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 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 Things Ultra-Productive Event Professionals Do Well

Event Management News

June 21, 2016

By nature, event professionals are driven to be highly productive in order to meet the demands of our stakeholders and keep all attendees happy. When we get really busy, however, it can be hard to stay on track and accomplish reactionary tasks as well as staying ahead on bigger, more forward-thinking projects.

Here are five ways that highly productive event professionals get more done:

Trade to-do lists for a calendar

Studies show that less than half of people’s to-do items never get completed. Why? Because the nature of written lists give us the opportunity to push things we don’t want to do to the bottom (and never complete them!). As event pros, we live by deadlines. Using an online calendar as a way of staying on track ensures we meet those deadlines instead of procrastinating.

Avoid overtime all the time

That’s right, we said no overtime all the time. Being overly busy can equate to lack of focus and wasted energy. We all have a breaking point where our highest level of performance gets compromised by overextending ourselves for long periods of time. Good event professionals prioritize tasks, create backup plans and delegate wherever possible to avoid burning out.

Bundle up those temptations

A concept introduced by Katherine Milkman of the Wharton School at Penn and featured on Freakonomics is temptation bundling. Tie two polarizing activities together–one you need to do but don’t want to, and one you love to do (such as going to your favourite restaurant, but only when your inbox is clear). Temptation bundling in this way pushes us to get more work done so we can get to the things we really want to do. Event managers can apply this to their design and planning phases by working sequentially and then rewarding themselves along the way (Venue secured? Time for a fancy coffee!).

Practice Self Care

This means learning to say NO to commitments that don’t add much value or even de-rail you from your most important tasks. Take care of yourself physically, mentally and emotionally. We strive to create experiences that serve our attendees’ needs but we also need to remember to serve our own. This can mean anything from eating well to drinking enough water, staying active, making time for loved ones or simply getting enough sleep.

Let Technology do the Heavy Lifting

Use the right applications and event management technology to increase your efficiency and help minimize manual or repetitive tasks. Keep notes, discussions, and files in the cloud so every person on your team is on the same page. Good event professionals don’t keep the details in their heads or in a notebook where they can get lost or forgotten.

Event professionals have unique demands that put extra pressure on us to be efficient. Let’s make sure we lean on tools, strategies and technology that can help us work smarter, not harder. There’s nothing more human than that!

About Attendease

A NEW HOPE FOR EVENT ORGANIZERS

Event Management News

March 7, 2016

Making Event Management Beautiful

Modest beginnings

When Patrick, Mike and I were laid off from the company we worked for in 2000, we didn’t quite know what lay ahead for us as software engineers. But, even with the gummy mess of the post dot-com bubble all around us, we actually didn’t seem too concerned at all. We were young, naive and frugal… and, more importantly, we had our Macs, an internet connection and an Airport to share between us :). Our unemployed spirits were generally high over the coming months as we casually convened to geek out and code in each other’s living rooms. I think that we knew in our gut of guts that reality would eventually get the better of us and we’d need to get back to work!

In 2001, the three of us officially partnered as Coverall Crew and opened up a bank account with money from our first paid gig ($6,000 is a lot of pizza slices!). We were on our way. Our first few projects happened to involve building event registration systems for enterprise clients which, unbeknownst to us, was an early sign of things to come. And, since we were being commissioned to develop many other web applications, we took the time to devise a PHP-based rapid application development framework which we called N2O. N2O would prove to be an essential backbone to almost all of Coverall Crew’s consulting projects over the next few years. It was also the basis for an early incarnation of Attendease.

An agile event management platform

The next 13 years would see us build the gamut of online event management software from the ground up. We responsible for assembling and integrating all the attendee-facing parts like the event website, conference registration and payment, mobile app, hotel booking, session scheduling, attendee management, event financials, onsite check-in, surveys, badge printing, onsite gaming, and session scanning. We were also responsible for the more technical tasks of constructing administrative tools for attendee management, reporting and statistics, financials, content management, sponsor management, conference marketing, and attendee messaging.

The concept for building Attendease was born early on. It isn’t a surprise that the more events we worked on the more we realized how much more efficient we could be if we leveraged a framework that automatically took care the things we found ourselves repeating time and time again. We needed to be able to easily customize each conference for our clients while still giving them full freedom to make and publish changes themselves. After a couple of scrapped false starts building Attendease overtop our N2O framework and a later foray into Merb, we finally decided on using Rails for our dream platform.

Since we didn’t have the resources to build out every module for Attendease in one fell swoop (nor do I think it that this kind of waterfall approach would have proved nearly as successful) we have always embraced an organic, agile methodology to developing new features. This has allowed us the luxury to take our time and build Attendease out slow and steady, making sure to do things the right way from the start, balancing elegance, usability and flexibility.

This is the platform you’re looking for

Event management platforms are not at all a new phenomenon, which actually presents a substantial opportunity for startups in our field. Most large players have been around for many years and, as such, continue to build technology onto core systems that are visibly out-dated and increasingly cumbersome to use. They may claim to support a wide breadth of features, but their implementation of these often falls short for many reasons.

As well as their failure to take advantage of the latest web standards and best practices, new features are often added atop legacy systems without proper planning around maintaining a seamless experience for users. Our mission at Attendease is to revolutionize the event experience for conference managers and attendees alike. We are obsessive (in a good way!) about using state-of-the-art web application techniques, while constantly striving for a wonderful and seamless user experience.

While Attendease looks and works beautifully out-of-the-box, we have also painstakingly built the platform so that our team (or anyone else proficient in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, for that matter) can easily manipulate the look, feel, and some functionality to very detailed specifications. It has been most exciting to see how our clients’ own internal developers have been manipulating the Attendease theme in order to pixel-perfectly match their company branding, without engaging Attendease for any costly custom consulting!

Clients that have switched to Attendease after using other platforms invariably describe how much more pleasing, intuitive, beautiful, and relatively inexpensive Attendease is compared with their old event management software. That’s the best feedback we can hope for, and it’s what constantly drives us to continue innovating.

Where we’re headed

The central mantra at Attendease is simply to make event management beautiful. Not only do we want to ensure that all attendee interactions are as enjoyable as possible, our goal is also to delight and simplify the lives of conference managers in the process.

Though Attendease can already accommodate the needs of most events out there, we are constantly updating the platform by adding new features as well as improving existing functionality.

This blog will house info on all things Attendease including product updates, event best-practices, company culture and other fun tidbits.

We’re looking forward to being part of the story that makes your lives easier and helps your events shine.

Jamie

Attendease Co-Founder