It’s the night before your big event, and the printer is jammed, half your bar staff has called in sick, and you’ve got 150 unanswered questions from attendees sitting in your inbox.
Sound familiar?
Even the most experienced event planners can get bogged down by a huge to-do list.
That’s why actively working on improving your event management process is fundamental to your success — and if you’re looking for event management best practices and tips on improving your skills, you’re in the right place.
At Eventbrite, we support hundreds of thousands of event creators in planning, organizing, and executing their events down to a “T.”
Read on to find out more about best practices in event management, why they’re important to your success, and learn from event professionals’ personal experiences.
Best Practices in Event Management
1. Build your event goals around your community
2. Use event marketing tools that will optimize your advertising
3. Create tight briefs for vendors and suppliers
4. Use task management tools to stay on track
5. Create a seamless user experience
6. Create and distribute incentivized surveys to find out how you performed
Why you need an event management plan
Successful event management involves pulling every aspect of your event together to bring your vision to life. But between managing a diverse team of people, coordinating multiple work schedules, and tracking your event budget, pulling everything together can be tricky at best.
That’s why you need to implement an event planning process you can use to manage your event team and refine it over time.
Deploying a basic management process like this makes it easier for event creators to stay organized. You can hit the ground running by using pre-made templates and event planning checklists then share them with your event planning team.
This collaborative approach to planning ensures everybody’s always on the same page. You can assign tasks to team members so that your event staff knows what’s expected of them, easily communicate deadlines, and have visibility on outstanding tasks.
The result: everybody stays on-task, knows the score, and none of the important jobs get forgotten.
Best practices in event management you need to know
Now, let’s walk through the most important best practices you can work into your event master plan — and look at how real event professionals use these best practices to achieve their business goals.
1. Build your event goals around your community
Before diving into selling event tickets or hiring event staff, step back and establish the “why” behind your event.
That journey starts with understanding your target audience. Start by identifying who your event is for, then use your research and knowledge to build event goals that will satisfy their demands.
“Determining your target market is essential for effective event marketing,” says Ava-Marie Rooney, PR executive at Encore Musicians.
“To do this, conduct market research to identify the demographics, interests, and preferences of your potential attendees. Use surveys, social media insights, and industry data to create detailed buyer personas. Knowing your audience allows you to tailor your marketing efforts to their specific needs and interests.”
For example, take a look at event creator Business Church.
When developing her events for female entrepreneurs, founder Katie Saffert noticed a gap in the market for events that celebrate women’s achievements in business and give attendees a holistic experience that supports their physical and mental well-being.
That was the “why” behind her event — and by building her event around the community she wanted to support, Saffert has created a series of successful events that keep guests coming back again and again.
2. Use event marketing tools that will optimize your advertising
It’s one thing to log into social media channels and post about your upcoming hybrid event — but creating a targeted and meaningful marketing campaign is a whole different ballgame.
“Each social platform has a different demographic and this can even change from location to location,” says Amanda Masick, Director of Marketing at Event Solutions.
“For example, Facebook is the social platform of choice in my hometown for adults 30-65 whereas TikTok is popular with the younger generation (47% of users are under 30). And then there are always new platforms, like Threads, that you always need to watch for. And those with new features gaining popularity such as Youtube Shorts. A very careful analysis of your target audience will help you choose the right platforms”.
Once you’ve identified where to advertise, use AI text generation with Eventbrite Marketing Tools to optimize your event ads.
You’ll also receive access to event management tools like advanced targeting based on user interests. From there, you can A/B test two pieces of content to determine which ads your target audience is most responsive to.
That sort of targeting and testing helped creator Freq Group score a 24.1x Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) on their social media campaigns.
Ready to promote your event?
3. Create tight briefs for vendors and suppliers
As an event creator, you’ll collaborate with many external businesses like venue owners, equipment rental companies, entertainers, retailers, catering businesses, corporate sponsors — the list goes on.
Create ironclad briefs for each business to get realistic cost estimates and manage expectations. These briefs must lay out the full scope of the work, a timeline with deadlines, event or venue policies, and payment terms.
For lessons in best practices, check out creator Rockers Unltd.
Their regular Rum Punch Brunch event requires organizers to manage a wide range of vendors and suppliers to create the perfect experience for attendees — and it looks like they hit the nail on the head.
4. Use task management tools to stay on track
A successful event manager has to keep their event staff on-task. Project management tools can make life simpler.
Integrating project management tools like Monday.com, Wrike, or Trello allows you to create different tasks, assign them to team members, and live chat about key updates.
You can also integrate a range of productivity apps with your Eventbrite account, so you’re always up-to-date with live event information and sales numbers. You can even deploy one of our event planning templates to circulate event planning documents across your team.
According to Katie Saffert, founder of Business Church, you just need to ensure all the tasks you plot into your project management tools align with your goals.
“The key thing is to have good time management, to be realistic about what you’ll be able to accomplish, and set yourself small, obtainable goals,” she says.
“Take everything moment by moment, and know you’ll face challenges, but that you’ll be able to overcome them at the same time.”
5. Create a seamless user experience
Placing user experience at the heart of everything you do starts with setting up a seamless event page. By creating your event page with Eventbrite, you can integrate ticket sales into your website or sell tickets directly through Facebook.
From there, make sure you’re deploying a fast and streamlined check-in process to prevent bottlenecks or fraud. That’s where the Eventbrite Organizer App comes in handy.
You can use the Eventbrite App to sell tickets at the door, check people in, communicate with event attendees, and distribute information about your event program.
“We mainly relied on the app for our programming, and communicating to our attendees, as we didn’t really print that many schedules,” says Mei Seva, a multimedia producer with RepresentUs who worked on Unrig.
“Going digital with accurate information updated in real time was a big plus for us.”
Using the right technology and making the digital experience smooth and free of glitches can help you take your communication strategy to the next level.
6. Create and distribute incentivized surveys to find out how you performed
The best way to improve attendee experiences is to send past attendees a survey asking for feedback.
According to SurveyMonkey, the best time to send out an event survey is between 48 and 72 hours after the event. But if you want your event’s details to be fresh in their minds, we recommend you send your survey within 24 hours.
Ask them questions like:
- How simple was the ticketing process?
- What did you like or dislike about our event format?
- What did you think about the food and drink options at our event?
- How did you find the attitudes and helpfulness of event staff?
- Did the venue facilities meet your expectations?
Remember to tailor your questions to your event and make them as specific as possible.
It’s a good idea to send out your survey via email using a tool like Eventbrite’s Mailchimp integration. You can segment your email marketing audience to ensure your survey will bonafide attendees.
Finally, make sure you incentivize your survey. For example, you could offer survey participants a discount code for future events.
Here’s how it’s done:
Ready to get started managing your event?
A sound event management process suits virtual, hybrid, and in-person events. Using the event management best practices above, you’ll be able to lock down every aspect of your event and execute your event plan perfectly.
Need some help in getting organized? Make sure you partner with an event platform that can support your event management process through each step. An all-in-one event platform like Eventbrite.
