Things To Consider When Planning A Corporate Event

Selecting the perfect menu and ordering the right amount of food is crucial. Your objective for the event should determine what type of food you provide and how it is served. When you goal is fun cocktail receptions are the most popular choice. Food stations or mini meals circulated by servers work best. However, there is nothing worse than being at a party and finding yourself with a plate of food in one hand, a glass of wine in the other and no way of actually getting the food to your mouth. Add a handbag to the situation and a woman could starve. High cocktail tables scattered throughout the venue can help alleviate this situation. Finger foods are another option eliminating the need for a plate and fork.

For more formal corporate events, or when there is to be a presentation, it is advisable to have your guests seated at a table. Plated meals, where meals are delivered to the table, avoids the distraction of traffic going to and from the buffet, and ensures that your guests are all served at the same time. Buffets, however, are usually less expensive and offer your guests a wider variety of menu items.

Most corporate events will require renting at least some equipment, table wares, glasses, linen, tenting and more. It may be tempting to lower your costs by coordinating the rentals yourself and thereby saving the make-up charged by caterers and event planners. However, although it seems a simple task, getting it right is vital to the success of your event and if you don't know what you are doing you could end up in the kitchen washing glasses or driving to the gas station for more ice in the middle of your event. Coordinating rentals is not a simple task and is best left to the experts.

Similarly, cutting staff can seem like a way to reduce costs especially if the venue is smaller. Keep in mind the number of staff required is dependent on the number of guests and the menu not on the size of the space. A good rule of thumb for cocktail receptions is one server for every 20 - 30 guests and one (beer & wine only) or two (full bar) bartenders for every 80 - 100 guests. For buffet dinners one staff for every 20-25 guests, and for plated formal dinners one staff for every 10-20 guests.

Recruiting volunteers can be a great way to keep your budget in line as long as their responsibilities are made very clear well in advance. Too often well-meaning volunteers pitch in enthusiastically at the beginning of the event and then wander off to chat with other guests leaving the skeleton staff with more work than they can handle. If you want to use volunteers have a formal meeting in advance of the event and hand out a detail list of the tasks they will be expected to perform and clear start and finish times.

Clearly hosting an office party is a massive undertaking and, if not planned properly, they can be just as painful to attend. Choose an experienced corporate caterer to help you plan an appropriate menu and work through the details of service, rental and entertainment.

How Organizations Can Be Benefitted From Online Event Management Solutions?

Planning is one of the most important aspects of organizing an event, as it can help to hold a successful program. Event planners can help you organize one or more successful events anytime, at your preferred location. However, they can also fix the venue of the event on your behalf. Besides, they look after the guests as well as arrange their meal.

However, there is also another great way of organizing successful events. Organizations can take the help of online event management solutions to manage all aspects of an event. The online event management solutions can reduce your administrative workload, expenses, and time considerably, helping you to do more important event-related tasks.

The web-based event management solutions come with the following advantages:

Instant Online Registration

Whether you are organizing a conference, meeting, or a seminar, the Cloud-based registration service enables easy-to-use, simple, and quick online registration for one or multiple events. People can access the registration pages from any part of the world 24x7. They just need to have a computer with an internet connection. Registrants can also update their registration page as and when required.
Customization of Registration Pages

The event organizing companies can customize their registration pages by using global settings. This helps them to find a theme to match the look and feel of their company website. They can even add their company logos and bar codes to promote their company during an event.

Communication Tools

The web-based event management solutions also offer a range of marketing tools, such as email and notification options. The emailing tool is likely to allow you send as many emails as necessary to your registrants before, during, or after an event. You can also notify your attendees about an event detail or give updates about a trade show or other programs by sending RSVPs, reminders, and so on.

Marketing Tools

The online event-based management solution also provides extremely easy-to-use, end-to-end marketing tools, such as promo codes, discount rules, and gift cards to increase participation level.

