How to Choose your Event Platforms?

Just like in every business, also events need technology. In constantly changing event industry, events need to able to react in the needs of the audience. One reason why event management platforms are so important today is that these platforms control how your audience gets involved in your event throughout the entire process. It can be sales platform, management platform or so-called 360-model.

7 things to consider when choosing your event management platforms 

Liveto visited Event Tech Live 2019 in London to catch up with the latest technology in event industry, meeting local event organizers and event tech suppliers. Inspirated of the event, we collected 7 things to consider when choosing your event platforms:

1. 24/7 Customer Support – there is never enough superior Customer Success stories. In case of your platform crashes (yeah, it happens to every tech-company), you should be able to get support from the platform provider. Some of the best event (management or sales) platforms have a Customer Success Manager who dedicate their work for your event.
2. Data – Peter Drucker said it best: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” Especially events always need quite specific data from their audience. Data can used in various ways for example engage their audience, monitor participation and measure response. Data is a key tool for the event organizer to ”gain whole event perspective” and then improve its performance. It gives a baseline for the future years to ensure that your events are getting better and better.

3. Customization – since events need to engage their audience and collect data, the event platform should provide a wide range of customizations. Every event needs a branded, high quality “look and feel” platform, which their audience are happy to use. Event platform should also cover customizations in templates and reports, in order to collect data.
4. Tutorials – your event platform should provide guidance and practical tips on how to use it. Tutorials or manuals can be inside the platform or can be offered as webinars about a specific topic. Webinars should be “bite-size”, 5-minute sessions. People just like you are so busy and anxious so the tutorials should the take just few minutes of your time.
5. Attendee Management and Communication – you should have a total access to your attendee/guest lists, sales reports etc. In this point it is important to make sure that your event platform offers integration possibilities to other softwares such as CRM (Hubspot) or comms (Mailchimp) analytics (Google). Integrations will make your event management more effective, saves resources and again, gives more data.
6. Financials – Your platform should handle all event related activities (ticketing, fees, donations, merch sales, accommodation etc.). In this phase you should also check out which payment methods can be used. It is crucial to know this since your target audience might expect that they can buy in various methods, such as credit card, invoice or even bitcoins.
7. Intuitive Design – Design is crucial in both frontend and backend (user and buyer). Platform should emphasize its look and feel in order to attract its user and courage to use it even more. Keep in mind that for example buying a pre-event ticket or pre-registration is always part of creating the first impression of your event.

Learn more about our solutions for ticketing and for webinars.