Your Eventective profile is a great way to get more events for your venue —but it can also help you with so much more. When you created your Eventective profile, you also created your Eventective Inbox that’s full of tools to get the most out of your listing. By using these Inbox tools, you can attract high-quality Leads, communicate with them easily, send contracts or proposals, and manage payments — all in one place.
For starters, your Availability Calendar lets people planning events know if you can host their event. From there, you can use the various messaging tools to reply quickly to Referrals or Leads. And finally, our Inbox tools allow you to stay organized when the request turns into a booked event. Let’s look at each of these features in more detail.
Attract the Right Events With Your Availability Calendar
One of the first things that planners want to know is your availability. If a planner doesn’t know whether you’re available for their event date, they might reach out anyway. But most of the time, they’ll move on to the next venue on their list.
Keeping your prospect-facing Availability Calendar up to date means you’ll receive Referrals for the dates you are available — and not ones for the dates you are not. It also means you’ll receive high-quality Leads that you can actually accommodate, instead of wading through Leads that you can’t.
With the Availability Calendar, you can mark any date as Not Available — for booked events, closings, vacations, or appointments. This makes it easy for planners to see if you’re free for their event.
Events from your Inbox that are in stages Qualified, Tentative, Booked or Complete automatically appear on your calendar. Other scheduled items such as site visits, recurring events and personal appointments can be added to the Calendar as Appointments.
You can add unavailable dates to your calendar from your Eventective Inbox or from within any Referral or Lead. If someone requests a date that you’ve marked as ‘Not Available,’ they immediately get an auto-responder informing them of the conflict. That means you don’t have to manually reply to those requests!
You can customize the auto-responder, too, so it says exactly what you want. You can customize this response and manage the visibility of your calendar through the Availability Settings in your account.
Connect With Your Prospects as Soon as Possible
When a prospect reaches out to you, it’s important to reply as soon as possible. There are a number of ways to connect with planners right from your Eventective Inbox. We recommend calling as soon as you receive their request or messaging them directly from your Inbox.
- Calling a Referral: Whenever possible, call a prospect. Phone numbers are not required to submit an inquiry request, so that information is special and should be used for follow up.
- Messaging a Referral: Of course, because phone numbers aren’t required, you won’t always have a way to call your planner initially. But you can always message them from your Eventective Inbox; it’s the second best way to follow up.
Some prospects will provide an email address along with their inquiry, and you always have the option to email the planner directly, too. But you won’t be able to track the conversations within Eventective. Instead, you’ll simply be emailing with the prospect, and any notes or attachments will only be saved in your email inbox.
Respond Quickly Using Templates
Because it’s important to respond quickly to your inquiries, we offer message templates so you can send faster responses. Templates are customized responses that you save in Eventective and send directly to inquiries in just a few clicks.
When you create a template, the response is stored, so you won’t have to type a whole new message every time. And you can create different Templates for different inquiries. For example, if your venue hosts both weddings and private parties, you can create a Template for wedding inquiries and a Template for party inquiries.
When creating your Templates, keep it short, use Template Variables, and be relevant to your inquiry. Template Variables act like merge fields. So, they pull in relevant details from the Referral so that your reply doesn’t look like a canned response. Examples include the name of the submitter, the date or type of event, and attendee count. They’re easy to set up and they ensure personalization in every reply.
It’s also important to be relevant to your inquiry. For example, are they a Lead or a Referral? If they’re planning a wedding, what information do they need to know that’s different from someone planning a meeting? This is where having multiple templates comes in handy!
Stay Organized With Stages, Filters, Tasks, and More
After you go through the booking process, it’s important to keep your events organized. Your Eventective Inbox moves prospects into Stages within your Eventective Inbox. That way, you can easily track and manage your requests — whether they’re Tentative or Booked.
You can use Inbox filters to select one or more Stages to display in your list. Move events between stages with the dropdown on the stage indicator. In some cases, the system will promote an event automatically. Learn more about Stages here.
You can also create Tasks relevant to the event you are viewing.
Choose the Tasks tab in the Messages pane to Add or view Tasks for the selected event. By default, the list is filtered to display only Incomplete Tasks. Read more about our Tasks tool here.
Send Agreements and Manage Payments
With Agreements, you can easily create event proposals and process payments directly from your Inbox.
Key features include:
- User-friendly tools to create, send, and e-sign custom agreements.
- Stages to organize your business process and focus your attention where it’s needed most.
- Payment processing solutions to offer your clients a secure online payment experience.
Learn more about our Agreements and Payments tools on our blog.
Conclusion
Your Eventective profile isn’t just about attracting prospects. Instead, it’s about attracting the right prospects for your business and then communicating with those planners to book events. There is a whole set of Inbox tools designed to help you book more business — from the first contact to the final contract.
Are you ready to start using your Eventective Inbox tools like a pro?
If you run into any issues or have questions about these features, you can always email CS@eventective.com or call 207-253-1653 to connect with your Account Manager.
