Today, just going to events — whether virtual or in-person — and making social connections or collecting business cards probably isn’t enough to create contacts that truly build your business afterward.
While it’s easy to meet loads of people at trade shows and conferences, these days, not everyone will have business cards. Even for those that do, getting or giving a business card doesn’t mean it will lead to a working relationship. Cards get misplaced or thrown out. Information on them can also change before a person gets around to making a call or sending an email.
In recent years, many business people have supplanted cards with social networking sites such as LinkedIn, where contacts can send messages and see each other’s work experience. While this is a good start for more dynamic relationships and it can sometimes lead to working together, social media isn’t enough either for ongoing event contact management.
In this article, we’re going to explore how event contact management software can make a difference, and share a few options for you to consider.
Event Contact Management Software Basics
When your Rolodex or social media accounts aren’t enough to leverage your contacts from events, an event management solution can give you the tools to convert leads into business value the way few other tools can. Here’s everything you need to know before we dive into specific solutions.
Defining Event Contact Management Software
Contact management software is “software that keeps track of people and activities.” It’s similar to customer relationship management (CRM) software like Salesforce, though there are some nuances to consider that are specific to event software.
Event contact management software is geared toward storing contacts or leads from corporate events — think trade shows, ribbon cuttings, industry conferences, chamber of commerce mixers, and virtual events like interactive webinars.
An event contact management platform collates contact data — names, contact information, details about their business and role, etc. — and makes it useable across an entire business. When contact information isn’t siloed within certain parts of your company, anyone from marketing to sales to operations can access it, finally unlocking the full value of the connections you go to events to make.
Another unique thing about event contact management software is how it allows relational groupings for locations, managers, employees, and reports. Staring at a drawer desk full of uncategorized business cards or scrolling through a list of hundreds of LinkedIn contacts can be overwhelming. The best event contact management software helps businesses to be better organized.
Why Your Business Needs It
The sooner you’re able to follow up with a warm lead created at an event, the better.
But making sense of a large number of new leads and getting them into a system that isn’t created specifically for this function takes up precious time — time that could be better spent crafting and sending out messages that turn contacts into customers or business partners.
Event contact management software allows time-sensitive lead management. New contacts can be quickly assimilated with other similar contacts, be it people from the same company or similar industries. Contact management software also provides a good way to visualize data, in this case contact data. Data visualization helps it come alive and offers new ways to look at information. It will make contact info seem less static and unlock creative ways to use it.
The Challenge with Finding the Right Event Contact Management Software
There’s no shortage of potential solutions on the market these days for event contact management software. The ones below are by no means an exhaustive list of what’s out there.
As we’ll explore in a bit, it’s important for companies to have an idea of the guiding factors in their search. The field of potential solutions is wide enough that companies can wind up with something that isn’t correct for them if they aren’t careful in their selection.
On the other hand, getting the right tools into place can make business events that much more fruitful. It will improve the ROI of events, which often aren’t free to attend.
4 Event Contact Management Software Tools to Consider
With so many event contact management software solutions out there, which ones are best? Here are four to consider.
1. Glide: Build a Fully-Featured, No-Code Event Contact Management Platform
Don’t love the event contact management software you’ve seen on the market? But also don’t know how it’s possible to create your own best fit? There’s a solution for that.
Often, what holds businesses back from creating their best event contact management platform is that they don’t have any professional design or development resources. To overcome this fact and empower these businesses, there’s Glide — a no-code software creator for building and designing custom software and turning spreadsheets into apps and website pages.
With Glide, no matter your knowledge of computer programming, you can make an ordinary contact spreadsheet far more powerful and shareable. Glide can take a simple spreadsheet with names and a few columns of relational data and turn it into a sortable world. This is doable in a short amount of time as well, sometimes as little as five minutes. For an even quicker fix, you can also use Glide’s templates as a launching point to build a fully-featured contact management tool to bring to your next event and capture leads in real-time.
