Event Management FAQs

What is online registration?

Online registration is the practice of allowing invitees to register for meetings and events online. Online registration also allows registrants to securely pay for their event registration online.

Cvent's dynamic multi-path registration allows for a targeted, personalized experience for every registrant based upon contact type. Create custom questions throughout the process and allow registrants to select event sessions, tracks, hotel rooms, and flights. Set up secure and automated payments, refunds, and cancellations.

How can Cvent help me increase my ROE-Return on Event™?

Cvent's software is designed to improve your event planning operation by increasing attendance, streamlining labor-intensive processes, and decreasing costs with a suite of powerful event management and email marketing tools. Cvent's advanced email marketing tool allows users to customize every aspect of the communication process with personalized and targeted email campaigns, which will bolster event response. Send automatic invitation reminders to invitees that had not yet replied to drive a second or third round of responses. Cvent's tell-a-friend functionality facilitates viral marketing, which increases both event attendance as well as the size of your contact database.

Automate time-consuming tasks by scheduling email campaigns and eliminating tedious spreadsheets with Cvent's robust reporting system. Deliver statistics in real-time to quantify return on investment and prove success to stakeholders. Decrease costs by substituting printing and postage fees with electronic messaging. By utilizing these features and more, Cvent clients have seen immediate results to both their top and bottom lines.

How can invitees register for my event?

Cvent's Event Management software offers several options for event registration. Guests can register via links sent to them in email invitations and reminders. They can register via a "Register Here" link placed on an existing website that redirects into the Cvent registration process.

Guests can also phone in, mail in, or fax in registration information, which can then be manually entered into the software by the meeting organizer. Finally, Cvent's online software allows attendees to register on-site, as any computer connected to the Internet can function as a registration kiosk for walk-in guests.

Can I make my event website and my registration pages mirror my organization's branding?

Yes. Cvent's Event Management software allows you to create customizable and flexible pages that are consistent with the look and feel of your company's brand. Include a company logo, header, footer and exact colors. Increase response rates while promoting your organization.

Can Cvent manage my housing and travel needs?

Yes. The travel module in Cvent's Event Management software integrates with the industry's leading housing and travel tools, including Passkey, GetThere, and Cliqbook, enabling planners to transfer data without additional integration efforts. Collect requests regarding hotel stays, flights, and car rentals. Block off rooms for attendees based on negotiated room blocks. Provide a one-stop shop for registrants to sign up, pay, and book hotel rooms and flights. Personalize itineraries, directions, and confirmations. Grant hotels and travel agents access to reports.

Does Cvent handle multiple registrations under a single payment?

Yes. Cvent accepts bulk registration and payment. Cvent also allows users to define multiple registration prices (e.g. member, non-member, client, VIP, sponsor, exhibitor) to streamline the selection and payment of registration items. Offer partial payment options, early bird discounts, pricing coupons, and volume discounts, all across a wide range of international currencies.

How can I get a handle on my meeting spend?

The most effective way to better manage your meeting spend is to utilize a budgeting application that allows you to track expenses across multiple categories and events. Cvent's budget tool alleviates the pain of tracking funds, recalculating variable costs and monitoring budget surplus by automatically accounting for event data impacting the budget. Obtain an executive dashboard view of money collected versus money spent across events and allow planners to monitor ROE-Return on Event™-in real time. Build budgets based on fixed costs, variable costs per attendee or a combination of factors. Leverage historical budget information to negotiate better deals.

Does Cvent's Event Management solution provide any integration with outside vendors or systems?

Yes. Cvent's Event Management software can be integrated with any system through our application programming interface (API). In addition, Cvent integrates with salesforce.com, Webex, Passkey, OpenTravel, Cliqbook, GetThere, APEX, Verisign, CyberSource, Moneris, and PayPal.

How does Cvent integrate with salesforce.com?

The Cvent-salesforce.com integration provides an out-of-the-box solution for clients who want to more easily exchange data between Cvent and salesforce.com. Using a simple configuration interface, choose to automatically create or update leads or contacts in salesforce.com based on actions within Cvent, such as attendee registration. Ensure that duplicates are not created for contacts you already have listed in salesforce.com. Automatically create tasks for your sales team in salesforce.com when invitees receive event invitations or sign up to attend an event, or when they are flagged as attendees in Cvent.

The Cvent-salesforce.com integration also allows you to import leads or contacts from your existing salesforce.com data into Cvent Contact Groups—no file imports or exports necessary. Quickly pull Cvent invitee lists from salesforce.com to ensure strategic and targeted messaging in your event marketing campaigns.

How does Cvent integrate with WebEx?

The Cvent-WebEx integration provides a seamless exchange of data between Cvent and WebEx. When designing an event, you can easily associate a WebEx meeting with any Cvent event or breakout session. Activate, deactivate, or modify integration settings for each event you host.

Include up-to-date WebEx session links and access codes in your registrant confirmation and reminder emails. Automatically send registrant contact information into a WebEx attendee list for a meeting. Mark event and session participants within Cvent based on attendance records within WebEx automatically or manually.

Email Marketing FAQs

How are open rates tracked and calculated?


In order to track an open rate, an HTML IMG Tag is embedded in outgoing emails. This HTML tag functions as a transparent tracking image so that when the recipient's browser or email client used to display the email (e.g. Outlook, Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) requests the image, the email message is identified as "open" by the image's host server.

The open rate refers to the percentage of individuals who have "opened" the electronic message that was sent. If a Cvent user sends 100 email invitations and 30 people open the email invitations, the open rate would be 30%.

What is the average open rate for an email marketing message?

Average open rate is hard to estimate given that Cvent clients use the email marketing engine to send emails for internal events, external events, large conferences, small seminars, and so on. The open rate will vary greatly based on type of meeting and type of audience.

That said, across all clients the average open rate is approximately 28%. However, some clients see open rates closer to 40% to 50%, and an even higher rate for those who employ an opt-in process.

When is the best time to send an email?

The most ideal time and day of the week to send emails differs, depending upon the group that is being targeted. Many Cvent clients have found an effective way to determine when to market to their invitees/audience is to conduct surveys asking clients to identify their preferred date and time to be contacted via email.

That said, some clients have used split tests in which they target lists at different dates and times in order to evaluate the time and day of the week that seems to receive the best response rates. Emails in the Cvent system can be scheduled to be sent at specific times. Email reminders can be set to repeat on a schedule as well.

What are the differences between a hard and soft bounced email?

A hard email bounce is one that has returned undeliverable due to a permanent failure, most likely because the email address does not exist. A soft email bounce refers to an email that has bounced due to a temporary problem such as the recipient's inbox being full or the email server being unavailable.

Cvent's advanced email marketing engine will attempt to resend soft bounces. It will also identify and flag hard bounced email addresses so that they can be eliminated or updated for future email campaigns.

How can I increase the response rate for my email campaigns?

Cvent clients ensure better response rates by including a "call to action" in their emails. A call to action includes text and/or images that encourage recipients to take a specific action such as a "Yes" button or a "Click here to register for the event" link. Cvent clients can also make use of 80+ embedded event and contact-specific data tags to make the email come across as if it were personally written for them.

The toolset also allows for segmented email messaging so that different audiences (clients, prospective clients, staff, vendors, speakers, members, non-members, etc.) receive content that is tailored to obtain a response. Furthermore, Cvent clients can also use an appropriate "From Name" for each distribution list to bolster the open rate of emails, thereby increasing response rate and event attendance.