Best Technology Tools for Planning & Hosting Events to Reduce Stress
Events can be one of the most successful solutions to facilitate business connections, develop relationships, share ideas and recognize people or efforts. However, events are also the one of the most stressful types of endeavors because they have so many minute details that require extreme organization and strategy.
The key to de-stressing an event is to keep everything as simple as possible. We phrase this as an attempt to “reduce complexity” rather than to make something “simple.” “Simple” doesn’t even cover the Herculean effort to takes to streamline processes, make things easy or de-stress.
So, in the midst of a multi-faceted and detail-bogged event, it’s important to choose tools, equipment and a team that wants to make things as easy as possible.
You can start by expunging scantron surveys, pencils, business cards, registration check-lists, scratch paper and hand-typed spreadsheets. Do not spend another hour on manual data entry in an attempt to collate business cards with scratch notes made about qualified leads.
Here are the different technologies you should consider at your event and where to get them.
1. Collaborative Planning Documents
Share Word documents or Spreadsheets with your colleagues for easy team collaboration – Google Docs.
2. Amplified Wifi
The standard number of personal devices every attendee that require Wifi totals four (yes, that is 4 devices that are all taking Wifi bandwidth PER PERSON). Today’s successful events accommodate a corresponding level of Wifi strength.
3. Registration
Use a registration system that you can update with late registrants, walk-ups or corrections.
4. Onsite Printing
There are always typos, walk-ups, lost badges, forgotten badges and reprints. Have an easy way to instantly reprint attendee badges at the registration desk.
5. Badge QR Code Barcodes
If you want to have barcodes on your badges, use a QR code.
QR codes are easy for lead scanners to read as they have the most error correction and are able to support the most information in their encoding. QR codes can also be instantly created with a generator.
We recommend using QR codes with a short URL encoded into it, pointed to a vCard or contact record. That way if there was a printing issue on your badges and the name of the badge did not match the QR code information, it’s a quick fix on the back-end to redirect the URL to the correct information (rather than reprinting to match the code with the names).
Use a reliable generator that is instantly created from a short URL, which comes with lots of support if you need it.
6. Mobile Check-In
Customize your check-ins so that you can get instant aggregate headcounts. Use a mobile device app so that you can avoid lines at the registration table by having registrars walk around the crowd to check people in as well.
7. Lead Capture App On Mobile Device
Download your lead capture app on your Android device so that you can point and capture an attendee’s information. Customize the lead information with details about what specific follow-up they should be getting; even more, have a “yes / no” qualifying question that will route your leads into the sales or marketing department as soon as you get your data export.
Be able to add notes to a lead scan at any time (even after the lead walks away).
Choose a lead capture app with an offline mode to counteract spotty or slow Wifi (as you don’t want to risk losing any data).
8. Event App
Give all attendees a link to download your custom event app. Update and post agendas, make announcements, and outline event logistics so that attendees can read it on their mobile device.
9. Schedule Post-Session Or Post-Event Surveys
Instantly have branded surveys ready to auto-send, after either a session or event is over. Be sure to include a link to a survey for them to automatically take to give feedback and help them relieve the experience to get more value from your event.
10. Dynamically Route Emails
Have a couple of versions of your scheduled emails ready. If they check in, send them a post-event follow-up survey; if they did not attend, send them a “Sorry we missed you!” message.
11. Real-Time & Easy-To-Use Data
If you use a tool with an online mode, all of your aggregate data will make downloading aggregate reports easy. By using a tool that downloads reports directly in your CRM uploading template, you do not waste time with manual data entry.
Our event management platform works for:
- AWARD CEREMONIES
- BOARD MEETINGS
- CHARITY FUNCTIONS
- CONFERENCE HOSTING
- CONTINUING EDUCATION COURSES
- CUSTOMER APPRECIATION EVENTS
- FUNDRAISING
- HAPPY HOURS
- NETWORKING EVENTS
- PRODUCT LAUNCHES
- SEMINARS
- TRADE SHOWS
- VIP EVENTS
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