Check Off This List As You Take Your Corporate Event Portfolio The Last Mile

Event Management News

October 18, 2016

Corporate event planners tasked with managing robust, multi-event portfolios have to take a different approach to event management than those with only a few events to plan. To avoid gaps and overlaps in meeting corporate objectives and optimize every single event on the schedule, planners have to view the event landscape holistically, taking a number of steps to maximize outcomes and return on investment.

Clearly define objectives for each event. The days of “a good time was had by all” being a good metric for meeting success are long over. Today, corporate meeting planners have to be very specific about the metrics they use to measure success, such as leads, cost per lead, pipeline acceleration or overall event ROI. Setting objectives, defining metrics, and reviewing outcomes will help you make better decisions about events, audiences, and programs in the future.

Plan event types strategically based on your target markets and buyers. While it’s always a good idea to think creatively about the types of events you plan, there are a handful of commonly understood formats designed to appeal to specific audiences. By analyzing your target buyers and applying the event types that will be most effective for them—a meetup vs. an educational summit—you can reach more, better prospects and diversify your event portfolio.

Map event content to your audience personas. If one of your event objectives (and it should be) is to motivate your attendees to take a specific action—buy a product, sign up for a newsletter, become a beta user—then design content and messaging to resonate with each attendee persona during the phase of the buying cycle in which they find themselves (awareness, consideration, decision) when they attend your event.

Create a workflow to capture attendee data across your technology stack. Different technologies capture different types of data. For example, a registration platform is best when it collects contact, demographic, and proposed preference (presentation selections, for example) data. But, a mobile app can capture evaluations, actual attendance (vs. intent to attend), and content downloads. By developing a plan to capture specific data points from different technologies, you can form a more complete picture of your customers.

Use registration forms to hone in on persona and buying cycle data. Registration software may be the most straightforward opportunity—you ask a question, the registrant answers it—now you have the opportunity to categorize attendees. Be strategic and succinct when asking for event registration data and make sure the answers lead you to the best understanding of who the attendee is and where they are in the marketing and sales funnel.

Develop an integrated event technology stack. No platform can perform every task required of an event marketer. But, an event management platform with most of the features and functionality a marketer needs plus the agility and hooks (standard APIs) to integrate with other best-of breed applications is a reasonable solution.

Focus on creating a repeatable event management process. Every event is different until it’s not. In other words, content, sponsors, and attendees will likely differ as you plan events in different regions or for different prospect groups, but the event architecture and workflows will stay constant. To reduce the amount of work required and maintain brand consistency across multiple events, it makes sense to create repeatable processes and templates when possible.

Build brand and experience consistency around your events. One way to build the value of your brand and the impact of your events is to attach meaning to them. What your events should mean to attendees is, “if I attend, I will leave with information and contacts that will help me do my job better and/or make my company more competitive.” That meaning can and should be conveyed through a consistent look and experience across the entire portfolio.

Measure which event types and topics resonate with your audience. Every event should involve a little bit of experimentation—throwing out topics, programming, and activities, the results of which can yield deeper insights on participants. No matter what you plan, make sure that you bake in measurement. Decide from the beginning what to measure and how to measure it so you can take those results to the next event.

Track event ROI and lead scores across your event portfolio. The question on every CMO’s mind is, “what was the conversion of the leads did we get from that event and what did it cost?” To answer that question, adopt processes, objectives, and technology that collects and scores lead data throughout the entire event life cycle starting from registration and ending with a healthy deposit of qualified leads into your company’s CRM.

Managing a multi-event portfolio requires a professional approach, skill, and technology tools designed to interpret corporate strategy, automate workflows, and generate data and results across the entire event-marketing program. If you’ve discovered how to get visibility for your corporate event marketing initiatives and made a decision to plan as many events as your budget will allow, go the last mile and lock down the strategy and the platform that makes it all possible.

Why Strategic Event Planning Involves Holding More Events Not Less

Event Management News

October 13, 2016

Companies that organize events do so because they’ve discovered that face-to-face events enable a subset of opportunities better than any other marketing or sales channels. When those opportunities are valued by the organization, it makes sense strategically to organize as many events as possible. Understanding those specific opportunities helps event marketers devise a strategy to manage more events better.

