One part of Eventful that hasn’t gotten much attention in the blog has been the Event Microsite.  I’ve created a simple example microsite to demonstrate some of the thing possible with Eventful.

Feel free to explore the microsite for the Greener Industries Conference.

Planning and executing an event or conference budget can be challenging for event managers. This article attempts to provide some simple guidelines to help you get started planning your budget.

Your budget can be broken into seven primary categories. Not all events will have all seven, and some may have more:

Promotional/Marketing (20-25%)

Venues (10-15%)

Catering (20-30%)

Speakers (5%)

Staffing/Vendors (12-15%)

Transportation (3-8%)

Miscellaneous (2%)

These budget benchmarks are more meaningful if you have a revenue goal in mind when you plan. A revenue goal helps determine your ticket price, which drives the type of attendee your event is likely to get. Keeping historical data on hand is also useful, such as gross and net profit from previous events, ticket price and staffing.

Looking for event management and online registration solution can be a confusing and frustrating process. Several applications are available, often at significant cost. What features should you look for when selecting event management software?

What Are Your Attendee Registration Requirements?

Attendee registration can mean various things to different organizations. It’s important to decide what features are important to you before selecting a software package.

• Online registration. Will you need to customize your registration forms? Offer surveys and guest management?
• Accepting paymenst. The most flexible event management applications allow attendees to request invoices or pay online with a credit card.
• Integrate with legacy systems. Allowing you to integrate with your existing CRM is essential if you’re running multiple events.
• Pricing. Do you want to offer early-bird pricing? What about special pricing for attendee guests?

Careful consideration of your attendee registration requirements will help in choosing the most effective solution for your needs.

What About Your Event Website?

Will your event use an existing website or will one need to be created? If you’re using an existing website, will you be able to integrate the attendee registration form into your site? Can you customize the look and feel of the webiste, including adding sponsors and attendee support features, such as maps and downloadable calendar information?

What Are Your Event Management Requirements?

Events are more than just accepting registrations. A robust event management solution supports the entire event. Your event will likely have speakers or presenters, possibly multiple speaker panels or forums. Assigning speakers to their respective events, as well as following up with email, can greatly simplify your event management. In addition to speakers, you’ll have staffers setting up audio/visual equipment, greeting attendees and setting up chairs. Integrated support for staff assignments provides a cohesive view of your event.

If your event spans multiple days, you’ll need to assign lodging to staff, and probably speakers as well. Your event management solution should support staff lodging, as well as roommates. Finally, you’ll need real-time reports to stay on top of your event’s staff and speakers.

Determining requirements for your event management software will help ensure you’ve selected the best application for your needs. If you need help determining your needs, contact us for assistance.

While the Event Microsite is a great public face for your event, it’s not always desirable to use it for everything. You might already have an event site, for instance. Now, you can easily include your attendee registration process into an existing webpage from the Microsite Options page within your event:

Once you’ve changed your preference, visit the Website Integration page for the necessary HTML to include the registration process.

Today’s release includes updates to the Event Microsite™, including downloadable vCalendar information, suitable for import into Outlook, as well as RSS feeds. (You can learn more about RSS here.)

Here’s what it looks like on the Event Microsite:

This release also includes some updated documentation.

The latest feature working its way out of development is promotion codes.  Event managers can create blocks of promotion codes for distribution to attendees or for use as incentives by salespeople.  Each block of promotion codes has an amount and an expiration date.

What’s more, you can get a report of all redeemed promotion codes with the claiming attendee.

In keeping with our idea of making event management easier, we’ve introduced the Event Inspector. The Inspector examines your event for things you might’ve missed, such as customizing your microsite or creating pricing options.

The Event Inspector can be found at the top of the Event Dashboard page. Notices are orange, while errors are red. Here’s an example:

The Event Inspector will make creating and managing your events easier.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s release of Eventful, we’ve added support for Google Maps on the event microsite:

Having the event location map allows both registered and potential attendees to quickly see where the event will be held. And the maps offer all the power of the Google Maps you’re used to, including satellite and hybrid maps.

Future plans for mapping include offering driving directions. Stay tuned for more updates!

The final touches have been put on Eventful and we think it’s ready for public consumption. What is Eventful? Eventful is a subscription-based online event management and attendee registration application. Offering realistic pricing plans and ease-of-use, Eventful’s goal is to help you manage your events more effectively, increasing attendance and revenue.
Eventful offers:

• Attendee and event management services in a clean, easy-to-use package
• Surveys, lodging and personalized email campaigns
• The ability to fully customize your event’s public website
• Payment collection, using real-time credit card processing

Eventful offers so much more than just the basic features listed above. Subscriptions start at $100/month and signup takes less than a minute.

We’ve just launched a new look for Eventful’s public pages. It was certainly time, especially as we near a public release.

Also, we’ve posted some new exploration movies on the Tour page. And yes, that’s really me doing to voice over.