We all use email for business communications and have for at least 10 to 20 years now. Email is a convenient and efficient method of communication. But email communications can easily get lost in someone’s in-box. If you’re not included on an email thread or a message doesn’t get forwarded to you, you may not be aware of the information shared or decisions made. And if someone leaves an organization, often times their business or client knowledge remains locked in their email archives.
My last blog referenced the term “knowledge era” and I’ve been thinking more about the idea of knowledge management. Many tools have emerged in recent years for the purpose of managing knowledge, including wikis, intranets, and blogs.
At Certain Software, our sales and client services teams use salesforce.com. It’s a client relationship management tool for logging customer cases, tracking sales leads, storing client contact information, etc. When everyone uses the application to track their communication with customers, the knowledge and history is accessible to all of the teams. If an account manager has a conference call with a client, they can use salesforce.com to find contact information as well as see if the customer has contacted our help desk recently.
Similarly, we use an enterprise wiki and an issue tracking tool from Atlassian to track product requirements, test plans, bugs, and so on. These tools allow our developers, quality assurance engineers, customer service, and program managers to share knowledge and track progress. Certain Software is also launching an intranet to help manage knowledge and share infrmation with our new divisions around the world.
So, how does knowledge management relate to training? Without good organizational knowledge management practices and tools, it is more difficult and time-consuming for a new hire to get up-to-speed. Trainers and curriculum developers have to spend more time with subject matter experts to gather information. Until an organization implements and uses knowledge management tools, this cycle will likely be repeated with each new hire.
Veteran staff also benefits from effective knowledge management practices. If you need to locate a document, get acquainted with a client’s history, or learn more about company policies, you can do so more efficiently and effectively using knowledge management tools.
Email has become the standard tool for event planners to communicate meeting, event and conference details with their attendees. It is quick, convenient and even green. With Certain Registration's high degree of customization the possibilities for creating dynamic email communications are great, but first email messages have to be optimized to make it through SPAM filters and get read by recipients.
Here are some best practices passed on from savvy business-to-business email marketers and some sound off from Certain Registration Chief Software Evangelist, Dr. Rick Borry.
1 - Get to the point. Keep messages short as people typically skim emails to decide if they want to read deeper.
2 - Avoid big images or attachments. Messages with large images or attachments often do not make it past spam filters.
3 - Stand out. Make sure your subject line is compelling. Personalize your subject lines. This could make or break your chances of ending up being deleted. (For example, “Cindy, registration is now open for the 2008 Miami Tech Conference” as opposed to something vague like,“Tech Conference Registration.”)
4 - Personalize emails. Connect with each addressee by personalizing greetings and content.
5 - Test before sending. Send yourself and another colleague test emails to proof how content and formatting will look to your recipients.
6 - Pay attention to timing. The best times to send email communications are Tuesday through Thursday. If you send on a Monday when people are sorting through emails from the weekend, yours may get lost in the shuffle.
7 - Plan ahead. Plan all your communications strategically – sending too often may annoy, while too infrequent may leave you forgotten.
8 - Always include “Opt Out” instructions. Not having an option for people remove themselves from your mailing lists is illegal.
9 - Avoid spamming. Make sure your communications are up to date with the current CAN-SPAM ACT. Information can be found on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) website.
10 - Learn from the results. Track and review the results of your email communications to improve on what is working and what is not.
Dr. Rick Borry of Certain Software, Inc. discusses email communications and online registration webistes.....
As the old phrase says, "knowing is half the battle." In the whirlwind life of professional conference planners, this saying couldn't be more true. With site visits to make, vendor contracts to negotiate, and confused registrants calling every two minutes, getting an overview of the meetings season and of the money that's being spent may sometimes feel like an unattainable goal.
Certain Registration helps event planners get control of the big picture by offering information about key meeting factors, and by allowing for strong Consolidation reporting across all events done that year (or multi-year). We offer:
1. A unified and easily navigable Events List that lets you see which events just finished, which are upcoming, where they are occurring, and how many people have registered so far for each.
2. Custom Event data fields to track extra details about each event that you may need, whether it's a departmental code, a travel partner, or the on-site manager's name and phone number.
3. Consolidation reporting that helps you see activity across multiple events at once. How many events did you do by location? How many registrants went to multiple events? What was your average attendance this year vs. last year?
