Cvent's online registration software and Supplier Network were recently featured on ITBusiness.ca! The article
"Software tools help event planners get hard results" describes how Cvent's event planning tools can help planners
host meetings easily, effectively and accurately despite shrinking budgets.
Some Cvent clients in Canada, such as Ottawa-based Netrunner, Inc., shared how Cvent helped streamline events and save money.
Valerie Yersh, vice president of events and marketing at Netrunner, noted in the article that Cvent's reporting function was useful for sending just the financial updates to the sales department, without having them access all of the other logistics information. When it came to costs, Cvent's customizable event website tool was her top money-saving feature.
"The Web site development function allowed us to
launch the event without having to pay a fortune for back-end Web development," she said in the article. "We found creating a Web site would cost around $15,000."
Read the full article
here at
ITBusiness.ca.
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.
One of the many unfortunate effects of the down economy has been staff cutbacks. Aside from losing trusted colleagues in light of tightened budgets, staff reductions also mean
your workload increases, though the hours in the day certainly do not.
Luckily, meeting and event planners can meet the challenge to do more with less thanks to technology such as Cvent. Cvent's online event registration software accomplishes the extra work you have on your shoulders by drastically cutting the time spent on manual tasks.
For example, Cvent consolidates your attendee or member records in one location, collecting this data from them as they sign up for meetings and events. This information is
pre-populated for returning customers, allowing them to view and update out-of-date contact data. Using Cvent,
keeping track of registrant information is easily accomplished without demanding any of your time.
Consider the cloning feature of Cvent's event and Request for Proposal (RFP) management tools. You can easily access past events or RFPs and, with a few quick changes, re-use them for your current event. There's no need to "reinvent the wheel"—you'll save time by doing all the major event work just once, leveraging it later for similar events or RFPs.
These are just a few of the ways Cvent can save you time in your event management. Though your meeting planning staff may be limited, there's no need to feel overwhelmed. Sign up for one of our
online demos today to learn more about using Cvent to
meet the demands of a heavier workload without falling behind.
As a member-based organization, you have a lot more on your plate than planning meetings and events through Cvent. Another important responsibility:
managing your annual membership renewal campaigns. Did you know that Cvent, the leader in online event registration software, can help your association do this, too?
Membership renewal through Cvent is easy and efficient. You can arrange for all your contacts to be notified of renewal just by organizing your contacts into lists based on renewal dates (i.e. those whose membership expires in January, February, etc.). Then, you can easily send targeted emails to members in a timely and efficient manner.
The process for renewal is easy. First, create and launch a professional, appealing website using Cvent. You can provide background on your organization, list key association contacts, detail membership advantages, etc.
Rather than clicking "Register Now!" your current/potential members can click to renew/subscribe.
After reviewing their contact information, they can submit select their membership fee and fill out the payment details.
A few simple steps, and renewal is complete.
Contact Cvent today to find out how our software can be leveraged for more than just your association events.
In a recent post on
tips for attendee management to increase registration, we mentioned that bundling pricing can be a great strategy for encouraging multiple registrations. But what if you're just looking for registrations, period? Or perhaps you're targeting many clients who work for small organizations, and thus don't have more than one employee for whom event attendance makes sense?
You can incentivize this target audience as well. One way to do this is to
offer other price discount options such as early bird rates. With Cvent's online registration software, you can set such time-related discounts for your admission items. Just enter the discounted price and specify a date. Any guests who registers prior to this date will pay the discounted early bird price.
Time-related discounts are a great way to draw in registrations. After all, most people are most open to paying for something when they know they're getting a deal.
Another tip for making the most of your early bird offer? As you approach your discounted registration deadline, consider extending the "Register by" date by a few weeks. Extending the early-bird rate will bring the event to your invitee's attention again. Plus, it will grab a whole set of registrants who realize they should take advantage of a second chance at a great rate.
