Save Money and Trees: How to Run Sustainable Events

Event Management News

May 30, 2024

Events can be a great way to expand brand awareness, educate an audience on a given topic, or even form important connections within your industry. But if you aren’t careful when planning your event, it can also lead to unanticipated environmental harm.

According to MeetGreen, the average conference produces 4.17 lbs of waste per attendee, per day (2.56 lbs of which will go to a landfill). Compounded across a three-day event with 1,000 attendees, this adds up to just over 12,500 lbs of waste—roughly equivalent to the weight of four compact cars.

With attention to detail and an open mind, it’s possible to run a more sustainable event without blowing your budget on pricey “green” alternatives. This post explores exactly how to do it, including how event management software can play a key role. Let’s jump in!

How to Run a Sustainable Event: 6 Tips

Ready to make your events greener without breaking the bank? Here are 6 ways to get started.

Understand the carbon footprint of your event

Waste is a huge contributing factor to your event’s environmental impact.

But before you can figure out where to make eco-conscious swaps, it’s important to understand the types of waste events produce.

“Even with a good composting and recycling program at the venue, a mid-sized corporate trade show with around 5,000 attendees will still go through tons of waste,” shares Shawna McKinley, Events Sustainability Specialist.

Some examples of common waste streams include:

Disposable coffee cups, including lids
Food packaging and serviceware
Food waste
Vinyl banners
Name badges
Audio-visual waste (lightbulbs, batteries, cables, etc.)
Carpet
Plastics that can’t be recycled by municipal programs

…To name only a few.

However, the carbon footprint generated by your event goes beyond waste alone.

McKinley suggests becoming aware of the carbon footprint generated by event-specific activities. This includes air travel and ground transportation, the energy used by hotels and venues, catering, and more.

The graphic below shows the typical breakdown contributing to an event’s carbon footprint (based on a mid-sized national association conference tradeshow with around 5,000 attendees):

Keeping these distributions in mind as you plan your event will open up opportunities to select greener alternatives at every stage.

GET THE FREE GUIDE: Learn the pieces that you need to run your multi-session event online!

Make eco-conscious swaps for common waste types

Now that you understand where events typically create waste, you can choose greener alternatives.

For example, if you know that most event waste is sent to landfills, any of the following strategies could enable you to divert event items to more sustainable alternatives:

Limit usage of paper signage, brochures, and other print materials

Unfortunately, attendees often toss these into the garbage—even if designated areas for recycling exist. Event planning software with a mobile event app or electronic files can communicate much of the same information without the need for paper!

Work with environmentally-conscious vendors

If these options aren’t made obvious by your vendors, ask. They may have eco-friendly solutions available, even if they don’t publicize them.

Choose refreshment options that require fewer waste products

For instance, a coffee bar with porcelain mugs will reduce waste from disposable cups, while a buffet-style meal will produce less trash than providing boxed meals for attendees. Even better, encourage your attendees to bring their own reusable mugs and utensils!

Identify options to reduce food waste

The more accurate your attendee counts are throughout the registration process, the closer you can get your order to what you’ll actually use. In addition, ask about options to donate unused food or to send it off for composting, rather than throwing it away.

Even implementing one of the above strategies can help your event significantly reduce waste.

Plan your event with sustainability in mind from the jump

Planning is your superpower. Use your skills and abilities to make greener choices from the get-go!

Here are examples of choices you can make in order to reduce your event’s greenhouse gas emissions:

Choose a central location that minimizes travel requirements

Holding your event in a major conference center rather than a more rural or suburban market ensures that more attendees and team members will be able to take direct flights instead of carbon-generating multi-leg journeys.

Book venues that can be easily accessed by public transportation

Ideally, this will minimize the number of attendees who will need to drive or take cabs to the event. You could even introduce a ride-sharing program to reduce ground transportation.

Look for hotels with sustainability programs in place

Hyatt, for example, has a program called World of Care that outlines their commitment to “advancing environmental action so that destinations around the world are vibrant for our colleagues, guests, customers, owners, investors, and communities.”

Insist on LED light bulbs when possible

Not only do these bulbs use less energy to produce the same output, but they should also help the venue save on its utility costs.

Look for vendors whose meals and refreshments are locally sourced

Transporting out-of-season produce or foods that aren’t available locally results in the production of greenhouse gasses.

Serving organic, vegetarian meals helps as well, as both commercial farming practices and the production of commercial meat are associated with higher emissions.

Eliminate print materials as much as possible

Forgoing print materials saves both print costs and the costs of the labor required to design, print, distribute, and clean up print materials.

Look for traditionally paper-heavy processes like event registration to identify opportunities to reduce. For instance, event registration platforms allow you and your team to streamline registration without the burden of collecting and storing paper forms.

Get as close as possible to your actual attendee counts

This won’t just reduce the waste associated with overbuying. It’ll also reduce the costs these overages add to your event bills.

Not only will many of these steps help make your events as green as possible, but they can also help keep your costs low.

LEARN MORE: Hit your registration targets by following 4 easy steps to boost your event registration by 20%

Take your event online

There’s no doubt about it: attendee travel is a huge source of emissions for events. To mitigate this, why not consider taking all or part of your event online?

Virtual and hybrid events—including conferences, seminars, press conferences, and more—continue to rise in popularity. Not only do they make your event accessible to attendees in different locations, but they also significantly reduce the carbon footprint of your event. Going online can also help lower costs related to venue, catering, security, labor, and more.

You could also consider running more virtual events throughout the year to complement your annual conference. This is a great way to keep attendees engaged and eager for the next event!

LEARN MORE: Looking for industry-leading virtual event software? Look no further than Attendease by Tripleseat.

Educate attendees on sustainable best practices

Of course, you can take all the steps in the world to make your event as environmentally friendly as possible. But if your attendees aren’t aware of their role in making the event sustainable, they may unintentionally hinder your efforts.

That’s why running a green event requires a commitment to attendee education. The following tips may help:

Make it measurable. Depending on the capabilities of your venue and vendors, see if it’s possible to quantify your green initiatives. For example, if you’re able to measure the amount of waste generated at the end of the event, set a goal that’s lower than a previous, similarly-sized event by a specific margin.

Be vocal about your goals. People love to feel like they’re part of a project or movement! So don’t be shy about announcing your efforts to make your event as sustainable as possible. If you’re trying to reduce your waste by 50% compared to another event, share this number as a part of your event announcements and encourage every person to do their part.

Integrate reminders into your event app. Use built-in notifications or an event FAQ to share your goal as well as the specific activities attendees can take to be a part of the effort.

If you’re trying to reduce waste, it may help to limit the number of places where trash can be disposed of versus recycled. You could also staff a team member near the receptacles to help remind guests of your goals (paper signage doing the same would be undesirable for obvious reasons!).

Manage sustainability shortfalls (be realistic)

It’s worth keeping in mind that there are no waste-free or perfectly sustainable events.

Attendees will toss items into the trash and forget to turn off the lights in meeting rooms, not out of ill intent but out of habit or because sustainability is the last thing on their minds in hectic event environments.

Trying to make environmental sustainability fun can help.

Vicky Martín of ACCIONA Producciones y Diseño shares one example of having done so at a past event with the Active Sustainability website: “For the ‘Día de la Música’ festival, we encouraged the audience to exchange used plastic cups for books and magazines under the slogan ‘turn your waste into culture.’”

She also writes about using, at a different event, “an iPad application which enabled guests to know about their carbon footprint or C02 emitted according to the means of transport they had used to go to the event.”

If all else fails, you can estimate the total carbon emissions produced by your event and purchase carbon offset credits through companies like Terrapass.

Not only will doing so help to mitigate the damage associated with conferences and other events, it may allow you to advertise your event as being “carbon neutral.”

Start Small for Sustainability with Event Management Software

You may not be able to make all of these changes at once. But every step made in the direction of environmental-friendliness matters!

Take a look at your upcoming events, and see which swaps will be the easiest to make. Talk to your venue and vendors about the green options they offer. As your sustainability program grows in sophistication, add more and more of these practices until you’ve created a truly green event.

Looking to reduce cumbersome, paper-heavy processes? Considering moving part or all of your next event online? Attendease by Tripleseat has you covered.

Support in-person, online, and hybrid events with one platform
Seamless online registration for all event types
Secure payments with Stripe, Microsoft, Apple, and/or Google Pay
Template and automate key workflows to make multi-event management easier

We uncomplicate even your most complicated events—and help make them a bit greener in the process. Want to learn how? Book a demo today.

Learn More!

Post-Event Survey Questions to Ask (+ Email Best Practices)

Event Management News

May 9, 2024

Some may think an event is over when the guests leave the venue, and the doors are shut, but event managers still do much more work. Part of the work is to gauge attendees’ satisfaction and measure the event’s success. Today, we will share some best practices to help you create effective event surveys to measure this success.

What Are Post-Event Surveys?

Post-event surveys are used to gather feedback and insights after the conclusion of an event. These surveys typically consist of questionnaires designed to capture the opinions and experiences of participants, attendees, and stakeholders involved in the event.

Why Are Post-Event Surveys Important?

The information collected through post-event surveys serves several important purposes:

Evaluation of Event Success

Post-event surveys help organizers assess the overall success of the event. Participants’ feedback provides insights into what aspects of the event went well and what areas need improvement.

Understanding Participant Satisfaction

Surveys gauge participant satisfaction by capturing opinions on various elements such as content, speakers, venue, logistics, and overall experience. They serve as a means to engage with attendees and show that their opinions and experiences are valued.

Marketing Insights

Post-event surveys can provide valuable insights for marketing purposes. Understanding what aspects resonated with participants allows organizers to highlight these elements in future promotional efforts.

Improving Future Events

Feedback obtained from post-event surveys guides organizers in making necessary adjustments and improvements for future events. It allows them to tailor upcoming events based on the preferences and expectations of the audience.

Best Practices for Post-Event Survey Emails

Email Timing

When discussing follow-up survey emails, the earlier is always the better. You should never wait more than 24 hours after an event to send a follow-up email. That’s because people will remember their experience better and share their feelings more accurately right after the experience happened. For this reason, it’s important that you have your follow-up emails ready to be sent and preferably scheduled to be sent automatically. Having an email marketing tool will be key to providing you with scheduling capabilities so your emails are sent automatically at the time of your choice.

Audience Segmentation

By segmenting your audience, you are able to ask questions that relate to each group in addition to being able to isolate the results for each of the audiences surveyed. For example, instead of getting a total average satisfaction rating among the entire audience, you can analyze how each segment felt about the event. Some audiences you may consider general attendees, VIP attendees, speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, volunteers, etc.

Email Message

When sending a feedback survey, don’t forget to add a personal message to the email with the survey link to thank them and share a personal note of your perspective of the event. This will keep things human and genuine so you can build a long-lasting relationship with each person. The message may vary according to each audience you are messaging.

