By Sherri Defesche

Source: Social Tables

Coordinating an event involves layers upon layers of details from the pre-planning stage six months in advance to the day-of-event logistics. Keeping all of those details in your head will result in constant mental chaos and present unnerving stress on event day. To say the least, that’s counterproductive.

Creating a customized event planning checklist will not only keep you on target with clear direction, it will also provide essential information to the event team, who can work in tandem with you to execute an amazing event. Just follow these steps to create a checklist that will keep you on track and executing flawlessly.

Start with the right template.

You can create your own checklist template in Microsoft® Word® or find a template from a book on professional event coordination. You can also use a free online app, such as Asana or Podio, that allows you to design your own process and work collaboratively with your event staff.  Once you have a checklist you can reverse-plan the event and create a timeline of tasks and schedule of deadlines, which assures that every minute detail gets covered.

Establish the event specifics.

Naturally, you will determine the date, time, location and type of the event. However, there are other details just as vital to a successful event that need to be established — event goal, objectives, and audience.

Event Goal

The event goal is the overall reason for hosting an event. It could be anything from fundraising or celebrating employee success to imparting information or launching a new product.

Event Objectives

Event objectives are the way to measure if an event goal has been met. For example, if the goal is fundraising, an objective might be to raise $1,000 or receive 50 pledges of support. Once the objectives are known, elements can be incorporated into the event that steer guests toward a desired action.

Audience

For an event to be successful, you have to know your audience and clearly understand what expectations they have of the event. If you don’t meet their needs, then the desired guest action is less likely to happen.

Audience expectations range from the creature comforts of easy parking, familiar food, and a pleasant room temperature to WOW factors, like an exotic location, tech-savvy presentations, and useful SWAG.

Profile your audience; then, take it a step further. Determine what you want them to feel, think, and do both during and after the event. And make sure to incorporate components in your event design that will provoke those responses.

Build your event budget.

When you contemplate recording every anticipated event expense, creating an event budget seems daunting. With a Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet, it’s not that complicated. Start with the major categories, such as catering, décor, and rentals. Then, breakdown all the expenses under each category and let Excel do the work for you!

Under this section of your list, you can add details such as research costs of rentals or negotiate a discount with vendors. The event budget isn’t a checklist line item that can simply be marked off. Your checklist is a living, breathing document, and this format encourages you to keep revisiting all aspects of the event until it is as cost-effective as possible.

Create the event design.

This is the heart of the pre-planning because it covers the range of event components that impact guests the most.

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By Lelde Dalmane

Source: Social Tables

In this post, we’ll show you how to measure audience engagement using four very different tactics that any planner or event marketer can employ.

Event planning isn’t easy. In fact, it takes our all sometimes: energy, time, effort, ideas, management, and even some sweat and tears. So when it’s all said and done, it’s only natural to that planners want to make sure that all of those efforts are validated. The best way to do that? Measuring audience engagement. In fact, when we ask event planners what they value the most during or after an event, it’s one of the answers that come up the most. But at the end of the day, it’s also tricky to measure in a tangible way.

Why Make the Effort to Measure Audience Engagement?

If attendees are enjoying an event, they’re not only engaged, they want to participate. And that engagement and participation doesn’t just mean a successful event — it means more word of mouth, more repeat attendance, and more return on planning and marketing efforts. Engaged attendees want to get involved, share images from the event, recommend it to their friends, and attend all over again.

And while you can always qualify audience engagement at live events with your gut, it’s a whole lot more effective to quantify it using hard data. Plus, when you know where to look, you can find the numbers you need around every corner — your attendee list, web analytics, social media, and many other places. Just combine them with some savvy methods of analysis and you’ll have an accurate, insightful idea of how engaged the audience is at any live event.

Brand Awareness

Brand awareness shows how much of a lasting impact an event leaves on the audience, as well as the type of perception that they’ll carry forward in regards to your brand.

How to Measure Brand Awareness

While brand awareness is somewhat intangible and can’t always be measured with 100% accuracy, you can get a pretty good idea if it’s growing (and how fast) by following some numbers.

Start by benchmarking metrics around organic traffic and direct web page visitors. Compare this data to the number of visitors for the period after the event. This gives a pretty good idea of how far the word about an event is spreading. Plus, the numbers indicate how many people have a deep enough interest in a brand as a result of the event to have looked it up, hit the follow button, or visited a brand’s website directly.

By using Google Analytics to monitor traffic to your website, you can track specific metrics that illustrate the growth in awareness with real numbers.

