Naturally, one simple way to multiply the impact of an event is to hold it again in a new place. We’ve seen organizations increase the number of small, templated events held in different regions around the world. This increased reach helps boost customer engagement and drives sales.
As we discussed in our recent post on micro-events, small events also allow organizations to reach more niche audiences.
Event professionals who manage hundreds of events annually know that minimizing extra work is vital. Using templates is an effective strategy for event planning.
However, some organizations encounter hurdles when investigating templatization and may be led astray by myths about the process. In this post, we’ll address common misconceptions about event templates and explain best practices for setting up a successful template.
Common Misconceptions About Event Templates
Creating an ill-suited event template or using it wrong can result in added frustration rather than efficiency. Whether you are new to event templates or have years of experience, it’s always important to review the following misconceptions:
- “Personalizing templated events is difficult.” Templatizing events can actually make personalization easier for your team. By limiting the number of tasks needed to set up an event, individual event planners can dedicate more effort to differentiating their experiences. Most event templates are designed to be flexible and offer plenty of opportunities to tailor the content, design, and branding to fit specific event needs.
- “Having as many templates as possible will allow the team to do more.” Templates enable efficiency, but only up to a certain point. Generally, less is more. The more variations you have of an event, the harder it is to manage changes. Too many templates can cause disjointed brand experiences. Instead of creating a template for each new event series, see whether you can make minor changes to an existing template to accomplish your goals.
Best Practices for Template Customization
Personalization and consolidation represent the heart of templatization best practices. To truly maximize your templates, we also suggest the following:
Seek Cross-Functional Input
Often, smaller, strategic events involve the marketing, sales, and client success teams at many steps along the way. Involving stakeholders from these teams early on helps your templates meet each group’s needs and support its business goals. Discuss the event data points each team would like to capture, and decide how much access each stakeholder should have to the templates.
Standardize Data Capture
Cross-event measurement is essential for demonstrating growth and ROI, but it is impossible to compare events if the data you are capturing differs from one template to the next. When creating a new template, refer to existing registration and intake forms. Be mindful that each action an attendee takes is part of their overall customer journey. Consistent data accelerates lead qualification.
Dedicate Time for Continuous Training
Even when working with the simplest software and relatively straightforward templates, the entire team must be trained on all of the latest best practices. Training helps align your team on naming conventions, event marketing, branding, and measurement. This helps prevent inconsistencies and outdated event experiences.
Want to learn more about event templatization best practices? Discover how Autodesk saved time and increased brand consistency with RainFocus templates.
