The range of tools for managing and organizing professional events is vast and varied. How do you know if you’re making the right choice for your event strategy?
In today’s article, we share some elements to help you choose your future tech platform for organizing your events.
Before you make your decision, here are the main questions you should ask yourself:
1) Does the event platform allow me to put MY brand on the spotlight?
Your event is a communication tool. You invest in producing interesting content, you invite your audience to come and meet you online or face-to-face: it’s a perfect opportunity to promote your own brand, or that of your event!
But beware as many solutions offer to host your event content within their own brand environment, with their URL, using their visual identity, with emails sent from their domain name….
This is a huge marketing miss for you!
Choose a white label solution: it is your brand that should be on the spotlight. Your website must be at the URL of your choice, your email communications must be sent from your domain name, the entire event site must be unique to your colors. In other words, it must be 100% personalized!
2) Is my event data safe and do I own it?
Event data is an extremely valuable resource for understanding and knowing your audiences. On the other hand, this data is sensitive. Compliance with the GDPR must be guaranteed.
Some platforms communicate on the volume of event data they collect on all the events organized by their customers. To us, this approach of the topic is a little confusing…
Your event data belongs to you, not to the platform that hosts your event.
Make sure you choose a technological solution that offers strict separation between the data of different event organizers, and that guarantees you the unique ownership of your data.
3) Is the event platform all-in-one?
Event planning can be a complex discipline, especially if your teams are using multiple tools to do it. Our advice: centralize event planning in one place rather than scattering the data.
With an all-in-one platform, the work is made easier for teams who share a single collaborative tool and it increases productivity.
4) Will I be able to manage face-to-face, online, AND hybrid events?
Once the health crisis settles down, physical events will return.
When the time comes, it will be critical that your event solution be designed to orchestrate all formats: digital, in-person, and hybrid.
You’ll be able to strategically combine one-time face-to-face meetings with an ongoing digital conversation through digital events.
5) Can I plan my long-term event strategy with the platform?
Does the platform allow you to deploy your event-marketing strategy, beyond one-off events?
In other words, choose a solution that allows you to create different event formats according to your event calendar, and to easily develop your operations by duplicating some formats (by language, by country, by theme).
Beyond the occasional event, it is in your best interest to invest in a solution that is versatile enough to adapt to all your needs.
6) Does the platform have good customer references ?
The quality of customer references is a strong indicator of the quality of a platform.
First, look at the customer references that have adopted the solution in your industry.
On the other hand, see which brands in other industries have carried out projects that look like yours, sharing the same objectives, comparable challenges, and similar formats. Best practices can be applied from one sector to another.
Discover inwink customer success stories
If very large-scale events have been implemented on the platform for example, it proves the stability and robustness of the technology.
7) What will be the quality of the customer service?
Does the platform editor you choose offer you specific support? How responsive is it? Does it offer resources for on-demand training? Is there a system for sharing experiences and best practices?
8) Does the solution have the features I need?
Even though this is an operational issue, it is absolutely essential and deserves an entire article. The event platform you choose must have features that can meet your specific needs.
We will soon publish an article listing all the must-have features of a powerful event platform for you.Stay tuned – subscribe to our newsletter to be informed!
Would you like to discuss with our teams on how inwink can help with your event strategy?
