Best Event Management Software Stack for 2023 [Infographic]

2023 Event Technology Guide: An integrated event management software stack to help you manage your event throughout your entire event lifecycle

“Focus on being productive instead of being busy” is the advice from Tim Ferris, entrepreneur and international speaker. We couldn’t agree more. With so many technology options available, it can be overwhelming to choose the best event management software that will help you be productive, rather than busy. While technology can help simplify the event management process, having isolated tools that don’t communicate between each other can make the work more difficult, instead of helping. So here is a list of the best event management software solutions that work well together to help you efficiently manage your entire event lifecycle, from beginning to end.

Before your event

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Slack + GanttPro

TEAM COMMUNICATION

Event management is not a one-person job. You are likely working together with a variety of professionals to put your event together. From the planning stages up to the end of the event, Slack and GanttPro offer robust solutions to keep your team in touch and streamline communication and task assignment, while keeping track of all your tasks.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Want to track tasks assigned and completion status from different team members? GanttPro can help you create visual charts to show you all your to-do list, deadlines for different tasks, and task status, making it easier to have a bird’s eye view of your event planning process. Having a Gantt chart to manage all the moving parts of your event will make it easier to manage all tasks, no matter how big or small, including venue booking, VR contracts, catering services, media kits, and more.

EVENT MANAGEMENT

Attendease + Slack + HubSpot + Salesforce

Website Builder

In order to promote your event and accept registrations, you will need to build an engaging online presence, probably a website. Using Attendease’s publishing platform you can easily create your event website using one of the many templates available. Whether you are planning a webinar, conference, product launch, or retreat, look for a website builder that offers attractive, customizable web templates to fit your event goals. With an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface, you can create your website without needing an army of designers and developers.

Ticketing & Registration Management

It’s a great idea to integrate multiple tools in order to get the most out of your event registration software. With Attendease you can integrate registration forms to your event website. You will be able to create different passes based on your event requirements, including early bird pricing, promo discounts, pricing tiers, and more.

Attendease integrates with Slack, HubSpot, and Salesforce, so you can automate all your efforts and stay on top of your event registrations. Here are some examples of tasks you can automate from the Attendease platform:

• Stay informed of the most important event and attendee updates, directly on your Slack account, including attendee registration, updates, and cancellation.
• Connect with HubSpot or SalesForce to bring in new contacts based on event registrations.
• Through HubSpot, you can also track attendee interactions with event sessions, including scheduling a session, adding to a session waitlist, or checked in at event/ session.

SPEAKER, EXHIBITOR, AND SPONSOR MANAGEMENT

Attendease users can use workflows to automate the process of managing speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors. All three workflows work in a similar manner, and will make your life so much easier when managing your next event!

Workflows work in six simple steps:

1. Create custom application forms
2. Publish forms on your website
3. Invite speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors to register
4. Review and approve or reject applications
5. Automatically publish approved applications to your website
6. Let speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors manage their information. They can add their own bio, and all you need to do is approve it. Everything will be updated on your website with the click of a button.

SESSIONS & CALENDAR SLOTTING

Manage sessions for your event using an intuitive calendar slotter from the Attendease platform. Attendees will have access to their personal agenda, and they can also join waitlists, if the session they are interested in is sold out.

EVENT PROMOTION

HubSpot + SalesForce + AdRoll

EMAIL COMMUNICATION

Manage your email marketing needs from HubSpot, or SalesForce (or another email platform you use.

Using these platforms you can:

• Manage email layouts, based on the message you want to send.
• Send email blasts: Remind registrants of an upcoming event, invite attendees to participate in surveys, or inform them of other events they may be interested in.
• Send a single email: If you would like to send an email to a single recipient on behalf of your event you can do so with the send single email function.
• Send unique messages to specific groups of people (e.g. previous attendees, current member, and non-members).

SOCIAL MEDIA

Use the HubSpot publishing tool to pre-schedule social media posts. You can also use their social media monitoring tool to track mentions to your brand and specific hashtags.

ONLINE ADVERTISING

Take advantage of online advertising opportunities, including retargeting ads. These ads would show to users who visited your website, but didn’t purchase a ticket. Ads would show on other sites your audience is browsing, such as a news site or Facebook. You can manage online advertising directly from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google AdWords. If you want to manage all ads from one place, try AdRoll.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)

Optimize your website for search engines, with these SEO techniques for event websites and manage these from your website platform. There are a number of techniques you can use to get your site ranking on the first page of search engines, like Google.

During the event

ATTENDEE EXPERIENCE

Boomset + Sli.do + Livestream

STREAMLINED REGISTRATION PROCESS

No one likes waiting in line. With Boomset, you can avoid long waits and delight attendees right at the beginning of your event, with onsite and self-service check in options. Start by building out your event on the Boomset web platform, where a user-friendly interface guides you to collect on-site registrations, check in guests on the app, scan QR codes, and activate RFID.

