Your organization is planning an event, and you know that effective event management is important to ensure it’s successful. The best way to start is by defining what event management is and exploring strategies that can make it easier.
In this guide, we’ll review what event management is and examine its purpose, top strategies, and how some of the 25 best event management software tools for 2025 can contribute to an event’s success. Whether you're new to coordinating events or part of a team of professional event planners, understanding the fundamentals is key to success.
What Is Event Management in Simple Words?
A simple event management definition is: the process of coming up with an event idea, planning it, organizing the setup, executing the plan, and tracking your success. Event management involves overseeing the entire process while making adjustments and navigating any issues as needed to ensure a successful outcome. From the initial idea to execution, every decision you make contributes to successful event management, where both goals and attendee experiences are maximized.
Characteristics, Objectives, and Importance of Event Management
Gaining an understanding of the characteristics, objectives, and importance of event management will help you to proceed with greater confidence and an excellent chance of success. We’ll take a look at each of these elements in closer detail to help you identify how they fit into your event management process. Taking time to plan thoroughly is a foundational step in the overall event planning process, helping you stay aligned with your mission.
Characteristics of Event Management
Some common characteristics you’ll notice within event management are:
Planning and Strategy
When organizations hold events, planning and strategy are essential to ensure they’re successful.
You’ll want to:
- Come up with a theme or idea that aligns with your organization’s mission.
- Determine metrics you want to achieve during the event, such as generating more leads or finding more volunteers to get involved.
- Create an effective event plan with aligned activities, speakers, and messaging that help you achieve your goals and metrics.
Financial and Operational Management
Effective budgeting also plays a critical role in risk management, reducing the chance of overspending or encountering avoidable disruptions. You’ll also need to handle financial and operational needs throughout the process, such as:
- Determining how much you can spend on the event.
- Managing sponsors and exhibitors who are willing to pay to be featured before, during, and after the event.
- Organizing logistics and resource requirements.
Interpersonal and Communication Needs
There are many interpersonal elements involved in event management, including:
- Communicating deadlines, providing clear schedules, and understanding staff and volunteer availability.
- Letting your target audience know about your upcoming event and encouraging them to register.
- Keeping your registered attendees engaged and aware of event updates.
- Networking and negotiating with vendors, potential sponsors, exhibitors, speakers, and other relevant professionals throughout the process.
Providing Leadership and Guidance
Event management requires someone, or a group of event managers, to take charge and make key leadership decisions, such as:
- Which tasks to delegate and who will be responsible for them.
- How problems are solved when they arise.
- What adjustments should be made if the organization isn’t meeting its event goals.
Technology Management
Technology can play a critical role in event management, supporting tasks such as:
- Creating an effective and accessible online registration system.
- Setting up event websites and mobile apps.
- Handling tech needs during the event, such as AV equipment or virtual activities.
- Accommodating for virtual or hybrid event needs.
Objectives of Event Management
Why should you work toward optimizing the event management process? The main objectives are:
- Ensuring your event is purposeful and meets clear, strategic goals.
- Creating a positive attendee experience.
- Developing clear schedules that minimize stress and help you stay on track.
- Making a positive impact on your organization’s mission and success.
When your event is well-planned, it makes it clear to everyone involved that your organization cares and wants to make a difference. It can improve your organization’s image, make association members feel more engaged, and help bring you closer to achieving your mission.
Importance of Event Management
There are many reasons why effectively managing events is important:
- It helps you approach the process with a clear purpose so you can have better results (more revenue, leads generated, member engagement, etc.).
- It creates smooth and professional processes across your organization for better staff and volunteer satisfaction.
- It leads to more positive attendee experiences that will improve your organization’s image.
- You’ll minimize risks that come with investing in event activities and managing attendee safety.
- It can help you achieve future success by reviewing data and working to improve while planning each new event.
When you use the right technology and strategies to manage events, your team can go from feeling overwhelmed to having a systematic process in place that reduces stress and leads to better results.
How Event Management Software Helps With All the Tasks Involved
Event management software offers a centralized way to manage everything listed above. Options like our Eventscribe event management system at Cadmium can help you:
- Create a smooth online registration system
- Manage sponsors and exhibitors
- Coordinate speakers and presentations
- Assign tasks and send notifications about approaching deadlines
- Keep registered attendees engaged throughout
- Design an effective event website and mobile app
- Handle logistics planning
- Track important data and analytics
- And more
With all these features, event management software offers a great tool that can make event planning easier, keep everyone on the same page, and help coordinate each step of the process.
What Are the 5 C’s of Event Management?
The 5 C’s of event management represent each of the stages you go through as you’re planning, organizing, and executing an event. They go as follows:
1. Conceptualization
During the conceptualization stage, you’ll come up with an idea for the event and perform initial planning. It’s important to form goals that your organization wants to achieve and come up with an event idea that will help you hit important metrics.
