From chaos to control: an event planner’s guide to CRM

Being an event planner is an intensive job. Even if activities only last a day or two, organizing them can take weeks or months of meticulous planning.

From coordinating venues and suppliers to tracking sponsors and attendees, event planning is a delicate balancing act that demands the right tools.

This guide explores how a simple customer relationship management (CRM) tool streamlines event management by putting critical details at your fingertips. You’ll learn how to organize attendee data, nail logistical multitasking and squeeze maximum value from your event budget.

The key challenges every event planner faces (and what’s at stake)

Event planners wear many hats. Whether you’re an independent specialist or handling events as a sales or marketing leader, you must juggle multiple projects, stakeholders and deadlines. It’s all in the event planner career description.

Here are the biggest challenges uniting all event planners and the risks involved if things go wrong:

• Managing stakeholders. Event planners must build and maintain strong relationships with venue managers, suppliers, sponsors and speakers. Keeping track can quickly become overwhelming, causing communication breakdowns that will put any type of event at risk.

• Handling event logistics. Most events have many moving parts, from booking venues to arranging permits and catering. Poor planning can lead to last-minute cancellations, supplier mix-ups and costly last-minute fixes that drain budgets.

• Maximizing event attendance and engagement. A well-planned event means nothing if no one comes. Building up registrations and keeping attendees engaged before, during and after the show requires precise, thoughtful marketing. If you miss the target, you waste resources on an empty venue and have little to show for your effort.

The good news is that no event organizer has to overcome these obstacles alone.

The right technology simplifies organizing corporate events, fundraisers, trade shows and other projects, freeing up time to learn from the experience and plot your next steps.

4 ways CRM software makes life easier for event planners

Many event professionals benefit from augmenting their organizational skills with tech.

Seventy-nine percent of the B2B organizers Bizzabo surveyed said event software significantly impacts their success. The same proportion now integrates their CRM or marketing automation systems with other event management tools (more to come on integrations).

While it’s natural to think of CRMs as sales tools, they have many other problem-solving qualities to streamline the event planning process.

Here are four ways a CRM can help you plan more successful events:

1. It centralizes and facilitates communication

Event planning requires a lot of ongoing communication with vendors, sponsors, speakers and attendees. A CRM allows you to track all these contacts and interactions in one searchable system instead of stressfully juggling countless email threads, phone calls and spreadsheets.

Here’s what a contact management list looks like in Pipedrive’s CRM:

You can use a tool like Pipedrive to:

• Store contact details, emails and call notes in a central location for you and others (e.g., marketing partners) to view in an instant

• Set follow-up reminders to keep supplier and sponsor negotiations on track

• Quickly search and retrieve past conversations to make all customer interactions more informed and productive

For example, you might be a wedding planner negotiating with multiple event venues, audio-visual equipment suppliers and on-site caterers, chasing the best deals for your clients.

Without a CRM, you’d need to keep a mental record of everything or jot it all down in the moment, risking losing the paper when you need it later.

With a CRM (and the right app or integration – such as Pipedrive’s mobile app), every call, message and email is logged automatically, so you can quickly get up to speed before every new conversation.

2. It streamlines lead and attendee tracking

A CRM’s contact management and deal management features make it easy to track attendees – from the first interaction to following up post-event.

Collect relevant attendee data in web forms, track registrations and check-ins in an event pipeline and segment guest lists by attendee type for targeted communication.

For example, you might group attendees into categories like “VIP”, “speaker” and “employee” and send out relevant offers ahead of the big day.

Let’s say you’re arranging an awards gala in the hospitality industry.

You need to know all attendees’ dietary requirements to order the right refreshments. Rather than spending hours contacting them, include a checkbox in your RSVP form that pulls the data into your CRM.

As a result, you can open the guest list and quickly pass the data on to your catering supplier.

3. It simplifies task and deadline management

A CRM’s workflow automation and project management features manage your professional event’s many moving parts. They keep you on top of deadlines to maximize your event budget.

For instance, use a CRM to do all of the following:

• Assign vendor communication, ticket sales and marketing tasks to specific team members, keeping them accountable

• Automate email reminders for contract renewals, permit applications and other important deadlines

• Map the whole event planning process in a linear timeline and get an instant overview of your progress

Imagine you’re a busy event coordinator in the healthcare sector.

Create a structured to-do list in Pipedrive’s project management software to ensure the timely booking of venues, seminar speakers and security staff. This will prevent hiccups on the day and ensure a positive experience for attendees.

4. It enables targeted marketing campaigns

A CRM segments attendees and sends personalized messages to each group at opportune moments.

While generic email blasts have greater reach, most people respond better to tailored content. Over half (56%) of respondents to a Twilio consumer survey said they’ll become repeat buyers (e.g., sign up for further events) after a personalized experience.

Meanwhile, 78% of the business leaders surveyed called first-party data (like CRM insights) the best tool for tailoring interactions.

For example, Zapier sent the email below to contacts who had signed up for its conference but didn’t attend. The tailored subject line read, “👀 We didn’t see you at ZapConnect”.

Sending relevant post-event content builds valuable relationships, even with people who didn’t show up. Zapier could have also contacted attendees separately to get event feedback.

