Event management software helps administrators efficiently manage camps, classes, and events. Currently, with the growing need for streamlined management processes, many administrators are looking for software solutions that can aid them in organizing their activities.
Businesses can improve their back-office operations and revenue by utilizing such software, ultimately improving customer service. Using event management software can improve the customer journey on a website and enable navigation across multiple pages, ultimately elevating your brand and making it stand out from your competitors.
What is event management software?
Event management software is a service with a wide range of features to help you create, organize, and run events with more ease. Event management used to be a difficult task and required an experienced professional to handle the logistics, coordinate with the staff and promote the business.
To address the pain points of handling the various aspects of event management, there has been a surge of management software solutions entering the marketplace. To determine the right solution that fits your needs, you should have a good understanding of the ecosystem and the features that these systems offer.
Advantages and Disadvantages of online event management systems
Now that you have a grasp of what event management software is, it’s time to talk about going online. First, you’ll need a stable internet connection, which nowadays everyone can access various ways to go online. However, note that in our experience of working with many schools, this is not always the case.
Many instructors, especially those who teach after-school classes and do not have access to the school Wi-Fi network, may find it difficult to find a good Internet connection using their mobile devices.
Therefore, for certain applications, such as attendance apps, the ability to work with data offline and then sync online is very important. In the rest of this section, we list the advantages and disadvantages of online event management systems.
Advantages of online event management system
- Convenience: Online event management systems provide the convenience of managing events from anywhere, anytime.
- Cost-Effective: Online event management systems can reduce costs associated with paper-based registrations, ticketing, and other manual processes.
- Timesaving: Online event management systems save time by automating various tasks such as registration, ticketing, payment processing, and attendee communication.
- Customization: Online event management systems offer customization options to meet the unique needs of different types of events.
- Real-Time Analytics: Online event management systems provide real-time analytics on attendees, sales, revenue, and other metrics, which can help organizers make data-driven decisions.
- Data management: Event management systems can collect and store valuable data such as attendance records, feedback surveys, and contact information of attendees. This data can be used to improve future events and marketing efforts.
- Real-time communication: Event management systems enable real-time communication between organizers and attendees, which can help ensure that everyone is informed about important updates and changes.
Disadvantages of online event management system
- Technical Issues: Online event management systems are dependent on technology, which can result in technical issues that may disrupt events.
- Security Risks: Online event management systems can pose security risks such as data breaches, which can compromise sensitive information.
- Limited Interaction: Online event management systems may limit personal interaction between attendees, which can impact the overall experience.
- Learning Curve: Online event management systems may require a learning curve for users who are not familiar with the technology, resulting in some difficulties during usage.
- Dependence on the Internet: Online event management systems are dependent on Internet connectivity, which can be unpredictable or unavailable in certain areas, causing disruption in the event management process.
Types of events to get you started
There are so many types of events. They can be educational or just a friendly event or maybe a get-together. Let’s break down the events:
- Corporate
- Social
- Virtual
- Fundraising
- Festivals
- Community
- Hybrid
How to choose online event management software?
Now is the time to answer the question of how to shortlist and choose the right software. There are a lot of reasons to switch to an online event management system. To kick off the process, analyze your business and come up with your pain points, write them down. Just like everything else in life, you need to have a reason for change.
- Do you need to grow your business?
- Do you have extra capacity in your classes and want to attract more participants?
- Are your events not as organized as you would like them to be?
- Do you deal with children and need to stay connected to their parents?
- What about the financial side?
- Do you take registrations online and accept various forms of payment?
- Can users browse their classes online and register on the go?
Event management software features
Because your business processes and target audience may be unique to you, you must find the right event management system that fits your needs. Most management systems come with built-in features for user registration, online payments, and rosters. The more complex systems, however, provide advanced capabilities.
For example, Jumbula allows you to segment your audience and keep tight control of attendance. In addition to rosters, Jumbula provides several canned reports to manage your finances to stay on top of your business.
Business promotion is another area, and you will have access to a wide range of tools such as campaign management to reach out to your target audience and prompt your classes. For payment processing, we integrate with several payment gateways, including Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.Net, Worldline, and more.
Staff management is essential for medium to large organizations; Jumbula provides a dedicated module for this purpose and allows you to define the roles and the right access controls for your employees.
