What is the main reason both companies and professional event planners use a complete event management platform when organizing events?
The answer is simple: it saves a great deal of time and effort.
A complete and professional event management platform offers a wide range of features that make it much easier and more efficient to manage attendees, revenue, and all the logistics surrounding an event. This not only saves time, but also helps eliminate and prevent many unnecessary costs.
In this article, you will learn why you and your company can save both time and money by using a web-based event management platform when organizing events.
8 reasons you save TIME by using an event management platform
1. There is much less manual work
What typically takes up the most time when you're planning an event with many attendees?
Usually, it's the constant stream of questions from attendees, time-consuming follow-ups, late payers, room re-bookings, name changes, refunds, or attendees deciding not to attend after all – the list goes on.
On top of that, you often have to enter various data manually, sometimes more than once. Into CRM systems, registration systems, attendee lists, check-in systems, hotel systems, and so on.
You may also be using separate tools and communication channels during the planning process. For example, one email tool to send invitations, another tool to handle registrations, and a third to manage hotel bookings.
That takes time too.
With a web-based event management platform – one single integrated platform that brings together and automates all information handling and all communication before, during, and after the event – you gain much more time to prepare the professional program and the important details that create even more value for attendees.
In short: the system does the job faster and more accurately than manual handling ever can.
2. You get everything in one place
Do you run one large event or several smaller ones each year? If so, you probably spend a lot of time figuring out:
- what you need to keep track of,
- how to collect all the information, and
- who is responsible for what.
If all your information is stored manually across emails and spreadsheets in different places, it often becomes a real struggle every time you need to organize the same event again. There are many time-consuming tasks to manage, but with a complete event management platform, you can handle all of this in one single system, efficiently and quickly. You no longer have to waste time searching for information.
3. You gain better control of the details
When you're planning an event and the date is getting closer, stress tends to spiral. With so much to keep track of, and days and hours flying by, “event anxiety” can suddenly hit hard.
It doesn’t have to be that way. A complete event management platform takes the stress and uncertainty out of the planning process and replaces it with control, structure, and full visibility.
All the information you need is continuously updated and available in the system. Partners and others can also easily keep themselves updated on numbers, bookings, hotel rooms, and more. This also means fewer internal administrative tasks to manage during the busy period leading up to the event date.
You avoid a lot of unnecessary work, and you save a lot of time afterward as well
4. You always have up-to-date information
When planning an event, it's essential to collect all the necessary attendee information. Just as important is making sure the information you have is actually up to date. That is not always the case, especially when your systems do not communicate with one another.
When you use an event management platform, all your information is kept up to date at all times. You also gain access to useful reports throughout the process, giving you a quick overview of all relevant information in real time.
This means you and your colleagues stay fully in control of your attendees, and it's easy to share the information with others when needed.
Up-to-date systems mean less work and more time saved.
5. You can invoice attendees when they register or let them pay with a credit card
Are you organizing a paid event? If so, you may be dealing with significant amounts of money that need to be collected. Many still handle invoicing manually – they transfer attendee information from an updated spreadsheet or an internal CRM system into the finance system once all the information has been updated and finalized.
This is both labor-intensive and time-consuming, and completely unnecessary double work.
Instead, you can either charge attendees when they register (by credit card), or generate invoices and send them either at registration or at a later specified date. You define the payment terms yourself, and incoming payments are automatically recorded on an ongoing basis.
Anyone who does not pay on time can automatically receive a payment reminder. This gives you full control over your finances at all times and a clear overview of who has paid and who has not. Your finance department saves a great deal of time and effort.
6. You can accept room bookings during registration
Will you be offering hotel accommodation for attendees at your event? When you use an event management platform, you can save time by allowing attendees to book their hotel room as they register. That takes one more task off your plate.
You can also let attendees invite others to share a room, and the room cost can automatically be split between them.
7. You can let attendees make their own changes along the way
It takes time to keep track of all the changes that come up in the lead-up to an event.
With a complete event management platform, you gain full control over all attendee changes from start to finish. One thing is that you can easily update information for one or several attendees, but if you allow it, attendees can also make changes to their own registration up until the deadline you have set.
8. You can communicate directly from one system with one or many at a time
To make event planning as time-efficient as possible, communication with attendees needs to be simple – before, during, and after the event.
With a good web-based event management platform, you can communicate by email or SMS directly with individual attendees, selected groups, selected statuses (confirmed, unconfirmed, waitlisted, etc.), or all attendees at once.
Perhaps you're on the move and especially busy. If the event management platform has its own app for users, you can also send emails to attendees directly from the app. Quick and easy.
You might also like: 5 warning signs your event platform support is not reliable
7 reasons you save MONEY (and prevent unnecessary costs) by using an event management platform
Did you know that a complete event management platform can save you significant costs when organizing events?
When you and your company or organization plan and run events, you invest substantial resources and a great deal of work over a long period of time. This usually involves considerable expense.