Survey Design

Regarding feedback surveys, the design would translate into both email design and the survey webpage. Your current email marketing tool should take care of the email part, but keeping that consistency across the survey page is also important. Tools like EventUp Planner can help you keep that design consistent while allowing you to manage all these moving parts straight from one unique platform.

Best Practices for Post-Event Survey Questions

Most post-event surveys will focus on what worked (so you can repeat) and what didn’t (so you can improve next time). In order to gather the information and analyze it, you should consider what types of questions to ask.

Types of Post-Event Survey Questions

Objective questions are easier to measure. For example, rating the overall event experience from 1 to 10 or answering yes/ no questions. These types of questions will be easier to translate into a chart so you can better visualize and understand the data.

On the other hand, open-ended questions may be helpful at times. If someone rated the event as “poor,” you will want them to share what made them feel that way. So, it is necessary to balance objective and open-ended questions to get enough data to analyze and decide for your next event.

The best practice is always first to capture your Net Promoter Score (NPS) question. That’s because the person responding to your survey can share their overall sentiment after the event without being influenced by other questions you may ask throughout the survey. Other survey questions may induce a rating that is worse than what you would normally get simply because you reminded them of less-than-stellar experiences that were not top of mind to start with.

Download Our Event Reporting Guidebook

25 Example Post-Event Survey Questions

NPS Example Questions:

1. How would you rate the event from 1 to 5 (or 1 to 10)?

This question provides a quantitative measure of overall satisfaction to help organizers gauge the success of the event and identify areas for improvement based on the average rating.

2. How likely would you recommend this event to a friend/ colleague?

This question offers a quantitative measure of overall satisfaction and provides insights into the potential for repeat attendance or referrals for future events.

Objective Example Questions:

Here are some examples where you can use a dropdown or a checkbox style of question and add a field for “other” if the attendee wants to add more information. This way, you can capture both qualitative and quantitative data:

3. How did you learn about the event?

Understanding the channels through which attendees discover events is essential for refining marketing strategies and allocating resources effectively to reach target audiences.

4. Why did you decide to attend this event?

This question uncovers attendees’ motivations, informing organizers about the aspects of the event that resonate most with the audience and guiding future programming and content decisions to align with these interests.

5. What were your favorite sessions/ speakers/ exhibitors?

Understanding attendees’ favorite sessions, speakers, and exhibitors provides insight into what aspects of the event resonated most with them, enabling organizers to tailor future events to better meet attendees’ interests and preferences.

6. How would you rate the venue, food, attractions, etc.

Rating the venue, food, attractions, and other amenities helps organizers gauge overall satisfaction with the event experience and identify areas of improvement for future events.

7. Did this event meet your expectations?

Assessing whether the event met attendees’ expectations offers valuable feedback on the event’s effectiveness and helps refine event planning and execution to better align with attendee expectations in the future.

8. If you have no barriers, would you like to attend this event again next year?

Exploring attendees’ willingness to attend the event again offers a gauge of overall satisfaction and informs organizers about the event’s potential for long-term success and attendee loyalty.

Open-Ended Example Questions:

Lastly, you should always have at least one open-ended question to gather additional feedback:

9. Was there anything you disliked about the event?

This open-ended question allows attendees to express concerns or grievances not captured by structured questions, providing valuable qualitative feedback for addressing specific pain points and improving future event experiences.

10. Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experience?

By inviting attendees to share additional thoughts, organizers can uncover unexpected insights, positive experiences, or suggestions for innovation that may not have been covered by predefined survey questions.

Ideal Post-Event Survey Length

One thing to remember is that the longer the survey, the lower the conversion rates will be. Aim to have no more than ten questions for better conversion rates. Multiple choice, radio buttons, and other objective questions demand less effort and can win higher conversion rates than asking too many open-ended questions. So try only to ask what you absolutely need. You can also offer incentives to motivate people to provide feedback, such as a discount code for the next event, a cash/ gift card incentive, or a draw-entry to win a prize.

Social Media Listening for Post-Event Feedback

Another way to gauge event performance, especially for larger events, is to listen to what people share on social media. Social listening tools will be able to create reports to filter messages using your event hashtag, talking about you and your event, and, more importantly, analyzing the overall sentiment during and after the event. That means analyzing the words used in relation to the event and defining them as positive or negative experiences. You can also analyze a word cloud to learn the most used words around your event.

Gauging Event Success with Post-Event Surveys & EventUp Planner

You got the answers to your survey; now what? Tools like EventUp Planner (formerly Attendease) can help you visualize your survey data so that you can analyze results and make better decisions for your next event. In addition to creating unique surveys for all your audience segments, you can also compare survey results from different events to determine which events perform better and why. We live in a data-driven world, so we must listen before taking action to thrive. Follow-up and surveys are where it starts.

Do you need a tool to help you with email marketing, survey capabilities, and data analysis? Check out what EventUp Planner can do for you.

Let’s Talk

4 Easy Ways to Boost Event Registration by 20%

Event Management News

May 7, 2024

You’ve spent countless hours and resources planning an amazing event. But what happens if no one shows up?

Event registration can make or break the success of your event. A seamless event registration process leads to more attendees and higher revenues. A leaky process, on the other hand, leads to missed opportunities and diminishing ROI.

Let’s examine an often overlooked but important source of attendees for your event: incomplete registrants AKA the people who stalled midway through your event registration process.

The Baymard Institute found that abandoned cart rates averaged almost 70%, sometimes going as high as 84%. Event planners, that’s a lot of lost registrants for your event!

Fortunately, with thoughtful retargeting and a series of strategic emails, you can boost attendance to your event—gaining back as many as 20% or more of your event registrations that stalled along the way! Event registration platforms can help you get there. Keep reading to learn how.

Let’s Do The Math on Incomplete Event Attendees

Let’s say your event ticket is $100. If 400 people begin the registration process, but only 70% of them follow through, that leaves 30% incomplete—which translates to $12,000 in missed revenue. Yikes!

If you successfully revived even 20% of those prospective event attendees (24 people), that would be $2,400 with a little effort on your part. You just have to know what you’re looking for.

If you don’t believe this could have a massive impact on your event strategy, plug in the numbers from your own registration statistics, and see what that missing revenue would be—you might be surprised!

You’ll likely find that the potential revenue is well worth the minimal time and effort it takes to set up a retargeting campaign. Event registration software can streamline the process.

GET THE FREE CHECKLIST: Take the guesswork out of designing an event registration strategy that drives your customers to buy!

4 Strategies to Boost Event Registration

Ready to increase your event registration numbers with minimal time and effort? Explore the following 4 strategies:

Run an automated email campaign

When it comes to event registration, event analytics are your friend.

First, navigate to the registration module of your event management software. Once there, you should be able to compile a comprehensive report that will identify all of the partially completed or incomplete registration forms.

Next, you can set up a series of automated yet personalized emails to go out to these people who have abandoned their registration process, regardless of where in the funnel they dropped out.

Did you know that registration abandonment emails typically have much higher open and click-to-open rates than other marketing emails? That’s because prospective attendees are already familiar with the event and just need a little reminder or encouragement to complete their registration form.

By creating an email campaign filled with engaging event content, keynote speaker highlights, or even a discount for your prospective attendees (more on this below), you can increase your event registration revenues considerably.

Catch registration problems early in the game

Sometimes people drop out of the registration process due to design flaws in your event registration forms. Other times prospective attendees may have questions about some of the required information, or concerns about data security. Or they may have simply become distracted before they were able to complete your form.

You can set up an automated email to go out to these potential registrants as early as the same day as a registration form is abandoned. The email should be a gentle reminder that they have not completed the registration process, along with an invitation to contact you for technical assistance if necessary.

If you think it might apply, you can also include some reassuring language that directs prospective attendees to your event’s legal policy or terms and conditions. The tone should be friendly and lighthearted. Here are some great examples of effective emails to inspire you.

Send a reminder about an upcoming registration milestone

If your event invitation contains an early bird discount, you can use the upcoming deadline as a reason to send another email reminder to your incomplete or abandoned registrants.

Make sure you send it at least a few days, if not a week before the deadline, in order to give them adequate time to take advantage of the opportunity. Sending another one the day before the deadline is not taboo, either.

Remember, these are people who have already shown interest in your event. They just need a little nudge.

When all else fails, offer a special deal

You’ve already sent out as many as two emails, and no response yet.

We don’t recommend sending more than three well spaced follow-ups in total, as too many may be considered aggressive. On your last attempt, make it count—your incomplete or abandoned registrants might need a small incentive in order to convert.

After your traditional milestone deadlines have passed, try offering a special discount or incentive, either at or just under the early bird rate. Clearly communicate that this offer is for those prospective attendees who have initiated the registration process earlier on.

With event registration software like EventUp Planner by Tripleseat, you can even provide unique promo codes to manage this process.

Sometimes price is the main barrier for prospective attendees not having completed their online registration the first time around. Offering a slight savings may be just the motivation to help them make up their minds and commit, once and for all.

LEARN MORE: Not sure how to effectively price tickets to your next event? We’ve got you covered with our in-depth ticketing guide.

Boost Your Registration with a Powerful Event Registration Platform

Event registration can make or break your next event. Fortunately, you don’t have to master this process alone.

EventUp Planner by Tripleseat provides powerful event registration and ticketing software that makes it easy to customize a seamless experience for your attendees.

It’s never been easier to:

Manage pricing categories, promo codes, and group passes
Create unique registration forms for specific pass types
Save registration forms to use again in future meetings and events
Schedule your fully branded registration experience to go live at any time you’re ready

For more information on how we can help you boost your event registration, get in touch with us to book a demo.

Simplify the Complexity of Managing Your Meetings and Events with a Powerful Suite of Tools

Make your attendees gather with ease. From small to large and complex events – plan and manage all of your events in one flexible platform – EventUp Planner.

Learn More!

How to Promote Events with Social Media in 2024

Event Management News

May 3, 2024

In order to increase awareness of your events and boost ticket sales, it’s important to invest time and effort into social media marketing. But with so many social media channels available—and new ones appearing all the time—how should you take advantage of each of them while being relevant?

Today we’ll cover how to use Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok to promote your events in the new year.

By posting on these platforms and making sure your followers are made aware of your event updates, it becomes easier to engage with them and potentially convert them into attendees. 👍

It all begins with understanding your target audience. Knowing who you’re speaking to helps you select the right social platforms to launch your promotional campaigns.

For example, if your event targets Gen Z, then Instagram and TikTok are great channels for promoting your event.

Here are some easy tips on how to get started with social media marketing to promote your events!

How to Promote an Event on Facebook

Not sure where to begin with promoting your event on socials? Facebook is your safest bet.

That’s because Facebook has over 2 billion daily active users as of 2024, making it the largest social media platform in the world. This means the platform has users spanning most demographics—including your target audience.

