If your event planning causes you to have lists upon lists of tasks that need to be completed, you likely want to know if there is another way to manage the process. AI has already made headlines with its capacity to automate tasks like email campaigns or analyzing data, but many event planners have yet to tap into its full potential.
AI can fill in a variety of roles as you organize your event. From helping with automation and personalization to increasing your group’s overall efficiency, you can employ AI in a variety of different capacities. Let’s explore some of the many uses of AI as you prepare for your next professional event or conference and some of the tools you can select to take advantage of AI yourself.
Why AI for Event Planning is a Game-Changer
Those who have walked through the event planning process know that there are many repetitive, monotonous tasks involved. Not only do event planners have to keep themselves motivated to get through these types of tasks, but they also have to look for ways to personalize the entire process and improve engagement with potential attendees. Fortunately, AI has the power to revolutionize both these areas.
By filtering data and helping you connect key data insights, AI can boost your ability to engage attendees and accomplish all the routine tasks that go on behind the scenes in event planning. Altogether, this means that you can increase your efficiency in logistics and your event scheduling. It is easy to see why AI has begun to play such an important role in the event planning process.
6 Must-Have AI Tools for Event Planning
We are going to break down 6 types of AI tools that you can use to power your event planning process. As we look at each category, we will explore how it can help improve and streamline your planning.
Tool 1. AI-Powered Event Management Platforms
Start building your AI capabilities with the optimal event management platforms. When your platform incorporates AI technology, it will simplify and streamline much of the planning process. AI can help you with scheduling and attendee engagement by capturing and analyzing attendee behavior. A platform like A2Z Events includes capabilities like building event apps and registration tracking. These features can bring together customer information from a variety of sources. This all provides you with a powerful understanding of your attendee’s interests and motivations, so that you can continually improve your events moving forward.
AI capabilities can also help automate registrations, walking potential leads through the registration process and collecting their important information. This frees up your human staff to focus more on engagement and interacting with leads and guests instead of collecting information from potential attendees. This improves event execution and helps you optimize the event planning process.
Some great examples of event management platforms that have incorporated AI include:
- A2Z Events
- Bizzabo
- Cvent
- Eventbrite
Tool 2. AI Chatbots for Attendee Engagement
Chatbots have made a splash in countless different roles across ecommerce and the rest of the digital ecosystem. However, they can also play a powerful role in event management. With chatbots, businesses can provide key information so that the bot can answer common customer questions and provide them with answers they need around the clock. This enhances customer service outside typical business hours and frees up human agents to deal with more complex customer service issues, since the bots can take care of the routine questions.
In event management, the bots can help with tasks such as managing ticketing and schedules. These AI conversations will guide customers through the registration process to reserve their spots and then create personalized schedules that maximize their experiences.
Effective chatbots for these types of roles include:
- Drift
- Tidio
- ChatGPT-powered bots
Tool 3. AI-Powered Marketing and Promotion Tools
As you build your event, promotion will also play a central role. Effective event promotion will ensure that your targeted audience hears about the event and registers to attend.
To attract attention for your event, AI can help in a variety of ways. Some common uses for the technology include:
- Help creating event marketing copy
- Optimizing email campaigns and creating email triggers to keep people moving towards registration
- Developing high-converting social media ads
- Creating personalized outreach approach guidelines and campaigns based on audience data and analysis.
If you want to incorporate these AI capabilities into your strategy, you have a few platforms to help. Some of the most effective and helpful options for marketing and promotion include:
- Persado
- Jasper AI
- HubSpot AI
Tool 4. AI for Smart Scheduling & Logistics
As you build your event, you will also pay close attention to the schedules you develop. Your event will require coordination between multiple itineraries so that you can make sure that all your moving parts work together effectively. For example, you will need to create schedules with your different vendors to make sure that everything is on-site and set up on time. You will also need internal checklists and schedules for your team to make sure that everything is tested and ready to run. Finally, there will be schedules for your attendees. Depending upon how many different components will occur at different times, you might even have customizable schedules for all your attendees themselves.
Fortunately, AI can also help you track all of these different components and optimize them as well. The data the AI can pull and analyze will help you determine the best schedules for your speakers, vendors and attendees. It can help you determine the best time slots for all the different event sessions to keep your attendees interested and engaged. It can also help you coordinate with your vendors and optimize all the logistics associated with setting up with your providers.
Consider the AI scheduling capabilities found on platforms like Aventri and Calendly to help boost your event planning process and remove some of the stress of planning the optimal schedule.
Tool 5. AI for Virtual & Hybrid Events
During the pandemic, the potential and popularity of remote events exploded. Although restrictions have been lifted and people attend events in-person now, many have come to appreciate the flexibility that remote events offer, making remote and hybrid events commonplace.
If you want to offer these types of events, then consider taking advantage of some of these virtual and hybrid AI tools.
The AI capabilities here can help you drive user engagement through powerful features like real-time transcription and translation. These features will expand the accessibility of your event so you can increase your audience base.
AI can also help with networking. Attendees appreciate opportunities to get to know other participants. Offering virtual networking and using AI for match making can help you maximize the potential so that your attendees get the most possible out of the event. The tool also simplifies the planning for you, allowing you to check another item off your list.
If you want to get some automated help in this area, we recommend looking at:
- Hopin
- Remo
- Airmeet
Tool 6. AI for Post-Event Analytics and Insights
One area of event planning where AI really shines is in analytics. Event planners know that analytics can have a tremendously positive impact on their preparations. The better you understand what drives your attendees, what interests them, what they did and didn’t like about past events, and everything in between, the easier it will be to plan future events that keep them interested and coming back for more.
AI can greatly enhance your understanding of your attendees, speakers, and sponsors. You can do a deep dive into attendee engagement throughout the event and evaluate the ROI your business experienced following the occasion. You can also collect all the audience feedback you received from surveys and interviews and bring it together to create a thorough and helpful picture of your event. AI will help you isolate all the helpful information so you have a clear roadmap as you start to plan your next event.
You have a few different types of AI you can tap into to start seizing these opportunities. We recommend getting started with:
- Google Analytics
- Tableau AI
- Zoom AI summaries
Each of these options will help you not only collect, but also investigate and understand the data related to your event to improve your planning for the future.
How to Choose the Right AI Tools for Your Events
Now that you have a better idea of all the different ways AI can help you plan your next event, let’s consider how you can choose the tools that will help you the most. You want to choose the options that offer the abilities you need the most while also fitting with your organization. Here are some key factors to take into account as you make these decisions.
- What is your event size and budget? Larger events with complex schedules, for example, might have more need for scheduling AI options than smaller conferences. Budget will also impact how you prioritize your technology selections.
- What tools and platforms do you already use? Integrations with your existing platforms will impact how smoothly you can incorporate this new tool into your processes and how helpful it will be.
- What are your event’s goals? The goals you have already set for the event will also impact the tools you want to employ. For example, if facilitating networking is a top goal, AI for matchmaking will likely be a priority. If you are starting a new conference series and want to heavily advertise it to a completely new audience, then marketing management AI will likely fit you well.
Final Thoughts on AI for Event Planning
With the passing of each year, event planning seems to become increasingly complex, as you have to consider attendee expectations, technology, and industry standards. Employing AI to help you manage the workload can be invaluable. The automation features can not only take some of the monotonous tasks off of your plate, but they can help you with complex data processing so that you can optimize features from email messages to speaker schedules.
If you are getting ready to plan a new event, consider how AI might fit into your processes and streamline your work efficiency. When you put AI for event planning to work for you, it can help you take your next event even further.