Let’s take a closer look at 7 areas where using an event management platform can help prevent and reduce costs – both in terms of direct expenses and the risk of negative publicity and reputational damage.
1. You get more attendees – and therefore higher revenue
If fewer people register than you had planned for, the costs of the event may end up being higher than the income. In the worst case, the event may have to be cancelled, while the incurred costs still need to be paid.
One of the major advantages of a good event management platform is that it makes it easy for attendees to register for your event. The easier it's to sign up, the more registrations you get – and the better your revenue. Simple as that.
With a complete event management platform, you can create and send professional email invitations, with customized and flexible registration forms tailored to your target audience. This also helps you save time, which in turn lowers your overall costs.
As all event organizers know, not everyone who registers actually shows up on the day of the event. To make sure that as many registered attendees as possible do attend, it's important to stay in continuous contact with them right up until the event day.
A good event management platform gives you an effective communication solution, allowing you to send information, reminders, teasers, and more by email or SMS to different attendee groups.
2. You free up time that can be spent on revenue-generating tasks
If you're mainly handling event responsibilities on your own at the company, or if you're two or three people working on it, most of your working hours are probably spent on logistics and attendee management when organizing an event.
On top of that, you're likely dealing with a constant flow of attendee inquiries and questions, time-consuming follow-ups, missing payments, attendee information that needs to be changed right before the event day, and so on.
If you're juggling all of this using spreadsheets, paper lists, and systems that cannot communicate with one another, the task certainly does not become any easier.
Many organizers who use a professional web-based event management platform report that they free up as much as 50% of the time they would otherwise waste on manual and disorganized processes. That means they can focus on more useful and value-creating tasks instead.
Quite simply because attendee management and logistics become so much easier, and the entire process becomes automated, structured, organized, and streamlined.
3. You avoid paying a fortune in “no-show” fees
Many companies and organizations that host events fail to keep track of hotels’ cancellation and reduction deadlines. As a result, they end up paying large amounts in “no-show” fees. A “no-show” fee means that a guaranteed reservation is not cancelled or reduced before the deadline, and the guest or company is billed for the original booking.
An event management platform helps you avoid or reduce “no-show” fees in the following ways:
- Attendees can book hotel accommodation at the same time as they register. By giving internal staff responsible for hotel bookings access to the event management platform, they can continuously monitor the actual number of attendees and reduce or adjust the booking accordingly.
- The hotel can receive links to relevant information from the system, which is updated at all times. This gives the hotel a full overview of the actual numbers at an earlier stage.
- Or even better: use a professional booking manager who has access to the event management platform, so no one internally has to spend time thinking about this at all.
There is a lot of money to be saved here.
4. It becomes much easier to follow up with attendees
If there is a long period of time between registration and the actual event, and you don’t follow up properly or send reminders, updates, and news, many registered attendees may fail to attend simply because they have forgotten they signed up.
An event management platform makes it easy to communicate with attendees by email or SMS before, during, and after the event.
5. You get help securing your revenue afterward
If you're organizing a large paid event, you may be dealing with significant sums that need to be collected. Securing that revenue is absolutely essential.
If you have been responsible for planning and running events and meetings with many attendees, you probably know how much time is lost on this kind of follow-up – and how late payers can lead to lost revenue.
With a complete event management platform, you can secure your revenue without spending a great deal of time and energy on payment reminders. You avoid all the work and all the potential errors involved in invoicing manually. A good event management platform includes a payment solution that ensures all attendees receive the correct invoice right away and, if you want, have actually paid before the event begins.
That way, you do not have to spend a lot of working hours – and lose money – sending out payment reminders.
6. You can easily collect all the necessary information
If everyone shows up and attendees’ different needs have not been captured, the result can be dissatisfaction and negative feedback – which may end up being the most costly consequence of all. For example, dietary requirements may not have been registered, hotel rooms may not have been booked, or special needs may have been reported but not properly handled.
With an event management platform, you can collect this type of information from attendees clearly and efficiently as part of the registration process, without the risk of it getting lost in the middle of everything else you need to keep track of. This helps attendees feel better taken care of.
7. It's easy to collect feedback from attendees
Post-event evaluation is important for gathering feedback, both positive and negative. If this isn’t done properly, bad experiences can quickly be shared online without you as the organizer even knowing about it. That, in turn, can lead to lost customers and damage to your reputation, which may require costly efforts to repair.
An event management platform makes it easy to gather feedback and information from attendees afterward. If someone has frustrations or is dissatisfied after the event, they have a channel to voice it there instead of posting it on social media. That gives you the opportunity to address the issue, analyze it, and take action so that your next event delivers an even better attendee experience.
You might also like: How much does a complete event management platform really cost – and why?
Save time by letting the event management platform do the work while you're on holiday
One of the reasons you save time – and therefore money – with a complete event management platform is that you can have the system perform tasks for you while you're away from work.