We know from research and personal experience that meeting people in person is more impactful, memorable, and motivational than reading their books or tweets or email. It’s even more powerful than speaking with them on the telephone. So, when companies value making an impact or gaining the mindshare of customers, it makes sense to engage them in person (and for economic reasons) at an event.

Events that cater to the very specific needs and desires of a group of customers and prospects, i.e. persona-driven events, provide event marketers with the rare ability to gather information and contextualize behaviors in a way that is not possible using other methods. Event marketers wanting to derive an even deeper understanding of an audience can accomplish that goal with a niche live event.

By design, corporate events deliver captive audiences of pre-qualified individuals. In other words, no business-to-business event ever threw open its doors; provided education, food and beverages; and offered access to other like-minded peers for just anyone that happened to be free those days. Because of this pre-qualification, sales teams armed with effective lead capture tools can accelerate the sales cycle with events.

Lead generation from events is the Holy Grail for marketers. Attendees behave—attend presentations, network with peers, participate in activities—as a reflection of their interests. When these behaviors are captured and analyzed (scored) methodically, they can be used to qualify buyers, develop more targeted marketing campaigns, and close sales. More events broaden the data pool from which these insights can be derived.

Corporate events are important channels for delivering information to prospects and customers without overloading them or having to compete with other companies. Events become even more valuable when messaging is designed to reach specific buyer types at strategic stages of the buying cycle. More events help event marketers reach a broader swath of customers with carefully crafted content.

It’s generally understood that, provided the company and products are of high quality, more leads deliver more sales. A lesser-known fact is that more events can deliver more leads. To truly take advantage of the more events = more leads sales formula, event marketers have to employ strategies—from lead generation to data collection to content design—that address the unique benefits of face-to-face events.

Contact us to see how we can help you change the way you create and manage your events.

How To Increase Your Attendance In One Easy Step

Event Management News

October 6, 2016

OK, so you’ve set up your event registration website, you’ve launched your event marketing campaign, and you’ve done a great job promoting your event on social media. Your event pricing is good – people are signing up! But there are a number of people who have left incomplete registration forms on your event portal and then dropped out.

Don’t overlook what may be a great opportunity here to increase attendance, ticket sales, and ultimately bring in more revenue for your event – targeting the people who have started but not yet completed the registration process. Let’s see how we can get these folks out of limbo and all the way through to becoming full fledged attendees…

Personal Follow Ups

Sometimes a personal note can be your best resource when trying to boost attendance to your event. People may not finish their event registration for various reasons. Perhaps they had to check a date in their calendar, or couldn’t find their credit card to complete the payment process. They may have been interrupted by a priority at work or even a family matter. No matter what the reason, if registering for your event has fallen off their radar, it’s your responsibility to gently place it back on.

Perhaps a simple note like, “We noticed that you didn’t complete your registration. Is there anything we can do to help? We’re here if you have any questions at all…”

Chances are, they don’t have any questions. But a note like this will definitely jog the memory of someone who truly did intend to register for your event, but simply got distracted along the way.

Email Campaigns

Nothing keeps the enthusiasm about an event higher than a vigorous email campaign that continues to build excitement during the months and weeks leading up to the event. Slowly rolling out news about speakers, special guests and other surprises is a great way to entice new attendees. Special messages from key people, such as a personal note from your event producer, can foster a unique connection with your audience and build a sense of community.

Although your email campaign may be geared towards your broader mailing list, make sure to include the people who have gotten stuck somewhere in the middle of the event registration process. Who knows? That one new speaker you just added might be the very thing that convinces them to get their act together and purchase their ticket!

Social Media Influencer Strategy

As any savvy event marketer will tell you, social media influencers have become one of the most powerful tools in the marketing arsenal. When you have a popular, funny, talented or glamorous person talking up your brand, people will pay attention. Social media influencers are today’s celebrity spokespeople, and can help focus your campaign marketing with their broad reach.

Given how much time the average person spends online these days, it would be a great advantage for someone who’s undecided about your event to see tons of retweets coming from all their industry colleagues! Who knows, it might be just the thing to get them to the finish line to be your most recently registered attendee!

