What is guest management?
Guest management encompasses all activities related to managing attendees at an event. This includes registration, data management, pre- and post-event communication, as well as the evaluation and tracking of attendees. Guest management is about ensuring that each person has a smooth and unique event experience and receives the necessary information in a timely manner.
Why is guest management crucial for events?
Efficient guest management is key to ensuring that events run smoothly. It ensures that attendees are correctly recorded, communication is personalised, and the organiser always has an overview. Poorly organised guest management leads to misunderstandings, confusion, and, in the worst case, a disappointed audience. Therefore, well-thought-out and automated guest management is essential for the success of any event.
What phases and tasks are involved in guest management?
Guest management consists of several phases:
- Save-the-date: For important events, a save-the-date is sent to attendees as early as possible so that the event date can be marked in their calendars.
- Invitation: Guests are invited to the event and asked to register.
- Event registration: Attendees must register for the event, which can be done with or without payment.
- Registration confirmation: After registering, attendees receive a confirmation of their event registration.
- Event communication: Important information about the event must be shared regularly.
- Check-in and onsite management: On the event day, attendees must be checked in quickly and easily. Onsite, attendees need to be able to navigate the venue and stay informed about the event programme.
- Follow-up: After the event, a satisfaction survey or follow-up communication is often sent to encourage attendees to participate in future events.
- Post-event evaluation: Finally, various event metrics are evaluated, and depending on the IT infrastructure, event data is transferred back into the organisation's CRM system.
What challenges exist in guest management?
In an ideal world, you would manage your guest list with a few clicks and quickly ensure a fully booked event. However, the reality is often more complex. Different target groups and individual registration options can quickly lead to high complexity. The biggest challenges in guest management are:
- Poor quality of guest data
- Lack of overview due to the use of various systems
- Unclear or inconsistent guest communication
- Manual processes that consume a lot of time and resources
- Lack of planning ability due to missing event data
- Automation of complex registration options
- Time-consuming and laborious check-ins
- Payment processing for events
- No analysis or evaluation options due to missing event data
These challenges can lead to high effort and frustration for event organisers. Ultimately, the guest experience itself may suffer as well. However, this doesn't have to be the case. We have compiled 15 tips to help you improve your guest management.
With these 15 tips, you can simplify and automate your guest management!
Through the automation of guest management, a variety of tasks can be optimised. These 15 tips will help you automate your event processes:
- Ensure good data quality for your contact lists. Duplicates or incorrect data lead to extra work or lower registration rates.
- Use personalised event invitations to achieve a higher open and registration rate. This reduces the need for follow-up actions to a minimum.
- Automate event registrations and offer a user-friendly event registration process where attendees can register independently with just a few clicks. Make it as simple as possible to choose different sessions or additional questions.
- List all relevant information about the event, venue, directions, and programme clearly on the event website to minimise inquiries. For larger events, consider integrating an FAQ section.
- Offer the possibility for attendees to cancel their registration independently, so they can easily unregister if they cannot attend.
- Use automatic confirmation emails to send attendees a confirmation and a personalised email with all relevant event information once they have registered.
- Automate your event communication – emails or SMS messages to attendees can be fully automated and scheduled, such as reminders or last-minute event updates.
- Use integrated payment processing – online payments can be seamlessly processed through direct integration into the event registration, saving you time on invoicing and reminders when selling event tickets.
- Keep an individual status for each attendee so that you can reach the right target group with your automated communication.
- Use digital e-tickets, which are automatically sent to attendees after registration. Send the e-tickets again before the event so all your guests have their ticket ready for entry.
- Implement an automatic check-in solution – with QR codes, attendees can check in quickly and without long waiting times on the event day.
- Send automatic thank-you emails, feedback surveys, and follow-up communication – send surveys or thank-you emails automatically after the event to all checked-in attendees, helping you collect valuable feedback or maintain relationships with your attendees.
- Use analysis functions to create detailed attendee data reports, which will help you optimise event planning and improve future events.
- Duplicate past events that worked well for your event processes and brought the desired registration and attendance rates.
- Use professional event software that integrates and automates all processes. Using multiple solutions inevitably leads to extra work and increases the likelihood of errors.
What support does event software like Oniva provide to automate guest management?
Event software like Oniva offers numerous features that significantly simplify guest management. In addition to automating event processes such as event communication, registration, and check-in, Oniva also offers:
- Central and secure management of guest data: All information about your guests is stored in one central place and is accessible from anywhere, thanks to the secure, cloud-based solution. Your data remains compliant with GDPR and Swiss data protection laws, stored on Swiss data centres.
- Real-time reporting: Oniva provides real-time data on statistics such as event registrations, attendee arrivals, no-show rates, and more, enabling quick and reliable decision-making for successful event execution.
- Easy to use: Oniva is user-friendly, allowing you to go live with events in a short time with just a few clicks. Thanks to various default configurations, you can save significant time when planning recurring events.
- Unlimited scalability: Oniva is ideal for events of any size – from small meetings to large conferences. Thanks to flexible registration logic, Oniva can be used for a wide range of events.
Conclusion
Automation in guest management is key to more efficiency and less stress when planning and executing events. With the right event software, like Oniva, you can optimise many manual processes and save valuable time. From event invitations to registrations and check-ins – automation makes guest management not only faster but also more effective. Use these technologies to enhance the event experience for everyone involved and focus on the truly important tasks.
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