard. For organizations already using sales or marketing tools like HubSpot, Marketo, or Salesforce, it’s easy to integrate your existing workflow into your corporate meeting planning software! 

Finally, the big picture: with the right software, your events will be stress-free, easier to plan, and have fewer errors.

Your event planners will be present, focused, and detail-oriented rather than being distracted and frustrated by third parties. Your creative team will be able to easily create and replicate assets without having to worry about formatting across multiple platforms and use cases. And, thanks to automation, dates and times will be correct across all promotional materials, and your speakers will be scheduled correctly without any conflicts.

You may not be able to put a price on the stress saved by corporate planning software, but you will definitely see the cost and time savings across your entire organization as a result.

If you’re ready to get started with corporate meeting planning software in order to save your organization money, it’s time to consider Attendease.

Attendease makes managing a large portfolio of corporate events easy and stress-free:

Book a discovery call today to learn more about how Attendease can reduce your event costs and help your team work more efficiently!

Whether you’re launching a new product, hosting an event, or conducting business as usual, your customers’ experiences need to be one of your top priorities. 

Customer experience (CX) includes all of the interactions a customer has with your business that inform their opinion of your organization. These experiences and how your business responds to them can determine whether a customer stays loyal and recommends your product or service to others or seeks to do business elsewhere. 

A strong, deliberate CX strategy can help you improve your retention and word-of-mouth marketing by turning customers into advocates for your business. In this guide, we’ll explore a few ways you can improve your CX program to create frictionless customer interactions, ensure customers feel heard, and provide evidence your program is succeeding that you can bring to your board. Let’s get started. 

Your CX program should help you identify trends in customer feedback that can inform long-term improvements. However, where CX really shines is its ability to help you respond quickly to customers who have had negative experiences and take action to prevent them from lapsing. 

Ensure you’re using a CX platform that can identify survey responses with negative feedback and automatically elevate them to the appropriate manager to respond and close the loop. PeopleMetrics’ guide to closed loop customer feedback explains this in detail: 

This cycle will then repeat every time you receive new feedback from customers. To ensure that feedback is acted upon promptly, set up automatic alerts to notify managers. This helps break down data silos and empowers employees to act as soon as feedback is elevated to them, creating more efficient, frictionless experiences for customers. 

For large businesses, analyzing every survey for insight into specific problem areas can seem impossible. After all, no one at your business actually has time to read thousands of surveys. Fortunately, with text analytics, you can get an overview of your customers’ thoughts and opinions by taking their actual words into account but without poring over each survey individually. 

Use CX software that includes text analytics and automated sentiment analysis features. Ths will provide you with a high-level overview of how customers view your business. With text analytics, you can:

Text analytics is a powerful tool, but keep in mind that there is a margin of error. For example, text analytics might have trouble knowing how to categorize misspellings or slang it isn’t familiar with. While these issues will be minor compared to the amount of surveys text analytics are able to accurately analyze, they can be pervasive in large data pools. 

To reduce these impacts when investing in CX software with text analytics, ensure your platform provides a human touch alongside its reporting capabilities. This means your CX software provider should be a partner in understanding your customers’ experiences rather than just a service you renew but don’t interact with outside of the technology. 

Your customers’ experiences are informed by a variety of factors outside of just product quality and price. While a customer may initially make purchasing decisions based on those factors, they’re unlikely to continue buying from a business they feel doesn’t listen to their concerns or respect their time.  

Frustrated customers are at a turning point in their engagement, and poor follow up can harm retention. That’s why during these intense and potentially emotional moments, businesses should strive to treat their customers with empathy and patience. 

To determine the most intense, potentially high-emotion points of your customers’ experiences, try creating a customer journey map. This map should include a satisfaction trajectory, which is a line graph that represents on average how customers should feel at various points in their journey. 

For example, satisfaction is likely to start low as customers are still learning about your business, then is expected to increase after finding the information they need and deciding to make a purchase. However, you might note a common dip in satisfaction from when customers order a product to when it arrives, as they’ll need to wait for shipping, which can be an annoying process. 

A business who knows they have a long shipping process might get ahead of this issue and show greater empathy to customer concerns by sending regular messages tracking where their package is and create a system where customers can easily report whether they believe their package was lost in the mail. 

Outside of interactions with individual customers, your business can also project empathy as an organizational value by participating in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Crowd101’s corporate giving statistics report shows that 90% of companies claim that partnering with a charitable cause enhances their brands’ reputation. For supporters who care about a specific cause or want to make ethical shopping decisions, this can be the deciding factor in whether they make a purchase or are even drawn to your business in the first place. 

CSR and showing individual customers empathy can even overlap in some situations. For example, if your business is hosting a CSR event, consider not just how you represent the cause your business has partnered with but also how customers at that event are treated. This applies to other aspects of CSR, as well, such as providing information on your business’s philanthropic projects that’s easy for customers to find and understand so they can make informed purchasing decisions. 

Your CX strategy influences how you approach individual customers and your business as a whole. Improve your efficiency with tools that can alert you to problems and provide a bird’s eye view of your customers’ experiences. But never forget to add a human touch by ensuring you have systems in place that facilitate listening to individual customers and approaching them with empathy. 

In order to measure if your event planning efforts are driving the desired results, including high engagement levels, meeting registration goals, and building relationships, you may have considered incorporating data into your marketing strategy.

When used properly, data marketing for your professional events can be incredibly impactful, whether you are planning a webinar or a product launch. However, contrary to common perception, data marketing encompasses more than just an initial data-driven outreach to your potential event attendees. 

Instead, effective data marketing takes place before, during, and after a given event. In this guide, we’ll look at the following: 

Before we dive into the value of data marketing across an event’s lifecycle, it’s important to first break down the common core elements across event data marketing strategies. Let’s get started!

Event-focused data marketing allows businesses to learn about their audience, personalize engagement, and market on facts instead of inaccurate intuition or guesswork. According to AccuData, every effective data marketing approach leverages the following set of elements:

With these elements of your plan nailed down, you’ll be in a strong position to leverage data marketing from initial event planning to sending thank-yous and additional opportunities to attendees. 

A data-driven marketing approach can help businesses throughout the event planning, implementation, and reflection process. Let’s take a look at how a data marketing strategy can help at three main stages of your next event.

Event data marketing is most commonly used pre-event to generate interest and excitement for your event, increase registration, and collect valuable personal information (such as demographics, interests, and preferences) from your attendees. Consider using data in the following ways to generate demand for your event:

However, you may not have the relevant data on many of your possible event attendees. Moreover, you may not have collected this information from your previous attendees. That’s where third-party data comes in. To most effectively use data to increase event registrations, work with a trusted data marketing provider to append third-party data to fill out your organization’s database.

Once you get to hosting the event, you can use data to continue engaging your attendees and craft a memorable, positive experience. Your data can help you:

As you leverage your data during your event, plan to continue to collect data as well. Survey attendees before and after each program, track participation, and collect updated contact information.

As you may have guessed, data marketing for events is a cyclical process. After an event ends, you can use the data you collected not only to thank participants but also to help market future events for your organization. 

For example, you can use your event data to:

When assessing your event data, consider looking at a range of different data points, including attendee surveys, email click-through and conversion rates, and return on investment for each marketing channel. Then, while the event is fresh in your memory, work with your team and relevant stakeholders to make an improvement plan for future events.

For the most impactful results in implementing your holistic data marketing strategy across your event lifecycle, maintain marketing best practices at every step of the way. We recommend:

Ultimately, with data by your side, you’ll be in a better position to find the right audience, host an engaging event, and grow your organization through long-term attendee relationships. Good luck!