More and more businesses who run events are looking for a way to be that little bit more efficient for less cost, the old adage, do more for less and better for less. Improving your levels of efficiency and increasing the value of your events are two primary drivers that help distinguish a successful events company from one that is struggling. So whatever type of events you run, whether it is multiple events weekly, internal corporate meetings, training, staff development, incentives or annual conferences it is imperative that your organisation and event operates at maximum efficiency and giving your delegates a high quality experience.

Have you considered giving some of the power back to your delegates? By allowing your delegates to manage some of their own event experience you are making them feeling in control and have ownership and involvement with the event process. One way to do this is to implement and use an event software which includes a self service event portal. A self service portal can be used in a variety of ways, but for the events industry, this portal would be used to take registrations online and to give delegates a profile or account so they are able to manage their details and event experiences themselves.

By implementing a self service portal your delegates can register online and they can manage their contact information, dietary requirements, event history, selection of courses, accreditation requirement, purchase of relevant event merchandise and more. It will also allow your delegates to view upcoming events and choose whether this is something they are interrested in attending. Most people have a preferred method of communication and an online self service portal will allow delegates to select their preferred method so they can receive updates on the events that are not only relevant to them but also sent via a method of their choice.

As the service portal is online delegates can access their profile and information 24/7 and from any location, making this extremely convenient to your delegates, this can only mean that your delegates will have control and are more likely to register ensuring they provide themselves with a smoother and less stressful registration experience. Also if your delegate is able to register via your official event website this gives them a familiar, trusted view, whilst providing them access to their own branded portal.

 By simply handing over the reigns to their own event portal means hat many jobs that the event manager would have managed is now in the hands of the delegate. Meaning that many of the communications between the event manage and the delegate can be removed, saving the event manager time and allowing them to work on more strategic tasks.

You can avoid the inevitable bottlenecks associated with event management by introducing a self sevice portal. Many delegates might learn about an event over the weekend and will have to wait until Monday morning before they can call the event company to register their interest or attendance. This can lead to sudden peaks in demand on a Monday morning which can be tough to control and manage and this can often lead to mistakes trying to juggle numerous tasks and coping with an unrealistic workload. However if you provide a way for your delegates to register via the internet this eans that the bottlenecks can be avoided.

A further key benefit to the event managers of the self service portal is that it allows them to access their dlegate information from one central location/platform. Making it that much easier to create reports, download data ad create delegate badges and custom event packs.

The self service portal can be integrated into your organisation's CRM system, this means that any amendments made by the delegates themselves to their contact information are automatically updated/populated (in real time) into the CRM. This means that your records are always clean, accurate and up to date.

Most self service portals, such as evocos', are more often than not supplied as part of an event software solution. These solutions include a host of event tools such as email marketing, invitation maanagement, online registration/microsite management, integrated surveys, reporting tools and more.

Contact the evocos team to learn more about our online self service portal, simply click here.

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Find a venue, make sure it is the right venue, select your target delegate audience, send branded invites, register the delegates, take payment if required, send communication to those registered delegates, schedule speakers, manage workshops, produce badges and barcodes, produce reports...wow...the list goes on and on..but is this sounding all to familiar? Managing a conference is complicated, time consuming and extremely hard work. More and more conference and event managers are starting to use a managed service to handle all these tedious tasks for them leaving them free to get on with the more important areas of managing a conference.

Most conference and event managers will look at an event management company to manage their conference for them, however, these companies still need to utilise the relevant event technology, such as; invitation management tool, microsite builder, online registration, email communication with your delegates and a report writer to analyse your event stats. This all starts to add up in cost and becomes a financial drain and more than likely your budget won't extend to these extras. Here at evocos we did our research and recognised their was a real need from the events market for this kind of service and on the back of this research we have launched an Event and Conference Managed Service to help you manage your conference, minisming cost and increasing efficiency. 

Our conference and event service will do the following for you:

• Affordable flat fee to manage the conference for you
• Design & create a website branded to your corporate specifications
• Liaise with your event & marketing team to ensure correct brand specifications
• Configure & upload your delegate database  
• Send branded e-invites to your known users
• Provide a single click transaction from e-invite to personalised & branded landing page
• Allow your delegates to register online through your website
• Customise your online booking form per event
• Enhance delegate liaison by managing a delegates full day itinerary
• Maintain & manage delegate registration and information
• Send automated delegate booking email confirmations
• Produce customised reports based on your specific event and delegate requirements
• Produce personalised delegate packs tailored specifically to each individual delegate
• Collate and store relevant information and produce delegate badges prior to the event
• Ensure total control over access through production of individual barcode security
• Provide a comprehensive schedule of all one to one meetings, workshops, seminars

The events market is a tough industry and everyone remembers your "last conference or event" so it is crucial that your conference or event is a success. Why don't you call and speak to one of our team to ask for a free demonstration of how our new Managed Conference and Event Support Service will ensure your event is a success at a very competitive and cost effective price.