How to become a successful event planner with CRM software

It takes more than a CRM subscription to organize better events. Squeezing maximum value from your software requires knowing exactly how to use it.

With that in mind, here are six simple ways of using a CRM to become a more effective event planner:

Step 1: Set up event-specific pipelines

Build dedicated “deal” pipelines for each event type you manage (e.g., conferences, seminars or training workshops).

Pipelines give you visual workflows to track every stage of your event planning process. At any moment, you can see how you’re doing and what needs to happen next, so it’s easier to keep projects on track.

Here’s a typical deal pipeline in Pipedrive’s CRM:

Some event types have unique setup requirements. However, you can use the following list of generic stages as a basic event planner template, then tweak the details to suit your needs:

• Initial planning

• Venue selection

• Vendor contracts

• Registration open

• Marketing active

• Event week

• Post-event follow-up

For example, if you plan numerous corporate conferences, move sponsors and exhibitors through stages like “initial contact”, “proposal sent” and “contract negotiation”. This creates an instant overview of how many booth spaces are free and which sponsors to follow up with.

Step 2: Automate attendee communication

Automating routine communication frees your time for more strategic tasks, like finding lucrative sponsorship deals and delivering excellent guest experiences.

With the right tools, you can automate emails, text messages, social media interactions and even support inquiries (e.g., with a chatbot).

For instance, here’s MarTech answering a question about its events, saving a human team member time:

More specific automation opportunities for event and meeting planners include:

• Registration confirmation emails

• Payment reminders

• Schedule updates

• Pre-event information packets

• Feedback surveys

For example, Iterable likely automated this post-event survey email to collect valuable feedback with minimal effort:

You need a CRM with email marketing software or an integrated third-party system to set up a similar campaign. As discussed earlier, connecting CRM and email marketing functions lets you use contact data to segment your audience list.

Step 3: Track event management with custom fields

Customize your CRM system to capture event- and guest-specific information that standard fields don’t cover. This will give you quick and easy access to important details when needed.

Useful custom fields might include:

• Room layouts and capacity needs

• AV equipment requirements

• Catering preferences

• Schedule time slots

• Insurance policy information

For example, if you’re arranging a company birthday celebration, create custom fields to track venue capacity, attendees’ dietary requirements and entertainment bookings – factors that wouldn’t be relevant to a more corporate event.

Having every detail available in your CRM makes project communications smoother and more productive. It frees you to focus on organizing memorable events.

Step 4: Collaborate with team members across departments

An event management CRM centralizes every event detail and interaction. Team members with permission can access that information at any time to track progress and support your project.

Let’s say you’re organizing a careers event and need to boost sign-ups. You enlist the marketing team to build a targeted ad campaign for LinkedIn. Instead of emailing a confusing bundle of notes, you direct the team to the relevant records on your CRM platform.

In an instant, they get up to speed on:

• The target audience (e.g., job seekers and local media)

• Registration data, such as current sign-up numbers and engagement trends

• Sponsorship details, including promotional commitments

• Advertising budgets and resources

As a result, the marketers begin building a well-informed, effective strategy, leaving you free to handle other vital tasks.

Other CRM collaborators may include salespeople, board members, project managers and partner companies, depending on the event.

Step 5: Integrate your favorite event management tools

Using multiple event planning tools can help you achieve more in less time, but it helps if they share data. Otherwise, you’ll end up with either or both of the following:

• A lot of inconsistent information that hinders your decision-making

• A vast amount of manual data entry that creates bottlenecks

For example, if your email marketing tool doesn’t connect to your CRM, you’ll need to manually add attendees’ information before contacting them.

A better way is to let Pipedrive auto-populate campaigns with contact details from your CRM, saving you time and effort while guaranteeing accuracy.

Make a list of event planning tech you depend on and cross-check it with your CRM’s integration capabilities. Other helpful integrations – all of which you’ll find in Pipedrive’s AI-powered Marketplace – include project management software (e.g., Trello), scheduling tools (e.g., Calendly) and social media marketing apps.

Step 6: Manage events in the moment with a mobile CRM

Stay switched on when the big day arrives to address last-minute hiccups and ensure a smooth, enjoyable experience for everyone involved.

A mobile CRM will keep you connected to your data and contacts in the venue, allowing you to do all of the following without lugging a laptop around:

• Update attendees on schedule changes

• Source information from partners and speakers

• Coordinate with your team and assign ad-hoc tasks

• Pull up essential documents, like insurance details and permits

• Find speakers’ emergency contact details

For example, if one of your keynote speakers is late, use your mobile CRM to get an updated ETA, let attendees know about the program change and update your team with new instructions – all without scrambling around for printed schedules and making endless calls.

The best mobile CRMs offer offline data access. You’ll need an internet connection to send and receive messages, so test the venue’s Wi-Fi beforehand.

Event planner FAQs

Final thoughts

Using a great CRM is like a superpower for event planners. Centralizing and organizing all your essential data boosts planning efficiency and mitigates risk, unlocking smoother, more successful projects.

Whether your next special event is in-person, online or a mix of both, apply the tactics in this guide to gain more time, mental energy and stakeholder kudos.

If you already have a CRM, you can get straight to work. If you’re yet to invest in one, learn which credentials matter most in Pipedrive’s comprehensive guide to CRM evaluations.