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We spoke to Katrin Taepke, who in her blog www.micestens-digital shares her experiences and tips on efficient event management. She has named 5 tips that simplify event management. Read more here!
Event manager is one of the most stressful professions and we probably don't even need to convince you of that. Especially in times when lead times are getting shorter and shorter and staff shortages can be felt everywhere. To help you plan and implement your events successfully under these new conditions while maintaining a good work-life balance, I have come up with five effective tips to make your event management much easier.
1) Build up a network in the MICE industry
Relationships only hurt those who don't have any. Relationships in the event industry are all about knowing which service provider is particularly good at what or which event location is best suited to which project. This is precisely why you need a network of professionals in all areas of event planning and implementation. Ideally, you will know a few exciting destinations, unusual locations, reliable technical and catering service providers and many more. This will significantly shorten the research and bidding process for you and the other party, while giving you a really good feeling about your choice.
But your network should also include like-minded people, i.e. event planners like you, so that you can exchange information on specific questions or challenges with a short e-mail or phone call.
For this reason, I recommend networking events in your diary and make valuable contacts there.
2) Standardize what can be standardized
Before you start worrying that your events will become standardized, I can reassure you. No, of course you shouldn't do that.
Standardize what can be standardized and save time. Then use the time you have freed up to put all your energy and creativity into creating events that really inspire.
A few examples:
You can easily standardize the registration process for your events. Use a professional participant management tool and say goodbye to Excel spreadsheets in countless colors and date variants. Such tools have customizable registration forms - in your branding, of course - and make it easy to manage all registrations. From automatic booking confirmations and self-correctable bookings to automatically generated invoices, everything is possible today.
Do you have many speakers and want to manage them as efficiently as possible? Set up a standardized process for this as well. Ideally one that starts with a submission form and then passes the contributions and speakers through all processes via a digital project management tool or an abstract management solution in the case of scientific conferences.
Do you manage the many special requests and offers for your exhibitors in Excel and manually? Then transfer this process to a digital project management tool such as Asana and save 90 percent of your "for information" emails. At the same time, everyone involved in your project will always have an overview - in real time and even when you are sick or on vacation.
3) Use digital solutions for standardized processes
Standardization is one thing. The other is the right digital solutions. Depending on the complexity, size and budget of your event, it is worth using the following software:
- Participant management software
This manages all registrations from the first receipt, to the invoice, to on-site check-in or even the evaluation of attendance data for certificates or for event reporting. - Event management software or project management software
Whether you use special event management or project management software is up to you. The main thing is that you no longer manage the tasks in Excel. After all, Excel is a spreadsheet and is therefore ideal for budgets and calculations - but not for collaborative work on complex projects. - Email marketing solutions
Sometimes an email solution for invitation management is included in one of the aforementioned solutions. If not, you definitely need a professional tool that can differentiate between those who are already registered and those who are not and is also visually appealing. - Event app
It is worth using an event app for a large event. It replaces the printed program and is always up to date. You can also use it to communicate with all participants in real time - e.g. via push notifications. - Feedback forms
on paper are a thing of the past. Today, there are numerous digital solutions that display the results in real time. Say goodbye to hours of typing up sheets.
4) Resist the proliferation of tools
The number of digital solutions on the market is constantly growing, and probably in your company too. Just think of all the places where messages can arrive: Emails, phone calls, Slack or Trello messages, Teams messages, Whatsapp messages, in your LinkedIn inbox, on Instagram and much more. This can quickly become cognitively overwhelming. But it is even more serious if your event and participant data is stored in different systems and is not synchronized. This quickly leads to duplicates and different data records. It's almost impossible to manage this manually. You should therefore opt for as few powerful tools as possible. Check whether you can achieve the desired result with the existing tools or whether the new tool can be integrated into the existing system.
You need a "single source of truth" for everything that concerns data.
5) Rely on interfaces and integrations instead of manual exports and imports
The more tools you use, the more often you as a planner are occupied with exporting and importing and reconciling data. Or worse still: you create data silos and thus contradictory and duplicate data records. It is therefore essential that you rely on solutions that offer integration with existing tools or have interfaces programmed.
A webinar example shows just how valuable a single, "small" interface can be:
For a webinar, use the registration form of your CRM or marketing solution. You use this to create the confirmation emails and reminders for your webinar. Thanks to the interface, the registration data is automatically transferred to your webinar tool or event platform. This means that your viewers still have access to the live webinar even if they register at the last minute and can "get in" without any problems. If you also use an interface for the "back" path, you can also send targeted messages in the follow-up emails. Those who were there will receive a different text than those who registered but did not connect live. Thanks to the two interfaces, the whole process runs automatically in the background and you can concentrate on the moderation, the chat or your presentation.
Conclusion
Event management is still a very challenging task. You can make it easier and more efficient by using digital solutions in a targeted manner and at the same time resisting the proliferation of tools. As is so often the case in life, "less is more".
About the author Katrin Taepke - has been in charge of organizing a wide variety of trade fairs, congresses and events for the past 27 years. She shares her experiences and tips on efficient event management and events that inspire on her blog www.micestens-digital.de onwards. She has been active as a consultant for digital event tools and efficient event management since 2018.