3 Tips for Preparing to Relaunch Your Event Venue [Templates and Practical Cases INCLUDED]

We are all waiting for the recovery and we are all looking forward to it! And if not for business reasons, it's for human reasons. You really miss filling up your premises! But good news, the recovery is on everyone's lips and is beginning to make our sector shiver with optimism.

So how do you prepare for this relaunch of events? How can you guarantee that you will be able to meet the (new) expectations of your customers? How can you be sure that it will be serene after months and months of anxiety?

Simply follow our 3 tips below!

1 - MAKE AN APPOINTMENT WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS

Really? Yes really!

Of course, the basis for this action starts with having a customer database and if this is not the case, don't worry, we will help you do it. in this article.

Sort this database into categories:

• corporate customers
• agencies and various contributors
• private customers

And sub-categories:

• by loyalty status
• by sector of activity
• by type of function
• ...
  

Once you have imagined the categories that you think are relevant, it is high time to imagine the format you are going to use to contact all these customers.

We recommend that you call your most loyal customers personally. For others you can send them a personalized email to make an appointment.

Business customer email template:

Hello XXX,
How are you?
You organized XXX the XXX with us and we were delighted to welcome you. It is also for this reason that I would like to come back to you today.
We are currently thinking about our future offers and services within our establishment in order to re-adapt to the current and future needs of our customers.
Would love to hear your feedback on how you think about your company's events?
Do you think we can talk by phone?
Looking forward to hearing from you in person.
Good day,
SIGNATURE

So what are you going to talk to them about? Well it's very simple you will tell them about them and generally it's the easiest thing to do because it's always easy to talk about yourself.

However, don't go wholeheartedly unless you are particularly good at improvising. Prepare a short script like: ‍

Internal events‍

Active or on stand by?

If stand by, why?

If active:

• what event formats?
• What are the goals of these events? To respond to which problems?
• How does it organize its events?
• ...
  

What are the challenges for tomorrow and what potential needs?

(To be completed)‍

Customer events

Active or on stand by?

If stand by, why?

If active:

• what event formats?
• What are the goals of these events? To respond to which problems?
• How does it organize its events?
• ...
  

What are the challenges for tomorrow and what potential needs?

(To be completed)

‍

Set soft goals: like making 5 calls per day or devoting 1 hour of your time per day to this project and if you have teams, involve them as much as possible.

We recommend that you write down the answers you collect directly in an Excel file or a collaborative tool such as Trello or Airtable in order to easily track your customer call work.‍

2 - IMAGINE MOMENTS OF REFLECTION

With your customers

At the end of your exchange with your customer, if you feel that they are interested in the subject and that they have a strategic role in their company, why not offer to keep them informed if you decide to set up a recurring meeting to think together about the challenges of reality and tomorrow.

You will tell us that making a recurring appointment with dozens of people is not easy, very time-consuming. Yes absolutely! It is therefore an opportunity to take advantage of this boom in digital formats to use these channels. Here are some examples and practical tips:

• Organize lives on Instagram or Facebook:

Very suitable and user-friendly format if you have an individual clientele. To inspire you, I invite you to watch the lives of D Day Wedding Planner, for example, which she then records on video on her account. Instagram.

• Organize a video conference:

This format implies that you will animate a moment of exchange and organize a process in order to be able to involve or give voice to your participants. This format allows you to receive more people and you can also put it online on your networks or on your website.

The advantage of these two formats is that you are not limited in the number of participants and that you can use the videos to put them on your social networks later on to make your brand live.

• Organize an online roundtable:

Unlike videoconferencing, the round table has a limited number of seats and generally revolves around a theme. We meet around a subject with a common objective.

• Start fun surveys:

Thanks to social networks and questionnaire tools such as Typeform or even Google Form, you can create a survey appointment every 1st Monday of the month for example to trigger interactions and collect information from your customers. Choose short and fun formats.

• Set up a newsletter:

Every month, for example, you can write a short newsletter for your customers to keep them informed of your observations during your telephone appointments, during your live sessions, or even during your videoconferences or round tables,... and thus invite them to reflect with you regularly.

And, regardless of the format of the appointment, there is a good chance that the customer will be flattered by the importance you give them. Great point in passing for your long-term customer relationship!‍

Internally

Once you have collected enough data, especially after your telephone appointments, it is time to use it with your team to organize an ideally recurring “brainstorming”: every week/month you collect observations and discuss them all together.

The aim of this brainstorming session should be to imagine how you can:

• rethink or diversify your offers and services,
• present your offers and services differently.

Once you have identified potential opportunities, divide yourself up to:

• contact experts if necessary,
• contact the service providers you need,
• submit your ideas to a group of customers who will be sensitive to them,
• contact competitors who have implemented similar things and ask for their feedback.
  

In This post for example, the L'Embarcadère place simply takes stock of the types of events they can surely receive because they perceived that their customers were a bit lost:

Discuss, observe and then, quite quickly, try!‍

3 - JOIN FORCES

Precisely speaking of contacting experts, service providers, competitors,... It may be a good idea to associate yourself with other professionals for all these projects of reflection and then the creation of new services.

You can also get closer to all the people with whom you already collaborate directly or indirectly but who have the same end customers or who work in the same sector.

The advantages are multiple:

1. you reach a larger community of customers,
2. you benefit from the expertise of your partners,
3. you optimize searches and results by being several people,
4. you facilitate value-added collaborations.
   

Here are some practical examples of collaboration:

You are a reception venue hosting a lot of weddings and you partner with a wedding planner to prepare for the next season. By asking, for example, your respective customers what fears they have about their marriage in the middle of a pandemic. In this way, you will be able to adapt your product and services according to their expectations in response to new constraints. And as you will have worked hand in hand with your wedding planner, he or she will have the guarantee that your place is adapted to his customers and will bring you events...

You are an event venue for businesses. Why not include an audiovisual player in your plans to prepare for the relaunch? Take advantage of their expertise and their observations to build with them and your respective customers the service offer of today and tomorrow. Ditto you will also be able to mutually bring customers to each other.

Concretely, the organization of this collaboration is very simple. Set up joint work tools via Google Drive or Trello for example. Create a schedule and divide the tasks. For example:

• Step 1: creating the script for customer appointments - 2 hours
• Step 2: each on their own, making a customer appointment and entering customer responses in a common document - 2 weeks
• Step 3: brainstorming, line of thought selected and choosing formats to keep in touch with the customers questioned
  

To conclude, don't forget to talk about all these things you put in place on your communication media: posts on social networks, stories, blog articles, replay videos, newsletters,... an ocean of possibilities are available to you to show a dynamic image of your place and your brand. The icing on the cake, you also benefit from the brand image of your partners and customers who think with it to make you known and perhaps attract prospects to contact you.

Look for example This post by Sylvie Brussoz the Sales Manager of Château de Montchat:

Social networks are also an incredible playground for staying on the lookout for new products, new people,... Don't be afraid to get in touch with someone you don't know on social networks to talk. You will have nice surprises!

Together we are stronger so let's unite to prepare for the relaunch!