Interviewer: What are the key elements to run a successful event?
DL: It’s about planning, exercising:
– What will people do when they come to the event?
– What are you going to get out of the event?
– What kind of people do you want to come to that event in the first place?
– Who are you going to invite?
– Are people only going to book online?
– Are you going to book by phone?
– How will they communicate?
– How will you ensure you hire the right people?
So it’s all about planning; planning is crucial.
It’s also about looking at how you’re going to follow up with those customers later, how you’re going to follow up with non-attendants, etc. Therefore, having a clear and concise plan around the pre-event, event execution, and post-event follow-up is part of executing a successful event.
Interviewer: What are the benefits of implementing an integrated solution for both the event and delegate management?
DL: It is about putting the client in control of what is happening but at the same time controlling what he does. Bringing a system online is great, but you have to interact with back office systems. The entire customer experience is the complete package. It’s about people being able to book online or over the phone, it’s about recording their details so you can follow up, so you can find out what their dietary needs are closer to the event. It’s about making sure people show up, if they don’t show up it’s about finding out why they didn’t show up. It’s about finding out what they thought about the event that day, and maybe finding out what they thought about the impact of that event six months from now.
Quite often people fill out the ‘happy sheet’ – we’ve all had happy sheets that end in an event and people generally check the happy boxes so they can get out as quickly as possible – but we found that if you follow up a event a week later or six months later, you get a much better view of what really happened. So that means you can target more events to that same customer or similar customers in a way that is appropriate for them and provides value. Delegates will return if they get value; if they don’t get value, they won’t come back. It’s about integrating all those processes together, of which the event and delegate management system is a crucial part, but not the only part.
Interviewer: What kinds of things should you consider when choosing the right type of system?
DL: The most important thing to do is not to look at the system at all. It’s looking at your business process. It’s looking at who does what and when in terms of customer engagement. Look what you’re doing right now. Look at the plethora of spreadsheets you inevitably have, the flying bits of paper, where do they go? What does the client get when they book an event? How do you find your event in the first place? Does he call you, visit your website or send you an email? How does it currently work and how would you like it to work? What must interact with other parts of the business? An event manager will interact with many parts of the business and have many roles. You’ll be a sales person to get people to the event, you’ll be a sales person after the event to sell them the benefits and get them to sign up for the next event, you’ll be a marketing manager, you’ll be an IT admin in terms of putting systems up and running; there are a lot of things they do, so look at what you do right now, look at the ideal model.