4. Event budgets with General Ledger codes specific to your accounting practices. We let you build your own General Ledger matrix for spend categories and codes, or you can use ours. Then track your projected and actual spend for each meeting, and report on the numbers across events using Consolidation reporting.
In subsequent releases, we will introduce new functionality to help you get even more control. We'll let you track meeting requests and approvals, use an automatic budget estimator to easily build better budget estimates, and assign meeting planner staff to events, all within one set of tools.
Stay tuned to our Certain blog for updates on the latest in our Meetings Management product suite.
While researching what Youtube clips exist out there on the meeting and event planning industry right now, I chanced upon this retro gem. From the looks of the hairstyles and clunky, old-school computer monitors, I am guessing this is from right around the early 1990's. Not too, too long ago, but definitely the pre-online registration days when things were still done manually with a huge paper trail, a simplistic desktop event management software program and shipments of slick marketing brochures.
Fast forward to the glorious digitized world of meeting and events planning in 2008 where business and communication are driven by the powerful engine of the internet. The hard way - manual processes, paper forms and printed collateral - have been replaced by convenient online registration websites that are hard at work for you 24/7.
These days, when you start planning a meeting, event, conference, convention or training program, you have to build a website first. And in this Web 2.0 era with so many great developments in sophisticated web design, social networking and back-end functionality, planners can't just publish rudimentary websites anymore. Your online registration website has to be creative, interactive, secure and.....in short, awesome.
"Web 2.0 is a knowledge-oriented environment where human interactions generate content that is published, managed and used through network applications in a service-oriented architecture."
This can be applied to create more appealing, effective, relevant and secure online registration websites.
TIP 1 - Custom design your websites
Even the least design savvy of people have grown accustomed to sleek, professional web design, so making your online registration websites have an engaging and sophisticated look & feel is just becoming a given. As a meeting and events planner, you are either creating a unique buzz around a specific special event or you are trying to conform to your client or organization's corporate branding standards. Good Web 2.0 online registration site design does not mean you need an art school or marketing degree, just access to an application that allows you to customize every element.
The number one guideline for Web 2.0 and beyond design is calculated simplicity. Make it readable, use clean typography. Use sophisticated color palates. Layout all the elements within a planned grid that makes them visible in the browser without scrolling down. Choose high aesthetic value, quality graphics.
If you aren't doing all this yourself, choose an online registration provider who offers event build services so you can engage a highly skilled web design professional with meetings and events industry experience to design the project to your specifications.
TIP 2 - Incorporate new media elements and relevant links
Well done Flash and video elements can deliver messages to potential registrants. A visionary address from the Board Chairman can put a face on an association and encourage old and new members to participate. A quick tour of a conference destination's amenities could entice more attendees to register. Increase program attendance by offering dynamic thumbnail previews or links to guest presenters' websites.
If you do not have the resources to create original pieces, look for ready-made media elements to incorporate from your host city's visitors bureau, hotel, conference venue or guest speakers.
TIP 3 - Optimize your websites for search engines
Optimizing websites to pop to the top of the list when people are searching on Google, Yahoo or other search engines is key, and even online registration websites can be search engine optimized. Determine what top keywords apply to the meetings, events, conferences or training programs you are marketing. Optimize every registration site by incorporating those keywords into the URL, web page titles, content and metatags. Because URL's are the very first part of any website that get crawled by Google, Yahoo and the other search engines, the ability to customize your online registration website URL is also incredibly huge, and not all software providers offer this capability.
TIP 4- Find ways to incorporate social networking and interactivity
In a sense, online registration is a social networking tool that is designed to bring people of similar interests together to meet face-to-face. But before that in-person meeting, you could offer ways for attendees to network with each other online before and after events. Create a Facebook page for the event, a Google group or a blog where attendees can have conversations with each other on specific topics. While these may exist independently of your online registration websites, offering them as "Meet Other Attendees" links within in your sites or in your email communications could be highly effective.
TIP 5 - Use hosted technology providers
One of the greatest things about how sophisticated meetings and events planning technology is today in the Web 2.0 era is that it is hosted. Unlike the days of paper and desktop applications, the availability of hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions brings meetings and events planning professionals many more advantages. You gain the flexibility of on-demand technology that allows people to register 24/7 and you to track registrations up to the minute from anywhere. Because online registration websites capture so much personal data including credit cards information, hosted solutions offer a higher degree of security as well.
