With These Tips and Software, You Can Plan Successful Events

1. What is event management?
2. These are the most important tips for planning events
3. These software aid in event planning
4. Step-by-step guide: This is how you implement your event planning with the eworx Marketing Suite
5. Conclusion: Event planning doesn't have to be complicated

A neuroscience institute called Neurensics conducted a study analyzing the value of information flow in live events compared to digital forms (e.g., through advertising spots). Thanks to NIRS and MRI scans, it proved that live formats appeal more to the human subconscious and generate more attention. However, due to the Corona era, digital communication formats have nevertheless prevailed, which still hold their own.

The fact is: both digital and personal events are indispensable from the professional environment. How you ensure that your event sticks in the heads of your guests, you will learn in this article.

What is event management?

The main components of event management are the planning, organizing and running of events. Whether in private or business venues - if you want to put on an event, it requires a lot of effort and organizational talent. The more participants your event has, the more complex and confusing it becomes. The biggest challenge in event management is to consistently maintain clarity and prevent bottlenecks in time.

There are commercial and noncommercial events. Many events revolve around a specific product or are used as a marketing or PR tool of your company. These include:

• Seminars, webinars and workshops
• Meetings, congresses and conferences
• Trade fairs and product launches
• Anniversaries and company parties
• Employee and team events
• Weddings and other private parties

These are the most important tips for planning events

Every corporate event involves a large budget and even greater expectations. To ensure your event is a resounding success, and leaves a positive memory for your attendees as well as all organizers, you should work closely with your team and use technical aids.

We would like to give you these 7 tips:

1. Choose the optimal type of event (online, on site or hybrid).
2. Make a plan with responsibilities, tasks, milestones, and deadlines.
3. Choose reliable and professional external service providers (e.g., catering or photographers).
4. Make a budget plan and regularly check the ratio between the actual and desired state.
5. Make a marketing and PR plan, to reach all desired participants.
6. Automate as much as possible, so you have time for the essentials.
7. Monitor and track the most important information.
8. In addition to planning and conducting, the follow-up is just as important. Keep pushing!

These software aid in event planning

A popular tool for event planning is the eworx Marketing Suite (short: eMS). It is a true all-rounder when it comes to digital marketing and essentially consists of three parts: mailworx (Email Marketing Solution), events (Event Management Solution) and messaging (SMS Marketing Solution). The modularly structured software also offers modules for:

• Landing pages
• Forms
• Marketing Automation
• Statistics and analysis
• Recipient management
• Subevents (brand new!)

The tool has been ensuring efficient event planning, execution and follow-up for more than 20 years for real-life, online and hybrid events. The data center is located in Upper Austrian, a gastronomy and tourism hotbed, and the software is 100% GDPR compliant.

The Subevents module was developed to help users at events better respond to individual requirements. They can split their event into individual projects and manage them individually. In this way, event managers can create a personalized visitor experience for each individual target group.

Step-by-step guide: This is how you implement your event planning with the eworx Marketing Suite

The exact procedure depends always on your company and the corresponding event. The ewrox Marketing Suite provides you with the optimal starting point: Simply use only the modules that help you. This is what your event planning with eMS could look like:

Step 1: Plan your event

If you plan regular or similar events, you can use one of your event templates in eMS. Then you just need to adjust the key data. This could be a sales meeting with internal and external partners. planning your first event with eMS is also a breeze because the event assistant guides you step by step through the process. You can see which tasks you've successfully completed through the green marking. You can still edit all points on your list marked in blue.

A clear dashboard shows you all the relevant figures and facts about the event in real time at a glance: the event description, the venue and date. In addition, you see all important information about the event form, the campaign activities, the current guest list and the event check-in.

Step 2: Create an event form and use it

Visitors can quickly and easily register for your event via your event form. You can edit this with a few clicks in the eMS Form Editor and design it according your taste. Again, you can choose between a new form or a copy of a previously created form.

Step 3: Send your invitations (e.g. by email)

Send your registration form via the newsletter, by SMS or integrate it directly into your website. The digital invitations not only arrive at your guests in an instant, they also automatically generate guest lists with registration status statistics.

The copy assistant also works when choosing your campaign activities. You can plan advertising, invitations and reminders for your event in advance and automatically send them with appropriate links. Predefined links include registration confirmations, event cancellations (with reason), event registrations, event dates for the calendar entry and event tickets with QR codes.

For all the guests who cannot attend, you can create a follow-up campaign, which keeps them up to date and lets them participate retrospectively in the spectacle with pictures and videos.

Step 4: Generate your guest list automatically from the registrations

eMS automatically generates a guest list based on the confirmations and cancellations. You see directly who has accepted or declined and who is on the waiting list or did not respond to your invitation at all. You can add new people to the guest list at any time. The guests also have the opportunity to register for an event using a QR code. This is automatically generated and is suitable e.g., to place the event registration on print media such as flyers etc.

The list of all email and SMS campaign activities for event communication is called Campaign Activity. In the case of linked campaign activities, you can also add accompanying persons right away. With the guest list, you always keep track of your participants and their accompanying persons.

Step 5: Generate personalized name tickets automatically from the guest list

Name tags are generated based on the registration data of your guest list. The name tags are largely determined by the stored layout (including company logo). However, you can also individually adapt them. You can also determine the number of empty reserve cards.

Step 6: Consider each guest individually

In the guest list you can display recipient and form fields, after which you want to filter the data. This way you can filter your guests for example by subevents, seminars, menus or VIP status and consider individually.

Step 7: Send automatic reminders or follow-ups to your target groups

With eMS you can plan complete events and if necessary use the subevent function. If you want to send different target groups different reminders or follow-ups, you can do this at any time with or without marketing automation. You can even integrate a separate check-in for each sub-event.

Before your big day, you should send your event tickets with QR codes to the participants. In addition, it contains the event's key data, the guest's personal information from the registration form and the announced accompanying persons.

Step 8: Successfully run your event

Finally, it is time, the show can start. All you have to do is scan the event's QR code in the eworx Marketing Suite or open a link by specifying a PIN. The event participants also check in using a QR code on their smartphone in the event app. Here a circle diagram shows the participant status. If spontaneous visitors appear, you can simply add new participants in the app. If your event takes place online, you can quickly get to the event via the link to your meeting tool in the event dashboard.

Conclusion: Event planning doesn't have to be complicated

Is event planning associated with a lot of work? Absolutely! But with the right tool, everything is only half as bad. The eworx Marketing Suite is the best example of how relaxed professional event planning can be. And if you ever need support in event planning, in addition to the software eMS also offers a personal contact who is available for questions and helps with the planning of the event.