For more information on how Attendease can help you boost your event registration rates, get in touch with us here to learn more about our event technology platform.

How To Manage Content Like An EventProf

Event Management News

October 4, 2016

They say “Content is King,” and it’s true. But when it comes to content management for events, what are we really talking about?

When planning your event, there’s a ton of content that needs to be created, organized and shared. Your goal is to communicate accurately and effectively all the details of your event to organizers, presenters and attendees in a way that is as exciting and inviting as it is practical. Let’s take a look at five of the best tips to help manage your content to support the creation and promotion of the most fabulous event possible!

1. Establish Your Voice – Your event website (or event landing page) is the central contact for all the information about your event. This is where you get to establish the tone and energy – the personality of your event. Your content should embody a voice that is an authentic reflection of your event and speak in a tone that will resonate positively with your audience.

2. Centralize Your Content – All of the basic information about your event needs to reside in one central place in your event management software – a CMS (content management system). All of your tools will feed from this one source of truth that is accessible to everyone producing and participating in the event. This includes your planning and marketing teams, your event staff, sponsors, exhibitors, presenters, and ultimately, your attendees. Consistency is key – you must have the ability to update information in real time to reflect changes in plans and ensure that everyone remains in the loop.

3. Use Technology to Your Advantage – Throw away those old-fashioned spreadsheets and post-its! Between event technology software that manages website building, registration, speakers, sessions and overall event coordination, you have enough tools at your disposal to do the job smoothly and easily. Starting with your CMS – lay the groundwork and immediately start populating your content. Make sure all of your tools are coordinated and that the information is consolidated automatically. You should have the ability to make edits on the fly and immediately publish. There’s no longer an excuse to be wasting time (and paper!) on old, outdated methods of event planning.

4. Integrate Your Content Marketing With Your Event Content – Whatever presence you have established with your event website, this needs to be carried over into all of your promotion. This includes your email blast invitations, press releases, social media strategy and post event surveys. Of course, all of the foundational event information needs to remain consistent, but you also need to establish continuity of tone and personality. Your language should also tie back into your general branding guidelines, so that your event becomes a natural extension of your marketing program.

5. Communication is Key – No matter how sophisticated your event technology is, your event plan is worthless without seamless team communication. Anyone who’s been in this industry for a while knows that last minute glitches and unforeseen circumstances are a given. Make sure that you have a good mechanism in place to update and share new content with everyone involved with your event, and all instances have been updated and changed. Being flexible and good natured doesn’t hurt either!

Contact us to see how we can help you streamline content management for all of your events.

How the Net Promoter Score (NPS) Can Revolutionize Your Event

Event Management News

September 29, 2016

Are you in the loop with NPS?

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a score that measures your customer’s loyalty. NPS was invented by business strategist, author and speaker, Fred Reichheld with research provided by Satmetrix in 2007, and has been developed into a renowned, cross-industry customer satisfaction evaluation tool. The NPS is utilized by hundreds of top companies in the healthcare, technology, telecom, financial, retail, manufacturing and travel industries, to name a few, including top brands such as Delta Airlines, General Motors, Citigroup, Lego and Paypal. But don’t be fooled because we’ve only provided large conglomerates as examples – the NPS is an ideal event management tool for helping corporate event planners and marketing managers to gauge their attendees’ feedback to their events.

Your NPS Score comes down to your customer answering one question – just one, that’s it! “How likely is it you would recommend us [product, service, event] to a friend?” Respondees are asked to rank their response on a scale from 0-10, with 10 indicating extremely likely, and 0 indicating not likely at all. The responses are then grouped into three categories:

(image courtesy of checkmarket.com)

Promoters (score of 9-10) – These are your loyal fans, who will sing your event’s praises to their friends and colleagues. They generally account for about 80% of your referrals.

Passives (score of 7-8) – While these folks are still considered to be satisfied, they might have qualified or not-quite-enthusiastic responses to your event and could easily be lured by a competing brand.

Detractors (score of 0-6) – These people are unhappy customers/attendees who account for more than 80% of your negative word-of-mouth. They have the power to discourage new customers and create low morale among your event team.

