Event marketing dashboards, are the new hot thing for event lovers. They help you to save time and possibly bring a few attendees in. Here is an overview of some of the most powerful ones.
I believe event dashboards are the next big tool for event planners and marketers.
In a fragmented social media environment, being able to publish your event in one click to multiple outlets is a winner. As a social media enthusiast I can go back in time when I was managing dozens of Twitter accounts, Facebook profiles etc and tools like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck came along.
The benefit was immediate and adoption skyrocketed.
When I first saw a similar example in events, Eventsaurus, I decided to invest in it but the company shut down after only 6 months.
Why Is It Cool?
Yes Eventasaurus did fail, but let’s not mix up the idea and the business. The idea behind Eventasaurus was and is still relevant and solves two huge issues for event professionals: lack of time and revenue.
A well implemented platform allows you to set up copy for your event and stream it to major social networks almost seamlessly.
Sometimes we give up as marketers revenue opportunities on social media because we have no time to publish, follow and manage our event on multiple outlets.
With the ever growing number of social platforms (consider Google+, Pinterest, App.net are a few months old) we can expect the importance of event marketing dashboard to increase over the next few years.
The Missing Element
Before I start delving into my selection, allow me to make a note about something that all these platform miss: LinkedIn integration.
Despite some of them put the LinkedIn logo on their website, no dashboard can integrate with LinkedIn yet. You will see this integration as a permanent coming soon.
This is not because of the guys developing these great apps. It’s because LinkedIn hasn’t released an Event API yet.
The successful but mostly unresponsive social network is a goldmine for wise event marketers, specially high calibre conferences and meetings.
The first dashboard who will obtain LinkedIn integration will gain substantial competitive advantage. To a certain extent I believe the lack of such integration will make dashboards also fail.
Enough said, here they are…
Crowd.fm
I covered Crowd.fm at launch. They cater for artists, djs and venues among others.
In fact the integration with Songkick, Last.fm and Spotify are a clear statement towards the music industry.
The platform is quite neat and simple and I am pretty fond of simple things.
: The platform is accessible at $9.99 a month and you can enjoy a 15 day free trial.
Planspot
I haven’t covered Planspot before, for some reason. I believe they are really doing well with marketing and making us, event lovers, understand what is the value of these services. Here is their promo video:
Planspot – Broadcast Your Events from Planspot on Vimeo.
They now integrate with Facebook and Twitter but they will soon introduce more outlets 😉
Pricing: Free my friend, free. To the question “How do you make money?” they answer “Don’t worry” on their website.
Event Chocolate
This is another new entry for Event Manager Blog. They are still in stealth mode and haven’t launched yet but seems quite promising.
Despite the website requires a captcha code to get in(??!!), they announce quite interesting features such as event attendees suggestions.
Pricing: Sign up to join the beta at their website.
GetPromotd
Getpromotd was on the blog a while ago.
I liked the local focus that is something other dashboards are missing. They have a huge list of media partners that cover lots of local areas, mainly in the U.S.
Pricing: The pricing is very accessible at a mere $5 per event with national coverage and 25$ forNational + Local.
Evently
Another new entry in the space. The UK based company offers Twitter and Facebook integration as well as email marketing management.
I also loved the emphasis on analytics to measure the marketing performance of different channels.
It looks like Evently is going more in the direction of CRM and I quite like it.
Pricing: The pricing is available on request so get in touch with them.
In Conclusion
The above five services offer a great opportunity for busy event professionals: saving time.
The good thing is that the pricing is quite accessible and overall you can get a feeling of what a service can do for you at no cost (other than your time).
We are looking forward to seeing LinkedIn integration and hope that some of these guys convinces them to release their event API.
In the mean time, publish your event! Now!
