Name Badge

With the peak buying season for consumers right around the corner, the big trade show season is close to follow...

One smart move is to plan shows within close proximity. You cut higher transportation costs if you can move all needed materials a distance that requires only using personal vehicles or renting a small truck (if you need to carry a lot).

Whether you draw hundreds or thousands of attendees, name badges are necessary for all. To save on this budget item, simply print ones that don't require pricey holders.

Instead of ordering custom booth, you're wallet is better off renting displays and booths. Both custom and rented serve the same purpose and get the job done, and you can decorate later to brand your space any way you want.

Purchase items in larger quantities to reap long-run savings. Many Cvent clients attend or plan multiple shows throughout any given year, and they find that it's less of a hassle if they don't have to place separate orders each time an event pops up on the calendar.

Don't settle for customer care that simply ends with product support. The highly-qualified professional services team at Cvent is available for additional support options such as data processing, campaign analysis and database management.

Our dedicated team responds to a variety of needs:

*Full-service event website and online event registration design
* Email marketing campaign and strategy consulting to achieve maximum response rates
* Database management services to help you clean, manage and grow your database
* Complete on-site support including registration and check-in, name badge production and payment processing
* Call center support that provides attendees with a phone number they can call to register, get information and resolve any issues related to your event
* Custom report creation and event data analysis

Take advantage of the extra help Professional Services offers. This group is determined to match up to our professional products, and their job is to give you the time and support that you deserve, but that many competitors in our market don't bother to provide.

One year ago, Cvent Meetings & Events blog was born! We've certainly grown—we're now over 1,000 posts strong!

To celebrate, I decided to take a look back at some of the year's highlights with a recap of our 10 most popular posts. Enjoy!

• How to Add Attendees—Not Expenses—to Your Event You can roll out an expensive marketing campaign or turn to discounted event prices to encourage registration, but you don't always have to do so.

• 3 Benefits of Banquetology Usually you'd think that bigger is better when it comes to catering at meetings and events. But in fact banquetology's "less is more" concept can be quite beneficial to planners in a number of ways.

• What to Include in Your Invitation Reminder Emails What can you do to increase your invitation response rate? Reminder emails are the answer.

• 3 Centerpiece Ideas to Save the Environment and Your Budget One area of meeting spend that can definitely get out of hand quickly is that of decor. It's also one that can be very wasteful, especially when it comes to centerpieces. Can you really save on centerpieces and be eco-friendly?

• How to Create a Custom Meeting Request Form In your already busy world, handling multiple meeting requests can get overwhelming. That's why meeting forms can be an invaluable tool in your Strategic Meetings Management program.

• 3 Caterers Offering Gluten-Free Menu Options One growing dietary concern among event guests is the need for a gluten-free option. Luckily, event caterers are hearing the call from planners to offer gluten-free meals.

• Creating Name Badges Doesn't Have to Be a Pain The task of creating name badges can be a time-consuming one. Event registration software such as Cvent makes it so much easier.

• 3 Ways Team Building Events Benefit Your Organization and Staff While professional networking, training and education are all key facets to your events, the benefits of team building to your employees and the organization as a whole should not be overlooked.

• 2009 Top 10 Meeting Trends Benchmark Hospitality International has released its Top 10 Meeting Trends for 2009, as observed at 30 award-winning properties.

• 3 Reasons Why Michael Scott Needs Cvent for The Office It's great that Michael can use Evite to quickly create an invitation and get some data on who is attending and who is not. But a 0.2 percent response rate? He could do better than that.

It's always been said that you only get one chance to make a good first impression, and events are no different. The first hour of your event is one of the most important, as it sets the stage for the rest of your event, whether it's just a one-night dinner or a three-day conference.

Make the most of this time! Welcome your event guests with:

• A thought-out invitation. The invitation is really the true first impression, right? Make sure your email event invitations are pleasing to the eye and include all the important information, such as event date and location, directions, and contact details.

• A name badge. When the majority of your event guests don't know each other, a name badge with a little bit of information—first name, company—is an easy way to create automatic introductions. Even when you host a big event in which many of the people should know each other (a large company function or user conference), name badges can be helpful. Your attendees may roll their eyes, but trust me, they'll thank you when their mind goes blank on the name of that huge client.

• A cocktail. When it comes to loosening up your event guests, nothing beats a little alcohol. Whether it be a signature cocktail or a glass of wine, drinks are a must-have at your welcoming receptions.

