If you are an association event and membership program planner, odds are you will be at the ASAE Meeting and Expo being held this week in sunny San Diego. ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership brings out some of the best association organizers in the United States to compare notes and get fresh ideas for membership management, meetings, events and professional development programs.
Certain Software's Director of Marketing, Kimberly Enright, along with other Certain Software experts will be available on the tradeshow floor to discuss solutions for 21st Century online registration, event management and membership programs. From Certain Registration, used by large member organizations like FFA and Boy Scouts of America, to newly added products memberConnect and eventsInteractive, Certain Software has long been meeting the needs of associations of all sizes and focuses.
The ASAE Meeting and Expo is going on August 16 -19. Visit their event site for more details and news.
In our upcoming release of Certain Registration 4.16, we're proud to present you with new tools to more effectively manage program item waitlists, as well as barcodes on the registration confirmation page.
The new program item waitlisting features in our online registration software enable event planners to:
Create waitlists at the program section level
Use new program item statuses and avoid over-booking
Move registrants from waitlisted to registered agenda status, as inventory becomes available
Run an event program item status summary report to see all of the program items with their registrants’ agenda status
In addition to the new program item waitlist features in 4.16, we’ve also provided you with the option to include a barcode in the registration confirmation. If you send the confirmation email in html format, the barcode will display properly and can be printed. Registrants can then bring the printed confirmation to the event and it can be scanned like an admission ticket for on-site access.
Training solutions:
Right now you can access a New Features Video that demonstrates how these new features work. To watch the video, login to www.certain.com and scroll to the bottom of the landing page. Then click the link for the New Features Video. Coming soon are a detailed tip sheet in the Support & Services section as well as context sensitive help.
As you may have heard in international meetings and events industry news, earlier this year Certain Software brought Austrailian-based event management software company, Amlink Technologies, under its umbrella. Now the industry leading event and meeting management software products of both organizations are coming together as the Certain Software Product Family. The product family brings together an offering that includes:
Certain Registration™ The leading-edge online registration Software as a Service application used by Fortune 1000 corporations, independent meeting planners, universitites, associations and government agencies to register people online for their meetings, events, conferences and training programs
eventsPro™ An innovative events management enterprise application used for the 2004 Olympics in Athens and 2007 Rugby World Cup in France
eventsPro CE™ A powerful continuing education and professional development management enterprise application.
memberConnect™ A robust enterprise application for managing membership organization programs
eventsInteractive™ An option that adds powerful online capabilities to the use of eventsPro, eventsPro CE and memberConnect
Expect to see a lot more on the Certain Software Product Family very soon.
In addition to online registration and meeting management functionality, some of our customers have been asking us about site selection and RFP capabilities. Since we don't have these features in Certain Registration or in events (from the merger with Amlink and Peopleware), we entered into a partnership with the largest site selection provider, HelmsBriscoe. So far, the response from our customers has been very positive since HelmsBriscoe sources from hotels in over 35 countries and has over a 98% response rate on RFPs. This helps the independent and small business meeting planners who were frustrated in getting poor responses from the larger hotels. On the whole, it gives our meeting planners more control and better pricing. We have set up a RFP Request Form from our login page and have a dedicated team at HelmsBriscoe to take care of our Certain Registration customers.
Online registration forms can go way beyond just getting people to attend your meetings, events or conferences, they can become useful tools for capturing any kind of information at any time.
Online registration can be applied to so much more than meetings•
Replace virtually any paper form for any purpose with an online registration website that is available 24/7
Post applications to be completed online by job seekers, new members or volunteers
Send surveys via email that can be completed by target groups
Register professional licenses or other credentials
Collect artist submissions for museum or gallery exhibitions
You already know about PCI, right. Or do you? Listen to Dr. Rick Borry discussing PCI for meeting and event planners and the importance of secure e-commerce to online registration technology.
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.....
When it comes to creating software simulation and training, I’ve found Adobe Captivate is easy to use and makes polished video tutorials. Not only can you demonstrate how a software application works, but you can also create interactive simulations for learners to practice using the application. In addition to screen captures, Captivate also provides quiz and survey features and is flexible enough to allow you to import images, audio, Powerpoint slides, and Flash files.
I've seen training videos produced using TechSmith’s Camtasia, but it doesn’t offer the simulation component that helps make for a more active learning experience. As a learner myself, I find simple demonstrations fall short of effective instruction. If you are mainly interested in recording a presentation, then Camtasia might work well for you.
As an online registration technology provider, Certain Registration is committed to giving customers the tools and solutions you need to manage events successfully. That’s why we’re developing on-demand training videos to help your registration specialists and meeting planners get up to speed quickly on our application. Look for our videos online later this spring!
