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Time waits for no one, especially an event organiser

Roxanne ArmstrongEvent Planning, Everything, Marketing & Promotion, Quicket

Tools to help you get on top of your administration so you can focus on your event.

Organising a kick-ass event takes time, attention to detail, people skills, creative problem solving (often under immense pressure), and serious amounts of admin (which is why we sometimes call it “badmin” after it’s driven us up the wall). Unglamorous as that last piece of the puzzle may be - not being organised and in control of your administration can really, really hurt your event and your brand.


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With so many people to collaborate with, so many attendees to communicate to, and seemingly endless tasks to tick off of your neverending list, it often feels almost impossible be everywhere and do everything yourself. Luckily one of the benefits of living in such technologically rich times (maybe those "What a time to be alive" memes were right after all) is that you don’t have to! Online tools can be set up ensuring that you don’t miss a single important detail, keeping you totally focused on what matters most - your event!


The foremost concept to keep in mind is that the biggest way to simplify your life, and remove unnecessary work, is to keep all of your information in one place, and connect the apps you use to communicate and report from. Like an HQ. Bruce Wayne had the Bat Cave, Dexter had his Lab, and you, well you need a lair to call your own from which you can rule your event empire.


Luckily, if you are running your event through Quicket, you can keep all your ticket buyers, VIPs, Artist and staff accreditation, car passes, etc. in one place, and integrate seamlessly with your ESP (email service provider), website and CRM (customer relationship management). Not to mention the scanning app on your phone or computer for quick and easy on-the-day access control at your door.


Event organisers assemble... with these helpful tips.



Mailchimp


Quicket loves Mailchimp. We’ve written about our love for it a few times. In fact, we love it so much that we have created a more convenient way for our Organisers to email everyone in their Quicket Guest List directly from your Mailchimp account. (You’ll find this under the “Integrate” option in your dashboard menu). It is never too early or late in your event planning to connect and link this up since it continues to pull through anyone on your guest list automatically as they buy tickets, and you can add attendees from previous events too (you can always go back to your information from past events, since it’s all kept safe for you in your Quicket account). From finished events, to a brand new event that has just launched - it’s completely hassle-free and automated. As soon as you are ready to shoot off an email, you’ll have everyone’s details ready and waiting in Mailchimp. Easy peasy, Mailchimp squeezy.


You can create one list for your Organisation and divide the list into different groups - one for each of your events.This way when you are linking this up from your Quicket event dashboard, it’s all right there for you to select. Contact our friends over at Mailchimp for more tips, tricks and help with organising your database. And check out our previous Mailchimp post for more tidbits of helpful info.


And of course, never forget to send out a post event survey. This is your chance to connect with your attendees and find out what they enjoyed and what you can work on to make the next one an even better experience. And of course, we’ve previously written about a few things to do after your event that can help you get the most of that post-event glow.


More on what to do after your event has finished.



Zapier


Zapier (the ultimate automation and workflow solution) thinks that computers should help you do more work, so you can focus on what's important to you. Well, at least until computers become sentient and take over the world. But even then, they’ll use Zapier to keep on top of what’s happening.


Zapier is a solution that allows you to easily connect services together without having to do a custom integration for each one. Simply put, as long as the application you are wanting to use can integrate with Zapier, you can connect it to Quicket.


Make use of Zapier to receive an SMS or email once a VIP checks in at your event, or add details to a Google spreadsheet every time someone is added to the guest list. Zapier can act like the personal assistant you’ve always wanted without the need to constantly ask your personal assistant to pick up your dry-cleaning every five minutes because Zapier already knows what it needs to do and won’t let you down.


The Quicket integration with Zapier currently supports the following triggers:


  • Order added (Triggers when an order is completed.)
  • Guest added (Triggers when a guest is added to your guest list.)
  • Guest cancelled (Triggers when a guest is cancelled either through a refund or a transferred ticket.)
  • Guest checkin (Triggers when a guest is checked in or checked out of an event.)
  • New registration ( Triggers when a user successfully registers for an event. If approvals are manual this will only trigger on approval.)
  • Guest Edited (Triggers when information about a guest is updated.)

The integration with Zapier is currently in private beta, so if you'd like to try it out, please use this invite link.


Access the Quicket-Zapier Integration




Social media management


With Facebook boasting roughly 1.59 billion monthly active users, Instagram 400 million, and twitter around 320 million active users per month, It’s clear to see why staying on top of your Social Media plan is so important. With constantly changing algorithms on these platforms - limiting who sees your content, to thousands of potential posts fighting to be shown to users - it can be a really tough landscape to navigate, and an even tougher nut to crack.


On top of this, Social Media has ensured that advertising is no longer a one way conversation. You’ll need to make inspiring, compelling, appealing, and sometimes thought provoking posts on a regular basis to keep your audience interested and engaged with your brand. It’s a garden that needs constant care and attention.


Monitoring relevant keywords, being mindful of your competitors, and what they are up to, and of course analysing your social performance to measure the impact you’re making are all important tasks to keep on top of. If your audience is interested - they’ll interact with you by sharing their opinion, and asking questions. It’s important to respond quickly and positively if you want to keep up your good image to the public.


There is a plethora of social media management platforms which allow you to schedule your posts, and manage the rest of your tasks easily. Some of these include - Hootsuite, eClincher, Sendible.com, Tweetdeck, AgoraPulse, buffer, Sprout Social, socialoomph, Viral Heat, Social Clout, and Social Booster. They all have pros and cons and some are suited more towards specific platforms so it’s important to do some research and test a few out, so that you can decide on the best tool for your organisation.


If your event involves displaying tweets in real-time on a big screen look into Everwall (previously named Tweetwall). If you are already using Hootsuite to manage social media, it would make more sense to use Hootfeed for this.


Of course, we’ve written about some of Social Media’s ins and outs before, including Influencer Marketing, so be sure to check that article out if you’d like to know more about the world of trendsetters and opinion leaders.



Trello


As you undoubtedly know communication among your team is absolutely vital to the success of your event, both in pre-production, and on the day. Therefore you’ll want to make this as straightforward, convenient and simple as possible.


An application like Trello makes it super easy to see the entire project board, share updates on current pipelines, and to quickly see who has done what - to keep you all on the same page.


Easily integrate Trello to Gmail and effortlessly add assignments to your project board, as well as to a downloadable app for your phone, along with the option to send reminders to yourself.


It’s a dream come true for any busy team of organisers, with a million tasks on the go.


Even as I am writing this list, there are more online tools popping up to help organisations just like yours!


It’s handy to keep in mind any challenge you are facing has probably been faced by another organiser, which means that a solution is almost certainly just a-Google-search-away.


Never settle for time wasting tasks, and get the very best out of you and your team with these tools.


And while you’re at it, set up a cool HQ. The world needs an event superhero, and you could be just that hero.


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