When Asian Media Group (AMG), Britain’s biggest Asian publishing house, started looking for event management software at the end of last year, many of their events team members had never used event software before.
The confidence that their new partner would help them “every step of the way” through the big transition from a largely manual system to an integrated software system for managing their events contributed to AMG’s decision to go with Evessio, says Evessio.
The deal was sealed at the end of May and AMG says it’s looking forward to managing their annual events – each tied to one of their publications – in a joined-up and integrated way.
According to AMG’s Events Team, everything had been running separately on an event-per-event basis until now. “Each event manager had their own databases – there isn’t one integrated place where we can keep all the information in one place and also know the history of each attendee. With Evessio, you can click on a guest’s profile and you will be able to see which events they have attended, paid for, and so on. This is useful to know!”
Another issue was the high drop-out rate of guests at events. “One of our biggest problems was tracking and monitoring guests on the day. We didn’t know who stayed for an awards ceremony or conference, for how long they stayed or even whether they turned up at all.”
AMG’s events have a strong awards aspect, but the entry and judging systems were managed manually. “For example, we put the award entries into a Word document, tidied it up and created a PDF to send to the judges. That took a lot of time and created room for mistakes, especially as the day of the event drew nearer.”
Some of AMG’s selection criteria were that they wanted an app, the ability to track and monitor guests before, during and after events, new event websites, design and distribution of newsletters and mailshots, and an attractive price structure.
AMG said: “We feel that we have the same values and we like that they have been so understanding on the fact that it’s a big transition for us. Tom (Howie, COO) and Gary (Clement, CEO) are both lovely, extremely patient and helpful through it all, many of the team members have not used event software before so they will need to be trained extensively and we feel with Evessio, they will help us every step of the way. We are also looking to double the number of events we run and see Evessio as an enabler to do that.”
Howie says that Evessio is delighted to get another client from the publishing industry on board. “We realise that running events is a revenue stream that is becoming increasingly important to publishers – it’s not just an add-on to their publishing brands anymore. More publishers are willing to invest in software that enables them to manage this revenue generator better and to get to know their event guests just as well, if not better, than their readers.”
