Endless' Greatest Hits: Our Most Helpful Event Blog Posts

As an event management company, Endless Events is passionate about empowering event planners and organizers at every step of the event planning process. And it all starts here: with our event blog that consistently educates and inspires fellow event professionals.

To get our subscribers and community members started, we go over the Endless Events greatest hits: our most helpful and influential event blog posts. Read through our most relevant event management blogs and learn more about the modern way of approaching event strategy, production, and planning in general.

Here Are The 22 Best Event Platforms To Use In 2022!

As virtual and hybrid events took over our worlds, event planners started asking new questions, such as: Which event platform should I use? While the answer will depend on the particular purpose and goals of each event, the event blog post about the best event platforms is a great place to start.

The Endless Events team assessed over 500 event platforms, scoring them based on customer reviews, event platform features, pricing, user-friendliness, and more. The report describes each of the best 22 event platforms in detail, adding Albert’s Aha! Feature, a feature that makes a particular event platform stand out from the rest.

Additionally, we advise event organizers to always book a demo with their chosen event platform. And if 22 event platforms are not enough to whet your appetite, check out our database of top 100 event platforms instead and compare them based on what features they have, pricing, and more.

Event Gamification Guide: Reach Your Event Goals

In this blog post, we explain how implementing event gamification can help planners reach their event goals. By strategically gamifying certain elements of the event, attendees are rewarded for desired behaviors. Event gamification can be based on collecting points, showcasing winners on leaderboards, and giving attendees rewards.

For example, attendees can collect points for:

early check-in,
participating in polling and feedback,
visiting exhibitor booths,
making new connections.

The main purpose of event gamification is therefore not to make the event more fun for attendees (even though that certainly helps). Ultimately, it’s about acquiring event data and getting people to behave in ways that work for your event ROI.

77 Event KPIs To Measure Your Event Success

Speaking of event ROI and measuring event success, we wrote an extensive blog post about event KPIs. Every event has a specific purpose or, to be more specific, goals. Event goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely (SMART). Event KPIs (key performance indicators) are therefore measurable data points that determine whether event goals were achieved.

Thanks to event technology solutions that offer data insights into attendee behavior and engagement levels, event planners can now prove event ROI better than ever before. We have divided the 77 event KPIs into eight major groups:

general and attendee event KPIs,
financial event KPIs,
marketing KPIs,
audience engagement KPIs,
presenter KPIs,
sponsorship and tradeshow KPIs,
event networking KPIs,
community KPIs.

Bookmark this particular event blog for the next time you’re strategizing. It just might give you some new ideas about how to measure event success.

Everything You Need To Know To Create Your Event Timeline

There’s a general rule when it comes to event timelines: the more time you have, the better. By having a clearly defined time plan, event planners can hold their team members accountable and manage their events better.

Our event timeline blog post guides event planners through the planning process by outlining tasks that should be completed six months, three months, and one month before the event. But remember; the time needed to plan a successful event depends on the size and complexity of the event.

6 months out:

define your event budget,
select your vendors, event platform, and venue,
start promoting and marketing your event,
designate roles for your team members.

3 months out:

finalize all event vendors,
open registration,
order signage, swag, and other supplies,
confirm topics with event speakers.

1 month out:

assess the final attendee headcount,
keep your attendees on their toes,
check-in with your event partners, such as the AV team and security team.

The day of the event will need its own detailed timeline. And finally, the event timeline ends with the post-event debriefing to measure event ROI and talk to your event sponsors, exhibitors, and stakeholders. Read the entire blog and learn everything to ensure time will always be on your side.

Community Model: Year-Round Engagement On Event Platforms

The events industry is witnessing a paradigm shift. While the in-person annual event used to be the main (or even sole) focus of event managers and planners, they’re now considered only a part of an overall event strategy, based on a community model.

Event platforms have started offering annual subscription deals, giving event planners an opportunity to nurture their audience all year-round. The community model offers endless possibilities for promoting upcoming events, webinars, Q&As, networking, and featuring sponsors and exhibitors.

Check out this blog post to learn more about this exciting event trend. The community model holds so much potential, including higher ROI, greater accessibility, and brand loyalty.

Virtual Audience Engagement: Keep Your Remote Attendees Happy

Since the pandemic and the rise of virtual events, audience engagement has become one of the most talked-about topics in the events industry. In this blog post, we share advice for increasing virtual audience engagement before, during, and after the virtual event.

Some things to consider before the virtual event:

get to know your attendees well through the event registration process,
select the right virtual event platform,
craft an email and social media strategy to promote your event,
hire the right speakers and coach them beforehand,
plan for your content to be delivered in bite-sized pieces.

Boost audience engagement during the event:

a moderator should get the chat in the event platform going,
utilize audience engagement tools, such as push notifications, polling, and Q&A,
gamify your event,
keep your social media channels alive during the event.

After the event:

analyze event data, harnessed by your event platform,
repurpose your event content and offer it on-demand,
ask for attendee feedback,
nurture your audience after the event on an event platform (community model).

In the blog post, we elaborate on each of these bullet points. Some are harder to implement than others, but when it comes to audience engagement, it’s well worth putting in some extra effort.

Understanding Hybrid Event Models: An Endless Events Guide

During the pandemic, event managers were encouraged to offer virtual attendance in addition to the in-person event. The result is hybrid events, one of the biggest event trends in the industry. Planning a hybrid event does not simply mean adding a live stream to an event, though. Hybrid events can take many forms, and Endless Events divided them into four basic hybrid event models: the Star, the Moon, the Planet, and the Sattelite.

Hybrid events differ from one another based on the size of virtual and in-person audiences. Additionally, they can take place in various types of venues, such as studios, multiple regional pods, or a traditional ballroom.

Curious to learn everything there is to know about hybrid events? Make sure to download our e-book The Road to Hybrid as well.

Networking Games: 8 Effective & Fun Networking Activities For Your Next Event

This blog post is one of our best performing of all times. Throwing it back to the way we networked before AI found the best matches for us on event platforms and apps, we describe in detail eight networking games, dividing them based on what kind of event networking you’re interested in.

Networking games that rely on event technology:

speed networking,
roundtables

Best games for teamwork:

scavenger hunts

Contest-driven networking games:

business card collection contest,
human bingo

Networking games focused on getting to know each other better:

quick-fire questions,
people organizer
switch sides if …

Our Event Blog Hits

The Endless Events blog offers content for forward-thinking event planners who are on top of event technology trends as well as beginner planners who are just getting familiarized with the events industry or event software. These are the blog posts that our readers find most helpful.

Event management is an art and a science, and it certainly takes more than one person to do it well. If you find yourself in need of an event management partner, reach out to Endless Events. As our content hopefully conveys, we are the experts you can count on.