The NPS is then calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Industry benchmarks are typically available for a fee via different research companies, but you may want to start simply by collecting your own data to establish an internal benchmark.

Before your event is over, you can share this question with your attendees via email or event app push notification, to gather their responses while the experience is fresh in their minds.

So What Does This Mean For Event Marketing?

Once you have your data in hand to help you track your customer journey, you can then learn who specifically among your event attendees are your Promoters, Passives and Detractors. This, coupled with dynamic event surveys, can lead to detailed engagement with those targeted audiences.

Promoters – Ask your promoters about their favorite aspects of your event. Once you understand what is really working, you can preserve and even refine those elements of your event to make it even better in the future. These influencers are perfect to include in your post event wrap-up videos and next year’s event collateral – they can even help close new sponsors or exhibitors with their passion.

Passives – Ask your passives what would make them more excited about your event – what would tip them over the edge to turn them into promoters. Ask them about the things they hated that might preclude future support. Although some of these things may seem like small details, they can make all the difference to your attendees, and you should pay careful attention to them.

Detractors – Give your detractors an opportunity to provide detailed information about the reason for their dissatisfaction, or to suggest ways they would like to see your event improved. You may even want to consider personal correspondence to soothe any particularly ruffled feathers.

With these kinds of actionable insights at your disposal, you are now in a position to execute a plan to create your best event yet! The NPS results can be used by all levels of your team, including front-line staff, management and executives, to refine your practices and objectives going forward. Many event planners also poll their staff for feedback on ways to make improvements as part of their post-event debrief. By sharing these insights with all of your team members, you can work together to constantly iterate your process and maintain a high standard of event excellence both with your attendees as well as within your industry.

To learn more about how Attendease can help you elevate your event management practice, click here.

Your Repeatable Event Portfolio Process

Event Management News

September 27, 2016

Running a successful event isn’t just about impressing your client or boss, it’s about adding to your event management portfolio so you can drive more business and boost your bottom line. Not only do you want your event to look good, you want to be seen as a leader in your industry. By using an effective process that can be duplicated, you can boost your event portfolio with fewer errors, increase your brand consistency, and avoid burning out. Here’s how:

Increase your event roster. Duplicating your processes could enable more events, allowing you to double your event roster. Using an efficient cross-platform event management solution will save you time, freeing up additional time and resources to take on multiple events. Taking on more events will show that you are capable of not only running quality events, but managing a higher quantity of events too.

Create a more diverse event portfolio. An event that is easier to execute opens up more opportunities to take on a variety of event types. This allows you to show your diversity as an event marketer, proving that you can manage events of different types and sizes, from webinars to product salons, to user conferences. Showing that you can work with a diverse clientele will not only demonstrate your ability to meet the needs of a range of clients, but it will increase profits for your business by tapping into new channels.

Customize events. Creating event-type templates allows for more customizable events, enabling you to create portfolios to match each unique event size and segment. Showing that you can customize elements of an event will not only impress your boss, it will impress your clients as well.

Generate new leads. When processes can be repeated and executed seamlessly, you will see more effective lead generation opportunities as a result. Event attendees will see that you’ve successfully managed your event without a hitch, and will want you to harness a successfully-run event for them as well.

Please the customer. Through creating repeatable processes, you can cater to various customer segments. This will allow you to grow and expand your reach, while ensuring a solid customer experience.

Show results. Aggregate event metrics for a portfolio view of your events. As part of your stream of repeatable processes, it is important to include a thorough, descriptive event report that summarizes all of the necessary metrics to make your event shine as a component of your overall portfolio. Strong metrics to back up the success of your event will draw in more business opportunities and prove your place as an event leader, while improving your overall event portfolio management process.

Using a repeatable process will not only cut down on your work time, but it will positively impact the event’s outcome. Your event team will be able to drive significantly better results through doing more events, generate more leads, and ultimately see a better ROI as a result.

About Attendease

Attendease is the event management platform trusted by teams running some of the world’s biggest, most exciting, design-forward and tech-advanced events. At Attendease, we believe that having the most effective events as part of an overall digital marketing strategy is all about giving organizations the right code, design and access to innovations. With ultimate flexibility in design and integrations, the Attendease powerful platform helps teams focus on developing amazing events that grow great companies. For more information, visit www.eventupplanner.com.

