For most creators, getting to a point where event planning is easy is the dream. But the planning process can still be challenging for even the most seasoned event organizers.

From tracking down the right venue and negotiating vendor contracts to creating a guest list, budgeting potential costs, generating ticket sales, and managing event staff, event planning is no walk in the park. But if you’ve got the right tools, you can overcome these hurdles and create a successful event.

That’s why we’ve created this guide. 

Event creators from all over the world use our platform to create, organize, and promote over five million events every year. And we want to share their top event planning tips with you. 

To get you started creating your own memorable event, here are 16 expert event coordinating tips on planning an event so you can have a less stressful experience and create amazing events.

Table of contents

Phase one: get organized

Phase two: nail down the details

Phase three: promote your event

Phase four: the day of (and beyond)

Phase one: get organized

The first phase of event planning is all about laying the groundwork for an amazing event that goes as smoothly as possible. That means figuring out the when, the where, and — of course — the budget.

1. Organize your time and your workspace

Creating efficient work habits lays the foundation for productive event organization. Plan your days, streamline your workflows, declutter your desk, and be sure to take breaks throughout the day. Even a 15-second break from your screen to decrease eye fatigue can make a big difference.

When outlining your day, try to leave a buffer for unexpected tasks that may come up. When polling organizers, we found that nearly half of them (44%) say their biggest barrier to productivity was last-minute requests. This is especially true when organizing events is only one aspect of your work.

Crowd sitting at table applauds
Pop Pop / All In Together Now – A 36 Course Wu-Tang Clan Inspired Event / Seattle, WA

2. Set goals based on your target audience

Event goals typically either fall into one of two categories: tangible goals and intangible goals.

Tangible goals are typically data-driven — meaning it’s easy to see and demonstrate whether your event has achieved its goals. 

That’s why most event planners create SMART goals to cover their tangible event objectives. A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Intangible goals are event objectives that aren’t as easy to measure. For example, maybe you want your event to make certain types of attendees feel more welcome or build a sense of community. Although you can achieve that goal, a sense of community isn’t always easy to measure with hard numbers.

According to Jonah Holland, PR & Marketing Coordinator for Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, partnering with the right solution to implement and track your progress in achieving event goals is fundamental.

That’s why Holland’s team partnered with Eventbrite. They had two SMART goals for their upcoming range of events: to reach a new audience without going over budget and to turn more interest into sales with a native checkout.

“Reaching a new and younger audience was one of our goals for this event and Eventbrite’s integration with Facebook helped us do that,” Holland said. “The majority of our attendees were not members of our garden. For many, it was their first time visiting Lewis Ginter … and they learned about the event through Facebook.”

3. Overbudget for your event

Creating a budget and sticking to it is pivotal to avoid slipping into the red when planning an event. 

According to our 2023 Event Trends Report, 80% of event creators are currently concerned about tightening budgets — with insufficient budgets being cited as the number one challenge for all event types moving forward.

That’s why Becki Cross, Managing Director at Events Northern Ltd., recommends working a contingency plan into your budget. An additional 5–25% is a good place to start.

Use the technology at your disposal to home in on activities that give the highest return. For example, Eventbrite marketing tools conduct A/B testing automatically so you know which ads lead to actual sales.

That’s exactly how event creator Freq Group optimized their social ad spend to generate a 24.1x return on investment.

Bird's eye view of crowd in large sports hall.
Ryan Muir / City of Science / Bronx, NY

4. Choose an inclusive and accessible venue

The location of your event is a crucial part of the event experience. You might be looking for a nontraditional venue for something unique, but you also want one that’s safe, easy to work with, and ADA-compliant.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), event creators and venue managers have to ensure their events are accessible and inclusive. 

This means people can buy wheelchair-accessible seats online without having to call the venue, ticket holders can effectively get your messages out of event communications, service animals can be admitted into your event, and everything in between.

And don’t forget wifi! According to researchers, internet speeds and availability have a huge impact on your overall audience experience. Any technology perks a prospective venue provides will simplify your planning.

Phase two: nail down the details

The second phase of event planning is where the proverbial rubber hits the road: choosing your vendors, signing contracts, getting your ticketing set up, and making sure you’ve accounted for everything. 

Foodtruck worker hands meal to customer
Spark Social SF / Avocadocon / San Francisco, CA

5. Deal in detailed contracts

The more information in your contract, the lower the chance of misunderstanding or manipulation. This goes for contracts you create as well as ones you review from your partners. Reading the fine print may sound tedious, but it could save you hours in the long run.

Like it or not, contracts are critical to any comprehensive event plan. They give you peace of mind that your vendors, entertainment, and venue staff will do what they’ve agreed to. They also protect you and your business against any liability if something goes wrong or your headliner doesn’t show up.