1. Unique pageviews – Track unique pageviews for the period after the event to a specific page (usually your homepage) for an idea of lift.
2. Serial Content – Create serial content like blog posts about the event or topics from the event, and send them out to your attendee base. Then, track metrics like unique page views, time on page, and bounce rate on those pieces to get an idea of how people are engaging with your content.

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Source: Social Tables

More than ever before, guests are searching for more than just a “traditional” meeting — they want personalized event experiences that will engage them on multiple levels. Not only that: attendees want choices, and to be a part of meetings that benefit not only their specific goals as professionals, but also add value to their lives in a more holistic sense. So much so that 80% of meeting planners report their jobs involve more experience creation than they did just two to five years ago.

Today, the best events are those that attendees feel they have to Tweet or post on Instagram about, and the success of an event lies largely on whether or not they deem it worthy to share. The question is, how can planners create these types of attendee experiences?

Personalized event agendas and experiences take priority.

Driven by millennials — the generation whose options are endless and often available from a mere swipe on a touchscreen — attendees also want some element of control. Control over meeting formats continues to shift from the hands of the organizer to those of the attendees, so planners are pushed to create more personalized experiences that reach beyond a linear concept or agenda.

Multiple, customizable, and interactive options for event-goers is key. As such, event planners need to stay on top of rapidly changing event trends, incorporate more attendee-specific elements into events, crowdsource feedback, and adjust agendas in real time.

With personalization, comes complexity.

While it’s easy to decide on adding more personalized elements to a given event, it’s a whole different story when it comes to bringing those elements to life. Carrying out a more imaginative, attendee-focused event means more moving parts and more planning as a whole.

So while personalization is a must in today’s event climate, improving the efficiency of the planning process is just as important when it comes to the viability of creating these types of experiences. That’s where event technology comes in. Using the right event planning software, planners can increase attendance by 20%, increase productivity by 27%, and decrease costs 20-30% — a must for ideas like the four below.

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By Megan Wenzl

Source: Social Tables

Events are a time for individuals to come together and learn something new. They’re a time for event planners to provide guests with an experience they’ll remember. In fact, 91 percent of event planners measure whether or not an event is successful based on attendee satisfaction, according to EventMB.

What are some ways you can make sure to get attendees to your event, fill seats, and make it so as many people as possible can remember your event? Here are five effective ways to increase event attendance.

Make the City Part of the Event

To drive attendance for your event, highlight its location and all it has to offer in marketing, such as emails, website, and invites.

Emma’s Marketing United incorporates the growing city of Nashville into its event. Marketing United takes place at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum. The museum is called the “Smithsonian of country music” due to its “unrivaled collection,” according to the museum’s website. Having the event at the museum highlights Nashville’s culture and gets people excited to be in an incredible venue close to the best Nashville bars and restaurants.

Emma also creates content all about what attendees can do while they are in Nashville, such as this guide about what attendees can do while they are in Nashville. Writer Mckenzie Gregory even lists out some breweries to visit in Nashville:

Another example of incorporating the city into an event comes from the World Education Congress hosted by Meeting Professional International. The event takes place in Indianapolis, Indiana. This landing page discusses the features and culture of Indianapolis and gives the reader an idea of what their overall experience will be like in relation to where the venue is within the city.

Create Content that Tells a Story

Develop content using participants from previous events or a few key influencers you invite in advance of this event, to explain their experiences with it and get others excited.

In a phone interview, Rachel Stephan, owner of Sensov/ event marketing, said to get people to attend an event, create content that tells a story. If you are promoting an event that has taken place in the past, she says, “Tell the story of the speaker, tell the story of an exhibitor, a sponsor, or even past participants. They can share some of their connections that they’ve made at the event, their ‘aha moments,’ and what they’ve learned and applied in the past year from that event. And maybe incentivize them and give them something in exchange of sharing some of those insights with you.”

Stephan’s second company, an event influencer marketing platform called snöball, creates shareable marketing tools that are unique to each exhibitor, speaker, and participant to help cultivate trust and extend reach when promoting an event. For example, a speaker will get their own landing page with their content and customized social media posts already done for them so it’s easier for influencers to share content with their networks. Having landing pages for all of your event influencers will help amplify their brands.

Stephan also suggests creating content about what the speakers will be talking about at the upcoming event.

“Arrange an interview with one of the speakers of your event and dig deeper into what they will talk about. Then repurpose it into a video, a blog article, or share it on social,” she said.

Here’s a simple example from Emma. Emma interviewed attendees and speakers after Marketing United 2016. One of the attendees said, “The only marketing conference I go to every year.” Interviews with real people, even short ones, are powerful when it comes to getting people excited to attend your next event.

