How Schools Can Manage Events in HubSpot Using Simple Events.

Overview of Simple Events

Simple Events is a user-friendly events tool that is integrated with HubSpot to help manage events. Whether this is an open morning, a taster day, or a parent evening event you want to manage, Simple Events allows you to do this in one central place.

Once you have created an event in Simple Events and someone registers or attends, you will be able to view this information on their contact record in HubSpot in the ‘Activity tab’ and filter by ‘Marketing Events.’ You can then use HubSpot tools such as active lists to record how many people register and attend your events, as well as creating automated workflows to streamline your communications before and after the event.

You can access Simple Events by creating an account here - Create your Simple Events account - and it’s completely free to sign up and use! Once you have created an account, you can connect your HubSpot account to start streamlining your event management.

Overview of Managing your Event in HubSpot

Once you have an event created within Simple Events, there are many ways in which you are able to manage it within HubSpot.

Forms

The first way you can begin to manage your event within HubSpot is through the automatic form which is created by Simple Events. This can be accessed either directly from your event within Simple Events or from the form section within your HubSpot portal! The form will have been automatically created with some simple fields such as name and email, yet you will be able to add or remove any properties that you wish.

Lists

Before your event is live and you have any sign-ups, it is best practice to visit the lists tool within your account to create 2 active lists per event:

Registered
Attended

When created with the properties which are automatically generated by Simple Events, these two active lists will update when contacts sign up to or check in at an event. This is one of the more important ways you can manage events within HubSpot as list functionality is hugely beneficial for reporting, automation, and much more!

Workflows

Once you have sign-ups for your event, you’ll want to be contacting them with updates, reminders, and any other information relevant to the event. These actions can all be automated within workflows.

An example could be a workflow which enrols based on the event form submission or list membership, which then goes on to send reminders in the lead up to the event.

Simplified Guide for Simple Events

Step 1:

Create an account

Step 2:

Connect your HubSpot account from the settings within Simple Events (found under ‘HubSpot Connection’).

Step 3:

Create your event from the Simple Events dashboard by selecting ‘Add New Event’.

You’ll need to provide:

Event Title
Event Type
Event Description
Start Date
End Date

Step 4:

Edit the form created automatically by Simple Events to capture any information you need.

Step 5:

Create ‘Registered’ and ‘Attended’ lists in your portal using the properties automatically populated by Simple Events.

Step 6:

Check in attendees from the Simple Events dashboard and ‘Complete Event’ when it is over.

How the admissions and marketing team can benefit from Simple Events

Knowing how to manage events day-to-day can sometimes be tricky, whilst also aligning your admission and marketing teams. However, using this integration with HubSpot showcases how efficient this can be, and how both the admission and marketing teams can both benefit.

Admission Team

The easy setup of events allows admissions to create specific events in a user-friendly way, whilst also viewing each contact who has registered and attended on one accessible dashboard. You can sign people into events on the day with the attendee toggle located in the event dashboard. This information will then be recorded on a new or existing contact’s record in HubSpot, once their information is captured in a form. This benefits admissions as they can easily view who has signed up to an event VS. who has attended. This tool essentially saves time and reduces using multiple event tools and platforms.

Another way admissions can benefit from this tool is by creating separate custom forms for each event they host on Simple Events. For example, admissions may want to capture different information for an open event, compared to a taster day event. By using HubSpot’s contact properties, the admissions team can create bespoke forms in HubSpot’s form tool to capture key information they need for each specific event. This information may vary from a parent’s name to mobile number to dietary requirements, to the date and time they want to attend.

Once a form is submitted by a contact, it will be recorded on their contact record, and they will be marked as attended in the event dashboard in Simple Events. Therefore, the customised forms really enhance the user experience and engagement of events as it registers contacts to the event, whilst recording key information on their contact record in contact properties. If you want to capture child information on the form too, you can create a workflow in HubSpot to create a deal record and associate it to the contact’s record from the same form.

Marketing Team

Marketing teams can also hugely benefit from Simple Events too as the integration with HubSpot allows you to create event lists and use these in automated workflows for tailored communications with attendees.

By creating active lists based on contacts registering or attending each event hosted in Simple Events, allows the marketing team to keep track of event engagement and to communicate this back with the admissions team. You can use the ‘Marketing event’ properties to record who has registered and attended through the integration. Once you have lists for both, you can use these to enrol contacts into keep warm automation to keep the engagement high and your leads warm; this will then result in a better conversion rate from enquiry to registration.

It is so beneficial for schools to map out keep warm communications to your prospective parents as this keeps them engaged throughout the admissions journey. By using Simple Events with HubSpot, you can track who has attended events and enrol them in a series of keep warm marketing emails to keep this conversion rate high. Also, using the email marketing tool in HubSpot allows you to keep communications personalised throughout a prospects journey, whilst they are going through different steps with admissions.

When someone registers to an event, you can use lists to enrol them into a series of marketing emails to keep them informed before the event. For example, you could send a ‘What to look forward to on our Open Day’ email, or ‘Key things to bring on your Taster Day’ email a couple of days before the event. Then, post event you could send your leads a ‘Thank you for attending’ email with the next steps of how to register, or ‘How to apply to upcoming events.’ Essentially, creating these keep warm communications with your prospects allows them to remain engaged and build a good relationship with the school whilst they go through the admissions process.

Therefore, using Simple Events alongside HubSpot to manage your events allows you to centralise event management with the Simple Events dashboard, integrate with HubSpot's CRM and display what contact's have registered and attended what events, enable effective marketing and event promotion using lists, marketing emails and workflows, and deliver all rounded successful events by aligning your admissions and marketing teams.