Top 5 features to look for in event planning software

With many changes happening to the meetings and events space, you might be on the hunt for event planning software. A good event planning software can help you adapt to new demands while you create and manage multi events.  

These tools not only help you manage the moving pieces of planning an event, but also avoid manual processes. They cut down on website and marketing tool subscriptions, eliminate the time lags and expenses associated with event website development, and drive down the cost of hosting your events.

If you’re a corporate event planner who manages a large portfolio of meetings and events in a typical year, then you need to be sure that the event planning tool you invest in can support the complete needs of your events be they large or small, public or private, free or paid, virtual, in-person, or hybrid.

Instead of searching for all-in-one event management software, we invite you to consider choosing a strong foundational tool that’s versatile enough to adapt to multiple event formats. From there, it’s simple to plug in additional event planning tools as needed to achieve an event’s more specific objectives like audience participation. 

Knowing what you need out of these foundational tools is the first step to choosing the right event management software. In this post, we’ll cover 5 features to look for when evaluating event management software for a varied events portfolio. 

1. Flexible and simple online registration/ticketing 

The best event management software makes your event planning easy from the very start of your attendee journey. That begins with event registration. Be on the hunt for an event management platform that supports flexible and easy online registration for your events. This can look like:

• Allowing multi-attendee registration e.g. group passes
• The ability to import attendee information from other platforms 
• The option to send private invitations
• The ability to create waitlists that auto-update 
• The freedom to create unique registration forms for different pass types e.g. regular, VIP, media 
• The option to create multiple types of forms and customize fields within them according to the attendee persona (e.g. student vs professional vs sponsor)
• The ability to connect registrations to data points through integrations with other platforms  

2. Advanced, fully-branded website builders 

Whether your event is customer-facing or for internal audiences, if you’re looking to have complete control over your brand, then you’ll need a solution that allows you to publish fully white-labeled event websites. Rather than being bound to a template you can make minimal edits to, or having your vendor’s logos plastered everywhere. This will give you full creative control over how your website will look. You’ll be able to customize all your event websites to incorporate design elements like your brand’s fonts and colours. It keeps your look consistent. 

Some of the best event management software vendors help you reduce your reliance on marketing teams, agencies, and website developers. They give you the freedom to build, manage, and update your event website yourself. 

Features you should consider when looking for an event platform includes the ability to  access a library of pre-built website templates, such as templates for webinars or conferences, and the ability to create a fully customizable website yourself. This will allow you to quickly spin new event websites and to keep control over your brand. 

Better yet, what makes some of the best event management software stand out is the fact that they help you pull from data sources to minimize errors. We can’t speak for all event management software. But what Attendease does is help you save time by pulling information from your back end to populate your website. The beauty of this feature is that it removes the need for manual updating in more than one place. Did a speaker or a session change? So long as you update your information in the back-end, you’ll be able to see it on the event website. Massive time saver! 

Intuitive event planning software also makes cloning your event websites easier. With a click of a button so you don’t have to spend time rebuilding similar pages for different events. This also helps you keep a consistent look and feel across all your events.

3. Strong email marketing automation tools 

Just like with event websites, top event management software vendors should help you create fully branded marketing emails through the use of templates and customization options. Ideally, your software will also allow you to clone your email messages easily so that you only need to create your email templates once, and make simple edits for subsequent meetings and events. 

From there, you’ll need your tool to support marketing email automation so that the platform can automatically send out event registration confirmation emails, event-related news and reminders leading up to the event, post-event survey emails, and more. This will help you save loads of time. All you need to do is set up your timelines in the dashboard and let the tool do its thing. 

If you already use a tech stack of more robust marketing software like Hubspot or Marketo for email segmentation, then you’ll want to go with event management software that integrates well with these tools to help transfer data from one tool to the other in real-time.  

4. Highly configurable agenda management

What sets apart the best event planning tools from others are powerful scheduling tools that can handle complex schedules for large events. If you’re hosting a multi-day event, in multiple locations, or in multiple rooms, then you’ll need your event management solution to offer a robust session slotter tool.

By pulling data points like your session names, speakers, and attendees from the back-end of your platform, agenda management tools can help you:

• Visualize when and where all your sessions are running to ensure nothing is missed
• Avoid double bookings and session clashes 
• Drag and drop your sessions into a comprehensive schedule 
• Tag your sessions by categories e.g. “sales”, “marketing”, “development”
• Sort your sessions by categories or speakers
• Confirm session capacity limits
• Create waitlists
• Update schedules and session information in real-time as changes take place

Tip: some event management software only allows your attendees to sign up for one event at a time. For a complex event running multiple sessions, you’ll want to be sure your software lets your guests sign up to whatever interests them without limitations. 

5. Scalability for multi-event management  

Some event management software will limit the number of events you can publish depending on your plan. Others might charge you a fee per attendee. But if you expect to host a large portfolio of corporate meetings and events, then your goal will be to manage more events with less cost, less effort, and no hidden-costs. 

It’s worthwhile to go with event management software that supports an unlimited number of events, and one that can support events of all types and sizes, be they in-person events, hybrid events, or virtual events. 

The best event management software:

• Gives you the freedom to create, publish, and manage a large portfolio of events 
• Simplifies managing several internal and external meetings at the same time 
• Gives publishing permissions to multiple team members and business units
• Allows you to manage different brands and business units in the same platform

Powerful event management software is built around a set of features that seamlessly ties together all the moving pieces of your event portfolio. By consolidating all event planning processes in one platform that integrates well with your existing tools, your team can save tremendous time and money while delivering a consistent experience across all your corporate meetings and events.