Now more than ever, meeting planners are on the lookout for ways to increase attendee registration. With a few simple but effective changes in your attendee management strategy, you'll have event registration numbers up in no time.
• Don't spam. Utilizing email campaigns for your event marketing can get a response rate of five percent to 15 percent, compared to the one percent to two percent response rate of paper campaigns. Yet no email campaign has a chance of success if it doesn't even get through to your event invitee's inbox.
Carefully consider your email invitation's subject line and content so as to avoid getting stuck in a spam filter. Online registration software such as Cvent boasts an email content analyzer feature that scores your email deliverability and risk of getting caught in filters.
• Take advantage of free marketing. Event planning software can do wonders when it comes to event promotion. But don't forget the many free avenues to garner publicity, like social networking sites, free press release engines and more.
• Go online. The Internet is the go-to place for information these days. Don't be left out! Create an attractive, professional event website to offer invitees online registration and event details, and to keep attendees up-to-date on the latest agenda.
• Bundle prices. Offering bundled fees for multiple event registrations encourages organizations to sign up several attendees. Attendees will be hesitant of registering more than one attendee at full price. By offering a volume discount, you'll entice organizations to sign up two, three, four or more attendees.
• Brand your event. From a color scheme to a catchy slogan, your event should be branded with the key "take-away" for your attendees. Make sure your attendees know the benefit of coming your event, and shout it from the rooftops on your email invitation, event website, follow-up survey and more.
Times are tough, and you've no doubt seen many changes happening with your meetings and events. Are you concerned about keeping your registration numbers up?
Just like you, your potential event attendees are dealing with stricter budgets. It's getting harder and harder to justify money spent on elaborate conferences and events. You can, however, convince cash-strapped attendees to click "Yes" on your event invitations.
Be flexible with your attendees by offering them multiple registration options rather than one, all-inclusive entrance pass. By setting up your online registration with various event session and track options, you'll draw in attendees who can't justify the price of a ticket to your conference or meeting as a whole, but can certainly attend a few of the most valuable (in their eyes) events on your agenda.
Offering multiple registration options is easy with online registration software such as Cvent. You can add sessions, specifying names, start dates and times and more.
Set fees and amounts that are appropriate for each session.
When your attendees register, they can select to register for the entire event or just one or two of your sessions. This feature will not only allow you to keep the registrants whose budgets no longer allow for an entire event registration, but also gain those who may have never met your admission fee in the past.
According to a MeetingNews survey, the majority of meeting planners (29 percent) have set a New Year's resolution to re-tool their meetings program in 2009. Many planners said that getting more familiar with event technology was one way to do this. Others cited efforts such as "improving the electronic invitation process" and "increasing my skill level in the use of technology as it relates to planning, promotion, implementation, follow-up and evaluation of our meetings."
Online registration software such as Cvent can help you meet these meeting planning goals and more. From email invitations to event follow-up surveys, Cvent's extensive toolset can address all of your needs. Plus, Cvent's dedicated customer care team is available 24X5 to assist in the creation, management and analysis of your meetings and events, and can also offer insider tips and best practices for making your events a success.
Make sure that your 2009 resolution is kept. Learn more about event management with Cvent by signing up for one of our online demos today.
Now that you know how to what makes an event website professional and effective, how do you go about actually creating one? Selecting event registration software such as Cvent can help. What should you look for in an event management solution when it comes to event websites?
• Customizable pages. Color and text are important for capturing your event attendees' attention, so make sure your event software lets you be creative with your pages. With software such as Cvent, you can set background and text colors, select button colors and styles, specify time and date formats and more.
In addition to being able to change the color, useful software for creating event websites should allow you to customize items such as graphics. Adding your corporate logo and color schemes promotes brand awareness.
• Organized page tabs. Rather than overload your invitees with event information on the first page of your website, create separate pages for the event summary, agenda, attendee list, speakers, etc. Using Cvent, you can create multiple event pages, then organize these pages in a logical order under separate tabs.
