Be efficient and plan it through: Smart tips for event planners
If there is one word that defines the mood of even the most seasoned event planners ever on the night before an event, it is overwhelmed, that is considering they want it all to go well. It is staggeringly stressful, there are never enough hours in the day and something always goes wrong. But, is there a way out? Oh yes, just keep calm and read on, because the following tips will make sure that your next event is efficient, effective and a pleasant experience for the client, again, considering that you read it to the end.
So, you want to create a successful event… Understand the life cycle of an event
Don’t get bogged by the work and number of man hours involved in making an event successful. With the advent of technology, things have got automated including event planning and one can save up to 30-40% of the time that used to go into planning in the traditional format. All you need to learn is to optimize your task.
Phase 1 Research
Get the objective right and clear from the stakeholders. This need requires meeting with the clients and understanding his requirements. Now, visualize yourself a decade ago, running after all the stakeholders to get them under one roof to finalize objective and nitty-gritty of the event. It would have been a nightmare and frustrating. But in today's age, there are tools that manages meeting request automatically and save your time and keep you stress-free and one such tool is Meetingbox, which manages meeting request for you at a push of a button.
Phase 2 Planning
Create a blueprint of your master plan: List down your event planning checklist and identify areas that are time-consuming and doesn’t require much of grey cells such as registration, database entry etc. Think of the ways to optimize these mundane tasks so that you can focus on the more important aspect of the event. Think of an event management solution available in the market, which automates these things for you and takes the burden off your head.
Budget: Finance is an important part of event planning and imagines if you must have to keep a tab of all incoming and outgoing cost on a real-time basis, it can drive you nuts. A good tool will help you keep a track of your expenses on a real-time basis.
Phase 3 Coordination
Multitask
Negotiating one contract, working on securing the services of another contractor, renting space, working out the details of the menu and much more will happen simultaneously. But successful event planning is all about prioritizing while working on the other in the background. Delegation with intermittent status checks will also be a strategy worth embracing. With all the stressful action behind the scenes, keeping a cool head to get a different perspective and keep things light is going to help in fluid project management and improve the overall experience of the event.
This is a very important phase as it requires coordination between various departments, vendors etc. such coordination can be efficiently managed task management module which is now presented in various automation solution – you can get a real-time overview all your deliverables, activities, milestones & tasks. It manages task collaboratively.
Phase 4 Promotion
Brand the event: For the event to clearly stand out and create a top of mind experience, timely and compelling theme must be chosen. Brainstorming themes with stark differentiators are critical for the success of the event. Creating a tagline and designing a logo for the event will go a long way in making the event unique. This could turn out to be the planners USP as well.
Event Website:
Creating a dedicated website for your event is a wise idea, as it provides a single platform to share all the information regarding the event with the attendees. such website encourages online registration, e-ticketing & payment management. I am sure the conversion is higher than the tradition registration method through online channels.
E-Invite:
Sending e-invite to your attendee's list which is followed by a reminder mailer is a very crucial part of the promotion. Thanks to many email tools available in the market which make such mundane task easier.
Event content management:
A blog post is another way of marketing your event. It gives filler to the readers about the event and such blogs can be embedded with the call to action button asking the reader to register for the event.
Click it and flaunt it:
How do people relate to a memorable event? When they relive it through pictures of course! Posting positive photos online is an exceptional way to demonstrate the success of an event. Nowadays, there are many social media handles – Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter that helps to spread the words. Creating a social media hashtag helps in getting an event trending. An event gives you perfect way to increase your social media presence. Have consistent brand messaging, post strategically and use each social media platform.
Spread the word, in every way possible:
This part is really exciting as the avenues are numerous and everyone considers themselves omniscient in spreading information. Not only online medium but consider offline medium also to create that buzz. Some of the offline ways you can promote the events are banners, newspaper advertisement, creating interesting event merchandise, signage in the vicinity of the event venue
Event Report:
Event performance is an extremely crucial part of an event and it must be of interest to everyone who was part of the event. This is a data-driven intelligence that is gives you an insight into an event. Whether you have the required results/ ROI out of an event is very important for an organization to decide for future events.
Also, such insights/ analytics helps you to understand your customer behavior, which helps in CRM. Traditional surveys used to be conducted to understand events performance but nowadays event management tools/app triggers such surveys within 24 hours of the event so that the memory remains fresh. And the reports of the data can be pulled out in any format you wish to analyze.
Last but not least be proactive! Adapt the technology, adapt event automation, make a smart decision while planning an event for a pleasing experience for both you and your client, but remember, in all these tips, creativity and perseverance are the key ingredients that would push all your planning to the next level.
And if you are the one who is looking for an automation solution to manage your event, meetingbox.com is the go-to solution.