• An appetizer. A few passed plates will be much appreciated by those event guests who didn't get to grab dinner or who traveled from far away and haven't even eaten lunch. Not just polite, appetizers at welcoming receptions are also practical—your guests will need something in their stomachs to go with your cocktails!

• A smile. One of the most important elements at your welcome reception is you, the event planner! Make sure your events are adequately staffed so that someone is on hand to greet guests, take coats, distribute name badges and answer questions.

One of Cvent's clients always jokes that her favorite thing about registering people on the backend of the Cvent system is being able to skip over all the fields she makes required for her invitees. If this sounds like you, do keep in mind your name badges! 

Fields such as company or title, which you may want to include on your badges, should be filled out during any type of registration. Otherwise your registrant will have a blank line on his or her event name badge.

Also, remember that the contact information filled out during online event registration will update your address book and reports, making them that much more robust. Though skipping a field here or there on the backend of event registration may save you time, make sure to think ahead as to what types of information will be used in other places. Don't let saving time now mean more work in the future!

Remember when we blogged about how easy it is to create a name badge using Cvent's event management tool? Just pick and choose the information you want on the badge (a person's first name, title, department, etc.); format the badge font, colors, and type; and pick the contacts you want to apply to it. In just a few minutes you'll have professional name badges for all your attendees.

What we didn't mention was how great the Cvent name badge feature is for all our meeting planners using Avery® brand products, an industry leader for name badges, binders and self-adhesive labels. Thanks to a Cvent-Avery alliance, planners can create and print Avery name badges using a specially designed Avery template.

To format your name badge, just select from four Avery name badge templates, all listed in a drop-down menu under "Label Type."



It's now easy and fast to customize your Avery brand adhesive, pin, clip or hanging style badge.

Cvent is happy to announce our April 2009 release! Thanks to suggestions from clients, we've developed a ton of great new features that continue our commitment to being the most comprehensive event management, web survey and marketing solution in the market.

Here are a few release highlights of our Event Management and Cvent Supplier Network products:

Event Management

• Design name badges and event certificates per registrant using a new interface

• Integrate your Cvent and Salesforce accounts to transfer data for contacts, leads, and tasks

• Sync participant information to and from your WebEx account

• Email meeting organizers a link to view or mark a list of event participants outside of the application

• Use additional custom field types to define more about contacts, events, and sessions

• Customize the time zone name for each event

• Show or hide registration questions based on a registrant's known contact information

• Collect more information at once by combining questions with the same choices into a grid format

• Better track your budget by customizing cost items and savings formulas

• Define and use multiple filtered listings to locate events in your account

• Gather more information by adding custom questions in housing and travel forms

Cvent Supplier Network

• Allow planners to define and post meeting request forms with custom fields

• Create events and RFPs from submitted requests easily

• Define your own event workflow using strategic policies, triggers, and notifications

• Incorporate your organization’s processes into the event lifecycle

• Assign user permissions based on their individual role for each event

As you can see, our April release is full of exciting new features—but there's no need to feel overwhelmed! We'll be going over many of these new capabilities in the coming weeks here on the Cvent blog. Also, don't forget to sign up for one of the new release training sessions, which are being held April 6 to April 14.

Communication with your event attendees should not stop after they register. If you want to keep your audience involved and excited about your event—and reduce event attrition—you need to keep them in the loop from the initial registration to the day (and even after) your event. That's why we offer functionality to send emails to your registrants after they've signed up for your event.

Aside from the standard event reminders and registration confirmations, Cvent offers a number of custom messages you can send to attendees, should something important come up. Did you have to change your keynote speaker? Has the cocktail reception been moved from 7 PM to 7:30 PM? Forgot to mention that name badges can be picked up on the first-floor lobby? Customize an email to include whatever information you'd like.

Because you can send emails to an invitee list of your choosing, you can even send emails for administrative purposes. For example, you can notify any registrants if they have a remaining balance due. Cvent's extensive set of data tags even allows you to automatically insert details such amount paid and remaining balance—meaning there's no need to spend time figuring out who owes what and creating emails one by one.

From registration to the day of your event, any number of issues could arise. Use Cvent's easy-to-customize email features to keep your attendees in the know.

Catering, audio-visual equipment, floral services—the list of things your meeting or event may require goes on and on. One thing that nearly every event is sure to need? Name badges. After all, networking is a big component of most events. If your attendees don't know each other's names, making connections is certainly hard to do.

