As many corporate event and meeting planners are canceling one or more of their meetings in 2009, association planners are not seeing their events meet the same fate. In fact, according to MeetingsNet, Corporate Meetings & Incentives are seeing 56 percent of meeting managers cut one or more meetings, while only nine percent of managers in the Association Meetings market report planning to do so.
These numbers come as no surprise, as meetings are critical to an association's success. However, association planners are facing challenges of their own, such as membership lapses. In a recent post on Meeting Professionals International (MPI) VP of Membership blog, poor membership information was mentioned as a big problem.
As job layoffs continue, more and more employees are leaving positions, along with their old contact information. According to the blog post, in December, 20 percent of members had inaccurate contact information or were no longer associated with the organization listed in the record.
Not being able to reach your attendees has a detrimental effect on your registration numbers and overall event success. So how can you address this problem?
One solution is to utilize an event management software system such as Cvent that offers contact management functionality. Using Cvent, you can quickly import and add contacts to your address book. Event invitations are pre-populated with a registrant's information (title, organization, phone number, etc.), thus encouraging him or her to update any out-of-date information. The Cvent system also automatically identifies and flags bounced back emails, which allows you to cleanse your data and keep it current.
Managing your contacts with a system such as Cvent is easy and efficient. Rather than send out separate reminders to your members asking them to update their information, you can easily gather current data at the same time you send event invitations—less hassle for you, and for your members.
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