Event Fee Collection

While using a system like Cvent's certainly makes sense for the traditional corporate event planner, our association clients are a little different. We count nurses, teachers, doctors, engineers, dentists, psychologists, and pharmacists as our clients and users of Cvent! These volunteers give their time and energy towards increasing the value of their respective associations and professions - in addition to demanding full time jobs.

Because of this, volunteer board members need to ensure that their time is spent effectively. Here are some tips and tricks we have seen that will save you and your board a lot of stress when it comes to crunch time:

• Automate your communication. We all know how big of a pain it can be to manually add your entire database to an email invitation, or reply to each individual registrant as they sign up for your event. Sending the right message to the right person can be confusing and time-consuming. With Cvent, this entire process is automated. Simply design your email templates, and the system will intelligently know when to send confirmations, regrets, and reminders - based on a schedule that you pre-determine.

• Use your resources. Part of the beauty of an association is that everyone involved has a passion for the material and dedication to the chapter. Delegate tasks to board members, form committees, and plan ahead. Cvent allows you to have multiple user logins, so that different people can use your account to complete different tasks. Especially with a limited budget, associations must make good use of their most valuable resource - people.

• Clone previous events. We know that associations typically have reoccurring events that are fairly similar each time - annual conferences, monthly luncheons, etc. With Cvent, you can simply clone these events, change the pertinent details (date, time, location, menu options) and open for registration. When you don't have to reinvent the wheel, you are able to spend time focusing on more important aspects of your event.

• Put fee collection in the hands of the experts. Managing and collecting funds from each event can be a giant headache, especially when fees are different for members and non-members, you have early-bird discounts, or when some sessions command a certain fee and others do not. Simply ensuring that you are collecting the right amount is hard, and you can forget about getting complete payments at registration time! With Cvent, this headache is erased completely. With each account, you receive a commercial-grade Verisign account, which allows you to directly deposit fees into your bank account. Furthermore, our system automatically totals everything in your invitee's registration. There is little room for error, and no need to wait around for you to receive your money from a third party.

• Source your event with the Cvent Supplier Network. Our comprehensive listing of venues and service providers is so easy to use and dramatically cuts down on the time it normally takes to find the perfect spot for your next event. Even small board meetings need a location, and we can help you find and negotiate the best rate for your group. Best of all, this service is free - certainly the best price tag for a non-profit. Sign up for your complimentary account today.

Of course, these tips are only a few of the ways that Cvent can help streamline your processes. We'd love to hear from you with more ideas!

As the meetings industry prepares for the H1N1 flu virus, are you ready for handling events during flu season? Check out these 4 tips for how to be prepared:

1. Stock up on hand sanitizers.

Hand sanitizers are a decent safeguard to spreading diseases from hand to mouth. Though they don't replace hand washing, they are especially helpful at meetings and events where your guests cannot always run to the bathroom for soap and water. Just make sure to purchase sanitziers that contain an alcohol (ehtyl alcohol, ethanol, etc.) in a concentration of at least 60 percent. Studies have shown that anything less than this is not effective.

2. Educate your guests.

Provide your attendees with helpful information on how they can keep themselves and others healthy. Washing hands frequently, avoiding touching eyes, nose and mouth, and coughing into a sleeve or elbow—not hands—are among the best tips to stay healthy. Share these with your attendees on your event website or in your email marketing.

3. Stay informed.

Just as your guests should be in the loop, event planners should make sure to regularly visit reliable websites such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to keep current on the flu vaccine, influenza activity in the United States and more.

Additionally, it also helps to be familiar with the symptoms of the flu, which include fever, sore throat, headache, body and muscle aches, dry cough, runny or stuffy nose and fatigue. Note that for adults, symptoms such as difficulty breahting or shortness of breath, sudden dizziness and severe vomiting warrant urgent medical attention. Establish a plan of action should an event guest, or one of your staff members, fall sick. Designate a contact person to whom guests can turn for medical assistance.

4. Have a back-up plan.

Last year, many event planners were caught unawares by the pandemonium brought on by the flu. Make sure to establish procedures for attendee cancellations, speaker cancellations, etc. Have a policy in place when it comes to refunding event fees for your attendees. This also holds true for your event venue and suppliers—go over how payments/refunds will be handled should you need to cancel or change locations at the last minute.

In today's uncertain economy, associations are struggling to strengthen ties and remain relevant to their members. One of the best ways to do this has always been hosting meetings and events, but due to staff cuts and reduced budgets all-around, it's likely that convincing your members to register has grown increasingly difficult.