To make it even easier, Boomset allows you to print badges onsite, so you can avoid stress, delays, and errors of pre-printing. This includes on-demand paper, plastic, or wristband badges.

CASHLESS PAYMENTS AND VOUCHER REDEMPTION

Boomset also offers RFID technology, so you can discreetly incorporate wearable RFID chips to track when guests arrived and how much time they spent in a specific area or attending specific sessions, without imposing on their event experience. RFID technology easily tracks attendee movement to give you more accurate lead generation ROI in less time.

In addition, Boomset’s RFID technology features cashless payments, meaning attendees can purchase food, drinks, or merchandise, and pay by scanning their RFID-enabled wristband. The wristband is linked to each attendee’s credit card beforehand, so process can be automated. Cashless payments provides a better experience, with fewer lines and faster service. Not selling food and drinks? Not a problem! Using the same RFID technology you can provide food and drink voucher to attendees, eliminating the paper trail and avoiding human errors in the process.

AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT: Q&A AND POLLS

With Slido you can easily increase attendee engagement during your event. Guests can go to your Slido page or event app and send their questions, which can be moderated by your team. As questions are approved, they become available for all attendees to see, and upvote them. You can then select the most popular questions and show it on screen, during the presentation, so the speakers can address the questions selected. Similarly, you can ask polls, which can also be accessed on your Slido page or mobile app. Results can be shared during the presentation. Slido integrates with Powerpoint, Keynote, and Prezi, as well as live streaming tools, including Livestream, Ustream, YouTube & Vimeo.

LIVE STREAMING

Speaking of live streaming, this is one of the newer trends in event marketing, and it’s only increasing in popularity. Whether you’re streaming to social or producing an event streamed around the world, Livestream’s hardware and software can help you look like a pro. Use Slido to engage your audience by asking questions live, and seeing the results in real-time.

After the event

EVENT ANALYTICS

Google Analytics + Attendease + Boomset + Sli.do

As an event professional, you know how important it is to analyze your event metrics. You can use a combination of tools to gather different types of analytics metrics and gain valuable insights. In our opinion, the best event management software tools for analyzing data are the following:

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

• Measure website traffic and engagement by specific channels
• Measure website user-journey and top visited pages
• Learn which marketing campaigns are driving more traffic and conversions

ATTENDEASE

• Integrate with Google Analytics for comprehensive website traffic data
• Track registration goals
• Track revenue by event and business unit
• Survey attendees to define overall sentiment
• Collect and measure data from form answers
• Track member attendance across multiple events

SLIDO

• Discover the most popular questions and topics: Learn which questions resonated with your audience and view the summary of the most frequent topics in a word cloud.
• Meet your event influencers: Find your most active and passionate participants who asked the top questions at your event.
• View all your poll results at a glance: Quickly browse through your polls or expand individual poll results to dig deeper into your audience responses.
• Share the insights in a beautiful infographic: Generate an infographic from your event data and share it with your colleagues or participants via email or social media.
• See detailed analytics by individual rooms.
• Get an overview of all events under your account.
• Export all your event data into pdf or xls files.

BOOMSET

• Lead retrieval: Allow exhibitors to digitally collect contact information and generate leads at your event easily, at their fingertips
• Real-time reporting: Give users all their information in one place via organized reports downloaded directly from the Lead Retrieval app. Event organizers can also view, download, and send reports to themselves and end users.
• Easily verify attendance for CEUs or certifications, determine popular sessions for better future planning

ATTENDEE SURVEY

Attendease + Sli.do

ATTENDEE EXPERIENCE AND NPS SCORE

Finding out how attendees enjoyed the event is key to learning what went right, what went wrong, and what you can do even better for your next events. Both Slido and Attendease will provide you with attendee survey capabilities, as well as data visualization, so you can analyze the results. A robust event management platform will allow you to easily gather useful data such as the “Net Promoter Score” from your attendees after they have experienced each of your sessions and other aspects of your event. This particular analytic is a gauge of loyalty and customer satisfaction. Net Promoters are your most important influencers, and well worth knowing inside and out. They are your loyal fans, who will sing your event’s praises to their friends and colleagues. They generally account for about 80% of your referrals and can help you close new sponsors or exhibitors with their passion.

It’s a Wrap!

“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.” – Thomas A. Edison

Managing an event is no easy task. There is so much to take into consideration, and so much work to do. Using the best event management software tools will help your team manage each piece of the event experience, from start to end. Increase your productivity by selecting the best event management software tools that integrate, so you can work smarter, instead of harder. What tools to you use to manage events more efficiently?

Best Event Management Software Stack [Infographic]