The Ultimate Guide to Event Planning Tools for Event Planners

Event teams are more dispersed than ever, so digital tools that facilitate collaboration are a must for any modern event professional. Enter Miro, a fast, free and easy-to-use online infinite whiteboard that lets you collaborate in real time from anywhere. Miro helps you brainstorm, plan, iterate, design, teach, learn and much more. You've probably heard of Canva, but if you haven't tried it, you don't know what you're missing. Canva is an easy-to-use drag-and-drop image editing package that lets you create original content or content based on thousands of templates, fonts, stock images and more. Do you need new business cards? An event logo? Flyers? Invitations or even t-shirts? Canva has you covered. The best thing about Canva is that it's cloud-based, so you can access your designs from anywhere. Simplify Gmail is a browser extension that simplifies your inbox to make it easier to read. Essentially, it removes all the extras around the inbox and the compose windows. It seems like a simple solution, but Simplify Gmail also blocks spy email trackers, offers intuitive keyboard shortcuts, adds a full dark mode, and more. The here and now of workplace productivity, Slack is a cloud-based collaboration tool that allows you to easily send messages between coworkers and through group threads. Slack also includes integrations with Trello, Giphy and more than 2000 software applications. It's a great way to create constant contact between team members and will make you wonder how you communicated at work without it. Used by more than 14 million people across 200,000 businesses, Loom helps you minimize emails and meetings by leveraging video. Loom is ideal for sending a quick message to a vendor or sponsor without having to make a call or send a lengthy email. What we love about Loom is that it shows your screen and camera in a single video to give the viewer a complete idea of what you're explaining. The videos can be shared instantly and even feature reactions and analysis of emojis. Headspace is a platform that provides guided mindfulness and meditation with soothing voices, including celebrities such as John Legend. With 70 million downloads and an average rating of 4.9 stars, Headspace can help out-of-print event planners de-stress and re-focus. Headspace has a free trial followed by the option of a monthly or annual membership. And, if you manage a team, you'll benefit from Headspace for Work. Bizzabo is the ultimate platform for event success, allowing organizers to plan immersive in-person, virtual and hybrid events. With an open, data-rich platform, Bizzabo's Event Experience operating system enables event experience leaders like you to manage events, engage audiences, activate communities, achieve business goals and much more. Create expected response times for each email you send and add them to your personal reminder list. If the person doesn't respond by that date, you can follow up. Thousands of event planners have managed more than 100,000 events (and counting) in Planning Pod. And thanks to your input, we've fine-tuned our system to address the specific needs of event coordinators like you. No matter what type of event someone is planning to host, a professional event coordinator will be able to help. Event planners often work more than 40 hours a week, must multitask to help their clients achieve a wide variety of goals, and must coordinate large and diverse groups of people. Some of these include tools for managing the business details of event planning (if you run an event planning organization), while others relate to planning large conferences or festivals. It's common for general event planners to outsource catering managers for help with menu design, food preparation, and more. Send, receive and track all event and customer email communications from a centralized event email inbox (even integrate your own email addresses). The event planner will arrive hours early at the party prepared to provide guidance to suppliers, manage settings and make last-minute plans so their customers can focus on their own unique roles and responsibilities and still have a good time. While event folders should include all the most important details of each event on paper, the rest of your reference notes, ideas, and correspondence should also be kept organized and together. Once an event planner has an idea of what the customer wants, how many people will attend, and what environment will be most appropriate, they will start looking for locations. Mastering organizational skills can not only lead to less stress but it can also enhance your creativity as an event planner allowing you to see the big picture and think outside the box knowing that you have firm control of details. According to CareerCast Event Planners Have Sixth-Most Stressful Job in America Thanks to Long Hours High Pressure and Lack of Predictability Companies that offer a range of event planning services can work with many different customers because they have experience organizing a wide variety of different events with disparate objectives attendees and priorities.