Best Practices in Event Management from Click & Pledge

As anyone who’s ever been to a silent auction or fundraising dinner (or even planned a wedding) can attest, events can be tremendously complicated. Who to invite, how often to promote your event, how to follow up with them - these are all critical pieces to making sure your event meets its registration goals and serves your mission.

This past spring we asked our friends at Click & Pledge to join us for a webinar on their event management system. Here are some best practices from Karen Arrivillaga at Click & Pledge based on conversations they’ve had with nonprofit customers.

Simplify

Look hard at your process and trim it down as much as possible. Make the process as simple as possible for registrants.  When transitioning from a paper type system to a new online system, you may have to rethink the way you set up your event to make it easier for an online registrations.

Customize

Bringing in your logo and brand colors/tone will give the event instant credibility and make your clients trust you more, since they’ll see a familiar look throughout the process.

Salesforce integration

Whether you are using Click & Pledge or another system for event management, make sure you evaluate how your contacts are going to come into your CRM.  Do you have duplicate protection?  Is there something in place to catch those duplicates before they are created.  Are your campaigns set up? and so on.

Automate Notifications

Through Click & Pledge, you can use a feature called Autoresponder (powered directly through Salesforce) to make sure you’re reaching out to the attendees and responding in a personalized way. Don’t be afraid to send out custom autoresponse emails and receipts to your registrants.  Again, if they see your logo and branding, they will be confident with their online transaction.

Test and practice

Make sure you test the registration process you create to make sure you have enough time to go through the process in the time you allotted (since most pages have timers).  Also, see how the contacts are coming in so you will be ready once the event starts.  If you are using Swiper1 to accept credit card payments, set up the swipers prior to the event and run a test transaction to make sure your account is ready for that type of transaction.

So there you have it! You can learn more about Click and Pledge here and watch our joint webinar recording here. If you’ve run an event recently, what tips would you add?