After all, it comes down to the metrics. Most of the event management systems have their features listed on their websites–start here and find out what they are offering. The next step is to do a free trial and take their system out for a spin. Make sure you know what questions to ask. Take your time and do your due diligence. Once you adopt a system and deploy it through your organization, it will be difficult to roll back and move to another platform. Now let’s dive right into some of the most needed features in the industry:
- Online registrations and user experience
- Customization
- Payment processing
- Reports
- Business marketing
Online registrations and user experience
The software you choose must allow users to register online and provide a friendly user experience. The ability to register on the go and to deliver follow-up forms to their laptops or phones can greatly reduce the steps of registering for a class. Improved user experience prevents under-enrollments and translates to an increased bottom line.
Ensure the registration flow is easy on your users and they can complete it within a reasonable amount of time. You do not want to drop your customers during the check-out process. Lastly, ensure the program setup is easy for you and your administrators. An ideal system must provide the best usability for both your customers as well as your staff.
Related Article: Benefits of an Online Registration Systems
Customization
While all online event management systems support online registration, they have vastly different capabilities when it comes to customizing the registration process to match the needs of your business.
For example, when you create an event, what type of event is it? Is it online or in person? Can it be hybrid? What is the maximum capacity? Can you have a waitlist? What about discounts and coupons? These options give you the power to customize the system to fit your needs. Don’t settle for less and change your business processes based on the capabilities of the software system.
Payment processing
At the heart of event creation and running your operations is payment processing. How payments are handled is one of the most important facets of an online system. The payment system must be secure, reliable, and compliant with the latest PCI security standards.
Furthermore, it should be flexible and offer customized payment options, such as scholarships. Before you finalize your decision on the online system, consider your payment needs and ensure the online system provides a complete payment ecosystem with all the flexibility for you and your clients.
To take a deep dive, let’s consider Jumbula. First, we use the latest technologies and adhere to various compliance standards, including PCI DSS. We offer a wide range of options for payment handling and support the following payment methods:
- Credit cards, all major brands
- PayPal, direct PayPal payments, and guest checkout
- eChecks (ACH) and electronic bank transfers
- Cash or check for manual payments
- Scholarships and financial aid methods
- Custom payments, create your own checkout labels
In addition to the payment methods, we support various forms of payment options:
- Payment in full
- Payment plans with deposits and installments
- Recurring monthly, bi-weekly, or weekly billing
- Daily drop-ins
Auto-change and recurring payments are built into our system, and you don’t need another system to collect scheduled payments. We offer all the bells and whistles:
- Confirmation emails with payment receipts
- Detailed installment reports
- Automatic successful and failed payment notifications to users
- Policies to define how the system charges users, the time interval between attempts to retry failed payments, and more
- Installment reminders
Reports
Reports are essential to running your back-office operations. Ensure your online registration management system provides you with all the reports that you need:
- Rosters for teachers
- Waitlists and capacity reports
- Financial and sales information for you and your accountant
- Custom reports to pull any data from the system and export capability
- Insights and recommendations
Business marketing
Don’t underestimate the importance of the business and marketing side of your desired online system. Once you set up your programs, you need to focus on how to advertise your classes and reach out to your target audience.
Advanced software systems in the industry should allow you to promote your business and help you attract more customers to your events. Jumbula, for example, provides a complete widget-driven system to build a homesite on Jumbula and promote your classes.
In addition, if you have your own website, you can leverage our Website Widget to seamlessly integrate the activities you have defined in Jumbula into your website. The integration provides a wide range of options:
- Embed directly on the web pages where you want visitors to see your programs
- User-friendly search capabilities with filters such as days, location, categories, and age
- Toggle capabilities between list and calendar views
- Automatic updates to your website when you make changes to your programs in Jumbula
Essential to business marketing is email marketing. We provide our own built-in campaign system, which allows you to run marketing campaigns and increase your brand awareness. In addition to this system, we have a live activity reminder system, which allows you to schedule announcements and keep your user base engaged.
Final word
After discussing the essential metrics to consider when evaluating online event management software, the responsibility now falls on you to conduct thorough research and select the most suitable software for your business. Prioritize your specific requirements and goals, then choose the appropriate solution provider based on what you deem most critical. Keep in mind that selecting the right online event management system can make a significant difference in achieving your desired outcomes.