Devising and delivering membership events is one of the most important activities for any membership organisation.
In addition to being an invaluable source of revenue, events also create a touchpoint where the organisation is brought closer to its members, and can directly demonstrate the value that membership provides.
Delivering events can however be an arduous task for any administration team. It requires an intelligently targeted marketing campaign, financial transaction management, the collection of a multitude of complex booking and preference information, and the provision of all types of reminders, support materials and follow-up communication. Achieving this in a cost effective and repeatable manner demands a technology solution that streamlines this workload, while providing additional value for the attending member.
Comprehensive rather than complicated
The range of events that a modern membership organisation needs to provide is vast. From multi-day, residential conferences to online training sessions, breakout seminars, committee meetings and fundraisers. And within each are a host of options for venues, budgets, catering choices and delegate accommodation.
To provide the right return on investment, a modern, integrated event management solution needs to provide the same level of support across every type. It should be easy enough to use for all sizes of events and be flexible enough to deliver all the additional complex options that have traditionally only been provided by the largest, most well-staffed organisations.
CRM integration
The primary feature that solves many of these challenges for an organisation is proper CRM integration. Managing multiple data sets is a sure-fire way to increase both the manual handling required for an event and the possibility of errors. But with an integrated event management module operating within a CRM system, all information regarding members, registrants, donors, volunteers or guests is immediately available to the entire events team.
Website integration
A further level of functionality is provided by integrating events management with the organisation’s website. Using the same core data to create an event, publish and promote it, collect online registrations, process payments and amend event bookings is transformational in terms of user experience and administrative time savings.
Retained preference information
To drive any type of sales or attendance, the removal of friction in the booking process is an essential objective. An integrated system can save member preferences and use it to intelligently pre-populate future bookings thereby streamlining the procedure for the member and the organisation.
At the most basic level this might mean that names, addresses and contact information does not need to be re-entered for each booking. But this can be extended to include valuable details such as dietary requirements or requests for special access and assistance. In addition to making bookings simpler for the member, this also clearly demonstrates that their time, safety and welfare is important to the organisation.
Back-office automation
Before integrated solutions were available, event management required significant project management support to ensure every task and its dependencies happened on-time and in the correct order. A modern event solution should include workflow functionality to alleviate much of this pressure.
Setting up the event with the use of schedule reminders creates event-based triggers which use information collected directly from attendees and run in the background to automate many of the most challenging tasks. It can automatically send booking confirmations when payments have cleared and keep track of attendee numbers and wait lists. It can distribute reminder emails to registrants as the event approaches and provide them with all the documentation or materials they require to optimise their experience. It can also send out thank you messages and deliver post-event surveys to feed into the organisation’s continuous improvement process.
And when the next event comes around, the system can identify members to whom it might be of particular interest based upon their previous booking, and launch a direct mail campaign to begin promotion.
Better events, more easily managed
The simpler the administration of an event becomes, the greater the return it provides for the operating organisation. Using the right technology solution eases the workload and allows them to offer a greater variety and quantity of events throughout the year. For members and attendees, the same technology can make researching, registering and attending events easier and more pleasurable.
To learn more, please contact our team for a free demonstration of Millertech’s integrated event management solutions.