Consider contracts for all of the key areas within your event and make them fundamental to your event strategy. This might include contracts with:

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. No two events are 100% alike, and so you might have other contractual needs. Just make sure you cover all of your bases.

Karen Hartline, CEO of the production company Reinventing Events, urges event organizers to ask for “full quotes.” Estimates for venues, for example, should include taxes and any other hidden charges, as well as scheduling contingencies.

6. Minimize last-minute changes

To organize an event, you have to work with a lot of stakeholders, sponsors, consultants, and talent. Set expectations upfront with everyone so there’s a clear deadline after which no changes can be made.

For instance, make sure you make it clear to vendors that they can’t back out after a certain date without incurring a hefty penalty. Similarly, institute penalties for artists, speakers, and other talent if they cancel. You can’t avoid last-minute changes altogether, but you can certainly discourage them.

You can’t predict the unpredictable, but you can make sure you’re always ready to communicate any last-minute changes to your customers. 

7. Make a folder or list of ‘five-minute tasks’

These are tasks that you can tackle whenever you have a window of free time. Having a place to store these quick tasks, like in an event-planning checklist or even on a sticky note, will keep you from worrying — or worse, forgetting — about them while you’re focusing on bigger things.

When it comes to staying on-task, there’s an app for that. Researchers say that you’re more likely to finish your daily to-do list when using a smartphone app. 

Fortunately, there are a range of great options out there. If you’re new to productivity apps, Google Tasks, Microsoft To Do, or Todoist are good places to start. And if you’re using Eventbrite, you can integrate a range of productivity apps with your account to help you stay on-task using one intuitive dashboard.

Event crowd approaches doors of venue
Renegade Craft / Renegade San Francisco / San Francisco, CA

8. Check ticketing off your list

Ticketing and registration shouldn’t be an extra burden. In fact, your ticketing partner should actively help you sell tickets with less effort.

That’s why event creator Harpoon Brewery decided to ditch the expensive ticketing platform they’d been using for their beer festivals and turned to Eventbrite instead. 

According to Director of Digital Strategy Megan Wilson, switching to Eventbrite meant saving money on large annual fees and processing fees for each ticket — but it also enabled the brewery to create more dynamic ticketing experiences without putting in loads of extra effort. That means creating different ticket classes, VIP experiences, and being able to automatically send discount codes to previous customers.

“It’s really easy to use. We create the codes for discounts and VIP complimentary tickets within the platform, and when people use it, it’s automatically applied,” Wilson said.

“The ability to get people in the door really quickly and get them into the experience is huge. It’s made things a lot easier for us.” 

Sell more tickets for your event with Eventbrite.

Phase three: promote your event

Now that you have your logistics in order, it’s time to put on your marketing hat. Follow these tips to optimize your event promotion to get the word out about your brand — and as many attendees in the door as possible. 

Women posting to social media on their smartphones
Bollywood Dreams Entertainment / Holi Hai: Festival of Colors / New Orleans, LA

9. Let participants spread the word for you

The great thing about social media is that it does your marketing for you if you let it. 

Social media influencers have rapidly become a key part of event organizers’ overall strategy to reach marketing-specific goals for upcoming events. You can often contract or commission influencers to promote and spread key messages about your event — but if your brands align closely enough, they might even do it for free.

Four out of five marketers believe that influencers are effective for reaching your target audience. Take a look at event creator Pretty Princess Parties and their range of children’s events, for example. To help get the word out, founder Jodi Polasky created a comprehensive social media strategy that included using trusted influencers.

“Social media influencers have been incredibly powerful for growing our brand,” she said. “We partner with people who already are trusted in local communities — often mommy bloggers — to connect with potential attendees. Influencers give your event credibility.”

10. Connect your marketing platforms

To reach a diverse customer base, most event creators will need to call on a range of marketing tools or event apps. But managing a half-dozen different marketing channels can drain a whole lot of time and energy — especially if you’re working with a very small team. 

That’s why it’s essential to integrate your tools under one roof.

For example, Eventbrite’s marketing tools let you bundle all of your social media advertising and email marketing and control it using one intuitive dashboard. 

With Eventbrite’s Mailchimp integration, you’ll expand your reach with the ability to send up to 10,000 emails per day with no contact limits — helping you spread the word about your events and keeping ticket holders in the know.

“The more people see your brand, the more they’re going to want to engage with it,” said Mackenzie Hatfield, owner of the Michigan-based Salty Owl Studio. According to Hatfield, by using Eventbrite, she was able to streamline her marketing efforts to get more visibility without having to put in more effort.

