Best Event Management Software for Every Event Type in 2020

Event planning and management is a challenging profession, especially when it comes to organizing events like corporate meetings, trade fairs, exhibitions, academic training and fundraisers.

Event planners nowadays have to deal with all kinds of businesses and enterprises, each having a different set of needs. Add to that the need to juggle between different applications to jot down content, going back-and-forth with multiple drafts, spreadsheets to track proceedings, emails to send out invitations, as well as social media to promote events. On top of that, imagine handling and coordinating teams amidst all this. While things are bound to go haywire sometimes, an additional disadvantage of manually handling things is the scattered nature of data making it difficult to manage everything efficiently.

Thankfully, the evolution of technology has made the life of event planners somewhat easier with Event Management Software. With the advent of such software, data has become unified within a single platform helping event planners effectively manage events irrespective of their size and business domain

Features that make Event Management Software the ideal solution

When talking about events, they can be of any size, for any industry, and aimed at any purpose. Event planners ideally don’t limit themselves when it comes to organizing events for a particular niche. And thus, putting that restriction on event management software would not be fair.

That’s why providers of such software incorporate a wide array of features in event management software to make them suitable for any event type. Here’s a look at features that some of the best event management software come equipped with.

  • Virtual Events
    With global working paradigms shifting to the virtual space, business and leisurely events are also being hosted online these days. As such, event management software should include virtual support with the option to live stream, remotely manage attendees, collect feedback online, and more.

  • Seat Map
    A critical part of handling event attendees is ensuring that the right people get allotted the right seats. This could depend on attendee seniority, ticket type, or any other criteria. Your event management software should be able to offer automatic seat allocation based on the criteria you define.

  • Survey
    Surveys can prove useful in many ways. They can help you gather pre-event information, estimate user engagement during events, and gauge customer experience post event. An event management software should enable you to create online surveysquickly and share it with your audience hassle-freely. Thereafter, it should also let you analyze the results of the survey through detailed reports.

  • Agenda Builder
    Every event works according to a pre-defined agenda. While the planners may be aware of the agenda before-hand, for most events, making the attendees aware of the agenda is critical. Manually creating agendas can leave room for errors and also pose challenges while sharing it with multiple people. Ideally, you should let your event management software handle the task automatically.

  • Speaker Management
    For events involving speakers, making sure everyone gets a pre-decided slot in an orderly manner and distributing slots according to the event duration involves a lot of effort. Using an event management software for the purpose eliminates confusion.

  • Attendee interaction
    Event Management Software nowadays helps event planners achieve natural attendee conversion with interactive user interfaces like promotional codes, QR check-ins, social media live streaming and more.

  • Unified platform for all data
    A unified platform for managing all data at a central location is a critical aspect of event management software. With everything handled from a single place, you no longer need to maintain spreadsheets for different purposes. Event management software has specific sections for this and it makes it easy to store, update, and manage information through a single interface.

  • Efficient data accessibility
    Event management software enables you to access data in the form of smart lists, with interactive features like filtering and sorting. You don’t need to apply lookup formulas through multiple spreadsheets for information any more. You can do this with ease using software and save crucial time.

  • Specialized portals
    Most event management software have inbuilt specialized sections and tools for different aspects related to events like registration, venue selections, check in, attendance, ticketing and more.

  • Email marketing
    Email marketing is an important element of audience interaction and engagement. Event management software provides integration of key email marketing tools allowing event planners to send email promotions, notifications, event updates, reminders and invitations.

  • Social media integration
    With the widespread use of smartphones, it is imperative for event planners to reach out to their audience on social media platforms. Event management software integrates with almost all social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

  • Payment gateway
    Good event planning software comes equipped with payment gateways for receiving payments and offers several payment options. Such software finds it easy to interface with payment devices like POS machines and card swipe devices.

Above all, effective Event Management Software enables you to optimize time over repetitive tasks and focus on coordinating teams for effective planning and management.

Best Event Management Software in 2020
There are several choices available when it comes to Event Management Software and it can become quite confusing to finalize on one. To help you with making the right selection, we’ve compiled a list of the best Event Management Software suited for all business domains in 2020. Have a look.

Eventbrite

  • Popular among users because of the “discover” feature in particular

  • Promotes effective collaboration, knowledge flow and networking. Particularly catered for organizations that want to promote teamwork through events and social media interaction

  • Free trial available


Bitpod

  • Centralized portal which lets you take care of pre-event, during event, and post-event activities from single place

  • Manage ticketing, memberships, payments, reports, and more conveniently

  • Includes detailed data analytic capabilities

  • Personalization capability with drag-and-drop workflow tools

  • Integration with over 700 different tools including Slack, Stripe, Trello, Sage 300, and more


CVent

  • Offers detailed insights to help you understand the impact of your events, better engage with your audience, manage costs, and ultimately improve marketing ROI

  • Available and highly rated as iOS and Android app

  • Attendee tracking, payments, group buying, conference management, and more

  • Mobile-friendly registrations and surveys


Combination of standalone tools like Google Forms + Survey Money + Trello

  • Give the flexibility to use only the tools and features you actually need

  • Most cost-effective option since majority of such tools have free versions available

  • Feedback collection, survey, task management capabilities


To conclude

There’s no doubt that with Event Management Software, organizing and planning events has become much easier. Such platforms not only help event planners to focus on user experience but also open up new avenues for them with features like social media integration and attendee engagement.

All-in-one event management solutions affect every aspect of event planning. Modern event planners can go with one of the solutions covered in this article to organize events at a whole new level, be it for any business domain.