How Using A Repeatable Event Process Will Boost Your Event Portfolio

Event Management News

September 13, 2016

Using a repeatable event process will not only cut down on your work time, but it will positively impact the event’s outcome. Your event team will be able to drive significantly better results through doing more events, generate more leads, and ultimately see a better ROI as a result.

About Attendease

How To Take The Upper Hand On Event Technology

Event Management News

September 8, 2016

As an event planner, you are so busy!. Juggling strategy with execution is a game of timing that requires focus and organization. Between defining a theme and keynote speakers, managing your budget, booking hotels, creating registration forms, crafting a schedule, and finalizing the mobile event app, you may be looking at a best case scenario of organized chaos. The reality is, you need help to stay organized and effectively execute all those assignments that have landed in your lap. You need an event management platform that is powerful yet easy to use, allowing you to build out and manage content and information as you bash through all the tasks on your plate.

First Things First

The first thing you need is an event management tool that will allow you to quickly publish your event landing page and initial registration information, beautifully designed, while you are nailing down all your sessions and confirming all your speakers. You should be able to add this information in bits and pieces as the details are solidified. As a bonus, every time you make an important addition to your schedule, it’s a great excuse for an email blast!

Sharing Information With Your Team in Real Time

These days, event marketing teams are spread far and wide, sometimes working from different parts of the world, let alone in the same office. You need an integrated event management platform that allows you to communicate and collaborate with chosen members of your team in real time, so you can finalize copy, confirm speaker lineup, make decisions on vendors, and update your ongoing marketing plans as you get closer to your event date. You’ll also want to be able to plan and coordinate all your pre-production and load-in plans.

Easy Check-In

Your online registration software should translate seamlessly into easy check-in on the day of your event. No more clumsy, hand-written lists or endless excel spreadsheets. No more attendees fumbling for print-outs of their ticket confirmation. Integration of ticket sales and check-in is the new gold standard in event registration. Most people know now to merely bring their smart phones and flash their confirmation email for quick entry at the door. This saves time for everyone, and prevents annoying delays for attendees.

Event Communications Insights

It’s important to understand the flow of your marketing outreach – how people respond to your mailings, your press releases and your social media postings. Your event marketing and communications can tell a powerful story and provide the secret sauce for your best attended event yet. Your event marketing plan should be fluid and responsive, allowing you the opportunity to pivot and iterate your process at any time prior to your event.

Pulling it All Together

At any point leading up to the final execution of your event, you need to be able to make last minute changes and communicate the necessary information to all team members and attendees. With the right event technology, your entire production operation should be well integrated into a mobile first, fluid, technology ecosystem.

And this type of system even integrates into the future… When you’re ready to start planning your next event, you can utilize an event tech platform to easily launch your new event website and registration page by cloning a previous one or firing up a new template. You’ll be able to customize as you go, maintaining brand continuity while saving time and money across a series of events.

If you’d like more information on how Attendease might be able to help you with your next event, get in touch with us here.

5 Tips To Power Boost Event Revenue & Attendance

Event Management News

September 6, 2016

Today’s event attendees are a busy crowd, often fielding multiple event invitations in one week. In order to help your event stand out in the sea of exciting options out there, you need to ensure that the registration process is quick and easy. Keeping in mind the needs of today’s on-the-go working professional, here are five ways to take advantage of the latest advances in event technology to bring in the right people, and lots of them.

1) Mobile First Approach

Ensuring your event technology is accessible on your attendee’s smart phone is not a “nice to have,” but a necessity. Your attendees are busy and on the go; they rely on their mobile devices as constant sources of news and connection during long days of hectic pursuit… The success of your event and the likelihood of a boost in ticket sales can be directly correlated to having a mobile friendly event website and registration form. A system like this can also help you harness very useful event analytics, event surveys and event check in data.