Payment Management

Most companies, especially the MNCs face a major problem in collecting and managing funds. It becomes really difficult for the corporations to collect and process payments coming from diverse fields and from different people. To give you relief from such a situation, the web-based event management application has brought in a safe and secure payment management service. This enables real-time authorization and processing of credit cards, POs, checks, and so on easily and conveniently. It also provides the option of using your own merchant account to pay for event tickets or funds of any kind.

Common Event Planning Mistakes

There are so many different types of event held by so many different organizations for a variety of purposes. Some hire individuals who represent themselves as "event planners," but in most case are glorified room decorators. Some decide to do it themselves, with varying levels of success.

While there are some excellent event planners, who are truly professional and knowledgeable, the wide majority misrepresent their expertise and what they can and will do. There are also some individuals who are detailed, organized, have common sense, and work hard, who can and do run a successful event, but the majority of others do not have and/ or use those skills.

Some of the most common event planning mistakes are:

1. Not knowing upfront what your needs or requirements are. It is extremely difficult to effectively produce an event if you don't know what your goal is.


2. Many events are inadequately promoted. Event organizers must have a budgeted amount devoted for advertisement and promotion. Too many are totally dependent on e-mails and E-Blasts, which often is tantamount to failure. How is this event going to be described to "capture the imagination," and set it apart. If this event is a conference or convention, how much detail is going into the flow sheet/ schedule, to show potential attendees perceived value.


3. Many organizers lack negotiating expertise. Before agreeing to hold an event in a particular place, organizers should use Request for Proposals (RFP) to assure that the location can adequately meet the needs, and deliver at the needed price level.


4. Many organizers simply either do not know what to ask, or don't ask the right questions. Many events require considerable amounts of audio visual, and the costs can often be astronomical, if not negotiated properly.


5. There is a need to evaluate when to purchase something versus when to rent it. Often it costs far less to buy something than the rentals will cost.


6. Many organizers don't understand that almost everything is negotiable. A group does not have to go along with the pre-packaged food and beverage menus, nor believe that there is no flexibility in pricing.


7. Many planners do not spend enough time assuring that attendees first impression and contact with the event is a positive one. There must be a friendly and welcoming Welcome Committee, who are trained and willing to be "meeters and greeters." A smile goes a very long way.


8. One of the most common errors is spending too much time on menial or less important items, and insufficient time on the priorities. Event organizers must fully understand how and why to prioritize.


9. if using an Event Planner, it must be clearly spelled out what the expectations are, and what the planner's duties will be.


10. Perhaps, most importantly, an organization must clearly understand and identify what it wishes to achieve from this event.

Of course, these are just some very basic things that should go into the overall process to ensure optimal success from an organization's event.

Why You Should Hire a Marquee For Corporate Events

When organising corporate presentations for large audiences or hospitality events for the product launches at outdoor shows, it is essential to make the right impression.

You want to make sure that your guests and prospective clients feel welcome, comfortable and that they are visually impressed by the way you have presented your company. They will be expecting a high standard of both your choice of venue and the way in which you organise your corporate event.

Corporate Marquees

Marquee hire is an excellent solution for both corporate and hospitality events alike, as temporary exhibition structure. They offer the professional look you require in terms of creating the right impression or 'wow' factor to new and existing clients. By being relatively large structures, marquees help to portray your company as a much large organisation than it actually is.

Advantages of Corporate Marquee Hire

The benefit of being able to style and layout your corporate event in the way that you want to, rather than being confined to a certain shape or space, is key to the popularity and success of marquee hire. If you run out of space, you can always attach a second or third marquee to your main tent. You could even hold separate parts of your event in individual marquees on the same plot of land, depending upon available space obviously.

Most large corporate shows do just this, choosing to hire a large marquee for the main event and additional, smaller marquees for catering and bar areas.

Expandability is a clear advantage that marquees have over most corporate event venues and exhibition centres. Most indoor venues are fixed in what they can offer in terms of more space or different shaped arenas, simply by the shape and size of the building they are in. They are unable to compete with the expandability of marquee hire.