As an online registration provider, we strive for 100% availability of our event management software. This is very difficult to achieve in practice, and we occasionally have outages ranging from a few minutes on all servers to intermittent performance for hours affecting only specific customers. Our customers' reaction to these hopefully infrequent episodes ranges from understanding ("oh well, I have a lot of other things to do right now - I'll check back later.") to complete outrage ("I'm losing paid registrations! I have to get this report to the hotel now!").
This article, On-Demand Outages the "New Normal"?, takes the interesting view that as people become more familiar with daily usage of Software as a Service (SaaS) such as our online registration technology, users will realize that these outages are inevitable and they will adjust their expectations and actions during the occasional downtime. No one is immune to the problem - the article references recent and period performance troubles at major SaaS companies such as Salesforce, Blackberry, and Google Apps.
I remember the early days of Windows when the "blue screen of death" was an unwelcomed part of my daily routine. Reboot, stand up and stretch, login, get some water, wait for the programs to open, pick back up where I left off. The blue screen probably did me more benefit ergonimcally by interrupting long sessions slouched over at my PC than they caused me harm - that is, once I learned to control my temper.
I'm not excusing poor performance or saying that we won't get better (as we have in the past). But maybe we as users need to begin to consider intermittent outages of SaaS as unavoidable and expected, and thus we should create contingency plans for what we will do when they happen (besides freaking out).
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.
It seems like one of the latest trends for the large meetings and events tradeshows is to segue off into "technology-focused" mini-tradeshows such as ASAE for associations, ASTD for training and HSMAI for corporate and independent meeting professionals. We saw this trending last year with MPI-WEC in Montreal when they grouped all of the technology providers for online registration such as Cvent, StarCite and Certain and other meeting and event software technologies in one exhibit area. It makes so much more sense when you think of the plight of the meeting professional who is inundated with the huge hotel venue exhibits, and trying to get through to the guy (or gal) in the back of the exhibit hall with the event management software demo. Let's face it would you rather drink a mai tai in the Hawaii booth, or ...well, you get my drift.
We just got back from the ASAE Technology Conference & Expo held in Washington DC last week. Once again, it was a technology focused show aimed at the association market. We were one of the only online registration providers to exhibit since most of the big players were the pure membership management providers like iMIS,Q, netFORUM (what is it with the CAPS?). We enjoy a very good relationship with associations, not only for their annual conference registration, but for their increased attendance through our email marketing and our ability to import a large amount of membership information.
Another team from Certain just got back from MPI-PEC in Houston last week where we participated in the technology playground and demonstrated Certain Registration. Stand by for more details on this blog from our soon-to-be-CMP Mariesa Ramos....All for now, Kimberly
There is so much buzz around "going green" right now, from international government polices about global warming down to what toilet bowl cleaners you use in your bathroom. Even meeting, event and training planners are not exempt. "Green meetings" have recently been headlining the covers of your favorite industry mags like Corporate EVENT, Smart Meetings or MPI's Meeting Professional, with articles on everything from minimizing travel to advice on china service and locally grown catering. As Fortune 1000 corporations, professional associations, universities and government agencies begin implementing their own overall green strategies, planners are under special scrutiny to focus on the amount of resources that go into every meeting, special event, conferences, trade show or training program. The carbon imprint of travel arrangements, the linen policies of hotel venues, the impact of where flowers arrangements are grown, the extensiveness of recycling efforts - there are so many factors for planners when trying to plan green.
Luckily there is one easy green tactic planners have already had at their fingertips for a while now, online registration technology. The old school way to plan an event involved having tons of glossy collateral printed up and delivered by mail. Everyone then had to fill out their registration forms to mail or fax back. Online registration makes this entire process dynamically virtual via the internet, so significant amounts of paper are eliminated and emissions from mail delivery can be minimized.
Certain recently put out some tips on making such a paperless technology part of your green strategy with their white paper called "The Easiest Way to Go Green Right Now".
>>Gianni Michael Lyle, Marketing Communications, Certain
Last week we moved to a new office in the heart of San Francisco's South Financial District at 75 Hawthorne St. It is great having all of the different departments together since we moved from two offices into one spacious office - now, IT, development, product management, and sales and marketing are all together. We can share the latest and greatest about online registration forms and event builds around the water cooler!
I am excited to launch this corporate blog for Certain Registration. It is a first for us...look for blogs from product management, IT, training, and, of course, our chief software guru, Dr. Rick Borry, to follow. Our intent is to share with you some thoughts and tidbits we come across in the world of online registration for the meetings and events industry, and for conferences and training programs. Some things will come from best practices from our customers, some from events and tradeshows, or general things we pick up along our journey. As far as events go - some members of the Certain Registration team just attended the ASAE Tech show in WashingtonDC this week, and another team is off to MPI-PEC in Houston next week. Rick Borry is going to host a table on online registration there at the technology breakout, next to the APEX folks. The government team is at the NATCAP chapter in WashingtonDC so it is proving to be a busy start to February. All for now, Kimberly
