General
Hotel Secrets to Lower Your Event Cost
Event venues, especially hotels, can try to nickel and dime you for the majority of your event budget. Here are some hotel secrets that will help lower your event cost and that you should keep in mind before you sign. Don’t feel bad about going back to your sales manager with questions or change requests – show them that you won’t be taken advantage of and that your hotel smarts are well above average!
1. Fill need dates.
Need dates are when a hotel has sold out of guest rooms, perhaps for a city-wide event, leaving the event space at the hotel empty. If you are a smaller group with no sleeping room requirements and a pretty flexible schedule, call in multiple hotels in the area and ask a catering sales manager if they have any “Need Dates” that need to be filled — you’ll probably strike a pretty sweet deal.
2. Check your cancellation clauses.
Some have long timelines and outrageous penalties for cancelling even 6 months before your event. If your group is extremely large and you are taking up a large majority of the hotel group room allocation, your cancellation clause is going to be more aggressive. Ask your sales manager if in the event you have to cancel you could apply your cancellation fee to a future event. If the answer is yes, get it in writing!
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Five Tips: Maximise ROI for your Next Association Event
1. Build Hype early
People tend to not want to miss out on an event that everyone is attending. If you can get a good number of registrations locked in early you will not only have cash flow to enhance your marketing but you will have people in your industry talking about the event thus creating hype and momentum.
2. Have a killer program
Be absolutely sure about who your audience is and what they want in a program both in terms of content and structure. Use your networks to get some respected keynote speakers, paid or un-paid. You need to feature at least one keynote in your first email or flier so you stake your position and intent. Then put real effort into building an amazing program… this is what will sell the event.
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3rd India Association Congress at Chennai
The 3rd Indian Association Congress is going to take place at Chennai this year during mid august 2013. Since it’s inception Indian Association Congress has been recognized as a meaningful & must to attend event for Large and Mid scale associations in India. Association are the base of any industry, to make a continuous growth as a leading association the future for trade and professional associations, is to engage an association management company.
During the 2 days event eminent International & Indian association leaders will focus & will discuss on Legislation, Governance,Budget, Staff profile,Membership etc. To know more visit www.indiaassociationcongress.com
Why event planners need to be good listeners
Event planners are sometimes like consultants – solving problems is what they do. So when a client runs into unforeseen issues, it is second nature to jump in and ‘fix the situation’.
It turns out that just listening, is a key element of problem-solving.
At first this may sound strange because listening doesn’t materially change anything. A good listener discovers the underlying symptoms causing the problem to get to the root of why the client is upset.
Some fear that listening is agreeing, but managing expectations will never force you to take any particular action. In fact it will reduce your client’s insistence that you take a specific action, if they feel you’ve really heard them.
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Success of 2nd India Association Congress
The 2nd edition of India Association Congress (IAC) was held successfully on 24th an 25th August 2012 at Trident, Nariman Point, Mumbai, India. The two day program witnessed panel discussion on various subjects like Role of Association in nation Building, future directions for India’s Associations Sector.
For more information and new visit http://tinyurl.com/96xeun7
How to turn your website visitor to an event booker
Content, price, location, perceived value, timing, and the score or more things that help people make up their mind to attend your event will still be a factor in their attending, but could something much more basic be a reason? Could it be that visitors couldn’t actually find the information on the events they were actually after? Or even, they couldn’t actually find the events at all?
If you are seeing a drop off in attendance and you use your website as a way to generate and / or process bookings, I’ve come up with a few things you should check out and consider changing right now! Let’s start the fight back: it starts at home (well as the first point says) or at least the Home Page.
1. Your main event page/s have a clear link from your home page
2. You segment your events to help people find the type of events they are after (for example conferences / dinners / training)
3. Your event lists are truly searchable (i.e. you don’t need to know the name or the date to find it)
4. You can search your events by price and location
5. You separate your events from other events which you may list on your website
6. You separate events which are run by smaller parts of the organisation e.g. ‘regional’ from your big national events
7. You have microsites (or all the functionality you need on your own website) for your large events
8. Delegates are able to book online
9. Delegates are able to pay online
10. You offer a telephone line for bookings or a number if bookers experience difficulties
11. You update your event pages 3 – 5 (at a minimum) times with new information over the course of an event
12. Your web pages have more detail than your marketing emails
13. You have a ‘tweet this’ and or ‘like this facebook’ links from all your event pages
14. You have a link to your organisation’s Twitter account / facebook page
15. You set up your web pages early and allow bookings as soon as you have some information available, i.e. price, general content and general location, you don’t wait for all the details
16. You ‘cross sell’ your events from pages with relevant articles / sections on your website
17. Use contextual marketing for your events on your website. See below!
I hope this helps. And if you want more practical tips like this then consider my events marketing training.
2nd India Association Congress
The 2nd India Association Congress will be held on 24th -25th August 2012 at The Westin Mumbai, India.
The IAC 2011 was successful in creating the most important platform for the decision-makers of several associations and non-profit organizations to network and share best practices. Eminent leaders covered topics on challenges and solutions in areas like membership retention, marketing skills requirements, encouraging member participation, revenues generation techniques geared to sustaining organizations, importance of technology, etc.
The two-day program will include panel discussions on several subjects, like competition law, coalition and advocacy, the future for associations, professional help for managing associations, membership retention mechanisms, the opening of Indian chapters of international associations and the problems involved, the importance of events as a source of revenue and engagement, etc. Furthermore, the congress’ programme will also include dedicated sessions addressing the needs of medical associations, with the accent on CME, ethics, etc.
Congrex and CIMGlobal form powerful alliance in India
Conferences & Incentives Management Pvt. Ltd. (CIMGlobal) in India and Congrex announced
today that they have entered into an exclusive Cooperation and Execution Agreement for
events taking place in India.
The new agreement is a powerful combination of Congrex international expertise and CIMGlobal’s market knowledge and experience in India. Congrex and CIMGlobal have already initiated bidding process for conferences and events scheduled for India and it’s dynamic market.
CIMGlobal has 15 years experience in delivering meetings, events and conferences in India and is a leading player in the Indian national and international conference market. CIMGlobal operates out of its HQ in New Delhi as well as offices in the major Indian cities of Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ahmadabad and Chennai.
Reduce Event Management Cost With Internet Registration Software
In our events industry, with the rising cost of materials and services, it can be a real challenge to nurture your event and sustain the standard experience that your loyal attendees began to expect. If inflated pricing is leading to a slow-down in growth on your event, event safes can be just the thing you need to streamline administration and do more with all the hours and budget you have now. Here are some strategies online registration software will help streamline event management:
Reduced Printing Costs
Back in the day that event registration, marketing and communication were done in some recoverable format. The case would print advertisements and post these over town, the attendee would prepare a paper registration form, the wedding staff would mail a paper confirmation to the attendee, and following the event was throughout, the big event organiser would send out a flyer to his attendees using an announcement about following year’s event.
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Increase your tradeshow attendence
Key to increasing attendance at your tradeshow is understanding why people attend your show in the first place. You need to understand why attending your show would benefit your potential audience.
This sounds simple, but it’s something many associations take for granted. It’s worth reviewing your value proposition today – people have so many more options available to them.
Host a brainstorming 20 minute meeting with a few key team members, make sure everyone knows your meeting topic in advance and is prepared with 2-3 points to contribute.
Why would anyone want to attend my show? Here’s a few reasons:
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