Planning an event is not as much fun as attending one. You need to take care of a lot of things like setting up ticketing, marketing the event on social media platforms, setting up fun activities, handling the budget, and much more.
No matter how experienced you are as an event planner or how good a party you throw, you can definitely use some help. Therefore, an event management software can bring you the exact help that you need.
Definition
Event management software offers solutions that cover different aspects of organizing an event, from the event planning stage to the post-event stages. The system provides tools to handle the entire life-cycle of the event. It also includes apps that focus on the process of organizing events, ticketing, communication, marketing, and many more.
Pros of an Event Management Software
Increased engagement
Engagement is at the heart of every event, whether it is business or casual. It needs to start early before the event even begins. While during the event, it is essential, the activities must be engaging, it is also crucial that the engagement of visitors increases as the event proceeds further.
A useful event management tool will enable you to aid participant communication at all stages. It also comes with the ability to view all the data accumulated and analyze it after the event gets over.
Supports targeted activity
Marketing is highly effective when it is targeted and tailored toward an individual. The data accumulated from past events can be used to know what the individuals that are visiting the event might be looking for. You can use the specialized tools that comes with an event management software to tailor your event and plan all marketing activities as per the list.
Also, you can manage email marketing campaigns that are personalized for the recipient based on the data accumulated by the event management software. EventTitans is such an example of an all-in-one event planning tool.
Document Generation
The event planning software offers you the ability to generate electronic documents related to all your marketing campaigns. You can print essential documents such as Chef BEOs, Credit card authorization forms, Proposals, Menus as well as Invoices. It can also generate automatic contracts outlining details such as client names, event dates, guest numbers, company policies, and other related information.
Communication tools
Many event management softwares comes with the interface similar to Gmail that offers you key details such as recipient name, CC/BCC, subjects, attachments, and body. They also provide customer messaging ability and the feature like team communication which can be easily used to communicate with your team members and your stakeholders transparently.
With the dashboard feature of the event planning system, it becomes easier to see all the latest bookings and other updates or changes in the system easily without chances of any miscommunication.
Cons of an Event Management Software
Price
Just because a Google search tells you that this is the best event management software that doesn’t mean it is the best for your business too. The cost varies significantly for event planning softwares, and as more features are added, the price also increases.
Thus, before jumping the gun and buying the most popular and sophisticated event management software out there, do your own research and make a list of things you want to get done using the EMS. This will give you a much better idea of which software you should go with.
Lack of design options
With the ease of using any software, there often comes the cost to pay of losing some vital customization features. Many event planning softwares comes with a fundamental and limited design. The users also find that features are not as intuitive as they need to be.
To save yourself some trouble of wasting money on the tool with just bare minimums, first, check out the software for a trial period and then take the decision of whether you want to buy it or not.
Support Channels
The customer service provided with any software is essential, as in case you run into any technical problems, it can affect your event planning. You need to feel confident that in such a situation, the support provided will solve your issues, and it takes minimum downtime to do so.
Using new software means there is a steep learning curve ahead of you, so seek out for such software that can help you get through the process with ease and take further. You can check the list of top event planning tools reviewed by industry experts and choose one yourself.
Conclusion
Analyzing your needs is the foremost priority when you go out looking for event management software. It sometimes happens that we wound up spending more on feature-rich software suggested by some top website, but later we realize that the features we needed most were missed, and we paid a whole lot for something that is only partially useful.
Therefore get your list ready with features you need most for your business and then choose the software that matches the features on your list. This way, you get the most value for the money you spend.
Author Bio: I am Greg Wilson, a Content Writer working with GoodFirms, a research and review platform for service and software companies. I am passionate about blogging, creative writing, social media, and content marketing. I write blog posts for GoodFirms about SEO softwares, Cloud computing, IoT development, and many more such categories.