In the first part of our blog post we covered the need for delegates to register online and in this final post we will be covering how using online registration will help not only your delegates but you, the event manager.

The online registration procedure should look something like the following:

·      Web page branded to your corporate specification

·      Sending branded, personalised e-invites to a targeted selection of prospect delegates via advanced email marketing tool

·      Provding a single click transaction from e-invite to branded event landing page

·      Allowing your delegates to register on-line through your website

·      Sending automated delegate booking email confirmations

·      Producing personalised delegate packs tailored specifically to each individual delegate

·      Collating and storing relevant information and making delegate badges prior to the event

This model benefits the delegate along with the event manager. For the delegate, they receive targeted, personalised e-invites, can register and pay online and then experience a complete closed loop by getting event confirmation and updates through email. For the event manager, they're able to take a step back away from the enrolment process, whilst still remaining in control. Full monitoring and reporting features should be included in the email marketing software that should allow the event manager to see who opened the invite, who clicked on links and more. This will help to improve the quality of the data, the follow ups and the success of forthcoming campaigns.

The event manager can also customise the online booking form for every event they host - ensuring that they get the most vital data for that event. This information may be used for other marketing and to create personalised delegate packs on the day. Custom delegate badges, complete with barcodes could also be created at a click of a button.

Managing the delegate registration process could be made a lot easier by outsourcing this area to an event software company. This kind of service provides all the above activities - freeing the event manager up to focus on more strategic tasks. Event management software organisations can take control of the delegate registration process through the use of their sophisticated event software solutions - all for a flat and affordable fee. This kind of partnership can often be preferable to event companies who are just starting to make use of technology when organising their events. The other side of the coin would be to completely invest in an event software solution which would come with a delegate registration model. Although in this case, the event managers would still need to manage and control this part of the process themselves.

For further information on how evocos can help you manage your delegates more efficiently, contact the evocos team.

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Have you noticed that more and more of your delegates prefer to register for your events online? People now understand the Internet and all it has to offer, and now expect organisations to meet their requests on the net as well as offline and therefore it is becoming more important to event managers to have the capacity to allow their delegates to enrol and pay online . Online registration provides benefits of increased control and effectiveness, whilst at the same time reducing expenses for the event host. This post explains how event managers can manage this activity - either themselves, or through the use of an event management software supplier.

Creating and managing profitable events is key to all event managers and with this growing pressure to be succcesful you also need to keep your expenditure low whilst increasing your efficiency. This means that event managers are repeatedly walking a very thin line between creating an event that is of value to delegates and producing an event that is managed on a diminutive budget. This can trigger issues sometimes as saving money is not always harmonious with the desire to manage and host a high value event.

It is now becoming apparent to event managers the benefits of control and effectiveness that technology can bring to the event management proess. Being able to automate key actions and taking advantage of the Internet should help save time and money and can also create a more efficient event experience for both event managers and delegates. One of the important areas where events and the Internet coming together is that of delegate registration.

Historically (and some organisations still do this), event managers would manually select target delegates from a database, from this selection they would then create and send direct mail invitations (this comes with addition expenses of printing and postage) and then deal with regsitrations via the phone, fax and post. The tracking and reporting would be minimal through this manual process, whilst incurring other costs via the continuious communication between themselves and the registered delegates. Managing the list of delegates would be very time consuming - managed on massive, complex spreadsheets. However, we are now seeing this conventional model of delegate enrolment being graudally overtaken by that of an Internet based model.

The Internet based model of delegate registration takes advantage of the increase in the use of the Internet all over the world. According to a Radicati Group study from May 2009, there is about 1.9 billion email users worldwide. That equates to just over one in every five persons on the earth making use of email. For 2014, Radicati Group projects 2.5 billion email users worldwide.  These figures demonstrate that people are now becoming accustomed to making use of email as part of their everyday lives.

The use of email and social networking means that people are increasingly living their lives online; simply put, this shows that they would like to be able to undertake essential transactions on line as well - which includes registering to attend events.

In the second part of this blog post I will cover the online registration procedure in more depth. However, in the meantime if you would like more information then please contact the evocos team

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