When it comes to making the most of Facebook, it’s important to share event updates, communicate with followers, and create pages that are dedicated to posting about your event on a consistent basis.You can even target your messaging to specific groups by investing in Facebook’s paid promotion tools, including Meta ads.

Here’s what you need to know about creating a Facebook event:

Use high-quality, eye-catching photos and videos that capture the essence of your event so potential attendees get a sense of what to expect. Visual content is crucial for grabbing people’s attention in the feed.
Clearly list the date, time, location, and any important details like pricing or dress code in the description, which eliminates potential confusion. Choose the correct event category so Facebook’s algorithm promotes your event to the right audience.
Craft an engaging description that builds excitement and gives potential attendees a clear understanding of what to expect.
Prominently feature a link to purchase tickets or register, and reiterate this call-to-action throughout the event page.
A verified page lends credibility and ensures your event shows up in relevant search results.
Cross-promote with any event sponsors, speakers, venues, or influencers involved by co-hosting the Facebook event and cross-posting. Teaming up with influential brands and personalities helps with generating buzz on Facebook, increasing the chances of registrations!
Boost successful promotional posts as ads to reach wider, specific target audiences outside your current following. Incentivize attendees to share the event by offering giveaways or promoting user-generated content (UGC). This is a great way to create buzz.
Keep your event top-of-mind by sharing updates, behind-the-scenes looks, and engaging your audience frequently on the event page.
Review data like reach, engagement, ticket purchases, etc. to understand what’s resonating and refine your strategy.

Nearly 82% of all daily Facebook users log into the platform using mobile devices. To maximize promotional efforts, designing ad campaigns for mobile devices needs to be a priority. Use “tap-able” images and copy.

Make selling tickets directly on Facebook easier with EventUp Planner! Our platform allows event planners to use global fields to track and assess information across multiple events.

How to Promote an Event on X (formerly Twitter)

X (formerly Twitter) is still a powerful platform for event promotion in 2024 leading into 2025. That’s because it thrives on real-time updates and has an extremely engaged user base.

The platform excels at sparking conversations, sharing exclusive BTS content, and providing a direct line of communication with attendees before, during, and after events. Perfect for savvy event planners looking to increase awareness of their events program!

X is the best place to be short, succinct, and innovative.

Here are the fundamental steps behind a successful promotional campaign on X:

Create a posting schedule or designate a team member to consistently post event updates and engage with the community.
Create a catchy, branded hashtag that’s easy to remember and incorporates your event name or theme. Find all the potential attendees listed to attend your event and encourage them to post your hashtag!
Research and follow relevant accounts in your event’s industry, then engage with their posts to increase visibility.
Provide value through your posts — share insider tips, behind-the-scenes glimpses, speaker spotlights, statistics, or other compelling content related to your event or industry. Informing is much more likely to gain attention, followers, and engagement as opposed to mere promoting.
Craft posts that spark curiosity, excitement, or encourage discussion by asking questions and soliciting opinions.
Use a custom URL shortener like Rebrandly or Bitly to brand and track your short links. In doing this, you can analyze click activity on links you’re sharing on X helping you to quickly spot which images, copy variations, or CTAs are most effective.
Be responsive — like, comment, and repost user-generated content showcasing your event to foster a sense of community. Even a like/repost can convince users to follow and engage!
Incorporate visuals whenever possible — posts with images, GIFs, or videos tend to get higher engagement.
Partner with influencers or individuals with large followings in your space to expand your reach through guest posting opportunities.
Schedule a consistent cadence of posts to maintain an active presence. Hourly posts are very important; avid users refresh their timeline every 1-2 hours on average. Make sure your post is on their timeline every time they open their account.
Leverage location tagging and local trends to boost visibility among users in the event’s geographic area.

Backing your promo campaign with a solid event marketing tool like EventUp Planner will boost instant engagement and ticket sales directly on X. Our platform allows event planners to create a customized platform to monitor and control all aspects of your events — pass types, promo codes, prices, etc.

How to Promote an Event on Instagram

Instagram is a visual-first platform that’s perfectly suited for creating buzz around upcoming events. Plus, 200 million users visit business profiles every day on Instagram, making it extremely lucrative.

With Reels, event organizers can share engaging, short-form video teasers and behind-the-scenes glimpses to captivate their audience. Plus, in-app shopping features make it easy to sell tickets directly within the app!

IG Stories provide an avenue for sharing real-time updates and countdown content leading up to the event date. The ability to go live, use A/R filters, and incorporate music also opens up creative avenues for promotion.

Here’s how to get started with successful event promotion on Instagram:

Use a recognizable profile picture, compelling bio, and include clear calls-to-action like “Link in bio” to drive to your event website or ticketing page.
Create branded, event-specific hashtags and research relevant hashtags in your industry to maximize discoverability.
Collaborate with influencers, sponsors, speakers, and vendors by having them post about your event to extend your reach.
Maintain a consistent cadence of posts highlighting different aspects of your event like speakers, venues, schedules, etc. This helps your followers get used to seeing your page name on their feed on a regular basis (hello, algorithm!)
Use high-quality photos and videos that capture the energy and experience you’re promising attendees.
Leverage Stories to share behind-the-scenes glimpses, countdowns, live moments, and incorporate interactive stickers and effects.
Include direct links to your event registration in your bio and use Instagram’s product tagging for easy ticket purchases.
– Offer free tickets or swag to amplify awareness and incentivize engagement like comments, shares, etc.
– Build excitement by broadcasting live Q&As, sneak peeks, and sharing real-time event highlights.
– Repost attendee photos and stories using your official hashtag to showcase your event’s community.
– Add location stickers and geotag posts to increase local visibility and awareness for your event’s venue(s).

Alongside Instagram’s analytics, use a platform that provides a single source of truth for your event data. With EventUp Planner, you’re able to create an unlimited amount of campaign prototypes, promo codes, content, price levels, etc. — all tracked through an intuitive visual analytics dashboard.

How to Promote an Event on TikTok

Promoting your event to a younger audience? You need to add TikTok to your list.

The platform is known for entertaining, bite-sized video content—which particularly resonates with Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

Features like viral trends, branded effects, creator partnerships, and easy shareability mean you can showcase your event’s energy in an authentic, engaging way. Plus, the TikTok algorithm excels at amplifying content tailored to niche interests.

Oh, and did we mention that the platform has over 1 billion monthly active users, with 150 million in the United States alone? TikTok’s influence is undeniable.

Here are some best practices for using TikTok to effectively promote events in 2024:

Optimize your event’s TikTok account. Use a recognizable profile picture, compelling bio description, branded hashtags, and link to your event website/ticketing page.
Research trending sounds, effects, and challenges. Pay attention to what’s resonating on the platform and get creative by putting your event’s spin on popular trends.
Partner with influential TikTokers in your event’s niche/industry to expand reach through sponsored content, Cross-promotions, or having them attend as correspondents.
Embrace the platform’s authentic, behind-the-scenes style. Share glimpses into event preparation, speaker previews, venue walkthroughs, etc. in an unpolished way that resonates with TikTok’s audiences.
Run contests, ask questions, enable stitching/duetting to encourage user-generated content featuring your event.
– Experiment with TikTok ads and boosted posts. Use targeting parameters to put your best-performing videos in front of precise audience segments.
– Offer giveaways, discounts, or exclusive access for users who create videos promoting your event using branded hashtags.
– Build excitement by broadcasting live, exclusive footage, and letting attendees take over your stream.
– Create TikTok-friendly short video teasers. Edit together compelling highlights set to music/sounds tailored for TikTok’s watch experience.
– Seek out cross-promotional opportunities by having other relevant creators make guest videos on your account.
– Regularly repurpose, highlight, and engage with the best attendee videos showcasing your event.
– Review data on your videos’ viewcounts, engagement, audio traits, etc. to continuously refine your approach.

While TikTok was once an emerging platform where minimal ad spend could generate big returns, its immense popularity in 2024 means event marketers need to allocate more substantial budgets. However, TikTok still offers great opportunities to reach and engage massive audiences in authentic, creative ways.

The potential to go viral organically still exists, but TikTok’s feed algorithms now prioritize videos from accounts willing to invest in promotion. Pairing compelling, trend-tailored creative with advertising dollars is key to cutting through the noise and reaching TikTok’s billions of highly-engaged users worldwide.

Make Event Promotion Easier with Leading Event Planning Software

Social media marketing for event planning is a great way to boost your ticket sales and draw attention to your event. Tapping into the massive user bases on platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok can seriously help you take your event to the next level.

Need professional help with planning your 2025 events? Check out EventUp Planner.

Offering all the key features needed to stay relevant this year and beyond, EventUp Planner gives you an intuitive, seamlessly branded and a convenient digital experience that goes hand-in-hand with the in-person experience.

4 Proven Event Formats for Launching Your Next Pharmaceutical Product

Event Management News

April 25, 2024

This is an exciting time for your pharmaceutical company.

You’ve spent countless hours doing R&D, passed all regulatory requirements, and you’re finally ready to bring a revolutionary new product to market. But whether this is your first launch or your fiftieth one, you know this phase is only the beginning.

An engaging introduction to the market is crucial for your new product’s success. So, how do you effectively engage your audience, increase brand awareness and trust, and ensure your product starts off on the right foot—all at the same time?

You plan a successful product launch event.

In this guide, we’ll explore the ins and outs of planning a memorable pharmaceutical event to launch your next product. Let’s dive in!

What Is Experiential Marketing, and Why Does It Matter?

Whether you’ve gawked at the lineups outside an Apple Store the week after an Apple Event or stumbled upon a unique pop-up during your lunch break, one thing is for certain: experiential marketing is more popular and more effective than ever!

Experiential marketing—sometimes also referred to as event marketing—consists of direct, one-on-one engagement with the consumer in a branded offline or hybrid experience.

At its core, experiential marketing encourages interactivity, engages the consumer’s senses, and helps to promote a positive, humanized brand impression that can be seen, heard, and felt.

Pharmaceutical companies can learn from the success of companies like Apple who use event marketing to generate serious buzz and sell out their new products.

GET THE HANDBOOK: Not sure how to choose the right event management platform for your needs? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

Key Considerations for Pharmaceutical Event Planning

The first thing you should consider is the type of event that would ultimately make your launch more successful. The key is to create something that your audience will find engaging, informative, and memorable.

For instance, if your audience is healthcare professionals, you might consider a webinar series to launch your product and provide training. Or if you’re looking to connect with the general public, a virtual press conference with medical experts might work best.

In general, pharmaceutical launch events typically involve a combination of educational presentations, panel discussions with experts, and media engagement to generate awareness and interest in the new product.

4 Top Formats for Your Next Pharmaceutical Event

Next, let’s discuss the best event formats for your next pharma product launch:

1. Keynote Event

Delivering a keynote address at a major conference is a powerful way to launch your latest pharmaceutical product. This format allows you to showcase your latest innovation on a prominent stage, often in front of thousands of healthcare professionals, researchers, and industry leaders!