2) Smart Design

You’ll want to make sure that your event landing page design is simple and readable. Instructions need to be clear and to the point. Graphics should enhance your overall branding, not distract from it. All information needs to be accurate and readily available. People with limited time on their hands should be able to get in and get out with all the basic facts in hand, registration completed smoothly, in as few steps as possible.

3) Create Different Ticket Types and Milestones

Everyone likes a good deal, and event attendees are no different. If you create an incentive for early registration by offering a discount for signing up by a certain date, people who were already planning to attend will most likely take advantage of it. If the discount is significant enough, you can use the savings as an enticement to first time registrants who just need that little extra push to jump onboard. Building in a schedule like this also gives you an additional opportunity for target marketing with email campaigns to remind people of the early bird registration deadline.

4) Stay in Touch

Once you’ve identified the right target audience for your event, you’ll want to make sure you stay in touch with them during your entire registration period. Email blasts containing direct invitations are as much about building relationships as they are about selling tickets. For any event you produce, you’re creating a community of like-minded individuals who are a natural fit for your brand. Along the way, you have multiple opportunities to remind them about discount deadlines, encourage them to complete their registration if they halted midway through the process, and announce new additions to your speaker and session line up. They are part of your world now, so keep that relationship alive, before, during and even after the event!

5) Use Social Media

As you continue to utilize email as a tool of direct outreach to your people, you’ll want to also cut a wide swath in the broader community by making news about your event highly visible on all of your social media channels. These days, many people use Twitter and Facebook, even Instagram, as their primary way of communicating with others about upcoming events. Create an event page on Facebook to link people to your event landing page. Share pictures on Instagram of featured speakers, your venue, or other exciting event-related images. Tweet regularly about registration deadlines and your most exciting speakers. Beat the drum loudly, in as many places as possible, and your people will come running to you.

If you’d like more information on how Attendease might be able to help you your highest performing event, get in touch with us here.

How To Earn The Respect You Deserve As An Event Manager

Event Management News

August 25, 2016

Managing an event, whether big or small, can be a juggling act. Coordinating speakers, logistics, ticket sales and timelines can be tricky, and with so many balls in the air, it can be easy to lose control.

Ensuring your event is successful is not only about checking all the boxes on your to-do list, it’s about exceeding the expectations of your organization so that you can earn the respect that you deserve as the event manager. Here are some ways you can get that respect, without dropping the ball.

Surround yourself with great people. Don’t try to do everything yourself. Instead, select a strong team of people who will be positive, respectful, hard working team players. Event communication, and event collaboration are key components to success, and can only be made possible when backed by exceptional people. You’re only as strong as your team, so make it a great one.

The coordination between you and your team must be seamless. Without a solid team, an event will not succeed. There are so many moving pieces, and ensuring that each team member plays an active role in the process, that the lines of communication are always open, and that the action items are carefully laid out for everyone, are keys to ensuring that your team thrives.

Pay attention to every detail. Regardless of how extravagant your event may be, your guests will remember the smallest details – especially if there’s a glitch. Misspelling a speaker’s name, leaving a name off the guest list, or forgetting to log a dietary restriction could leave a bad taste in the mouth of a picky guest.

Understand the event needs of your organization. It is important to know the main purpose of the event, and the desired outcome before the planning begins. This will ensure that you are equipped with the right information when you’re ready to report back on your event’s success.

Manage stress and maintain positivity. Running an event can be stressful, and your organization, your team, and the event guests will be looking to you to gauge stress levels throughout the day. Maintain calm and stay positive, and the others will follow suit.

Present innovative, forward-thinking ideas. Presenting ways for your organization to save time, costs, and resources will show that you are a forward-thinking leader. Using an integrated event platform that allows you to build event schedules, manage the event on-site, create value-added benefits for your speakers such as mobile networking, and create powerful post-event reports will put you in the spotlight.

Create impressive post-event reports. It is important to create clear, concise post-event reports, so that your organization can review, evaluate, and track results. Including registration summaries, financial reports, and post-event survey results, will show that you’ve dotted all your i’s and crossed all your t’s.

A successful event not only relies on a smooth execution, but a strong event leader, and using an effective event platform will make your event shine. Earn the respect you deserve, and both you and your company will reap the benefits of your hard work.

About Attendease