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By Maria Waida

Source: Social Tables

If you need to create a seating chart for a wedding, don’t panic! By reading this guide you’re already one step closer to wedding reception bliss. Here we’ve answered your most pressing seating chart questions and broken down the process into small, easy-to-follow steps. You’ll also find instructions for creating a digital seating chart that will make the whole process smoother and more enjoyable.

Answers to frequently asked questions about how to create a wedding seating chart

Before we dive deep into the process of actually making a seating chart, let’s get some of the most common questions and concerns you might have out of the way.

How do you seat guests at a wedding reception?

Every wedding is unique. Each aspect of the event should be customized to fit the personalities of the happy couple. But there are a few best practices you can follow to streamline the task. We’ll get more into that in a little bit.

Do the bride and groom’s parents sit together?

It depends! Do they get along? If so, they’d probably love to share their happiness together on the wedding day. If they don’t prefer to celebrate together, seat them with other close relatives at separate family tables.

Should you assign seating at a wedding reception?

You might be wondering if you even need a seating chart at all. A good rule of thumb is, if you have over 75 guests or you choose to do seated dining, you should definitely use one. But even if you have a smaller group and opt for buffet-style, a chart will help whole event feel more organized. This empowers guests to relax and keep their focus on celebrating.

Which side of the room does each partner’s side of the family sit at reception?

If your wedding is also a religious ceremony, your beliefs will determine which side of the family sits where. Also, it varies from culture to culture. For example, Christian ceremonies often place the bride’s family on the left while Jewish ceremonies seat them on the right.

Does the bride sit to the right of the groom?

Just like in the last question, the kind of religious ceremony you have could decide which side the bride sits. Otherwise it’s up to you!

Does the bridal party have to sit together?

Nope! If the bridal party is made up of friends from all different areas of the happy couples life, consider seating them among guests they’ll feel most comfortable with. But if they do know each other or get along well, they’ll probably enjoy the experience of sharing a table. Either way, focus on who they’ll most likely want to sit with and go from there.

Do you need place cards at a wedding?

If there is a large wedding guest list, a seating chart will help coordinate everyone just fine. If your reception is on the smaller side, place cards will be more appropriate.

Now that you know the basics, let’s get started on your digital seating chart.

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By Maria Waida

Source: Social Tables

Delight friends, colleagues, and customers with impressive spring themes for parties and events. Featuring real examples from innovative brands, foundations, and celebrities, these inspiring ideas for spring theme ideas and event names will help you kick off your own event planning in style.

Here’s how to pick the perfect spring event name

What’s in a name? A lot, actually. Whether it’s a corporate seminar or a hashtag-worthy 30th birthday, it’s important that you choose a great name for your spring event.

The name you choose can give a practical description of what attendees should expect. And it can also become a memorable phrase, adding excitement and buzz to an already highly anticipated event.

Get started with three simple tips for creating fresh spring event names.

1. Ensure the event name is original.

If you’ve selected a hashtag for your bridal shower, do a quick search on Instagram to see what else – if anything – comes up. The bride-to-be might not love seeing inappropriate photos of strangers showing up next to pictures of her mom.

Corporate event planners should also keep this tip in mind. A unique event name helps prospects find and remember your upcoming event. It also helps your event registration page rank higher in organic search results which boosts ticket sales.

Because your event has a seasonal theme, adding the word “spring” to the name can also help it stand out from other similar functions.

2. Include practical details but don’t be afraid to get a little creative.

Corporate events should include the name of the host business and provide a clue for what guests can expect if they attend. For example, if you’re hosting a spring-themed Bingo night for charity, you can include the event type and the name of the charity in your marketing.

Private events typically host a smaller group of people than most corporate ones. It’s also assumed that guests of private events are all connected by a shared person or common interest.

Lean into whatever that is when you choose to name your party. Using an inside joke or piece of inside information that only guests would know about makes the event feel even more special for those in the know.

If it’s a well-known fact that your guest of honor is turning 50 for the 10th year in a row, you can have a little fun by putting their name and “is turning 50… again” in the Facebook event title. As long as the birthday person laughs along, you’re good to go!

3. Keep your event name short because it makes it easier for attendees to talk about the event and share it on social media.

Initials, abbreviations, and snappy phrases are easy to remember. They’re also great for saving money on signage, print ads, and other hard copy marketing materials.

SXSW is a great example of this. The spring event held annually in Austin, Texas is a premiere film, music, and technology festival. The full event name is South by Southwest but the abbreviation makes it easy to search, hashtag, and reference to people who have never even been there themselves.

With these points in mind, let’s take a closer look at some of the best real examples of spring theme ideas for parties and events.

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