5 Benefits of Outsourcing Your Event Management
Is your association hosting an event soon? It’s pretty overwhelming, right? There’s no question that events are stressful. From brainstorming and planning to organization and logistics, there’s just so much to do in so little time — and that’s all before the actual event even begins.
Despite the pandemic, conferences and live events have been the highest-rated association member engagement offering for 10 years running. Your members are eager to once again attend in-person meetings to connect and engage with your association and their fellow members. But, with so many changes in the event space over the last two years, where do you begin? What extra steps do you have to take?
There’s good news for those bleary-eyed, hosting-weary association event planners out there. You can actually outsource your entire event to experts. Reservations about having a third-party meet the individualized and niche event needs of your association are completely understandable; however, in today’s modern digital age, a lot of the nitty-gritty work of planning an event are fairly association-agnostic. In-the-know event experts are in touch with the latest protocols, trends, best practices and tactics to alleviate any uncertainty about leading your next event, regardless of your association’s industry.
With that said, let’s go over some of the top five benefits your association could see by outsourcing your event management.
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More Time on Your Hands
This one seems pretty obvious but it’s highly impactful when you consider the fact that you can use this time back on your hands to focus on more pressing association business. Aside from the lack of disruption to your daily routine, personnel and resources, having more time on your hands by outsourcing your event affords your association the golden opportunity to do more for your members, focus on being a leader in your industry, engage your existing membership base and reach potential new members. Essentially, it’s more time back to focus on making your association the best it can be.
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A Dedicated Team for Your Event
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a team of event professionals keeping the mess that events can create off your desk? When there’s an outsourced team that knows your association taking the lead, they can create a detailed strategic plan for each event and facilitate deep and thorough analysis of the event landscape, competitors, and member feedback. To best build event scenarios that work for you, a good event team can draft a testing strategy, timeline with goals and objectives, pricing strategy, budget, marketing plan, reporting plan and a project work plan.
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Qualified Experts Reading Your Contracts
Experienced event teams know the ins and outs of every contract that needs to be executed for an event and will provide end-to-end event logistics, including all vendor and venue acquisition, contracting, management and budgeting, before, during and after the event, including securing a venue space. From appointing and supervising a general contractor and enlisting all necessary sub-contractors and creating and implementing a show operating plan and budget, to procuring the necessary event insurance, requisitioning food and beverage orders, and developing an event security plan, event management teams can do it all without you so much as lifting a finger.
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Increased Attendance and Engagement
Outsourcing your event management also gives you the unique advantage to get more bang for your buck. By leveraging an outsourced team of experts, you can increase your event size, attract new exhibitors and sponsors, and deliver more profitable association events. When attendees see and experience the enhanced event as a result of a qualified team, your member engagement also grows as a natural result. Simplified event management through outsourcing produces the opportunity for your association to hone in on what makes your association great and enables you to share that through your event management team to your attendees.
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On-Site Management
Not only can event teams outline, plan and execute a great live event, but they’ll be on site, supervising the setup of all aspects of your event, including stage building, classroom setup, exhibitor move-in, registration setup, special features areas and other key activity areas. Event teams worth their salt will manage staffing for all aspects of the event, including a show office, as well as green room management for speakers and all issues related to presentations, including staging and supervising all room sets. That’s a lot of heavy lifting your team won’t have to do.
Association Events are Too Important to Not Execute with Precision
Events are oftentimes the lifeblood of an association for non-dues revenue generation and member engagement. Now that in-person gatherings are back in full swing, it’s more important than ever to prove your relevance in the markets you serve.
At Naylor, we’re devoted to transforming your event to grow non-dues revenue and member engagement. Our event clients achieve event rebook rates as high as 90%, and over the last two years, we’ve sold more than 2 million square feet of exhibit space for our clients. Let our event management teams do the same for your association.
Ready to talk to an events expert to learn how we can do the heavy lifting for your next event?
