As an implementation and consulting partner for the Impact Community, we’ve learned a lot about event management—specifically, the importance of choosing the right event management platform. Finding an application that can meet your current event management needs but has the technology to scale alongside your organization in the future is essential to sustainable growth. Over the years, we have identified five key considerations for choosing an event management platform that can transform your team’s dynamics for planning, executing, and analyzing your events and we are excited to share them with you below:
1. Integration with Existing Systems
Tight connection and integration with existing systems are invaluable, especially with a CRM platform like Salesforce. The ideal event management application for most users is one that is natively built on Salesforce, which ensures that your data begins and transforms within your CRM without requiring integrations, syncs, or other connections that risk data leakage. Before choosing your events app, consider its compatibility with your existing technology stack, because whatever app you decide will impact overall effectiveness and your ability to report on the data you need when you need it.
2. Scalability and Adaptability
The broader worlds of education, nonprofits, and the impact sector have a variety of events ranging from small, simple classes or seminars to large university orientation days, commencements, and conventions. Education events in recruitment and admissions often require a scalable system to handle hundreds or thousands of student registrations and sessions. Thus, we recommend you choose a system that can quickly adapt to your event’s scale or complexity.
3. Attendee Experience
Consider the experiences your attendees will have. It’s important to remember that an impressive, memorable, positive attendee experience will contribute substantially to the success of your events and heavily influence whether someone will repeat their attendance, donation, or general participation. Thus, we recommend personalizing event journeys—from online registrations and ticket purchases to mobile check-ins during the event. This attendee-centered approach will enable you to focus on creating a top-notch, positive attendee experience.
4. Centralized Data Visibility
Having all your event-related data in one place is a game-changer! Data visibility must be centralized at every event stage, enabling you to generate insights and make data-driven decisions. Consider how your event management platform handles data—can it consolidate everything in one comprehensive view? Can it surface other key data about your constituents in the same report without using stale or incomplete data sets? Centralizing data helps resolve these lingering questions.
5. Sponsor and Speaker Management
Hosting events often involves liaising with sponsors, speakers, and partners and will require robust tools to manage registrations and communication in one place. Thus, it is important to consider selecting an event management tool that offers comprehensive features to operate and maintain relationships within the event ecosystem.
Event Management Success with Blackthorn Events
Picking the right event management platform may seem daunting, especially with the number of solutions available. However, Blackthorn Events stands out as an event management tool that encompasses the five key considerations we’ve outlined. With its being native to Salesforce, its scalability, focus on user experience, centralized data visibility, and engagement tools, Blackthorn Events is an excellent fit for your organization’s event management technology needs.
Visit Blackthorn for Nonprofits and Blackthorn for Higher Education to learn more about Blackthorn’s industry use cases and the other industries we serve, such as Healthcare and Public Sector.
At Cloud for Good and Blackthorn.io, we are always available to chat and answer any questions. To help you make an informed decision about the power of effective event management, contact Cloud for Good or reach out to Blackthorn today.
About the Author:
Chris Federspiel
CEO, Blackthorn.io
Chris Federspiel, a New York City resident and cycling enthusiast, lives to make things better. After seeing how hard it was to process payments as a Salesforce Systems Integrator, it was that spirit that led him to co-found Blackthorn.io. Currently serving as the CEO, the company’s apps—Blackthorn Payments and Blackthorn Events—now have over 200 Salesforce AppExchange reviews and have been honored with multiple Salesforce.org Partner of the Year awards.