A compelling keynote typically features a charismatic speaker—such as a renowned expert or company executive—who delivers an engaging presentation that highlights the groundbreaking science, clinical benefits, and patient impact of the new product.

For example, at the 2017 American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) Annual Meeting, Novartis delivered a keynote address to launch their new psoriasis treatment, Cosentyx. The presentation featured impressive efficacy data and patient testimonials, generating buzz and excitement among dermatologists in attendance.

Keynote addresses are ideal for hybrid events, as many are live streamed to reach a global audience. So if you’re looking for a way to elevate your brand and inspire a highly targeted audience of healthcare professionals, a keynote with a strong media focus is ideal.

LEARN MORE: 35 Creative Product Launch Event Ideas to Try This Year

2. Industry Trade Shows and Conferences

Trade shows and conferences are the perfect place to connect with healthcare professionals, industry experts, and potential partners or investors. These events provide an ideal platform to showcase the latest drugs, therapies, and medical devices your company has to offer.

For example, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting—the world’s largest oncology conference—is a prime venue for pharmaceutical companies to present clinical trial results and introduce new cancer therapies.

Consider setting up exhibits, delivering presentations, and holding press conferences to generate interest in your product among the medical community and media.

Plus, by engaging with healthcare professionals and industry leaders at these events, your company can effectively raise awareness about your new product and establish valuable connections within the industry. It’s a win-win!

3. Virtual Press Conference

When launching a new pharmaceutical product, consider hosting a virtual press conference. Doing so allows you to effectively reach a wide audience of journalists, healthcare professionals, and industry stakeholders.

A well-organized virtual press conference typically includes presentations by company executives, medical experts, and key opinion leaders, followed by a Q&A session.

For example, Biogen held a virtual press conference in June 2020 to announce the FDA approval of their Alzheimer’s drug, Aducanumab. The event included presentations by company executives, medical experts, and patient advocates, discussing the drug’s potential to slow cognitive decline in early-stage Alzheimer’s patients.

Ultimately, virtual press conferences allow your company to deliver a compelling narrative around your new product, generate media coverage, and build excitement among relevant stakeholders—all without breaking the bank.

LEARN MORE: Healthcare Events: Ideas for Every Size and Type

4. Webinar Series

Webinars are another powerful format to launch your latest pharmaceutical product. This format allows you to deliver in-depth, informative content that showcases the science behind your new product while providing valuable insights to medical experts.

A well-structured webinar series typically consists of multiple sessions spread over a period of time, each focusing on a specific aspect of the new product, such as its mechanism of action, clinical trial results, and patient management strategies.

Gilead Sciences, for instance, successfully launched its hepatitis C medication, Harvoni, in 2014 through a series of educational webinars. These events highlighted the drug’s high efficacy and convenient single-pill regimen, providing healthcare professionals with the knowledge and confidence to prescribe the new treatment.

By leveraging event management software, a webinar series can help your company educate and engage with healthcare professionals and ultimately drive the adoption of your new product.

LEARN MORE: Best Practices for Hosting a Webinar Event

Uncomplicate Your Pharma Event Planning with Event Management Software

Launching a new pharmaceutical product requires careful planning and execution.

By choosing the right event format—whether it’s a keynote address, trade show exhibit, virtual press conference, or webinar series—you can showcase your product’s unique features, share compelling clinical data, and establish your company as a leader in the field.

Need a helping hand with your pharmaceutical event planning? Attendease provides a powerful suite of tools to manage all of your events—large and small—in one place.

Learn more today!

Learn More!

How to Boost Engagement During Healthcare Meetings and Events

Event Trends

April 23, 2024

We get it—internal meetings and events aren’t usually healthcare professionals’ favorite workplace activities. 90% of employees feel that meetings are “costly” and “unproductive.” But there are many scenarios where these internal meetings are inevitable, especially when it comes to running a well-oiled healthcare organization.

To get around this, focus on making your healthcare events as engaging and worthwhile as possible. You can use the same planning strategies you use to prepare for external presentations—such as virtual events or conference speeches—to boost attendee engagement.

From captivating your audience with a good story to creating on-brand and visually appealing slides for your presentations, we’ve compiled this list of tried and true strategies for making healthcare events something employees actually forward to rather than dread.

In all cases, thorough planning is your friend. Event software for healthcare can make the process easier. Let’s dive in!

7 Strategies to Enhance Events for Healthcare Professionals

Boost attendee participation at your next healthcare event by implementing these seven proven strategies:

1. Set Clear Objectives for all Presentations

It’s crucial that every presentation starts with a detailed plan and clear goal. You need a justifiable reason why you’re taking the time to pull team members from their duties and bring them together for a meeting—especially in a busy healthcare environment.

When setting goals for the presentation, be clear about the purpose of the meeting, the intended result of the meeting, and any next actions you’d like attendees to take.

For example, perhaps you’re planning a hospital fundraiser that you’d like employees to spread the word about. If so, the objective for your presentation would be to educate everyone on the upcoming fundraiser so they can share details with friends, family, and the local community.

The intended result would be to create excitement about the fundraiser, including the intended use(s) for the raised funds, such as a new mental health wing or essential pediatric initiatives.

At the end of your presentation, you’ll want to share the next steps you’d like attendees to take. That might look like a request for participation—like pledging to do a fitness challenge to raise funds—or a request to raise awareness, such as sharing about the event on social media.

GET THE FREE HANDBOOK: Master The Art Of Choosing The Right Event Management Platform

2. Start With a Story

One powerful tool to captivate your listeners is through storytelling. You can transform dry facts and figures into something memorable and impactful by simply telling a story before diving into the meat of your presentation.

For healthcare professionals, storytelling can effectively communicate complex ideas and evoke an emotional response. For instance, sharing a patient’s journey from diagnosis to recovery can illustrate the importance of early intervention and personalized care.

But stories don’t always have to be serious! Sharing a humorous anecdote about a light-hearted workplace mishap—such as that one time you discovered a patient walking down the hallway completely naked—will resonate with colleagues while also illustrating the issue or topic you’re going to cover (e.g., the necessity of hospital gowns).

In summary, storytelling allows you to humanize your content, making it relatable and understandable to your audience. Your colleagues will begin to look forward to your presentations, and your stories will become a topic of conversation at future events.

3. Make it Brief to Ensure the Best Use of Everyone’s Time

Putting a multi-hour time block on your people’s calendars to cover a handful of topics probably isn’t the best use of everyone’s time. Here are some tips for keeping healthcare meetings concise in order to respect everyone’s time:

Send materials in advance. Distribute any necessary documents or information prior to the meeting, allowing attendees to review and come prepared.

Minimize distractions. Encourage participants to silence their devices and avoid unnecessary interruptions during the meeting (this is extra important for busy healthcare professionals!).

Assign a timekeeper. Designate someone to monitor the time and keep the meeting on track. If conversations begin to veer off-topic, this person will gently guide the discussion back to the agenda.

Allocate specific time slots for each agenda item. Assign realistic time for each topic and adhere to these limits.

Encourage concise communication. Ask participants to be brief and to the point when sharing their thoughts or updates.

Summarize action items and decisions. Conclude the meeting by briefly restating any key takeaways, action items, and decisions made.

Follow up with a concise summary email. After the meeting, send a brief email recapping the main points and next steps to ensure everyone is on the same page.

But don’t sweat if you don’t cover everything. You can always provide additional information and answer follow-up questions later on or simply reserve them for the next meeting.

By implementing some of these strategies, you and your colleagues can make the most of your valuable time and collaborate more effectively to deliver exceptional patient care.

4. Present Data Clearly and Concisely

If you’re presenting data during your presentation, focus on the most important metrics and let attendees explore the fine details on their own time afterward. Also, be sure to present the data in an easily digestible format. Infographics or charts make it easier to see data points in context.

For example, if you’re trying to convince your healthcare organization to upgrade its event management software, you might present data about how your organization can increase its ROI by using a better tool. You could show charts that demonstrate the negative impacts of your current event software (or lack thereof), and the potential cost savings and efficiency boost that a new solution could offer.

Or, you might be analyzing event data to identify opportunities to engage your audience better at your next event. You can assess the main takeaways—such as attendance rates, attendee feedback surveys, and social media engagement analytics—to develop a new marketing plan with your team for your next event.

5. Brand Your Meeting Materials to Your Organization

All internal communications should be uniformly branded, such as your presentation materials, training resources, or emails. This keeps your materials organized and easy to read. Plus, it’s easier to maintain external branding standards when your team is already used to keeping internal communications cohesive!

Here are some ideas for how to brand your meeting materials:

Incorporate your healthcare organization’s logo and color scheme. Consistently use your company’s logo and official color palette across all meeting materials, including presentations, handouts, and agendas, to reinforce brand recognition and create a cohesive look.

Use branded templates. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Develop a set of branded templates for presentations, documents, and other materials that feature your organization’s logo, colors, and fonts. This ensures a professional and consistent appearance across all internal communications.

Include your healthcare organization’s mission or tagline. Integrate your company’s mission statement, vision, or tagline into your meeting materials to remind attendees of the organization’s purpose and values.

Feature employee photos and success stories. Incorporate photos of your team members and highlight employee achievements or success stories in your presentations and handouts to create a sense of pride and belonging within your organization.

Use branded visual elements. Develop a library of branded visual elements that align with your organization’s style guide, such as icons, illustrations, or infographics. Use these elements consistently throughout your meeting materials to enhance visual interest and reinforce your brand identity.

These strategies will help you create a strong, cohesive brand identity that resonates throughout your organization, fostering a sense of unity in all your healthcare meetings and events.

LEARN MORE: How to Design the Perfect Event Registration Landing Page

6. Encourage Attendee Feedback

Gathering employees for a meeting offers an effective opportunity to collect feedback and new ideas.

Let’s say you’re a Corporate Responsibility Consultant hosting an event with a hospital and some of its key stakeholders to identify strategic initiatives for the upcoming year. You might ask attendees to brainstorm event ideas to support the program. Or, you might ask for feedback on how their corporate volunteer program is going.

Allowing attendees to speak up during your meeting and make their voices heard can make your presentation that much more engaging and productive.

7. Provide Relevant Materials After the Meeting

After your presentation, send attendees any data charts, slideshows, or supplemental materials. If the meeting was virtual, you might want to record it to let any employees who couldn’t attend watch the presentation after the fact.

It’s also important to answer any follow-up questions employees may have after the meeting. Creating open lines of communication and providing transparency about any decisions that impact employees is key to promoting a positive work environment.

Healthcare professionals should leave your internal meetings and events clear on the next steps they should take or how the information presented will impact them going forward.

Streamline Healthcare Event Planning with EventUp Planner (formerly Attendease)

When it comes to healthcare meetings and events, time is valuable. More time in meetings means less time caring for patients.