Let’s look at a specific example: say you have an event scheduled for right after the holiday period. You have a long to-do list, and you will probably not manage to complete everything before going on holiday. Well, you do not have to – you can actually let the event management platform handle many of those tasks for you. That means you can go on holiday with peace of mind, knowing that everything is still on track ahead of the event.
Here are some good examples of how a strong event management platform can do the work for you, whether you're hiking in the mountains of Northern Norway or taking it easy along the promenade in Rethymnon, Greece.
1. Scheduled, precise messages
Do you have a list of “known” attendees?
You can prepare everything in the event management platform – email invitations and registration forms – and let the system send them out on a specified date in the future.
Do you need to send out information as the event approaches?
You can schedule both SMS and email messages in advance and send them to defined categories and/or statuses.
Would you like to send a reminder to those who were invited but have not responded?
The system knows who they are and can send only to them, not to everyone else – which is much less annoying for people who have already replied.
Perhaps you need to send the program, hotel information, or other practical details to everyone with a confirmed registration as the event gets closer?
The system can do that automatically as well. It knows exactly who is registered and confirmed at the specific time you want the message to go out.
Tip: If you're hosting an event that is open to everyone, it can be a good idea to publish a nice-looking event website, promote it at set intervals throughout the summer on social media and possibly in other channels, and of course keep registration open throughout the entire period.
2. Automatic follow-up of attendee payments
If the event requires payment, the system handles the follow-up here as well – fully automatically. Attendees can either pay continuously by credit card, or the system can send out an invoice upon registration or at a time you specify.
You choose the due date yourself, and if some attendees are slow to pay, the system sends reminders throughout the summer.
If the finance department wants to keep track of this themselves, you can simply generate a link to a page showing all attendee payments, allowing them to monitor everything while you're on holiday.
3. Attendee app and/or evaluation prepared in advance
If you plan to use an attendee app at the event, send out an evaluation, or prepare anything else, you can create these elements before going on holiday and schedule them in advance.
That way, you have a little less to think about when the holiday is over and the event is just around the corner.
4. Partners can keep themselves updated
If several partners are involved in the event – such as the hotel, catering supplier, conference venue, and others – you can easily send them a link to the attendee list. Just remember not to include more information than they need, for GDPR reasons.
You decide how long the links should remain valid, and partners can monitor registration progress and the information they need for planning on their own, without you having to keep them continuously updated.
5. You can monitor everything through the user app, wherever you are
If the event management platform has its own user app and you have downloaded it, you can check in from your phone at any time (if you want to keep an eye on things while you're on holiday) to see how everything is developing.
And remember: if you have booked an external event venue or hotel, it's especially important to monitor attendee registrations. As mentioned earlier in the article, it can be costly if you're unable to cancel or reduce bookings because you don’t get enough attendees. And it can also be a problem if you end up with more registrations than expected and not enough capacity.
Another advantage of having a user app as part of the event management platform is that, in the final run-up to the event, you're probably spending less time in the office in front of your PC or Mac. In that case, it's very convenient to be able to communicate directly with one attendee or all attendees by email and SMS, wherever you happen to be.
You might also like: How to choose the best event management platform – without wasting time or budget
In summary: invest in an event management platform and save time and money
You save time: Many companies and organizations manage their events using spreadsheets, paper lists, and systems that cannot communicate with one another. If that sounds familiar, you have probably already experienced how messy, manual processes take a huge bite out of your working hours.
Those who start using an event management platform, on the other hand, find that managing attendees becomes much easier, and much faster.
- You no longer need to use different systems, forms, and communication channels to handle registrations, hotel bookings, payments, evaluations, and websites.
- You no longer have to keep reporting to others, simply because everything is available in the system for anyone who needs to follow the progress.
- You can easily “repeat the success” from last time, with ready-made structure and saved workflows and setups.
With a complete event management platform – one that can easily integrate with the other systems your company uses – you gain full control of every detail, all in one place. That can realistically cut your time spent in half.
It's also a major time-saver (and a real source of reassurance) to have a dedicated contact person at the platform provider you can call if you need information quickly and are not sitting near your computer.
Put simply, you save a great deal of time because the work becomes easier and the entire process becomes automated, structured, and organized. Use the time you save to create an even stronger event program. The ripple effect is that you build an even stronger and more visible brand.
You save money: The main reason you save money by using an event management platform is that you save so much time. And as we all know: time saved is money earned.
A professional web-based event management platform can help prevent costs – both in terms of direct expenses and all the working hours you and your colleagues would otherwise have to spend on ad hoc tasks, follow-ups, manual processes, and duplicated work.
Just as importantly, an event management platform helps you avoid negative feedback caused by weaker attendee experiences and an overall impression that is less professional than you intended.
By using an event management platform, you as the organizer are effectively “forced” to think through and plan in a more structured way than you otherwise might. There are fewer ad hoc tasks, and everything works together. Overall, this results in:
- Lower costs
- Less room for error
- A more professional impression of your company
- More attendees (and happier ones), which increases revenue
