Making Your Events Environmentally and Economically Friendly
Got tech? Of course you do! But are you utilizing the programs and platforms at your disposal in the most efficient way possible?
Technology has made enormous strides in recent years and gone are the days of packing stacks of brochures and handouts in your suitcase to hand out at your events. They’re bulky, cumbersome, and frankly just outdated. Making technology work for you will not only make your life easier – and free up your budget – but your attendees will appreciate the ease of use.
These simple tips will help you stay both economically and environmentally friendly:
Registrations, Sign-Ins, Data – Oh My!
You likely don’t continue to use a MySpace account, so why would you continue to manually write names on a sign-in sheet? Keeping your data in one place sans manual data entry is a total time saver and gives you additional capabilities to analyze your attendee list, manage RSVPs, and more. Plus, that information can all be stored for future use!
While an Excel spreadsheet can help organize this information digitally, it can only offer so much and leaves plenty of room for error. Having one place to store your data that can be accessed from anywhere for all of your events is key.
Keep Your Discussion Materials in One Place
Raise your hand if you’ve had to toss piles of paper products that were left behind at the culmination of an event. Us, too ?. There is nothing worse than seeing all of your beautifully crafted (expensive!) agendas, flyers, and handouts seeing the dark side of the trash can. The struggle is real, but with a little editing and some tech know-how, you can save both money and trees and de-clutter your packing list.
Uploading all of your speakers’ handouts, discussion information, and presentation slides into one simple platform will make your life infinitely easier and alleviate the task and cost of printing all of those materials. Using technology programs like Dropbox or a shared Google Drive – or better yet, Expo Pass, which is a one-stop-shop – is a great way to give your attendees all of the material in one easy to access location.
Feedback is Great – If You Actually Get It
Many event planners ask for feedback at the end of a conference or seminar and that’s great. Knowing what worked and what didn’t is an efficient way to begin planning future events. However, this feedback often comes in the form of a piece of paper and a golf pencil handed out to bleary-eyed attendees who have just sat through hours of presentations; the quality of their feedback may not come back as thorough as you had hoped. Plus, that’s a lot of loose papers that may or may not get left behind – a cost to both your data and your wallet.
Giving attendees a digital survey post-event using a platform like SurveyMonkey is a simple solution to paper handouts, but why not take it a step further and strike while the iron is hot. For more efficient session feedback consider using Expo Pass to request feedback from attendees while they are still in session, and when they can easily respond on their smartphone.
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Give yourself a break and go digital! You’ll be surprised at how much you can do with a well-rounded software platform and the amount of money you’ll be able to save in the long run.
