An Unfortunate Predicament
Your boss just asked you to organize the holiday party at work. The party is only six weeks away. You have been putting it off for months. You are scrambling to keep up with all the work that is in front of your face. You’re feeling the pressure because 250 people have already reserved the date.
There seem to be dozens of things that need to be done just for one event. You must collect important event information from guests, including attendance, names of guests, meal preferences, and payment for raffle tickets. You create a lengthy email to cover the event details and then ask for RSVPs in one message. You’ll have to spend hours reading every reply by hand and performing technical magic in order to clean, normalize, and transfer the data into a spreadsheet.
This scenario sounds familiar. You may not have personally dealt with the stress of organizing a large event, but you might have seen a colleague or staff member struggling to solve the problem. You know, the person who is walking around in an agitated state, whispering, “He’s going, She’s not going …”
The organizer, who is most likely a non-professional, has probably taken on this task with a spreadsheet and a company directory. If they are clever, they may have used an online survey tool to collect RSVPs. When the charges are not organized and unbound, it’s no surprise that anxiety and stress take over.
Event planners can improve their game by using specialized software. Some of the most well-known consumer brands in the industry can help with some aspects of event planning, but they do not cover everything. Evite is a good choice for smaller parties. Eventbrite allows you to sell tickets and manage registration. Constant Contact and Mailchimp provide tools for email marketing and communication. SurveyMonkey handles online surveys. These tools can be useful on their own, but organizers will need to combine them to complete planning.
I solved this problem in 2016 by creating my software, Eventene. Eventide is a modern solution to the most common planning problems. It’s flexible, scalable and cost-effective.
After identifying this problem and its potential solution, let me show you how Eventene can handle this once-overwhelming task of event planning.
Tracking responses & sending invitations
Sending out invitations is the first step. You’ll need to create a list of attendees if you are currently using spreadsheets and email. Create several columns for names, emails, RSVPs, attendance, and other guest preferences.
It can be frustrating to send emails with consumer email services because they limit how many emails you can send and receive per day, as well as how many guests you can include as recipients. Gmail, for instance, has a limit of 500 emails sent per day. After you’ve sent out the emails, you will likely spend hours reading each response to mark each person in your spreadsheet as attending or absent.
If you want to ask questions in the invitation email, it will quickly become a lot of work. Include questions like “Who are your guest?” “What entree do you prefer?” and “Whom would you sit with?” These responses will all need to be manually processed and transferred into your spreadsheet. The guests often change their minds, adding to the work.
Eventide, however, excels in sending email invitations that include questions and tracking responses. Eventide makes it easy to manage and import lists of names and email addresses. The invitations are then sent automatically by email. Eventide has built-in survey tools, which make it easy to ask guests any questions you like. The emails are professional and look great. Sending event information or reminder emails to attendees who have not responded is much easier. Eventene’s segmentation and automation allow it to reduce the RSVP process by hours.
Collection of Payments
All events require payment collection. Scout troops collect payment before every campout. Some schools and youth groups charge fees for weekend activities or field trips. Entrance fees may be charged by community organizations, along with a la carte fees for additional activities and items to purchase, such as coffee mugs, t-shirts, or hats.
The most difficult part of organizing an event is collecting payments. This requires the organizer to be a collector. For most event planners, the process of tracking RSVPs is also manual. The status of each guest must be updated on the master spreadsheet after every payment. This is an error-prone process and can easily go out of sync. The organizer must also be able to handle multiple forms of compensation.
The process of collecting payments can be a source of friction between organizers and attendees. It’s better to let the computers handle payment reminders and collection. Eventide offers a payment platform for the event. Organizers are able to sell tickets, T-shirts, Mugs, or any other items related to the event and accept donations of any amount. Each invitee’s fees and things will be added to their cart as they register for the event. They can then review and adjust the quantities of their items before paying with cash or credit card. Eventene’s organized summary of invitees’ payment status is available after they have checked out. You can send frequent reminders to those who aren’t paying and even let the software be the “bad cop.”
Arranging Guests
Organizers often have to assign attendees roles and responsibilities or physically arrange them, such as seating charts for dinner guests or carpools for passengers. Some event planning services focus solely on RSVPs or ticketing, ignoring this crucial step. Instead, organizers are left to arrange attendees manually using a spreadsheet.
It’s about arranging carpools of drivers and passengers for each camping trip. Seating charts are created for lunches and dinners, and meal preferences are recorded. It’s the same for county fairs. You have to arrange booths and shifts.
Eventene’s key design goal was to solve the assignment and arrangement part of planning in a way that could be used for all types of events. Eventide lets organizers assign guests to places and roles within the app’s sections. Organizers are able to arrange any number of groups in any number of areas.
Creating seating charts for banquets is simple. Organizers create a section of tables and assign seating capacities, then add an activity for dinner with a group of guests. The organizer can arrange the guests at the event into tables by using a drag-and-drop interface. The table assignments can be sent to guests before or during the event. This process is so easy that you will wonder why it was left to spreadsheets.
Guest Communication
Sending invitations to events is a great way to promote them. The email invitation will be the first thing that invitees notice. A plain text email sent from the company’s email server may not generate a positive reaction, and it could even be ignored. Eventide enhances email invitations by adding images, rich text formatting, and other professional elements.
The organizer must send reminders after the RSVP process begins to guests who haven’t RSVPed yet or paid their fees. Even a seemingly simple task, such as manually sending emails to 100 guests or more, can take a long time. In the lead-up to an event, organizers may want to send emails to certain subgroups, like those who are attending, those who have not paid yet, or those who are still undecided. Eventide allows organizers to select subgroups and send them an email with just one click.
The organizers must distribute assignments to attendees after carpools and seating plans are complete. They will most likely use a spreadsheet to create a PDF of the information and then email or print copies for participants. This is a wasteful and inefficient process. Eventide provides organizers with an elegant solution to this problem by allowing them to distribute assignments to all attendees easily in one step. Each attendee gets a personalized email that includes a link to click. They can then view their terms on any device, desktop or mobile. The organizers can change the words at the last moment, and there is no need to reprint or update anything.
After planning is completed, organizers should distribute general information to attendees, such as the agenda, guest directory, and contact info. They can also provide maps of venues, venue maps, and any other important details. Sending long emails or PDF files with all of the information is inefficient. Eventide offers a modern solution to this problem by providing a native app for event attendees. They can view the event details, RSVP, and see who else will be attending.
It’s time for a new approach.
It’s easy for an event planner to run into problems everywhere, such as inviting people to your event, tracking their responses, or making sure Joe pays his ticket. With Eventene, these barriers are gone. It’s time to stop worrying and improve your efficiency as an event organizer.
Event is here to help you next time you’re faced with the task of organizing a company picnic, holiday party, or summer barbecue.