Marketing departments are often responsible for managing events, either alone or on behalf of a sponsoring department or practice area. Without InterAction, this process usually involves a lot of manual effort - compiling and de-duping lists, printing reports, and creating Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheets to manage attendees. Most of this work is not reusable when another event is hosted. InterAction improves the event management process and reduces the resources required to do so.
In InterAction, you can manage the contacts involved with an event using marketing lists. InterAction includes two out-of-the-box event folder templates: Marketing Event and Marketing Event with Sponsors. InterAction also includes out-of-the-box reports that are useful when managing events.
This chapter describes an approach that provides reusable processes, templates, searches, and reports to streamline the tasks involved in managing an event to which clients, prospects, or employees are invited - for example, seminars and social events.
The following are the high-level steps in managing an event:
- Prepare the Event Folder
- Populate Folder Contacts
- Process Invitations and Manage Responses
- Send Materials
- Manage Event Attendance
The benefits of using this recommended approach in InterAction to manage events include the following:
- Marketing lists in InterAction can track the attendees, including RSVP and guest information.
- Professionals and their assistants can quickly and easily add contacts to the list of invitees.
- InterAction labels, envelopes, and reports can be used to create event mailing labels, name badges, invitation lists, and registration reports.
- Activities that are logged regarding people who were invited and who attended events build valuable historical and relationship information that professionals can leverage.
- When an important event is approaching, professionals using InterAction for Microsoft® Outlook® or the Web Client are notified through alerts which clients were invited and how they responded. After the event, alerts convey whether they attended the event.