Glide’s pricing plans are flexible and affordable — you can even customize a package to serve your enterprise needs.
Unlock your genius, and the power of your event contacts, when yousign up for Glide.
Who it best helps: Any business staff who want to create custom contact management tools, no matter their level of technical skill
2. Cvent: Event Contact Management for Business Event Planners
Cvent’s software caters specifically to businesses that host events and generate the bulk of their leads that way, so most of its features are for managing event contacts on a very large scale.
It can be tough to manage contacts from the same organization or event who are spread out in different locations. Cvent works around this in different ways by collecting information that can be customized for departments and divisions, even staff nicknames. It also allows the contacts themselves to update their own information.
With Cvent, users can monitor various types of attendee engagement, including seeing what actions potential attendees might take. A registration button even allows company sales staff to complete event registration on behalf of customers.
Who it best helps: Professional business event managers
3. Google Forms: Create an Event Contact Spreadsheet
As long as your event contact management needs are basic, Google Forms can go a long way.
To use Google Forms for event contact management, you can set up a laptop or tablet at an event so new contacts can use the simple interface to enter their information. Alternatively, the form can also be emailed to new contacts, or embedded into a website. When contacts fill out their information, it will dump directly from Google Forms into a Google Sheet, which can be converted into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet as well, if needed.
On the downside, the end product you’re left with is a spreadsheet full of contact information, with no helpful features to organize or take action on it. Thus, businesses will need to use another tool alongside Google Forms if they plan on collecting a high volume of contacts and know they’re going to need support making use of them while they’re still warm.
Glide is highly compatible with Google Sheets, so for those who are really looking to leverage information gathered at events, Google Forms + Glide could be a match made in revenue-generation heaven.
Who it best helps: Users with simple needs who want a contact spreadsheet
4. Daylite: iOS-Only Event Contact Management
If your business simply swears by Apple products, you’re probably looking for a contact management solution that’s geared toward Apple’s typical operating system.
Daylite is a CRM for businesses with less than 100 employees. It helps businesses collect contacts, manage communications, and track deals. And, Daylite works specifically on the iOS platform, which includes Mac computers, iPads, and iPhones. The software can also integrate with Apple Mail and sync with different team members.
Who it best helps: Small businesses with all-Apple products
How to Choose the Right Event Contact Management Tool for You
For companies ready to implement an event contact management software solution, here are a few tips to ensure you choose the right one.
Consider Your Budget
The amount of money available to spend on implementation can go a long way toward guiding you to choose the right event management platform.
If your business is enterprise-level and already has design and development resources on hand, an internal custom build might be the order of the day.
On the other hand, startups and smaller businesses can get what they need from a free tool like Google Forms or one that doesn’t have an upfront cost with its API like Glide.
Determine How You Want to Use the Software
If contact management software makes up the core of your business success, it’s not a bad idea to spend the time and money contracting with professional designers and developers to build a heavily-featured platform around which all business operations can revolve. In cases like this, it’s absolutely worth it.
Add-ons like Google Forms and no-code app builders like Glide might not be the best fit in this scenario. Glide offers a quick, simple, and affordable way to access and create the tools, workflows, and templates you need to streamline contacts and build relationships. While it is certainly customizable and has plenty of features as well as integration capabilities, there are some especially robust builds where Glide and similar tools aren’t the right solutions.
Look to a User-Friendly App Provider That’s Excited About What You Build
Glide is as user-friendly as it is because company co-founder David Siegel designed it this way, with TechCrunch noting: “One of the primary lessons Siegel says they learned is the importance of getting out in the field and talking to customers, and not falling into the trap of falling in love with the act of building the tool.”
When creating Glide, we didn’t make the mistake of falling in love with what we built at the expense of what our customers want and need. What we care about is seeing how businesses that use Glide take their event contact management to the next level. We can’t wait to see what you build.
Is Glide the right event contact management solution for you?Sign up today to find out.
