In today’s event industry, with rising prices for materials and services, it can be a real challenge to grow your event and maintain the quality experience your loyal attendees expect. If inflated costs are contributing to a slowdown in your event’s growth, event management software may be just what you need to streamline administration and do more with the human resources and budget you already have. Here are some ways online registration software can help streamline event management:
Reduced printing costs
It used to be that all event registration, marketing and communication was done on paper. The event would print announcements and post them throughout the city, the attendee would complete a paper registration form, the event staff would send a paper confirmation to the attendee, and once the event was over, the event organizer would send a flyer to your attendees with an announcement about next year’s event.
Taking your event online with event management software will easily cut printing costs and paper usage in half. Pre-event marketing can be done with email advertising campaigns that have proven to be more effective than posts. Your event participant can register online and submit their details and payment through a personalized online registration form.
Registering online means the attendee will receive an automated confirmation email, eliminating the need for your staff to print one out and mail it to you. After the event, good event management software will allow you to submit an electronic survey form and notification of next year’s event date.
Reduced staff hours
As mentioned above, one of the great advantages of offering online event registration is that your attendees will receive an automatic confirmation email immediately after submitting their details and payment. This not only eliminates the need for event staff to print and mail a confirmation, but also puts the registrant at ease. If your participants are currently registering on paper forms, your staff will likely spend a good part of the day answering phones and emails from registrants who are concerned that they haven’t received their payment. If you are hosting the registry online, the automatic confirmation email should greatly reduce inquiries from registrants.
Event management software will also drastically reduce the number of hours your staff spend manually entering attendee data into a spreadsheet or event database. Offering online ticketing for your event means that all the data collected in the online registration form will be automatically sent to a secure database. If you currently collect paper forms, you know how many nights are spent transferring data from the hard copy to the database. Those last few days leading up to the event will be a lot less hectic with a system that automatically sorts and stores your data. You just need to log in to the event management area of your software and check your numbers.
Reduction of excessive purchase of merchandise and food
One of the most challenging things any event planner faces in the last few weeks leading up to the event is accurately predicting how many t-shirts to order from your vendor or how many hamburgers to buy instead of hot dogs. Collecting data from event participants using a paper form means there is a delay between the time the form is received in the mail and the time the data is available in your database. In those last few weeks before the event, the speed at which you can update your participant data in the database is crucial.
With online event management software, this is not a problem because attendee data is automatically added to your database and available for viewing with real-time online reports. Adding shirt size and food preference questions to your personalized online registration form will allow you to get fast, accurate reports and email them to your vendor or caterer at any time. This will eliminate the need to guess how many orders to place, which often ends up being more than you really need and a waste of money.
In conclusion, growing your event without increasing staff, payroll and office hours is possible! Profitability without reducing the services you offer to the attendee is the smart way to grow your event. A good event management system will help you streamline the logistics involved in planning your event and allow you to do more with the money and staff you already have.