Individual Corporate Events

Marquees have the added benefit of offering corporate event organisers a flexible internal area to decorate and furnish. With modern marquee design, internal support structures are no longer necessary, so the entire indoor area is available for customisation. Though some other indoor event venues are able to offer this, marquees have the added advantage of usually being located on open ground.

Being located on ground level, allows marquees to accommodate large pre-build exhibition stands, heavy objects such as audio/visual and recording equipment and promotional vehicles such as cars & caravans. Even hospitality porter cabins and catering service vehicles can easily be incorporated into your event inside your marquee, which cuts down setup times and costs.

With such large customisable interiors, marquees are an ideal venue solution for companies who are organising corporate shows and exhibitions which need to be individual and personalised. A marquee can be easily transformed from a otherwise ordinary tent into a visually appealing venue, with drapes, atmospheric lighting, stage sets and multimedia screens.

As marquees are such big structures, the interior space allows lighting rigs and video camera scaffold to be setup. This is great if you require your corporate event to be broadcast on television or streamed over the internet.

Total Corporate Event Management

Many marquee hire companies nowadays offer a tailor made corporate event planning and management service as well as hiring marquees. With some offering corporate event decor design and furniture rental and even catering and mobile bar services.

Additionally with the increase in the popularity of the internet, particularly within the business world, wireless internet access, audio/visual presentation equipment and staging structures are also sometimes offered by marquee hire companies to complete your corporate event.

How to Write a Perfect Confirmation Email for Your Event Attendees

An important advantage of using an online event registration feature is that you can automatically send confirmation emails to event registrants instantly. Although the primary objective of such an email is to confirm registration details of the attendees, yet such emails are great for providing attendees with additional information and reminders about the event. However, you need to ensure that it gets to the intended recipient at the right time.

Focus on ensuring that the email is delivered to the recipient's inbox along with a deliver. Increase your ROI with large-Scale Corporate Event Marketing Strategy confirmation email to you. Additionally use the feature to receive confirmation that the email has been read before being sent to the Trash folder or deleted from the Inbox.

The subject line of the confirmation email is of vital importance. You need to frame it in such a way to prevent it being sent to the spam folder of the inbox. Mostly the Spam filters look for certain words, such as "free, loans, subscribe, opportunity, please read, special promotion and all new". It is a wise idea to avoid these types of words and phrases, in order to avoid SPAM filters.

According to experts, the subject line can create a positive impression on the recipient, if framed carefully. For example, your subject line should be something like - "XYZ Conference Confirmation and Additional Detail". Although it is precise, yet the subject line can make the mail easily recognizable by the reader. It is likely to remind them about the event for which he or she has registered.

One of the major components of the confirmation email is the sender's name. Make sure that the sender's name is appearing on the mail body as an actual name rather than just an email address. In case, you do not want to use your personal name, you can try out other readable text, which can be easily comprehended. For example, you can use "William Jones" (your name) or "XYZ Conference Register" (event's name)b in order to the attract reader's attention towards your mail.

Remember to choose something that your event audience can easily recognize.
After you decide on the subject line and the sender's name, you need to think about the content of your confirmation email. Apart from confirming the person's registration, you also need to mention the time, date, venue and dress code (if there is any) for the event. It helps you in building up your credibility.

Many a times, event organizers add various links to the confirmation email for the convenience of attendees. Links allow people to access more in depth information without actually cluttering up the confirmation email.

Check out the link ideas you can use in your confirmation email

• A link to a map of the location where the event is organized
• Links to accommodations in the area
• Links to car rental companies
• Links to the sponsors websites
• Most importantly, a link to the corporate website

You can follow these ideas to create a great confirmation email for your next event.

