The technological solutions that help the event planner

Invitation management and attendee registration is one of the key activities in event organization.

In thirty years of experience, I have analysed, together with the best professionals in the field, different software platforms and data models suitable to solve the usual problems in the organization of an event.

Technology is the great ally in the organization of an event: it can give us the best possible result and save us precious time.

There are many modern CRM (Customer Relationship Management) suitable for the management of frequent and large events. However, these systems are not always suitable for the customization of small, high-quality projects.

Having a reliable partner is essential to ensuring the best technological solutions; an event planning professional able to turn the needs of every single event into solutions.

Each event has its own characteristics. The professional event planner understands all the specific organizational needs of the occasion and identifies the most suitable technological intervention system to ensure the desired result.

The event mailing list management

The mailing list is the starting point of the organization of each event. A fundamental phase that, if faced superficially, often reserves unpleasant surprises. When I work on a mailing list, I sometimes manage information that is not consistent and that is difficult to encode (such as honorifics and plural expressions, sometimes in different languages). One way of solving these problems is to structure the list of contacts according to very precise criteria.

A well-structured registry allows you to:

• Obtain the correct alphabetical order, regardless of the nobiliary particles in the different languages;
• Manage double invitations, when the invitation refers to more than one person (eg: The Prince and the Princess …);
• Manage the names connected to the invitation registry, the so-called “plus-ones”;
• Direct confirmation status to the different events related to the main invitation;
• Manage in real-time the assignment of seats for individual events;
• Check hotel reservations, even with real-time allotment updates;
• Manage transfers organized for individual events;
• Respond to requests for individual transfers for arrivals and departures;
• Provide the services required by each guest present at the event (cultural and tourist programs, hairdressers, makeup artists..).

How to structure a registry in an effective way

Structuring the address archive according to precise criteria simplifies the organizational work. The mailing list must contain different fields for each information. The most important to be defined are:

• frequent use information: first name, last name full address, email, telephone.
• the category: the relationship that the guest has with the company event (customer, supplier, member of the Board of Directors, etc…) or with the family, in the case of private events (wife/husband, partner, daughter/son, wedding witness, etc…);
• the source of the invitation: who provided the name of the person to be invited;

Reports and their organizational function

A well-organised database enables reports to be produced for every organizational need, thanks to the possibility to make multiple selections with Boolean logic.

Data organization in the database allows to generate useful reports such as:

• check in lists;
• hotel rooming lists;
• worksheets for related services (cultural and tourist programs, hairdressers, makeup artists…);
• lists for transfers;
• lists for assigned seats.

How to defend against proliferation of lists

It is often the case that different bodies provide the organizational secretariat with their own guest list. In this case it is frequent that the planner, checking the data, find duplicates with sometimes different information.

A good information system allows you to clean lists and give consistency to data, avoiding annoying and confusing repetitions.

This operation is essential to the preparation of invitations and saves the event planner from making a bad impression.

The database update

The value of a database is not only in the information stored in it.

The database update is also essential and must be performed regularly. Only in this way the archive will maintain its value intact over time.

There is always a field where a professional event planner records the date and information of the latest update, so as to keep the development of each registry under control.