Spend everyone’s time wisely by preparing a constructive agenda that includes plenty of time for healthcare professionals to speak up and engage with the topic. You’ll offer your colleagues a better experience, and everyone will work more productively toward achieving your organization’s goals! Put your healthcare events on autopilot with EventUp Planner. Our all-in-one platform provides helpful tools to uncomplicate your events through drag-and-drop functionality, built-in templates, automation, and intuitive data reporting. Book a demo today!

Simplify the Complexity of Managing Your Meetings and Events with a Powerful Suite of Tools

Make your attendees gather with ease. From small to large and complex events – plan and manage all of your events in one flexible platform – EventUp Planner.

Learn More!

6 Killer Revenue-Boosting Ideas for Your Next Fundraising Event

Event Management News

April 16, 2024

Fundraising events are mutually beneficial for all. Not only do these events provide nonprofits with funds to power their mission, but they also offer a meaningful experience for donors, allowing you to steward stronger relationships.

One of the best events to raise serious funds and engage donors is a charity auction. A charity auction is a high-energy, flexible event that is sure to excite any audience, whether it’s taking place online, in-person, or as a hybrid combination of both.

To help your nonprofit bring this engaging fundraising event idea to life, we’ll explore six innovative ideas to increase your ROI. But first, let’s uncover the fundamentals of charity auctions.

What is a Charity Auction?

Auctions involve guests bidding on fun, unique, or luxurious items, and the highest bidder takes home the prize. There are three types of auctions:

Live auctions involve an auctioneer announcing items and accepting bids from the audience, whose members either state their bids aloud or raise a paddle.
Silent auctions traditionally involve showcasing auction packages around a venue and guests submitting paper bids. However, paper bids can easily get disorganized, making it much more difficult for your team to effectively stay on top of incoming bids. Instead, use mobile bidding software so your participants can submit bids right from their phones. We’ll discuss this feature in more detail in the next section!
Online auctions are hosted through online auction software and allow guests to bid from wherever they are, whenever they’re able to.

Auctions involve an extensive planning process, including item procurement 9-12 months in advance, pre-event ticketing and registration, and logistics like booking the venue, catering, and technical equipment. This is why it’s essential to take ample time to prepare and get your team ready to host a show-stopping event!

6 Ideas to Accelerate Auction Fundraising

Auctions have the potential to be highly lucrative, but to make the most of your fundraising efforts, you need the right strategies. Let’s jump into six proven ways you can accelerate your ROI and meet and exceed your goals.

1. Invest in the Right Auction Software

Technology is a powerful force to increase efficiency and fundraising power for any event. OneCause recommends investing in auction software with intuitive features like:

Event management: Look for fundraising software that empowers your team to easily manage every step of the event planning process, including facilitating contactless check-in and check-out, generating custom ticket packages, sending segmented communications to guests, and more.
Mobile bidding: With the right mobile bidding tools, participants can submit bids right from their phones, set maximum bids, and receive outbid alerts to bring them right back into the action.
Item management: Easily track the status of your item procurement efforts, bundle items into packages, and create solicitation letters to send to donors and corporate sponsors.
Gamification: Feature leadership scoreboards, fundraising thermometers, and engagement drivers like live chat for remote events to keep participants tapped into your event.
Data tracking: Use software that will automatically generate real-time data reports so you always have a full picture of how your fundraising strategy is performing.

Keep in mind that the right fundraising tool won’t just help you run auctions but will also make it simple to host fundraisers of all types, including walkathons, peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns, and more. Invest in an all-in-one fundraising software to get the most bang for your buck.

GET THE FREE GUIDE: Leverage Effective Ticket Pricing Strategies & Sell Out Your Events

2. Incorporate Social Fundraising

Social fundraising draws on the power of your supporter’s social networks to raise donations for your cause. The most common examples are:

Peer-to-peer: Create a peer-to-peer fundraising page associated with your event and allow supporters to create their own personal fundraising pages alongside it. Donors can share their pages and solicit gifts from their networks, expanding the reach of your nonprofit. Make sure to work with comprehensive peer-to-peer fundraising tools to make the process as easy as possible for your participants.
Giving days: Conduct a time-intensive, hyper-condensed online fundraising campaign, aiming to reach a specific goal within 24 hours. Think #GivingTuesday, but planned specifically to boost energy and awareness leading up to your auction. These campaigns thrive on social media, where donors can help spread the word.
Challenges: Participants complete some sort of challenge (ex, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge) and donate to your organization after doing so. They share a video of the challenge with their networks and challenge a few friends to continue the trend.

Begin social fundraising in advance of your auction to help raise awareness and build excitement. At the event, announce how much was raised before your event even started to thank participants and show the power of social fundraising in action.

3. Tap Ambassadors to Support Your Fundraising Plan

Ambassador fundraising leverages peer-to-peer fundraising by tasking ambassadors (your most loyal and involved supporters) to raise funds before, during, and after your auction.

There are three steps to successful ambassador fundraising:

Select ambassadors. Look to your board members, volunteers, people with social media clout, your event planning committee, and any honored guests coming to your event, like community leaders, to help.
Define your program. You’ll need to outline how you will leverage ambassadors (ex, social media promotion), what your ambassadors’ goals will be (ex, selling the most tickets), and how you will onboard ambassadors.
Motivate ambassadors. Use an ambassador leaderboard and incentives (such as special prizes) to motivate supporters.

Ambassadors can prove to be a valuable way to spread the word about your event, increasing attendance and total revenue. Make sure to properly prepare your ambassadors with any information they may need about the event, check in with them regularly, and thank them for their efforts.

GET THE FREE CHECKLIST: How To Boost Event Registration

4. Create an Event Microsite

Create an event microsite to provide guests with the information they need to participate and engage their networks. Include information like:

A short introduction to your nonprofit.
Explain how you’re using the proceeds to benefit your cause.
Rules for bidding and instructions on using your mobile bidding software.
Event schedule.

Then, include information about the items available for bidding:

Name and number of each item.
Specific but brief description of the item.
Market value, starting bid amount, and minimum raise amount.
High-quality photos.

Make sure that you generate an auction item list that aligns with your supporters’ interests and fits their budgets. This way, you can garner the most amount of bids possible.

LEARN MORE: 5 Tips to Streamline Web Communication for Healthcare Events

To spread the word, have members of your staff and volunteers share the link to your microsite widely on multiple channels, such as:

The different types of platforms nonprofits can use for multichannel marketing, repeated below

Social media
Your website
Email
Text messaging
Direct mail
Print ads
Flyers
Radio or TV slot

Taking a multichannel approach can help you increase touchpoints with supporters and keep your organization’s event top of mind. Pair your content with strong calls to action to register or donate early so you can spark engagement.

5. Add Raffles to Spike Giving.

Raffles are a quick and easy addition to any fundraising event, including auctions. Simply sell raffle tickets throughout the event and draw a winner at the end of the night!

To add this to your event, make sure that your raffle is:

Desirable for your guests. Take a deep dive into past raffle sales and auction item interest to determine what your audience historically has been willing to bid on.
Worthwhile to raffle instead of auction. Ensure you’re raffling off an item that you’ll cover the price of, and raise additional revenue by selling raffle tickets alone.
Not competing with your auction items. Remember, your raffle is supplementing your auction. You don’t want to raffle off something that’s going to draw the attention away from your main attraction!

Consider selling raffle tickets ahead of your event. You’ll give guests a taste of what your event will entail (like a preview of an auction item) and build interest.

Keep in mind that raffles are technically considered gambling by the IRS. Check the laws of your state to determine if you’re able to host a raffle at all or if there are specific guidelines around how to conduct your own in-person or online raffle.

6. Gamify Your Event

Using gamification is a powerful tool to add competition, fun, and fundraising momentum to any event. Leverage the following gamification features to amp up giving:

Bid scoreboard: Assign numbers to guests so they can bid with their numerical identity rather than their names. Project a leaderboard of who is winning each item and by how much for some friendly competition.
Fundraising thermometer: Project a fundraising thermometer displaying how much has been raised by the event in tickets, bids, and donations so far. Set a realistic stretch goal number and challenge guests to reach it by the end of the night!
Prizes: Offer incentives to ramp up giving for the night to the top bidders, such as free branded merchandise, a lunch with your organization’s leaders, or discounted tickets to your next event.
Memory-style tile game: Make use of a memory-style tile game that displays sponsor logos. This will spark friendly competition between attendees while boosting your supporters’ engagement with your sponsors.

Gamification encourages guests to raise more and enhances their attendee experience. Check-in with your event guests regularly to assess their engagement and add in more gamification tactics as needed.

Implement Six Revenue-Boosting Strategies To Amplify Your Charity Auction

Through this guide, we’ve explored six revenue-boosting strategies to amplify your charity auction. Mix and match ideas or add your own unique twist on them to meet your audience’s preferences. By analyzing your donor data, you can make more informed decisions on how to organize events that will inspire generosity and resonate with donors.

LEARN MORE: Healthcare Events: Ideas for Every Size and Type

Make Fundraising Easier with Event Software

Incorporating charity auctions into your hospital fundraisers can be a game-changer for boosting revenue and engaging your supporters.

To streamline the planning and execution of your fundraising events, consider using an event management software like EventUp Planner! EventUp Planner (formerly Attendease) offers a variety of tools that will simplify your task list and reduce headaches.

With features like branded event websites, simplified registration and ticketing, marketing automation, and robust reporting, our tools can help you save time, reduce stress, and create more successful fundraising events that drive your mission forward. Book a demo to learn more today!

Learn More!

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Manage your entire event portfolio and drive down the cost per event with each additional event you execute. EventUp Planner has flat-fee pricing, with no surprises.

For all meeting and event types
For all event sizes
For all functional teams
For all use cases

Book a call with our team to learn how EventUp Planner fits your needs.

Corporate Event Themes: 45+ to Choose From

Event Trends

April 9, 2024

Planning a corporate event? The secret ingredient to an engaging and memorable event is…drumroll please…the theme! A creative theme brings cohesion to all the moving parts of your event — from décor, activities, catering, and more. It gets attendees excited and invested in the experience you’re creating.

But coming up with a corporate event theme idea is easier said than done. You want something aligned with your brand that also feels fresh and fun. That’s why we’ve put together this list of 45+ corporate event theme ideas, from classic and elegant to quirky and one-of-a-kind.

Plus, with our easy-to-use event coordination software, you can bring any of these corporate event themes to life seamlessly — without losing your sanity! Tools like customizable registration forms, email automation, and reporting dashboards will give you the power to execute a polished, on-theme event your attendees will love.

Let’s dive in!

Why Do Corporate Events Need a Theme?

A creative theme is more than just décor — it enhances every aspect of your corporate event for greater engagement and impact.

Themes foster camaraderie and excitement among attendees around a shared experience. They make the event more memorable and unique compared to everyday work life.

Themes also enable better messaging by tying all aspects of the event back to central ideas…So whether you want to motivate employees, unveil a new product, or reinforce company values, an impactful theme brings it all together into an immersive experience!