Association Strategies, Inc., a premier executive search and transition management team, has some advice for struggling associations. In the first of its original quarterly surveys called "Burning Questions," the organization came across a few strategies for associations to connect with staff, volunteers and their networks.

One such approach is to take a hard look at your members and offer what they need right now. Here's what they said one respondent was doing to make it easier for members to stay involved:

"One of our respondents shared their association’s experience creating a 'pay-what-you-can' approach to meeting registration. The organization was pleasantly surprised by the number of individuals who registered—and who paid close to the proposed fee."

We've always supported offering multiple registration options to your attendees to keep attendance high—for both association events and non-association meetings. Letting cash-strapped attendees sign up for the most relevant sessions of your event captures an audience you might have otherwise lost with one all-inclusive event fee.

Read the complete survey by Association Strategies for more insight.

There's no doubt that face-to-face meetings and events hold a lot of benefits for organizations, especially in these tough economic times when your clients need to hear from you. However, in some cases, a live meeting is simply not an option.

To help planners who can't justify the costs of a live meeting, Cvent is happy to announce a strategic integration with the nation's leading web-conferencing service provider, WebEx. With Cvent, planners have complete flexibility to manage and market online meetings in addition to in-person events.

The partnership is a win-win for both Cvent and WebEx customers. Cvent users can easily integrate with the most reliable web-conferencing service available, and WebEx users can increase attendance to their events and enrich each attendee's experience.

Features of the integration include online fee collection, custom-tailored email invitations, automated reminders and branded event websites. Cvent also synchronizes registration data with Cisco and allows users to send post-event emails and post-event surveys to the attendees of your webinar.

To learn more about the partnership and how the integration can benefit your meetings and events, read the full press release at the Cvent website.

Building your event website is an important step in the event management process. Not only does it provide instant access of event information to your invitees, but it also is a great centralized location for promoting your events, collecting online registration and payments, and more—all accomplished quickly and at a low cost.

There are, however, some do's and don'ts of event websites. Consider a few of the following tips as you start to build yours:

DON'T be boring. A black-and-white website with simple plain text doesn't exactly get an invitee excited about attending your event—nor does it look very professional. Liven up your event websites with color, graphics and other eye-catching features.

DO select colors and designs that enforce your event's theme and your organization. Choose colors and logos that will be used throughout your marketing materials and event communications. This will give attendees an instant connection between your pre-event, event and post-event materials.

DON'T be too wordy. Text-heavy pages are difficult to read and turn viewers off. Split your event information (agenda, speakers, etc.) into easy-to-navigate tabbed pages. This makes your event data easy to read and easy to find.

DO make event registration easy. The goal of your event website is, after all, to promote your event and encourage online registration. Your invitees should not have to work to find a way to register. Prominently display a "Register" button on all your event website pages so that they have a clear path to registration.

DON'T make assumptions. Even if you've been reading about the hottest new hotel in town for the past few weeks, don't think that your event attendees have. Just saying the event will be held at City Hotel won't be enough information for most, and you certainly don't want to make your invitees work for the information themselves.

Include specifics on event location and phone number. Better yet, provide links to location maps and offer driving directions. Be just as specific with your event date details and contact information.

DO say thank you. Using these tips, you've created a clean, professional website that has convinced an invitee to say Yes to your event. Once they've registered, don't forget to show your appreciation with a Thank You and event summary upon completing registration. They'll appreciate it just as much as you do their attendance.

 

Most companies are planning for 2009 right now. In a tough economy, it's important for meeting planners to have an accurate forecast for projected costs on meeting and events.

Cvent offers a budget management module that helps planners measure budgeted costs against actual costs. We also help planners figure out if they have collected enough event fees to cover their event costs, if they charge for attendance.

Consider a few benefits of having a good budget tool integrated to your event management system:

1. Tracking everything in one place means less tedious data entry and chance for errors.

2. Such tools help you calculate taxes and gratuities to make your meeting budget more accurate.

3. Tracking vendor activity over time helps you negotiate better deals with vendors. If you give a company repeat business over time, you'll likely be rewarded for your volume and loyalty.

4. The ability to generate reports quickly for actual spend vs. budgeted spend can save you a substantial amount of time.

5. Looking at spend by categories and sub-categories can help planners identify where they are spending too much money.

6. Reviewing cross-event reports with the click of a button allows you to track trends over a month, quarter or year to see important trends and make critical business decisions.

At Cvent, we "eat our own dog food," so to speak, and use our event budget module to plan all of our events. We know from first-hand experience that it helps forecast our expense and return on investment down to the dollar. So it's no surprise that We recommend all of our clients use the event budgeting capabilities integrated with their event management software to save time and money.

View more information on how our event budget module works