A Gay Wedding Planning Agency

I would like to share the unique idea that a friend of mine came up hypothetically when in conversation with a group of other wedding planners. Because of the continuing discrimination against gay rights and not allowing equal marriage rights, he mentioned how successful a wedding planning company would be that - to celebrate equal rights for all of humanity- does wedding planning only for gay couples. Hypothetically, such an event business would root in those states where gay marriages are legal. Because the gay couple is already getting married in a very limited area, they would definitely prefer to celebrate their freedom of living however they want and choose a wedding planner who only celebrates and caters to their needs.

A gay wedding planning company would definitely work in unconventional ways as they already have a task away from the traditional bride and groom wedding and would have to have a wedding occasion plan where both brides and both grooms could fit in without having to seem like they are forcing themselves to fit in to the traditional marriage style. Since all the gay couples around the country who want to get married will only come to this state to do this, it will also catch a lot of business by the power of idea monopoly. With the success of such a company, other states and agencies would also want to have a gay wedding planning division in their company and that demand of starting a new type of venture would maybe even put pressure on the government to ease up on laws that do not allow same sex marriages. Because a gay marriage in general breaks from the norms and is not considered traditional marriage in general, the wedding planning company can also play around with many different ideas on themes, locations, foods etc; just because there is no standard wedding occasion procedure that they need to follow.

This will give them a lot of publicity and even more business because in most cases same sex couples would enjoy breaking away from the norms that try to tie them down and control their personal life decisions. It could be an exciting platform to start new traditions and trends that show the world that if people could just live and let live, everyone will be happy and find happiness in their own ways doing things the way they want to do with what makes them most comfortable.

How to Become an Event Planner - Home Based Business

If you are looking to fire your boss while using your organizational and interpersonal skills, event planning is for you. The current state of the economy is the perfect time to embrace your entrepreneurial spirit and own your own business. The event planning industry is growing by leaps and bounds and proving very profitable for entrepreneurs. This article shows you how to become an event planner which is an ideal home based business.

If you have decided to stop putting money in someone else's pocket in a regular 9 to 5 job from which you derive no fulfillment, going into business for yourself is the way to go. Event planning as an at home job is a great option for the creative individual with excellent interpersonal skills. A lot goes into planning an event and you must be up to the challenge.

There are various types of events that need an event planner such as corporate events, weddings including the currently popular destination weddings, birthday party, bar mitzvah, as well as other party planning.

You can specialize in one area such as corporate events or offer your services for any event. Here are a few points to note before you get into the event planning business.

1. Skills and Abilities

Most event planners do not have college degrees although event planning degrees are available at some colleges. Most event planners will take a few classes to help them with some of the aspects of owning a business such as marketing, management, etc. You still may want to get certified just to offer some credibility to clients and potential clients.

Most event planners entered the business because they have great organizational skills and are great with people. They may have assisted someone else with some aspect of planning for a party and discovered that they have a skill in this area. If you are not very organized, there is certainly software that can help with organization.

2. Volunteer

If you are uncertain whether this is an area that you could excel in, volunteer to help a friend, family member or charity looking for party planning help. See how you like it before you decide to become an event planner.

3. Register the Event Planning Business

It is important to register the business to avoid any legal issues. The additional benefit of registering is that there are certain tax advantages for a home based businesses that you could use.

4. Professionalism

To be taken seriously in the industry, you must present yourself in a professional manner starting with your appearance. The way we are dressed is usually the first thing people notice about us. If unsure, consult an image consultant and get help.

All your correspondence with clients or vendors whether electronic or print, should be on your company letterhead. Most businesses have an online presence so this should be one of your marketing strategies.

Join local networking groups to help you spread the word about your business so that you can get referrals.

Your local chamber of commerce will provide guidance and are a great resource for starting your small business. There may even be opportunities for obtaining small business loans to help you with start up capital that you may need.

The success of this business is entirely dependent on your skills and abilities as well as your perseverance during tough times. The event planning industry is very profitable and continues to be and has the potential of making you financially free while doing something that you love and ensuring that people enjoy themselves at the events that you plan.