7 | Minute Read
Event management is no easy feat, and not all companies’ event needs are equal. For the brands holding one off events infrequently, their event management needs are a lot simpler, and achievable without specifically designed software. However, for those businesses who hold serial events frequently – for example, appointments – they have much more complex needs, and would benefit from Event Booking System Software.
How do you know your event needs would benefit from event booking system software?
What kind of automation tools are available through event booking system software, and how does it help your business?
We answer these questions and more below.
What is Event Booking System Software?
You’ve undoubtedly heard of Event Management Software – which refers to applications (either on the web, or installed onto your desktop) that help to automate and digitise the event management and planning process.
Event Booking Systems refer to a similar type of application as above, except the tools available help to automate and digitise a multi-event booking registration and management process. Event Booking Systems go beyond normal email invites and registration tools; they offer tools which make it easy to manage serial events for which booking into specific events, appointments, or time-slots is necessary.
Here are some examples of tools you’ll want to look out for if you are managing frequent, serial events, appointments, or webinars:
- Event calendar (which auto-populates with all your created events)
- Appointment booking options (registration via a calendar, or predetermined time slots)
- Event, registration form, and email cloning (to make running serial events as easy as copy and paste)
- Webinar integration
If running events is central to your business model and is something you frequently do, then you may want to look into an Event Booking System Software which offers the above tools.
3 Signs you need event booking system software
You run a high volume of events frequently
Perhaps your business runs events daily – or even hourly. What if your business has complex, high volume event needs?
Running serial events, or appointments using normal event management tools can be time and resource intensive. Without the right tools and automation options, running a high volume of events (and/or appointments) is a full time, stressful job.
With Event Booking System Software, you can automate invite send-outs, have all your events automatically populate onto Event Calendars for easy registration, and even offer live appointment booking via time-slots.
OK, so we want 30% of our event’s attendees to commit to purchasing our brand’s new product at the event. That means the event has to be about the launch of your product; the entire Value Proposition of your event is the new product itself. You’ll also need extra incentives to convert at the event. Lastly, you’ll want to not invite too broad of an audience; as lukewarm contacts and leads are less likely to convert.
You run events as appointments, and have trouble managing registration
You may be using normal event managing processes and tools for running appointments. The issue here is that it becomes confusing and error-prone to manage event registration at this volume.
Lets say you run 10 events a day (which are technically half hour appointments). Without Event Booking System Software, browsing available vs unavailable appointment time-slots, and registering accordingly is incredibly difficult to manage for both the event manager, and the registrants themselves.
With Event Booking System Software you could utilise appointment booking calendars which pre-populate with all your appointment time-slots. This makes it easy to browse and register from a user end, and easy to manage registration in the back end – for example – with automated confirmation emails.
Here’s an example of an Appointment Booking Calendar created using the Swift Digital Events platform.
All your events are near identical - and you waste time in creating them separately
If you’re running serial events that are incredibly similar in set up, marketing and management, you may find your working days eaten up by repetitive, monotonous tasks. By using an Event Management Automation software with Event Booking capability, you will save countless hours by being able to clone events, marketing materials and registration forms – all whilst automating publication of important event communications.
Lets see how easy it is to set up 10 identical events (held in different venues and on different dates) when using a high quality Event Management platform:
- Create your original event. Set up the event details, branded email campaigns, and registration form.
- Simply click to ‘clone’ the event 10 times
- Edit each of the other events’ time and venue.
- If you created event emails such as invites and reminders, you should have used ‘event variables’ which pull in their correlated event’s details dynamically. Meaning the only thing you have to edit across your 10 event clones is venue, and date. No wasting time updating the copy across dozens of emails!
- Simply set and forget. If you’re using Event Booking System Software you can rest easy knowing your 10 cloned events are automatically pulled through to an Event Calendar you’ve embedded on your site; saving you time and stress in marketing to gain registrants.
The above is just an example of the simplified process when using the right tools (in this case, tools available in our Swift Events application).
If your business model depends on serial events and appointments, there is absolutely no reason to not invest in Event Booking System Software. Over time the ROI will speak for itself. Serial events are time consumptive without tools specifically designed to automate this complicated, high-volume process. Give your event managers (and registrants) a break and install an Event Booking System that will put your appointments and serial events on auto-pilot.