Bottom line: themes make corporate events more enjoyable, meaningful, and share-worthy for attendees.

What Are Creative Themes for Corporate Events?

When choosing a theme, it’s important to make sure it aligns with your company’s brand identity, values, and culture.

For instance, outdoor retailer REI goes for nature-inspired themes like “Reach the Peak” for its employee summits. SaaS company HubSpot is known for its inbound marketing expertise, so they aptly chose “Inbound” as the theme for their annual conference.

Get creative, but ensure the theme reinforces what your company stands for. If your brand is serious, avoid going too quirky. The theme should feel authentic to attendees while getting them excited about your event programming. Once you’ve landed on the perfect theme choice, a tool like EventUp Planner can help with the rest of your pre and post event coordination, from agenda building and schedule management to email surveys after the event is over.

Casual Themes
Sophisticated Themes
Tech and Innovation Themes
Destination and Travel Themes
Artistic and Creative Themes
Interactive and Hands-On Themes
Outdoor Themes
Fun and Unique Themes

45+ Memorable Themes for Your Next Corporate Event

Now let’s look at 45+ memorable theme ideas for your next corporate event. From classic and sophisticated to playful and adventurous, you’re sure to find inspiration to make your next company gathering engaging and on-brand.

Casual Corporate Event Themes

From happy hours to comedy nights, here are 6 casual corporate event themes guaranteed to engage your team and attendees.

Happy Hour

A happy hour theme is perfect for casual mingling amongst attendees! Kick back with cocktails and appetizers in a lounge-style setting. Use dimmed lighting, high tables, and bar décor to set the mood. Upbeat background music, games like pool and darts, and free drink tickets encourage employees to unwind and bond away from their desks.

Food Truck Alley

Bring a fun, lighthearted vibe to your next event with food trucks. Set up a variety of cult favorite trucks and carts outside your office or event venue. Use picnic tables, string lights, and music to create an energetic experience. Give employees food truck coupons or tickets to sample different offerings. The outdoor, casual setting provides a nice change of pace.

Movie Night

A movie night is classic for a reason. Set up a projection screen, dim the lights, and arrange plush, theater-style seating with popcorn machines and snack stations. Choose a film that ties to your company’s values or culture. Surprise employees with movie trivia or costume contests before the show for some extra fun.

Comedy Night

A comedy night adds laughter and levity. Host stand-up comics or an improv troupe at your office, or set up the event at a local comedy club. Welcome guests with upbeat music and silly décor like cardboard cutouts of laughing emojis — perfect for a photo booth. Provide small tables for drinks and snacks to give it a casual, intimate vibe where employees can let loose and enjoy themselves.

Catered Brunch

A catered brunch is a fresh take on your typical office party. Bring in breakfast stations that include coffee, fruit, and pastries and hot meals like made-to-order omelets. Play lighthearted, upbeat music as attendees mingle and fuel up. Consider fun additions like a waffle station, juice bar, or pop-up instax photo booth to make it an engaging morning event.

Gameday

Get everyone excited for the big game! Decorate the space with sports banners, jerseys, and foam fingers. Set up “stadium style” seating around screens broadcasting the game. Set up a sports bar and serve classic game day snacks like wings, nachos, and sliders. Consider running a sports trivia game or office betting pool to get everyone involved.

LEARN MORE: 14 New Trends in the Event Planning Industry for 2024

Sophisticated Corporate Event Themes

From sophisticated soirées to playful gatherings, here are 6 unique corporate event themes to delight and engage your attendees.

Black-Tie Elegance

Black tie elegance brings sophistication and class to your next event. Enforce a formal dress code and host the event at an upscale hotel or venue. Use crystal chandeliers, candles, and fresh floral arrangements. Greet guests with classical music or jazz. Offer elevated hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. The refined atmosphere encourages mingling and networking in style.

Vintage Glamor

Transport guests back in time with a vintage glamor theme. Choose a historical venue and encourage period-appropriate attire like flapper dresses or tuxedos. Use antique furniture, candles, and floral arrangements as décor. Play jazz music and serve appetizers like deviled eggs and caviar. The unique setting, combined with nostalgic music and food, will make for an unforgettable vintage-inspired event.

Movie Magic

Make attendees feel like stars with a Hollywood movie magic theme! Roll out a red carpet entrance lined with paparazzi photo ops. Name tables after famous films and use movie poster décor throughout the space. Set up a photo booth with props like director chairs and clapboards. Play songs from popular movie soundtracks to complete the A-list event vibe.

Masquerade Ball

A masquerade ball brings intrigue and elegance. Have attendees bring their own masks or provide unique masks for them to wear. Use candelabras, sheer drapes, and floral arrangements to create an air of mystery. Serve hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. Hire a live string quartet or pianist to set the mood. The masked disguises and upscale atmosphere will create a night to remember!

Casino Night

Encourage fun and friendly competition with a casino night theme. Set up poker, roulette, craps, and blackjack tables staffed with dealers so attendees can try their hand at gambling. Use playing cards and casino chip decorations to set the Las Vegas mood. Consider providing funny money or prizes for top gamblers.

Prom Night

A prom night theme provides lighthearted, nostalgic fun. Decorations can include balloon arches, streamers, and photo backdrops. Encourage attendees to don formalwear and corsages. Set up mock prom photoshoots, vote for prom royalty, and hold a dance-off competition. The high school spirit fosters camaraderie and reminds attendees not to take themselves too seriously.

LEARN MORE: Building a Winning Corporate Events Program: 7 Critical Success Factors

Tech and Innovation Corporate Event Themes

From immersive VR experiences to robotics competitions, here are 5 unique technology-focused corporate event themes to engage your tech-savvy attendees.

Interactive VR/AR Experiences

Get immersive and interactive with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)! Set up stations where attendees can interact with simulations, 3D modeling, or virtual facility tours. The hands-on activities showcase your company’s tech capabilities and allow guests to engage with your products in memorable and exciting new formats.

Hackathon

Encourage camaraderie and outside-the-box thinking with a hackathon. Split attendees into teams and pose a technological challenge or problem to solve. Provide working spaces, whiteboards, and any necessary hardware. Teams can work together over the course of the event to develop prototypes or solutions and then present their demos to judges.

Coding Competition

Looking to engage your dev team? A coding competition lets developers showcase their skills in a fun, creative way! Set up workstations and provide internet access, code editors, and any necessary software. Present attendees with coding challenges relevant to your company and give them a set time limit to complete them. Judges can review submissions and recognize top performers.

Robotics Competition

Highlight innovation in action with a robotics competition. Provide teams with robotics kits, hardware, and space to work. Challenge them to program their robots to complete specific tasks like navigating obstacles or sorting objects within a time limit. Set up a demo area for teams to showcase their creations. Your people will appreciate a hands-on break from the daily routine.

Product Showcase

Highlights your latest offerings in an interactive format with a product showcase. Set up display booths, demo stations, and lounge areas to feature new software and innovations. Let attendees view live demos and interact with products first-hand. Consider breakout sessions for deeper dives into real-world applications. Hands-on experiences drive meaningful engagement and bring products to life!

LEARN MORE: How to Host a Webinar and Harness its Power

Destination and Travel Corporate Event Themes

From tropical vibes to snowy après ski, here are 5 unique destination-inspired corporate event themes to transport attendees around the world.

Global Bash

Celebrate your company’s global reach and diversity with an around-the-world theme. Decorate event spaces with flags, maps, and cultural symbols from different countries. Offer food and drink stations featuring cuisines from across your international offices. Consider live entertainment like multicultural music and dance performances. The globally-inspired details will make attendees feel connected and proud to be part of a worldwide organization.

Hawaiian Luau or Beach Party

A Hawaiian luau or beach party provides a fun, tropical escape from the norm. Decorate the venue with leis, tiki torches, palm trees, and beach balls to set the island mood. Serve picnic foods like burgers, tropical cocktails, and fresh fruits like pineapple or mango. Play reggae or steel drum music as attendees arrive. Consider hula dance lessons or limbo contests for some interactive fun!

Mardi Gras Madness

Bring the spirit of Mardi Gras to your next event with a New Orleans-inspired theme. Decorate with beads, feathered masks, and purple, green, and gold accents. Book a jazz band or brass ensemble to provide upbeat entertainment. Offer appetizers and buffet stations with Cajun and Creole cuisine. The festive colors, sounds, and flavors will get attendees in the mood to celebrate!

Nautical Adventure

Bring the excitement of the high seas to your next event with a nautical adventure theme. Decorate the venue with maritime accents like anchors, life preservers, sailor hats, and ship wheels. Serve seafood appetizers like shrimp cocktails and oyster shooters. Offer nautical cocktail options like mai tais and Captain’s punch. Consider interactive elements like a silly photo booth with sailor costumes.

Après Ski

Bring the warmth and fun of an après ski lodge to your next event. Decorate with vintage skis, electric fireplaces, and cozy furniture like fur throws and leather armchairs. Serve hot beverages like mulled wine and hot cocoa. Offer hearty appetizers like raclette, fondue, and chili. The cozy, wintery ambiance will have attendees feeling like they’re unwinding after a long day on the slopes!

LEARN MORE: 7 Event KPIs That Will Prove You Put on a Great Event

Artistic and Creative Corporate Event Themes

From refined art gallery nights to active dance classes, here are 6 creative corporate event themes to spark creativity and make lasting memories.

Art Gallery Night

Bring culture and sophistication to your next event with an art gallery theme. Transform the venue by hanging artwork, sculptures, or photos from local artists around the space. Offer light bites and wine as attendees browse the makeshift gallery. Consider live entertainment, like a jazz singer or classical guitarist, to enhance the ambiance. Even better? Rent out event space at an art gallery for an authentic experience!

Wine and Cheese Night

A wine and cheese night is an elegant yet approachable event idea. Set up tasting stations featuring a variety of wines paired with cheeses, grapes, and jellies. Set the mood with relaxing background music. Supply cheese boards and decorative stemware. To add even more fun, encourage attendees to build their own charcuterie board.

Painting Night

Encourage your attendees to express their creativity after a long workday. Hire an instructor to guide attendees step-by-step through recreating a featured painting. Set up easels, canvases, paints, brushes, and smocks at each seat. Play mellow music and serve refreshments like wine, finger foods, or desserts. The experience encourages guests to mingle and unwind — plus everyone gets to take something home!

Local Artist Showcase

Support makers in your community while providing unique items for employees to purchase with a local artist showcase. Transform event spaces into a market setting, with local artisans, designers, and craftspeople setting up display booths or tables. Consider aligning the timing with holidays for seasonal gift shopping. The maker’s market facilitates meaningful connections and lets attendees bring home one-of-a-kind goods — the perfect memento from your event.

Dance Class

Spice up your next event by bringing in dance instructors to teach a fun, active class! Set up an open space with a suitable floor surface and sound system. Encourage coworkers to pair up and learn choreography together. Consider a short performance to showcase everyone’s new moves. High-energy dance classes like salsa, hip-hop, and ballroom build relationships while getting attendees on their feet.

