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An exciting new events landscape is upon us. But with it comes new challenges, the need for new strategies and more focus paid to the bottom line than ever before.

The worst-kept secret in the meeting & event industry is that event costs are rising and budgets are tightening. 

A Seismic Shift: The New Events Landscape

A new meeting and event landscape has emerged due to the technological revolution accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on in-person meetings. Meeting and event managers, digital marketers and strategic meetings manager (SMM) program owners have all experienced and adapted to rapid change.

Many industry professionals are upskilling or reskilling to not only effectively design and operate hybrid and virtual events but also to address automation and artificial intelligence, which are also impacting their jobs. Not to mention maximizing budgets to deliver memorable event experiences.

The swift shift to digital meant that more industry professionals began to embrace technology. Technology that would not only help them create and hold their events, but also help them automate processes and cut costs.

Technology in the New Age of Events

Meeting professionals are exploring new technologies and incorporating them into the design and delivery of M&E, but not at the expense of a focus on people. Technology now offers an enhanced means of creating participant experiences that touch emotions, inspire action and change and match the interests of those participating. Keeping these digital solutions simple with integrated systems can increase ease of use and satisfaction among presenters, sponsors and participants.

The ways technology can save event professionals costs are many. Here are just a few:

·      Meeting Approval & Budgets: Streamline the request and approval process to an online process at scale. Technology can enable you to automatically notify departments of new requests, assign planning teams online.

·      Marketing: Save time with branded/scheduled email campaigns, reminders, save the dates and “know before you go” messages. Keep attendees/prospects well informed and nurtured via pre-built and scheduled messaging.

·      Venue Sourcing Tech: This helps you eliminate manual efforts of calling, emailing hotel for pricing & availability. This technology can help you avoid the manual consolidation of proposal information via massive spreadsheets, and help you gather eRFPs quickly and effortlessly.  View property data online, search for relevant properties online. Tag relevant vendors as preferred and make timely decisions.

·      Venue Diagramming Tech: Site visits can be costly. Multiple sit visits can sink an already tight budget. This technology offers you virtual walk throughs, the ability to create diagrams in minutes with flexible templates, make updates in seconds and collaborate with team members and partner venues to make changes and updates in mere minutes.

This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to how event technology can save you in the short and long term.

Takeaways

Technology now offers an enhanced means of creating participant experiences that touch emotions, inspire action and change and match the interests of those participating. But also, ways to help you as an event’s professional adhere to your organization’s increasingly scrutinized budgets.

Embrace new and developing technologies and fully embrace hybrid and virtual as an extension of your in-person meetings and events. Second, no matter what the current state of your SMM, make it a priority to refresh your program or commit to exploring the potential of implementing one, if only to gain visibility to enterprise-wide meetings and events so that there are controls in place to protect your organization.

For more information about how to run a smarter SMM program, check out our new white paper, “Strategic Meetings Management in a Next-Gen World.”