Event management is a process that involves all aspects of planning, organizing, and implementing events. It can be used for weddings, conferences or even small get-togethers. Event managers are responsible for everything from choosing the venue and catering to hiring speakers and making sure everything goes according to plan. Event management can be challenging but it doesn’t have to be if you follow these tips:
Create a Detailed Event Checklist
- Create a detailed event checklist.
- List the things to do before the event, during the event, and after it ends.
- Keep track of all important documents like contracts and agreements in your organizer binder.
- Make sure you have a sign-in sheet for each session or section that you are hosting at your event so that you know who attended what sessions and can contact anyone who did not show up or left early if they had any issues with their session speakers or other attendees.
Create a Contact Database
You will want to make sure you have a contact database. You should be able to reach out with updates and other information about your event. This is especially important for larger events, where there are more attendees than you can possibly remember.
There are many tools available for keeping track of contacts. You could use an Excel spreadsheet, or even something like Google Sheets if you prefer an online tool. Either way, it’s important that your list stays up-to-date so that you don’t miss anyone!
Another thing you’ll want to do for using the event management on your event is to create an email newsletter. This can be a simple document that goes out every week or two with information about your event, including updates and announcements. You can even send out special messages for specific people in your contact list if you have enough information on them (like their birthday).
Create a Budget and Manage Expenses
Your event management budget should be based on an estimate of how many people will attend the event, what type of venue you’ll use, and whether or not food and drinks are included.
Once you have a firm idea about how much money you can spend on your event management, then it’s time to start planning your expenses. Estimate how many hours each task will take and add up all those costs to get an overall total.
It’s important that you keep track of both your budget and expenses so that they stay in line with what has been allotted for them. This is where a good spreadsheet comes in handy—you can easily see all of these numbers at once without having to dig through piles of receipts or mail invoices.
Create and Manage Your Event Schedule
The following are some tips for creating and managing your event schedule:
- Create a detailed yet easy-to-follow schedule that covers all aspects of the event. The core of your event is likely to be the stage or presentation area, but it’s important to include things like food service times and breaks as well. This way, attendees will know exactly when events start and end, where things will happen (like meeting rooms), what kind of food options there are at each mealtime, etc.
- Posting the schedule in a visible place—such as next to the registration desk or in front of the stage—is key so that people know exactly where they need to be at any given moment during your event. If you’ve got multiple sessions going on simultaneously (e.g., breakout sessions), then post each one separately so people can get their bearings quickly instead of being confused by multiple overlapping schedules posted together on one wall!
Oversee the Day of Event Activities
As the event manager, you are responsible for overseeing all aspects of your event on the day of. That includes making sure everything runs smoothly, that the schedule is being followed and that everyone involved delivers on their promises. You’ll also be there to take care of any issues that arise during the course of the day—and they will arise!
In order to be a successful event manager, you have to have a lot of experience under your belt. The more events that you’ve managed before and the more varied those events are, the better off you’ll be.
Your job as an event manager is to make sure that your event goes off without a hitch, and that everyone involved in making it happen does so successfully. You’ll need to be able to work well under pressure, because you will have plenty of it! You’ll also need to have some experience managing teams of people, since this is one of the most important aspects of the job.
Use Event Management Platform
The best way to get started is to use an online event management platform to keep all your planning activities in one place. You’ll be able to manage everything from the same dashboard, delegate tasks to team members and track progress, keep track of expenses, create a detailed event checklist with daily checklists and reminders, create offline resources like brochures and other marketing materials for attendees—all without having to leave the app!
With an online event management platform, you can:
- Manage every aspect of your event from one place
- Create a detailed event checklist with daily checklists and reminders
- Delegate tasks to team members
- Track progress of all activities and tasks on one dashboard
- Keep track of expenses and generate reports for accounting purposes
Conclusion
You can always add more features to your online event management software, but the most important thing is to get started. There are plenty of free and paid options available today, so you won’t have any trouble finding one. The good news is that these tools have made it easier than ever before for organizers to keep track of all their planning activities in one place—no matter what size or type of event they’re organizing!