For example, you might notice that engagement metrics from your association’s members have dropped significantly over the last quarter, and you want to create an event that helps re-engage them.
Some great options that reinforce the value your association offers to members could include interactive workshops, networking opportunities, or hosting speakers who are highly relevant in your industry.
2. Coordination
Once you have the idea and a general plan in place, it’s time to coordinate event setup. You’ll want to set an event date, create a timeline for setup, and assign tasks to everyone involved. An event management software can help organize all these elements so team members can easily communicate and stay on the same page.
3. Control
You’ll want to continue reviewing metrics and progress as you move closer to the event day. If you notice you aren’t meeting important numbers, you may need to make some adjustments at this stage.
For example, you might notice you haven’t committed as many sponsors as you hoped. Then, you could implement more networking and outreach into your event plan to get in touch with more relevant organizations and industry professionals who might be interested.
4. Culmination
Here, you’ve reached the day of the event, and it’s time to execute the plan you set.
You might run into some obstacles or have things not go exactly as you planned, and that’s okay. Just remember to have some backup plans in case things go wrong, continue communicating effectively with team members, and use event management software to help organize tasks and handle the technology involved.
5. Closeout
After the event ends, you’ll want to follow up with your guests to thank them for coming. You can also send surveys or questionnaires to collect their feedback, which can offer great insights that help you plan your next event.
Then, you can use event management software to review the data and see how things went. Did you reach your goals for the event? What elements went well, and what can you improve on the next time? Make clear notes of all the key insights you can use going forward.
Types of Event Management
The scope of event management is large, and management strategies can differ between industries and the type of event you’re hosting. Some of the most common event management categories are:
- Nonprofit and association events: Many nonprofits and associations host events to get members involved, extend their impact on the community, and generate funds. Some of the most common types of nonprofit and association events are fundraisers, annual meetings, and community involvement activities.
- Hybrid and virtual events: An increasing number of organizations are hosting different types of events in hybrid and virtual formats. They offer a way to use technology to your advantage and extend your reach beyond one specific location.
- Business events: Business events can include conferences, meetings, and seminars that focus on professional growth, learning about industry trends, or improving a company’s performance.
- Educational events: Workshops and e-learning programs are common types of educational events. They can be great tools for professional associations and continuing education providers to extend their impact and engage their members.
- Social events: Galas, award ceremonies, and professional networking events often make socializing and building connections a big focus. They can be great opportunities for professional growth and building connections in your industry.
With all the different types of events you can host, it’s important to have the right technology to help manage them. When searching for event management software, make sure it’s built around the needs of your industry and can handle a variety of event sizes and types to give your organization flexibility as it grows and your needs change.
Event Management Examples for Associations and Nonprofits
The following examples describe how event technology was used for successful association and nonprofit events.
Example #1 - Integrating Association Events and Educational Content
One of our case studies at Cadmium shows how a large professional association simplified its management process for dozens of live events and online continuing education programs.
Some of the big problems they were running into with other solutions were that they couldn’t integrate their event tech with their education technology, and their staff was struggling to build and distribute content to members.
Our solutions at Cadmium were able to make a difference. The Association was able to manage event planning, build event websites, and keep attendees engaged with our Eventscribe software. Then, they integrated their learning system with our Elevate software to create more impactful experiences that connected continuing education courses with live events.
On top of that, our Warpwire livestreaming solution helped record, upload, and organize live video content to learning portals.
By switching to Cadmium’s integrated system, the association was able to create a more organized and engaging experience for members, reduce staff stress, and develop a more efficient system.
Example #2 - Optimizing Speaker Management
Another one of our case studies shows how the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), a nonprofit accrediting agency for approximately 1,000 U.S. colleges and universities, used Eventscribe to improve speaker management during their events.
The HLC was planning events in two locations with 3,700 attendees, 253 presentations, and 334 speakers, and they were having trouble organizing all the information and managing communication with everyone involved.
The Speaker Ready System with Evenscribe was able to help with that by integrating with their AV system, creating an organized process to review and distribute content, and setting up login-free workstations.
The HLC was highly satisfied with the new system since it helped them stay on schedule throughout the event, reduce communication errors, and proactively address AV issues before they got out of hand. It shows that the right event tech can make a huge difference while managing events.
Maximizing Event Success With Cadmium
With so many tasks and stages involved in managing events, you need the right technology and strategies to make handling each task easier. That’s especially true for associations and nonprofits that can have a limited staff available to oversee everything.
At Cadmium, our goal is to offer effective event, learning, and video, a technology that can help.
Cadmium’s event management system, Eventscribe, is a great choice for associations and nonprofits. It’s an all-in-one solution built to help manage events of all types and sizes at each stage. That includes registration, attendee engagement, logistics, speaker management, data analysis, and more. The entire system is easy to use and customize, allowing you to create an efficient process.
Click here to learn more about how Eventscribe can make a difference for you.
