Event planning is not an easy job. It’s fraught with challenges and high stress situations, yet some organisers seem to thrive. What’s their secret? We look at the seven things the most successful event managers do every week to keep their event planning on track.

1. Check their key metrics

One defining trait of a successful event planner is that they leave nothing to chance – everything is measured and analysed. Collecting data from events ensures organisers can devise effective strategy and work towards consistently improved results.

Metrics that should be reported and monitored include:

  • Event costs and savings
  • Ticket sales and event revenue
  • Attendee population
  • Engagement and satisfaction
  • Website and app usage
  • Social media engagement

Checking this information daily means you can be proactive in reallocating marketing spend, knowing how much food to order, or inviting more people to your event, rather than waiting until it’s too late.

Eventbrite tracks a range of KPIs including ticket sales and how much you’ve made from each ticket type, promotional code usage, attendee geography (by IP address), and merchandise sales. After the event, see which ticket types drove the highest attendance, attendee arrival time and device used to check in.

You can even combine report data from multiple events to give you a clear understanding of the performance of your events. See how here.

2. Prioritise and work on the most important things first

Busy event organisers have limited time so it is critical they understand the most important areas to focus on. Since they’re measuring performance (see above) they can react quickly when a challenge presents itself and put all of their effort into getting things back on track.

If ticket sales are down, you need to get on the case with marketing. If the attendee satisfaction survey highlights a problem with the food and beverage, it’s time to source a new catering supplier, pronto!

To set priorities, planners must have concrete and useful data about their events, communicate the priorities to their staff, and implement processes to ensure that these priorities are carried out.

Related: Improve your event planning productivity with batching

3. Talk to clients

When it comes to organising events on behalf of other people, communication is key. As all successful event planners know, assumption is the mother of all screw-ups, so it’s vital to understand exactly what your clients want and expect and keep them fully informed of progress.

If, on the other hand, you’re organising your own events, then your clients are your attendees – the ones buying the tickets. Be sure to communicate with them just as regularly – via your blog, newsletters and social media.

Related: Improving your event communication for happier attendees

4. Take time out to reflect and relax

Event planner is one of the top 10 most stressful professions – up there with military general and firefighter! So, successful planners understand it is vital to take a break before reaching breaking point.

An informal coffee break meeting with your team is a great way to keep track of what’s going on, re-focus and maintain motivation levels (doughnuts optional).

Related: 5 tips for reducing stress before an event

5. Research new ideas and trends

As well as taking time out to relax and catch up with your team, a wise event planner makes time to read industry news and blogs (like this one!) each week.

To stay ahead, it’s vital to keep your finger on the pulse of industry trends, supplier news, new products and services and developments in technology. Meanwhile, case studies can show you what your competitors are doing.

If you don’t have time to read every day, or find yourself easily distracted when browsing online, establish a habit for everyone in your team to take just 30 minutes to do research every Friday and share it with co-workers in a digest email or at a Monday meeting. Pocket is also a great tool to bookmark interesting articles to catch up on later when you have more time.

6. Nurture relationships

Consistently talking with clients is a good management strategy (as we discussed above), but it is also a good marketing strategy.

Regularly reaching out to past clients for a ‘catch up’ will show that you remain interested in their business and keep you front of mind when they next require event management services – this business is all about relationships!

Don’t forget about your suppliers and venues – a great relationship with them will give you extra bargaining power.

7. Ask for feedback

Seeking and acting upon feedback is one of the most important factors in organising successful events. As part of their performance measurement, great event planners ask for feedback from their attendees, participants and stakeholders utilising specialist tools.

Eventbrite offers organisers the opportunity to easily seek opinions – both pre and post event – via integration with survey tool SurveyMonkey.

There are survey templates for a range of event types with preset questions to make the process super simple, or create your own customised survey. Read more about sending a survey here.

Related: Grow your next event with 4 important post-event tasks

There’s no mystery to being a successful event planner – it’s simply a case of being organised and systematic in your approach, listening (at least) as much as you talk and always looking for ways to improve.

About to run your first event? Check out our headache-saving tips for first time organisers.