• Ability to update. Your event isn't static, so why would your event website be? Valuable event website software will allow you to keep adding and editing your event website after the initial launch. You can keep your attendees up to date on agenda items, session speakers and more.
A final note: one of the most important things to look for in your event website solution is a user-friendly interface. Especially if you have no knowledge of HTML or experience in website construction, pick a software solution like Cvent that offers easy-to-use tools and free customer support. Creating and launching event websites becomes a no brainer for any user.
When it comes to getting advice and opinions, we often turn to trusted friends, colleagues and family members. We value their input more than that from any external sources, which is often you, the event marketer.
Because of this inherit trust, a message from a friend or colleague can have a much stronger impact than one from you, especially if you are contacting a potential event attendee with whom you do not have a relationship (a non-member, new lead, etc.). Wouldn't it be great if you could get endorsement of your event from an invitee's friends? It's possible with Tell-A-Friend functionality.
Using event registration software such as Cvent, attendees can forward an event invitation other people. During registration, attendees simply enter the names and email addresses of friends along with a short message. An invitation email will automatically be sent to those entered.
When it comes to event promotion, it doesn't get much better than a solid recommendation from a trusted friend. Make the tell-a-friend feature a must-have for your event management software.
As many meeting and event planners know, it's common to have more than one type of registrant for your conferences, tradeshows, etc. For example, at a tradeshow you may have both exhibitors and attendees, while large meetings and conferences may be open to both members and non-members. In such cases, using conference registration software that offers only one registration process would be inefficient.
Using Cvent's registration software, it's easy to
create multiple registration paths so that you can offer a registration to all your attendees. When creating your event, simply select the Multiple option for your event's registration process.
Then you can edit the details of as many registration processes as you need for your event.
Events and conferences are not "one size fits all," so why should your conference registration software be?
Using Cvent's multiple-path registration feature, it's easy for planners to manage complex events with one easy-to-use system.
Looking for a way to save time without increasing cost on your next conference? Conference registration software is
exactly what you need.
Conference registration software such as Cvent offers a wealth of easy-to-use features that will
enhance the
registration process for both you and your conference attendees. Set up quick online registration that you can make open to the public through the event website or make private by specifying a targeted list of
attendees.
It's easy to customize your online conference registration to meet every one of your needs. Set cut-off dates for when attendees can change or
cancel registration, provide a personalized agenda according to each registrant's selections, and allow attendees to repeat the
registration process as another registrant. You can even
ask custom questions about your conference registration,
for example, "How did you hear about this conference?"
Do you have a particularly detailed conference in the works? Using Cvent for your conference registration software makes it
easy
to create multiple sessions or tracks for your event. Include sessions in your conference, or create optional ones with
or without required fees.
Managing your specific session attendees is even easier with session emails. Scheduled automated emails for each
session, whether before the session to provide an agenda or after the session to thank all the participants.
Consider all the features of conference registration software for your next event. You can save time and money
planning even the most involved conference or event.
View more information on Cvent's
online registration features
You likely wear many hats in your career as an event planner: negotiator, accountant, manager—the list of
roles you fill and skills you have master goes on and on. With the advent of email marketing, event websites and
online registration, and other technology, must you also add the job of webmaster to your list? The answer is no,
thanks to Cvent's easy-to-use HTML editor.
Thanks to the easy "What You See Is What You Get" interface, Cvent's HTML editor makes it simple to craft HTML email
messages, no matter your level of experience.
Enter and edit text directly into HTML editor window, adjusting
colors, sizes, font types and more. Select images from your graphics library in order to match the look and feel of
your event emails to your organization's brand.
Drop in data tags from Cvent's extensive list, such as contact name
and company and event title and start date. You can also view the HTML code of your email and preview how it will
look to recipients.
No matter how large or small your event, you'll likely be sending a few emails, from invitations to event reminders
to requests for post-event feedback.
Cvent's HTML editor ensures your event emails are professional and
eye-catching—no HTML knowledge required.
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