As an event manager, you’ve got a lot on your plate. Instead of burning yourself out on time-consuming tasks, you could be using event automation to streamline your business operations. What’s not to love about hassle-free events?
With developments in event and venue management technology, all kinds of tools exist to handle tasks for you. When you automate tasks across the entire process of managing events, you can free up time for tasks that need your focus.
In this guide, we’ll cover some of the best ways you can use automation to enhance your next event.
What Does Event Automation Mean?
Event automation is the process of using event technology to automate otherwise manual tasks during the event management lifecycle. Event managers can automate many different activities for an event, including compiling proposals, managing event marketing, improving client experiences, and more.
There are so many ways to automate event management. A lot of it depends on the software you use and the areas of the event lifecycle you want to streamline.
In any case, event professionals are some of the busiest people. So, using automation tools can be a game changer for you. Not only does this supercharge your productivity powers, but it also frees up time so you can zone in on tasks that need your personal attention.
What are the Benefits of Event Management Automation?
Using event management software to automate processes offers many clear advantages. Here are some of the main reasons you should consider hopping on the automation train.
Time Saver
Most significantly, event automation can be a massive time saver for busy event managers. There are endless, time-consuming manual tasks involved in event planning and venue management. By using automation to do these tasks for you, you can save loads of time.
Things like sending repetitive emails, managing marketing content, organizing payments, and arranging bookings can require a lot of unnecessary admin. When you use software to do these tasks, you can focus more on the event management tasks that matter.
Simplifies Processes
If you don’t have certain technical knowledge, then you can use event management software to handle complex tasks for you. For example, great venue management software will allow you to easily access event analytics. You shouldn’t need to spend time curating spreadsheets and creating bar graphs.
The right automation software can handle technical tasks, which will help you focus your energy on tasks you’re confident in. This means there’s no need to learn complicated new skills, or onboard new staff members or consultants, to perform these tasks.
Money Saver
Another result of the operational efficiencies that automation offers is financial savings. You know what they say: time is money. Because automation streamlines your processes and saves time, it can help you save a lot of money along the way. It can also save money as you no longer need to pay professionals to perform certain tasks.
Simplifies the Scaling Process
There’s a lot that goes into event management, and the busier you get, the more demanding these tasks become. As your business grows, having automation available will make it a lot easier to scale. This is especially true if you’re operating as a solopreneur or have a very small team.
Automation makes it easier for your event venue to deal with fluctuations in demand while always being able to operate profitably. Instead of taking on the financial burden of hiring staff to help you during busy periods, your event management software can manage time-consuming tasks for you, such as automating email responses.
How to Use Event Automation to Scale Events
Event automation is a fairly big topic, and it can cover many different tasks and processes. Here are some of the main ways you can use automation to manage events at your venue.
Supercharge Marketing
When it comes to automation, marketing is one of the best places for application. You can use automation to streamline venue and event promotion in multiple ways. This is mainly done by creating automated email workflows and automating marketing communications.
You can use email software to set up automated email workflows that trigger based on certain actions. This can include marketing drip sequences or even just a simple message related to booking requests.
For example, you could set up various types of event emails, which you can automatically send out for certain scenarios. This is useful if you find yourself writing the same email over and over.
With a solution like Perfect Venue, you can upload your email templates to the platform. This way, you can automate your email process and add hours to your week!
Automated emails can also be set up and sent out to event hosts when they submit event inquiries. These emails provide clients with general information to review before you can send a more personalized response. The client can enjoy instant information and easy communication with your venue, which builds trust and simplifies their journey.
Using event marketing automation like this ensures you always send the right message to the right person at the right time. This will make a big difference in helping you secure more venue bookings.
Scale Up Social Media Posting
Social media automation software is another great way to make your life a lot easier. With these platforms, you can create content calendars for your social media channels and effortlessly schedule your posts to go out at the right time. This can free up a lot of your time creating and managing social media content. It also ensures that the right posts are up at the right times.
Streamline Payments
Event management software can also help you accept, execute, and streamline payments. This can be a major time-saver when booking out your venue or running events.
Payments generally involve a lot of back-and-forth admin and communications. With the right tool, you can simply send clients automated invoices, which they can pay at the click of a button. This saves a lot of manual effort associated with invoice creation.
Managing costs and payments becomes a lot easier with the right software. For example, you can utilize tools that automatically monitor your costs and payments. You can set up automated notifications to remind you and your clients when upcoming installments are due. This data can be easily accessible through a single platform and even integrated with your accounting system.
This way, you don't need to go through the hassle of sharing data between systems and possibly risking incorrect data inputs.
Ease Operations
All kinds of event operations can be streamlined through automation. If you’re struggling with a time-consuming manual task in your event management process, chances are there’s an automation solution that can help you out.
You can automate the sales, event coordination, and post-event process with automated emails. These can be written and scheduled through your venue management platform. If you have a repeat client, you can easily duplicate event bookings with the click of a button.
Automation can help you manage bookings, craft winning event proposals, manage your calendar, stay up-to-date with your to-do list, optimize food and beverage planning, automate event bookings, and more.
By utilizing an all-in-one venue management software solution, you’ll be able to ease your daily operations with automation in many different ways.
Interactive Floor Plans
Interactive 3D floor plans can be a game-changer for any upcoming event. You can create realistic 3D floor plans that provide event planners with a walkthrough of your venue. Once you’ve established an email list of event planners, you can send them an automated email with this floor plan.
Making it interactive can help event planners understand your venue and how it looks, without you having to provide a guided tour.
Improve Movement in the Sales Funnel
Automation tools can help you streamline your sales funnel. Linked to your CRM, these tools can save you time, help you generate and nurture leads, and get them to the conversion stage.
Sending automated email drips throughout the funnel stages takes a load off your plate. You can even use a chatbot on your site to warm up top-of-funnel leads.
Final Thoughts
Using event automation is easier than you think, and it can help you transform the way you approach upcoming events. If you want to unlock these benefits for your venue, make sure to use the right software tools.
Perfect Venue is a complete venue management solution that can help you access some of the automation abilities listed above. Try it out for free to see how you can use event automation to grow your business today.