Interactive Art Installations

Interactive art makes attendees part of the experience. Partner with a local museum, art gallery, or artist collective to curate hands-on exhibits, sculptures, light displays, or projections that invite guest participation. Provide snacks and drinks for a casual, creative atmosphere. Unique installations spark conversation, imagination, and inspiration in memorable ways.

LEARN MORE: Strategies to Increase Event Sponsorship: How to Get More Sponsors

Interactive and Hands-On Corporate Event Themes

From friendly competition to thrilling, high-energy activities, here are 7 hands-on corporate event themes that encourage teamwork, communication, and good times.

Board Games Night

Encourage friendly competition and collaboration with a board games night. Set up stations with classic games like Connect Four, Chess, and Scrabble and trendy new options. Consider a giant version of a classic like Giant Jenga. Provide snacks and drinks to enjoy while playing. Rotate stations or hold a tournament to involve all attendees.

Cooking Competition

Get attendees to showcase their culinary skills in a fun face-off. Split into teams and provide cooking stations with standard ingredients. Give each team a theme or recipe to improvise. Have judges score dishes on taste, presentation, and creativity. Offer prizes for the winners. Co-workers will bond over the collaborative format — plus everyone gets a tasty treat for their efforts!

Escape Room

Challenge your team to work together under pressure with an escape room. Transform your venue into an immersive puzzle environment with clues leading to a final goal or “escape”. Split attendees into small groups and have them race to solve cryptic brain teasers, codes, and hands-on challenges within a set time limit. The thrilling, interactive experience facilitates bonding, communication, and teamwork!

Mini-Golf Tournament

Encourage friendly competition at your next event with a mini golf tournament. Set up a compact putting green with obstacles and holes. Split into teams and rotate through holes, tracking individual and team scores. Consider lively music and fun outfits or costumes. At the end, award prizes for the top scorer or winning team.

Obstacle Course

An obstacle course gets attendees active in an exciting team challenge. Set up a series of physical obstacles like climbing walls, rope swings, balance beams, and monkey bars around your venue. Time teams as they complete the course together. Obstacle courses encourage camaraderie, communication, and fitness through friendly, interactive competition.

Fitness Challenge

Get attendees moving between breakout sessions! Organize activities like relay races, tug-of-war, push-up or plank contests, and more! Split into teams and track scores. Offer prizes for top performers. Active group challenges build morale, laughs, and relationships while getting everyone moving.

Murder Mystery Party

A murder mystery party theme blends intrigue, suspense, and laughter. Assign characters and provide costumes. Set up the “crime scene,” then have attendees mingle, collecting clues and questioning each other about their “alibis.” See if they can solve the mystery by the end of the night.

LEARN MORE: Why A Sustained Events Program Outweighs One Big Event

Outdoor Corporate Event Themes

Here are 6 refreshing outdoor corporate event themes perfect for embracing the warmer seasons.

Spring or Summer BBQ

A spring or summer BBQ is a festive, seasonal event theme. Host outdoors and decorate with flower centerpieces. Fire up the grill for classic BBQ fare like burgers, hot dogs, and grilled veggies. Consider games like bocci, croquet, or giant Jenga. The warm weather BBQ atmosphere fosters relaxed connections and fun among coworkers.

Garden Party

Host an outdoor garden party and decorate the space with fresh floral arrangements, string lights, and paper lanterns for soft, romantic lighting. Include live acoustic music or a string quartet. Offer guests chilled beverages and small bites like tea sandwiches, scones, or mini desserts. The beautiful garden setting provides a relaxed backdrop for mingling and connecting with nature.

Treasure Hunt

Get attendees to channel their inner explorer with a treasure hunt! Create teams and provide maps, riddles, or clues to find hidden objects or locations outside. The hunt could involve taking photos at landmarks, solving puzzles, collecting items, or geocaching. Reward winners with prizes. The interactive outdoor activity provides a refreshing change of scenery while encouraging teamwork and problem-solving.

Gardening Demonstration

A gardening demonstration connects your team to nature in an engaging way. Partner with a local nursery or master gardener to teach planting, composting, floral arranging, or other gardening skills. Provide supplies for attendees to get their hands dirty in container gardens, herb planting, or designing seed bombs. This theme is great for stress relief while teaching sustainable horticulture skills that can also be applied at home.

Annual Company Picnic

An annual company picnic provides a relaxed, festive atmosphere for employees and families to connect. Host at a local park and organize outdoor activities like volleyball, sack races, or egg tosses. Supply classic picnic fare like fried chicken, potato salad, watermelon, and pasta salads.

Outdoor Concert

Host an outdoor concert to create a festive atmosphere. Book local musicians or bands to perform live music suited to your attendees’ tastes — rock, pop, jazz, or acoustic. Set up an outdoor stage and sound equipment. You could also organize food trucks and seating areas like picnic blankets or lawn chairs.

LEARN MORE: Top 10 Event Planning Resources For Meeting & Event Planners

Fun and Unique Corporate Event Themes

Here are 5 unique corporate event themes that will create an extraordinary and unforgettable experience.

Carnival or Circus Extravaganza

Bring lively entertainment and amusement park-style fun to your next event! Decorate with bright colors, tents, balloons, and lights to set the stage. Organize carnival games and activities like ring toss, photo booths, face painting, and psychic readings. Consider booking circus performers, magicians, acrobats, or mimes to wow the crowd with whimsical surprises.

Superhero Soirée

Let attendees embrace their inner superhero at a fandom-themed soirée. Provide comic book decor and superhero props for photo ops. Organize heroic games like an obstacle course, strength contests, or scavenger hunts. Serve themed food and drinks — like “Hulk” green smoothies and “Kryptonite” cocktails. The superhero event theme delivers a heroic experience for fans to geek out and unleash their alter egos!

Decades Parties

Turn back time with a blast-from-the-past decades party! Select a fun era like the 1950s or disco-filled 1970s. Decorate with time-specific props and play hit tunes from that decade. Encourage period-appropriate attire like poodle skirts, bell bottoms, or leisure suits. Add entertainers like Elvis impersonators or Motown bands. The nostalgic party provides a playful atmosphere as attendees reminisce about the good ol’ days.

Annual Company Awards Show

Make your employees feel like stars with an annual company awards ceremony. Create awards categories to recognize achievements and company milestones. Decorate with a red carpet, stage, and Hollywood-inspired props. Ask employees to deliver acceptance speeches. The touch of showbiz and recognition creates an uplifting experience that honors your hardworking team.

Intergalactic Gala

Blast off to an out-of-this-world event with a space-themed gathering. Partner with a science center or observatory, and decorate the space with planets, rockets, and stars. Organize astronomy talks, spacesuit photo booths, or space trivia. This theme provides interactive education and galactic fun that’s out of this world!

LEARN MORE: How to Create an Event Website + Best Event Website Examples

Aligning Your Theme with the Event’s Purpose

The most important thing to remember when planning a corporate event is that the theme should align with the purpose behind bringing people together. Is the goal team building, celebrating a company milestone, making an announcement, or networking? Match the theme to the event’s objectives to support your goals.

For example, outdoor group activities create opportunities for team bonding, while a sophisticated gala is great for celebrating company-wide achievements.

Carefully choosing themes that align with the purpose of your event creates more meaningful experiences for attendees — while also achieving company goals. Keep the event’s purpose top of mind when selecting a creative theme to ensure it delivers the desired impact.

Up-Level Your Next Event with Event Organization Software

Choosing a compelling theme for your next corporate event is key to shaping a memorable experience. Whether your goal is team building, making a big announcement, or celebrating a milestone, align the theme to the purpose for maximum impact.

Looking for support with execution? EventUp Planner is one of the leading names in the field of all-in-one event management software! It provides event managers and planners with an intuitive, seamless, and convenient digital experience that goes hand-in-hand with live, virtual, and hybrid events.

Contact us before your next corporate event to learn more about how EventUp Planner’s complete event management software and automation platform can help you with your planning.

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7 Stress-Free Ways to Scale Your Event Program

Event Management

April 4, 2024

Whether you’re planning your first large-scale event or looking to grow an already successful program, scaling up can seem…daunting. More events mean more moving parts, more staff, and more potential for stress. But with some strategic planning and the right tools, growth doesn’t have to equal headaches!

In this post, we’ll explore how to thoughtfully and sustainably expand your events. We can’t promise zero stress, but implementing even a few of these strategies will set you up for growth that’s as smooth and painless as possible.

So whether you’re planning corporate events, conferences, fundraisers, or beyond, you’ll find practical takeaways to level up your program.

Read on for 7 stress-free ways to scale up your events, step by step.

7 Ways to Scale Your Events Without Stress

Scaling your events program doesn’t have to be painful. These tried-and-true strategies will help you maximize time, energy, and resources so you can scale without creating more work for yourself.

Establish clear goals and objectives

The first step to stress-free scaling is defining clear goals and objectives. What specifically do you want to accomplish by growing your events? More attendees? Higher revenue? Greater brand awareness?

Whatever your goals, quantify them with actionable metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress. Relevant KPIs may include the number of registrants, revenue and profit margins, social media impressions and engagement, email open/click rates, and surveys of attendee satisfaction.

With measurable goals and KPIs in place, you can methodically scale up your events framework to hit these targets. Think through the resources, staff, budget, venue size, marketing channels, etc., you’ll need at each stage of growth.

Having this scalable blueprint based on your established objectives lets you grow intentionally and strategically instead of blindly getting bigger for bigger’s sake. It keeps stress manageable even as your events ramp up.

Leverage event management software

One of the best tools for scaling events without extra stress is a feature-rich event management software like EventUp Planner by Tripleseat — the event planner’s Swiss army knife! From easy automation to life-saving templates and cloning capabilities, event management tools allow you to handle more events and attendees without creating more work.

Larger events mean more registration and ticketing headaches, right? Not necessarily! Event management solutions like Attendease can help you seamlessly register 2,000 people as easily as 200.

The best event management software also provides powerful promotion features so you can grow your reach and registrations without manually sending every email.

Also, look for software with hybrid event capabilities built-in, so you can alternate virtual and in-person without starting from scratch each time. With a robust event management platform that grows with you, it’s easy to scale up or alternate event formats as needed.

Build a strong events team

Scaling up successfully requires a skilled events team you can count on.

Take time to thoughtfully build your team and establish clear roles and responsibilities. Identify areas like registration, marketing, logistics, on-site staffing, and breakout sessions that need dedicated support. Consider blending in-house event planners who can handle big-picture strategy with on-site staff like volunteers who’ll manage tactical execution.

When working across departments, set expectations for who owns what early on. Resist trying to control everything yourself—learn to delegate. If your team needs extra support or training, consider investing in team development, like project management training or customer service workshops. Set up regular check-ins to keep everyone aligned.