“It took that pressure off, that I could just engage with a single platform,” she said.

You can also A/B test different campaign content, use AI to come up with copy ideas, and even get campaign recommendations based on when people are likely to buy your tickets.

Desktop and mobile view of Eventbrite dashboard

11. Automate everything you can

Do you find yourself doing the same task over and over again? It’s time to automate all the boring administrative tasks in your life and start focusing on what really matters: creating a memorable experience for your guests.

With event management software, you can streamline interconnected tasks, use tools to optimize tasks, and save time by creating dependency-based automation around your email marketing, advertising, or communications strategy.

That’s what brought event creator Busspepper Promotions to Eventbrite marketing tools. 

According to director Mateen Hepburn, the ability to optimize advertising using automated A/B testing made it fast and simple to produce effective social media ads — saving event teams like his a lot of time and head-scratching.

“You try two different descriptions and two different pictures, and [Eventbrite] automatically tests them, starting and stopping the ads based on which is performing better,” he said. 

“Think about the work that would have to go into that, if you were manually doing all that on Facebook or Instagram yourself — it’s wild.”

12. Make data your friend

Data can reduce uncertainty around your marketing, sales, and operations efforts while you plan an event. When you have the numbers to back up your decision-making, you spend a lot less time fretting about your choices.

Having and using robust data gives you negotiating power and lets you analyze the effect of all your decisions so you can keep fine-tuning. For example, with Eventbrite marketing tools, that data is always up-to-date, clear, straightforward, and accessible.

You can create smart audiences, automatically target those audiences, and create a wide range of detailed reports to help you make better-informed decisions (or validate that you’re headed in the right direction).

A large crowd enters festival grounds in the rain
Ultra Australia / Ultra Australia 2023 / Melbourne, Australia

Phase four: the day of (and beyond)

It’s go time! Here are some last minute tips for making sure your event goes off without a hitch, and learning from the experience to make your next one even better! (That includes taking care of yourself so don’t burn out.) 

13. Be ready for anything

Unseasonable weather, a local traffic jam, broken technology, critical members of your event team getting sick — all of these things can derail an event. Be ready to pivot your event or move it online.

We can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have a backup plan. That means you’ve got to do a lot of homework before your event — from creating a detailed site map of your venue, mapping your attendee flow, studying local regulations and permit rules, training staff so they can take on different roles, and everything in between.

In addition to having a tactical plan for anything that might go wrong, you should consider taking out event insurance. Many event organizers carry at least $1 million in liability insurance or even more for a larger event. 

Crowd dances on dance floor at club night
Nonsense ATL / Heyday – 80s Dance Party – Pride Edition! / Atlanta, GA

14. Ask for feedback

Don’t miss an opportunity to make your next event even better. As soon as your event is over, send out a survey to your attendees. Their responses will help you hone the efforts that’ll bring you the highest return next year.

By setting up a post-event survey, you’re also building closer bonds with your customers. When you ask for attendee feedback and prove to them that you’re actually listening, customers feel valued and will be more inclined to come back for future events.

To make sure your attendees‌ read and submit the survey, send it quickly and offer an incentive. Survey best practice is to send it within 24 hours of your event, so it helps to have it ready to go before the event even starts.

15. Debrief with your team

Similar to gathering feedback from attendees, be sure to discuss the event with your team. 

Ask ‌staff and volunteers to consider what went well and what could be changed within their area of responsibility. Intentionally gather feedback from everyone via a survey or email conversation. This is also a great opportunity to thank everyone who contributed to the event.

Schedule a debriefing meeting with your core leadership team to discuss feedback from attendees, staff, and volunteers. Look for ways to celebrate what went well and to incorporate intentional changes for next time.

Great communication isn’t just a post-event activity. You need to ensure you have clear and transparent communication with your event team before, during, and after your event to succeed.

A group of yoga participants stretch on mats
Trap Yoga Bae / Trap Day / Los Angeles, CA

16. Have an end-of-day ritual

Trying to plan an event can feel like a 24/7 job. That’s why it’s important to include a hard stop to your workday and schedule time to decompress

Taking care of yourself means you’ll have enough energy and focus to take care of everything else. You’ll also be better equipped to assess your progress and refine your prioritization process accurately.

Ready to get started?

Once you’ve got the right processes and technologies in place, you can start taking your event planning to the next level. 

Just remember to follow the tips we’ve covered — and if you’re looking for more advice or inspiration, you’ve come to the right place.

Dig deeper into how to promote event with our ultimate marketing guide for events and start putting together your event marketing plan. Most importantly, use Eventbrite marketing tools to market to more people and manage your events all in one place.

Power your event planning with Eventbrite.

planning event for labor day