Email marketing is an important and influential part of the event management process & journey. Ensuring you are targeting the right delegates and promoting your events effectively are crucial elements to any event manager. As evocos event management software has an integrated email marketing tool within the software I have put together a list of my top 10 reasons why event managers should use an email marketing tool to ensure their event is a success.

• Clear Communication - Utilising the marketing tool effectively will ensure internal & external communication targets the relevant delegate audience or department.
• Fully Integrated Email Marketing Tool - Enabling you to produce & send e-invites and email marketing campaigns for every individual event.
• Increase in Delegate Attendance - utilising an email marketing tool will ensure that you are sending out relevant information to the relevant delegates
• Measure Event Metrics - Providing you with instant, comprehensive event metrics such as; bounce rates, if your email has been opened, click throughs, conversion rates & unsubscribes
• Enhance Delegate Journey - Through the automated e-invite functionality you are able to ensure your delegates event journey is seamless
• Integration with CRM - Having a tool that integrates seamlessly with your in-house CRM system and automatically updates all relevant delegate information will ensure you have the correct & most up to date information at all times
• Cost Effective - You are able to send highly targeted email and e-invites, not only increasing delegate attendance to your events but reducing costs as there is no cap on the number of e-invites you can send
• Able to Re-brand Simply - With an integrated email marketing tool you can re-brand each individual event through a simple and easy to use graphical marketing tool
• Increase Your Event ROI - By sending highly targeted & corporate branded e-invites to your delegates and with the inclusion of a simple registration process, this will ensure you increase not only the number of delegates attending your events but also your event ROI
• Total Control - Utilising the right event software which includes an integrated email marketing tool will ensure you as an event manager have total control over the entire event marketing process

As a fully comprehensive event software system, evocos provides you with a highly sophisticated integrated email marketing tool which will ensure you are able to achieve all of the above.

Contact us to discuss your requirements in a little more depth or just simply request a demo.

Part Two of this blog, Dave Langran explains how the event management industry is embracing technology to assist in the running and managing of events, but warns of the dangers of investing in software that is not able to fulfil long term requirements.

Interviewer: What sort of things do you need to consider when you’re choosing the right kind of event management software system? DL: It’s important to consider what would you like to do – what would be the ideal model today if you had a green field site that could do whatever you wanted it to do, and then look further down the track if you can; five years time/two years time, what’s it going to look like for your business? Then come up with a list of key points that you need your solution to meet in order to get to that end goal. Then you can start looking at products and solutions. Get products in, making sure to ignore the tinsel and the glitz around the products; they all look good, they’ll all demo well, they’ll all look fantastic in an hour’s presentation, because all event management software companies can do good presentations! Look at the company behind it, look at the how seriously they take your business processes and look at how much time they’re willing to invest in working with you to understand what you do. If they’re just going to sell you a box with a bit of software in it and a support and maintenance contract, that’s probably not the company for you, if you’ve got a long term view of how you’re going to take your event management solution. So look for a company that’s going to work with you, that’s going to be there for the long term, that’s going to take your ideas on board. Because you’re the person, as an event manager, who is doing the job. The software company – they don’t do the same job as you. They create the software. So a good software event management software solution company will want your ideas; so listen to what they’re saying in response to the ideas you’ve got, and then formulate whether you think you can work with them in the long term. It’s all about relationships.

Interviewer: Over the next few years, how do you see the event management software industry developing? DL: The economic situation is having a huge impact on the event management market place; there is a reluctance to leave your desk. If you’re not at your desk, you’re somewhere else and you’re not adding value to the business. So people are reluctant to leave their desk. The online WebEx/GoToMeeting/online meetings, there’s a relatively large explosion of that, especially in the US and it’s started to gradually come into the UK and Europe. We’re a bit more reluctant to do online events – they’re a bit ‘strange’ to us and we’re more used to getting in our cars and going on the train to physically attend an event. But with the pressures of the economy, online events will become more and more prevalent.

Equally, social networking such as Facebook, Twitter is creating a level of personalisation. The whole ‘Amazon’ experience online is what people expect. People who go onto Amazon and buy a book, they’re told what other books are in the same subject, and this is exactly the same with events. If you’re booking on an event you want to be able to see suggestions such as:

• Here’s an event that may be relevant to you
• Here are some others events you can look at
• Here are some other subjects surrounding the event
• Here’s a book about the event subject
• Here’s a DVD you can buy to prepare yourself -
• Here’s a hotel that’s near your event

So you can’t just look at it in isolation of the event, it’s all the bits that go around it as well. People’s perception of what they can get from an online experience is rising exponentially, and the software industry and the web industry are racing to keep up.