With the right team structure and training in place, you can confidently hand off responsibilities, freeing yourself up to focus on big-picture growth and strategy. The stronger your team, the more your event program can scale without compromising quality or adding stress!

Streamline event logistics and operations

When your events program is growing, it’s crucial to streamline processes so more volume doesn’t mean more headaches.

Look for ways to develop efficient workflows, like using event planning templates to keep timelines, checklists, and document formats consistent across events. Centralize communication channels, like an email listserv to send announcements to your full staff and a dedicated Slack or WhatsApp channel for event managers to coordinate logistics in real-time.

Automate repetitive tasks that don’t require a personal touch, like using your event management software to automatically send confirmation emails, reminders about unpaid invoices, and notification updates leading up to the event. For example, you can set up automation to send event reminders, prompt feedback requests, and personalized thank-you notes to attendees.

The less manual work per registration, email, invoice, etc., the more you can scale without more effort. With operations optimized, you’ll be equipped to take on more events and attendees seamlessly.

Embrace scalable venues and formats

The right venues and formats will make running larger or concurrent events much smoother.

For scalable spaces, look for convention centers, hotels, and multi-room venues that can accommodate your event at different growth stages. Or consider more adaptable options like outdoor spaces, warehouses, and creative office spaces. You can even embrace a “hub and spoke” model with smaller satellite venues feeding into a main event hub.

Need help finding perfect event spaces in different cities? EventUp by Tripleseat has you covered.

When it comes to formats, take advantage of hybrid options to extend your reach, like livestreaming keynotes or offering select sessions virtually.

Other modular setups add flexibility, like ballrooms with movable walls or sets with interchangeable staging. With the ability to reshape sessions, spaces, and seating as needed, you can adapt seamlessly as each event scales up.

Whether planning simultaneous gatherings or a single growing conference, smart venues and formats prevent you from being locked into one rigid model.

Engage in continuous feedback and improvement

To scale successfully, continually gather and act on attendee feedback. Collect input regularly via post-event surveys, roundtable discussions, and moderated Q&As.

Look for patterns in what participants enjoyed most and areas for improvement. Without this real-time feedback loop, you risk magnifying the same problems as your events expand.

Analyze comments to identify opportunities to fine-tune and evolve. For example, you may hear that breakout sessions are too basic for your now expanded audience. Or that a popular speaker doesn’t resonate the same way virtually vs. in person. Use these insights to modify programming, activities, and logistics to better meet your attendees’ shifting needs.

The more events you run, the more feedback you can gather to implement meaningful improvements across the board. Keeping a finger on the pulse of what engages participants will ensure quality keeps pace with quantity.

Budget strategically

Scaling successfully means budgeting smartly. When allocating funds across a growing events program, you’ll want to prioritize based on need. Your largest conferences warrant bigger budgets than smaller meetups. Identify your primary revenue-driving events and invest accordingly to elevate the experience.

Leverage solutions that maximize dollars. Negotiate ongoing partnerships with venues and vendors to secure bulk discounts. Or consider seeking out sponsorship opportunities. Take advantage of early bird pricing on consumables purchased far in advance. Find creative ways like volunteer staffing to control labor costs.

Looking ahead, factor scalability into your company’s long-term financial projections. Outline different budget scenarios for conservative, moderate, or aggressive event growth. This allows leadership to see the monetary impact of scaling and helps secure buy-in for your strategy.

With strategic budgeting, you can fund your vision for growth while keeping costs sustainable. The more prepared you are, the easier it is to scale smoothly when investment is needed.

Event Management Software Helps You Scale With Ease

Implementing even a few of these strategies will set you on the path to smooth, stress-free event growth.

With EventUp Planner by Tripleseat as your end-to-end event management software, you’ll have the right technology and support to scale your program efficiently. Think more attendees, more buzz, and more revenue — without necessarily more work.
Ready to elevate your corporate events program? Book a demo today!

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Does Your Appearance Matter When Hosting a Webinar?

Event Management

April 2, 2024

In recent years, professional communication has undergone a significant transformation. According to industry reports, virtual events have increased almost 1000% since the beginning of 2020, and webinars have become a powerful platform for knowledge sharing and networking. Previously, we’ve discussed tips on how to host your first webinar, covering steps such as developing content and spreading the word about your event. Today, we’ll be taking a look at whether your appearance matters as a host, sharing tips on dressing to establish credibility and shaping brand perception. After all, webinars are a highly visual medium, and how hosts present themselves can make all the difference in capturing and retaining audience attention.

Why your appearance matters when hosting a webinar

A Forbes article written by sociologist Tracy Brower highlights a study from the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, which found that when you dress in a more professional way, you tend to perceive yourself as having more power. It also helps you identify more with the people around you and enhances your ability to think more effectively. Meanwhile, other studies have shown that formally dressed individuals are rated as more competent because professional attire communicates maturity, capability, and success.

For virtual events that rely almost entirely on appearance rather than small talk and warm handshakes, presenting a polished look establishes your professionalism and credibility right from the outset. Every aspect of your image – from your clothing and grooming to your posture and facial expressions – sends subtle messages to your audience, shaping their perception of you and your message. So, here are some tips for dressing professionally for hosting a webinar.

Dress for your industry

Your choice of clothing sets the tone for the webinar and communicates professionalism to your audience. Consider the nature of the webinar and your role as the host. If it’s a formal business event, opt for similarly formal attire such as a tailored suit for men or a polished pantsuit for women. Casual or semi-formal webinars call for business casual attire. For this, select a collared shirt like the Men’s Performance Button Polo by Kenneth Cole or the Gloria Vanderbilt Women’s Amanda Button-Front Shirt paired with dress pants or a skirt. No matter what, avoid loud, distracting prints and overly casual clothing such as t-shirts or jeans, as they may give the impression of unprofessionalism.

Wear minimal accessories

Making a fashion statement with accessories can be great in any non-professional scenarioIn any non-professional scenario, making a fashion statement with accessories can be great. However, when presenting a webinar, some accessories like chunky jewelry can serve as a distraction, especially if they’re shiny or make it’s shiny or makes a lot of noise with movement. Be smart and keep it simple when accessorizing. If you’re a glasses-wearer, pick glasses frames that look professional and stick to neutral colors like black, brown, or tortoiseshell. Consider frames that are classic and timeless instead of pairs that are trendy or flashy, such as the Caracas from Michael Kors or Frogface frames by Arnette. If you’re prone to glare or reflections from screens, invest in anti-glare lenses to improve visibility and reduce distractions during the webinar.

Consider your webinar background

Think of your webinar’s background as an extension of your professional appearance. A survey of professionals supports this notion as video background evaluations parallel dress attire, with background sometimes judged to be more important than clothing choice. As such, choose a neutral and uncluttered background for your presentation that complements your attire. Avoid backgrounds that are too busy or messy, which can distract viewers. For this, it’s best to set up a dedicated space for hosting webinars with a professional backdrop.

As the host, your appearance plays a pivotal role in setting the tone for your webinar and influencing how your audience perceives you and your message. By presenting yourself professionally, you establish credibility, create a positive brand image, and facilitate effective communication with your audience, ultimately contributing to the success of your webinar.

Simplify the complexity of managing your webinars and virtual events with a powerful suite of tools

Make your virtual attendees gather with ease. From small to large and complex events – plan and manage all of your events in one flexible platform – Attendease.

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How to Run a Sustainable Event: 6 Tips

Limit usage of paper signage, brochures, and other print materials

Work with environmentally-conscious vendors

Choose refreshment options that require fewer waste products

Identify options to reduce food waste

Choose a central location that minimizes travel requirements

Book venues that can be easily accessed by public transportation

Look for hotels with sustainability programs in place

Insist on LED light bulbs when possible

Look for vendors whose meals and refreshments are locally sourced

Eliminate print materials as much as possible

Get as close as possible to your actual attendee counts

Start Small for Sustainability with Event Management Software

What Are Post-Event Surveys?

Why Are Post-Event Surveys Important?

Evaluation of Event Success

Understanding Participant Satisfaction

Marketing Insights

Improving Future Events

Best Practices for Post-Event Survey Emails

Email Timing

Audience Segmentation

Email Message

Survey Design

Best Practices for Post-Event Survey Questions

Types of Post-Event Survey Questions

25 Example Post-Event Survey Questions

NPS Example Questions:

1. How would you rate the event from 1 to 5 (or 1 to 10)?

2. How likely would you recommend this event to a friend/ colleague?

Objective Example Questions:

3. How did you learn about the event?

4. Why did you decide to attend this event?

5. What were your favorite sessions/ speakers/ exhibitors?

6. How would you rate the venue, food, attractions, etc.

7. Did this event meet your expectations?

8. If you have no barriers, would you like to attend this event again next year?

Open-Ended Example Questions:

9. Was there anything you disliked about the event?

10. Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experience?

Other Example Post-Event Survey Questions

11. How did the event contribute to your professional development or industry knowledge?

12. Were the topics covered in the event relevant to your interests and expectations?

13. How would you rate the overall logistics and organization of the event?

14. Did you find the networking opportunities at the event valuable?

15. How effective was the use of technology and multimedia in enhancing your event experience?

16. Were there any technical issues or improvements you would suggest for future events?

17. Did you feel a sense of community and engagement throughout the event?

18. What impact did the event have on your professional or personal development?

19. How valuable did you find the post-event resources provided, such as presentations, recordings, or additional materials?

20. Were there any measures taken to accommodate diverse needs that you appreciated?

21. How would you rate the accessibility and inclusivity of the event for all participants?

22. Did you utilize any post-event resources for extending your learning or networking?

23. What aspects of the event stood out to you as particularly positive or noteworthy?

24. Were there any aspects of the event that you think could be improved for future editions?

25. What suggestions do you have for enhancing the overall participant experience in future events?

Ideal Post-Event Survey Length

Social Media Listening for Post-Event Feedback

Gauging Event Success with Post-Event Surveys & EventUp Planner

Let’s Do The Math on Incomplete Event Attendees

4 Strategies to Boost Event Registration

Boost Your Registration with a Powerful Event Registration Platform

How to Promote an Event on Facebook

How to Promote an Event on X (formerly Twitter)

How to Promote an Event on Instagram

How to Promote an Event on TikTok

Make Event Promotion Easier with Leading Event Planning Software

What Is Experiential Marketing, and Why Does It Matter?

Key Considerations for Pharmaceutical Event Planning

4 Top Formats for Your Next Pharmaceutical Event

1. Keynote Event

2. Industry Trade Shows and Conferences

3. Virtual Press Conference

4. Webinar Series

Uncomplicate Your Pharma Event Planning with Event Management Software

7 Strategies to Enhance Events for Healthcare Professionals

1. Set Clear Objectives for all Presentations

2. Start With a Story

3. Make it Brief to Ensure the Best Use of Everyone’s Time

4. Present Data Clearly and Concisely