6 Benefits of Investing in Event Management Software
According to a study from Frost and Sullivan, the industry of event management software currently stands at approximately $28 billion and maintains a 3.3% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Frost and Sullivan also found that 80% of professional event planners are now using event management software in some capacity. What are the reasons behind these trends, and is your organization possibly missing out on a valuable tool?
Let’s take a look at just a few of the reasons that an event planner might want to invest in event management software.
Improving Engagement
The right event software will help you improve your engagement with members exponentially. You can more easily aggregate the conversations from your social media platforms and organize them into segments from the trends that you find. You can connect your online and offline audiences into a more streamlined funnel that helps to ensure larger attendance and a more targeted profile.
Automation
Features that automate your email outreach efforts along with your payment processing and registration tracking will keep your event staff focused on the more creative, important and interesting aspects of putting an event together. Keeping records digitally also reduces the instance of human error that can cause problems in real time. Your staff doesn’t mean to mistype a number or misspell a name – it just happens! Automating the process gets rid of this problem for good. You can also automate your follow up process – thank you emails are now sent off to your entire audience with just a few clicks.
Snapshotting
Automating your outreach and intake processes allows your organization to snapshot events as they happen. You can easily see which of your targeted prospects has already registered, who needs an extra push through email, and who is most likely to attend based on past records. You can also track the money trail very precisely so that it does not take away from the in person experience that you offer to your members.
Professionalism
Event management software supports a more professional process. As mentioned before, the automation that your software package brings to the table handles all of the time consuming rote mechanics of the event. Your staff gets to handle all of the problems that require a truly human touch – the one time problems that tend to happen unexpectedly and cause bigger trouble if they are not handled quickly by a professional problem solver.
Highly Targeted Marketing
Your marketing is definitely more effective if it is targeted at the members who are already more likely to be interested in your event. When you have the right software package as a tool, you can completely tailor it to fit the individual event. For instance, you will be able to easily create customized guest lists based on the interest level of certain parts of your membership.
A Holistic Solution
Software brings together everything that you need to have a great event process – administration, HR, accounts receivable, floor plan organization, outreach and many other aspects of planning. Without the consolidation of these tasks, you would be outsourcing and delegating things haphazardly, causing confusion within the office and a slower process overall! The right tech has been shown to grow attendance by 20%, improve productivity by a measure of approximately 27% and reduce costs up to 30%.
Software packages such as MemberSuite allow you to quantify so much about your event experience that you may not be able to go back to “gut feeling” mechanics ever again. Your organization will be able to put hard data to metrics that were formerly difficult or impossible to measure. Additionally, you gain a wealth of automation processes that are a direct response to the glass ceiling that your scale bumps up against. You have the ability to expand beyond your dreams when you use event management software – for more reasons than one.