Unfortunately, the task of creating name badges can also be a time-consuming one. Planners have to figure out how to design a label, incorporate mail merge fields into the design (that's assuming you already know all about the mail merge itself), and generate a label. Event registration software such as Cvent makes it so much easier.

Using Cvent, you can select what information—email address, first name, last name, title, etc.—appears on the name tag. Add your organization's logo, and edit the font size, type, color and style.



Then, just select the contacts for whom you want to create a name badge and print.

Don't make the task of creating name badges more difficult than it needs to be. Cvent's fast and simple feature for name badge creation is another example of how the software can meet all your event management needs.

A very big challenge for event planners is creating seating charts and table assignments after attendees have completed their event registration. Creating seating assignments is a time-consuming task; in fact, some planners find the task so unpleasant that they outsource the job of table management.

Still, it's an important task, as seating arrangements can make or break the success of dinners and special events. To ease the pain of this critical task, Cvent recently released functionality that allows planners to easily assign groups of attendees to a table.

Enter table details such as name, status and number of seats.



Save and add as many tables as you want, or import already create table and seat data.



Then, browse your event attendees and assign them to the proper tables and seats.



Planners often experience a substantial number of changes to seating assignments during the planning process. Especially for events with a large number of attendees, having software to help with such changes can be a big time-saver to easily print reports, organize name badges and streamline event logistics.

Managing seating assignments in combination with your event registration/event management software is a great best practice. It can save you a lot of time and make your event planning more efficient.

It's election day, and voters across the country have more to look forward to than the thrill of casting their vote for the next president of the United States. This year, numerous companies are offering election freebies to voters—and even to those with no proof of a vote.

Starbucks Coffee is offering a free 12-ounce cup of brewed coffee to its customers, while Ben&Jerry's is giving out free scoops of ice cream to guests between 5 and 8 PM. Patrons that don an "I voted" sticker can enjoy a star-shaped Krispy Kreme doughnut today, and the East Coast chain California Tortilla is giving out a free taco coupon to diners wearing their sticker.

The intention of such giveaways isn't solely to encourage voters (although they certainly can't hurt.) Companies, just like meeting planners, use these giveaways to drum up business, get their name out there, and make a lasting connection with customers. Though planners may not rely so much on giveaways to boost registration counts (such as tradeshow exhibitors, who tend to use giveaways to entice attendees to explore their booth), planners often incorporate freebies into their events in order to make a lasting impression on their attendees.

To achieve this connection, you must select event giveaways wisely. Consider the following two types of fail-safe freebies:

1. Writing Supplies

Pens and notepads certainly make sense at a meeting where (obviously) attendees will be taking notes. Whether at breakout sessions or a conference-wide presentation, attendees will actually use the pen emblazoned with your company's name.

2. Apparel and Accessories

If a guest has chosen to commit time and money to attend your meeting, it's likely they have an interest or connection in what you have to offer. Aside from being functional, name badge holders and other apparel such as T-shirts and hats will be of interest to your attendees. An added benefit: such items promote a sense of community among your attendees.

It's great to be innovative and unique in your meeting or event giveaways. But beware of the seemingly endless options (blinking pins, wallets, pedometers, piggy banks, etc.) that don't necessarily capture attendees' interest. The goal is to give your attendees something they'll find useful and will keep as a reminder of your event—not relegate to the junk drawer.

Getting to your conference is just half the journey. Whether your registrants are traveling five miles or 500 miles to get to your event, the check-in process should be seamless. After all, a long, slow registration line is not the best first impression to give your attendees.

As guests begin their event experience, these four tips can eliminate common hassles and keep your guests feeling like VIPs:

• Offer on-site registration. Give your attendees a chance to register and check in simultaneously at on-site kiosks. For a true one-stop-shop experience, accept payments and produce name badges at the same time.

• Lend a hand. Looking for a personal touch? Staff your event with your own employees who are familiar with the event and its activities. Assign them to the registration section to help with the check-in process and answer any questions.

• Make it unique. Each guest should only be given one name badge, and each badge should contain a distinctive ID or bar code to ensure a secure transaction. Use the statistics from your bar code scans to keep track of your attendee counts and for future lead generation.

• Follow up on no-shows. A skipped event doesn’t mean the end to your relationship with an invitee. Contact your missing registrants with a personalized email reminding them of your next event.

Kick off your event with superior customer service, and set the tone for the entire conference. By easing anxiety and showing your registrants that you are truly professional, you’ll guarantee they’ll share their positive experience with others—and that’s an investment with unlimited return!