The focus in the future will also be with the integration into the back office systems. A lot of online event systems aren’t integrated; they’re not integrated with CRM solutions, you can’t therefore get personalisation in place. Personalisation is crucial if you’re going to deliver an online experience that adds value to the customer, personalisation is essential. Without that you’re just providing a ‘me too’ type experience. One delegate may register to attend a ‘Yacht Master Sailing Course’ and someone else is going on a ‘Competent Crew Course’ on a yacht; they’re completely different experiences that the two people are having, and so they have two completely different sets of expectations. One may be a leisure sailor the other may be a professional. The professional will want a professional experience, and the leisure sailor will want a leisure experience. Getting it right, and getting the interests of communities together and interfacing that with other systems is going to be crucial in the next two to three years. That is what will differentiate the events companies and the events solutions that will drive forward in this economic downturn and as the economy recovers, and those that just stand still.

This blog the second and final part of this interview.

Please read Part One to gain a full understanding of how you can future proof your events through investment in a comprehensive event management software solution. For more information on full end-to-end event management software solutions, talk to evocos. In the past year alone evocos event & delegate management software solution has created over 7000 events, managed approximately 75,000 delegates and has taken over 50,000 online bookings. evocos event management software team ensures our customers are able to seamlessly manage their events; gaining huge cost and efficiency benefits. Contact us now

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This blog article is Part One of an interview that discusses how companies are embracing technology to manage their events. Specifically, the blog explores how companies are using event and delegate management software to improve the efficiency of the event management process.

This is a transcript of an interview with Dave Langran (Director @ evocos) which was carried out earlier this year. This is a two part blog – make sure you come back in a couple of days for the second half to get a full understanding of how to future proof your event management software investment.

Interviewer: What are the key elements of running a successful event? DL: It’s all about planning – working out:

• What are people going to do when they come to the event?
• What are they going to get out of the event?
• What type of people do you want to come to that event in the first place?
• Who are you going to invite?
• Are people just going to book online?
• Are they going to book via the telephone?
• How are they going to communicate?
• How will you make sure that you get the right people in place?

So it is all about planning; planning is crucial. It’s also about looking at how are you going to follow those customer up later on - how are you going to follow up the non-attendees etc. So having a clear, concise plan about the pre-event, running the event and post event follow up is all part of running a successful event.

Interviewer: What are the benefits of implementing an integrated solution for both the event and also the delegate management? DL: It’s about putting the customer in control of what’s going on but at the same time controlling what they do. Putting an online system is all well and good, but it has got to interface with back office systems. The whole customer experience is the complete package. It is about people being able to book online or being able to book over the telephone, it’s having their details recorded so you can follow them up – so you can find out what their dietary requirements are closer to the event. It’s about making sure people attend, if they don’t attend it’s about finding out why they didn’t attend. It’s about finding out what they thought about the event on the day, and perhaps finding out about what they thought of the impact of that event in six months time.

Quite often people will fill in the ‘happy sheet’ – we’ve all had happy sheets that end in an event, and generally people tick the happy boxes so they can get away as quickly as possible, but we find that if you follow up an event a week later or six months later, you get a far better view of what’s actually happened. That therefore means that you can target further events to that same customer or similar customers in a way that’s appropriate for them and gives them value. Delegates will come back if they get value; if they don’t get value they won’t come back. It’s all about integrating all those processes together, of which the event and delegate management system is a crucial part of, but it’s not the only part.

Interviewer: What sort of things do you need to consider when you’re choosing the right kind of system? DL: The most important thing to do it to not look at the system at all. It’s to look at your business process. It’s to look at who does what and when in terms of the customer engagement. Look at what you do at the moment. Look at the plethora of spreadsheets you inevitably have, the bits of paper that fly around - where do they go? What does the customer get when he books onto an event, how does he find your event in the first place? Does he ring you up, go onto your website or send you an email? How does it work at the moment and how would you like it to work? What needs to interface into other parts of the business? An event manager will interface into many parts of the business and will have many hats on. They’ll be a sales person to get people to the event, they’ll be a sales person after the event to sell them on the benefits and to get them to register for the next event, they’ll be a marketing manager, they’ll be an IT manager in terms of getting the systems in place; there’s a wide plethora of things they do, so look at what you do at the moment, look at the ideal model.

This interview is concluded in “Part Two: Interview with Dave Langran, Future Proofing Your Online Event Management Software” which we will be posting shortly. If you would like further information on implementing an online event management software then please contact the evocos team

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