Picture this: You’re halfway through planning your next event, and the venue calls to cancel.
Even worse, you’ve already allocated all your remaining event budget and don’t have the time to find an alternative event space.
Don’t panic. With the right event management process in place, you can overcome hurdles like this and get your next big event idea over the finish line — and we’re here to help.
Here at Eventbrite, we support all types of event creators with a range of planning, marketing, and analytics tools to manage their event operations and put ironclad processes into place.
Read on to find out how you can streamline your operations with the help of a smooth event management process flow, get some expert advice, and find out the steps you need to follow to master the key stages of event planning.
Stages of the event management process
1. Use your audience to guide your event’s purpose
2. Break down your event planning stages into bite-sized sprints
3. Lock down a venue, vendors, and entertainers that align with your values
4. Create a dynamic event marketing plan that rolls with the punches
5. Execute your event plan (and delegate along the way)
6. Use big data to improve your process
Why do you need an event management process?
Having a well-thought-out event management process allows event creators to break down operations into bite-sized chunks to keep track of their workflow and stay focused throughout the event lifecycle.
Using a defined workflow creates a sense of the “bigger picture.” By implementing a process, you and your event staff always have a clear picture of where you’re at in your event management plan and how the tasks at hand fit into your overall event strategy.
What are the stages of the event planning process?
To streamline operations and make the entire event creation process smooth, you’ve got to outline and commit to an event management process.
To help you get started on your event management journey, we’ll walk you through the basic steps.
1. Use your audience to guide your event’s purpose
People want unique, immersive experiences that align with their values. So start your event management process with market research to ensure you know your target audience and understand what type of event is the most likely to hit home.
Data mining and predictive analytics: Collect data from your past events, including attendee demographics, session popularity, ticket sales, and website engagement through Eventbrite’s data analytics features. Use a tool like Google Analytics to collect website data and a social media analytics tool for social media data.
Import this data into a predictive analytics tool to look for patterns like which topics had the highest engagement or what time of year had the most event sign-ups.
You can also put together a quick survey and send it out to your mailing lists or post it on social media to get some quick responses you can use to start developing an idea of your audience.
Once you’ve got a firm understanding of your customers and their event preferences, use that knowledge to build a vision for your event.
For lessons in best practice, take a look at event organizer The Last Bookstore and how they developed (and optimized) their event format based on user feedback.
By working to better understand what their audiences and authors wanted to see from book events, they rejigged how they ran events and they’ve doubled the number of events they run due to higher demand.
💡Pro tip: Tools like Brandwatch or Hootsuite are great for sentiment analysis. Set up these tools to monitor mentions of specific event types, themes, or even your brand across social media and online forums. Configure them to track sentiment (positive, negative, neutral). If there’s a positive sentiment towards a particular type of event (like tech conferences or music festivals), consider this in your planning.
Ready to get to know your audience?
2. Break down your event planning stages into bite-sized sprints
To be a successful event project manager, you need to make sure your team understands what they’re doing and why at all times. To keep things simple, develop your event planning process around key event stages so you can tackle them one at a time.
Start with an event planning template to get the creative juices flowing and visualize the next key tasks. Next, use your completed event planning template to outline processes that can be grouped together.
These grouped tasks, or sprints, will differ depending on whether you’re planning an in-person event, virtual event, or hybrid event. For example, you could focus on submitting necessary event permits, contracts, or insurance documentation to fulfill all of your regulatory obligations.
💡Pro tip: Be prepared to adapt your plan based on feedback and new developments. The event planning landscape can change rapidly, so flexibility is key. If certain tasks require more time or resources than initially thought, adjust your sprint timelines and priorities accordingly.
3. Lock down a venue, vendors, and entertainers
After creating your workflows, it’s time to execute your plan.
If you’re hosting an in-person event, create a shortlist of event venues convenient and desirable to your target market.
You might need to track down additional funding, too. Add a sponsorship workflow into your management process where your team can focus on pitching to potential sponsors to create collaboration opportunities.
Use that same market research to develop a list of entertainers, speakers, and vendors to build your event lineup. Ensure they align with your event values — otherwise, guests might get put off by your lack of authenticity and avoid future events.
Eventbrite creator EMS Conferences is amazing at this. They always build their events around their locations — which optimizes the lineup for each individual audience and creates a fully unique and authentic experience.
💡Pro tip: Never pitched a sponsorship opportunity? We recommend starting with an email template. This will ensure you maintain the right tone of voice and ask all the right questions — and you can use templates to complete pitches faster.
4. Create a dynamic event marketing plan that rolls with the punches
The next step in your management process should be to download an event marketing plan template with a marketing strategy and actions to promote your upcoming event.
It’s also critical you’re using event management software that’ll help you speak directly to your audience — while spending as little as possible.
According to Integrate’s 2023 State of B2B Marketing Budgets Survey, 38% of marketers are facing budget cuts. That’s where a platform like Eventbrite can help out. It’s got advanced features like scheduling recommendations and A/B testing to figure out which types of content your target audience responds to.
With Eventbrite, you can even sell tickets directly over Facebook so you can reach potential attendees quicker and simplify the purchasing process.
That’s how Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden was able to expand its appeal to younger audiences and end up selling 27% of tickets directly through Facebook.
💡Pro tip: “Creators can benefit a lot from using the look-alike-audiences feature in our paid social media ads tool,” says Amanda Crawford, Eventbrite’s Senior Product Marketing Manager.
“This capability lets creators target audiences resembling those who have previously purchased tickets to their events.”
5. Execute your event plan (and delegate along the way)
Once you’ve got your promotional strategy in place, make sure you delegate tasks to your event production team so you don’t get overloaded.
According to researchers at the Project Management Institute, managers waste up to 90% of their time checking in with team members and trying to oversee operations. By using a free productivity software tool, you can claw that time back.
Productivity software lets you create task lists, tag members of your team, and visibly chart your progress without having to constantly chase them for updates.
You can even invite suppliers or other contractors to collaborate on shared documents so everybody is in sync when you execute your event plan.
💡Pro tip: Use event management software that connects project management tools with your existing tech stack. That way, things won’t get complicated jumping between different interfaces.
For example, you can connect your Eventbrite dashboard to your company’s CRM using our Salesforce integration so all your event technology systems are up-to-date. That way, your team has access to all the necessary data to execute their tasks.
6. Use big data to improve your process
After your happy guests are home, it’s time to determine the event’s success. That means using different sources of traditional and non-traditional data.
Use event metrics to determine tangible successes (like revenue and ROI) and metrics like attendee responses from surveys to determine the success of intangible goals (like creating community).
Make sure you also communicate results to stakeholders. This will help them understand what you achieved — and also how you can optimize your processes to make your next large-scale event better.
💡Pro tip: Try Eventbrite’s Mailchimp integration to streamline the process of gathering feedback from attendees. It enables you to quickly and efficiently reach out to segments of your online registration pool to collect opinions about your entire event.
“For small business creators who are juggling different tools to connect with their audience, the Mailchimp integration is a must-have,” Crawford says.
“It lets you smoothly transfer contacts between platforms and easily segment them using the ticket data from Eventbrite.”
Ready to start managing your next event?
Life as an event planner can be difficult enough — don’t make it any harder. By implementing a clear event management process, you’ll see every aspect of your event’s operation improve and be able to assess how they fit into the bigger picture.
Just make sure you’re using event software that can execute your plan and get you over the finish line.
For example, with Eventbrite, you can integrate a range of project management apps, get access to data analytics tools, and harness the power of Eventbrite’s Marketing Tools to make sure your promotional strategy hits all the right notes.
