Event Management Software Systems You Can Grow With

Increased sales from event marketing.

Increase
Sales

Virtually every event management system we've created is designed to either help you increase your sales, or reduce your administrative costs. In many cases, our systems will do both. For instance, the Automated Event Email "Drip" System can be used to send a sequence of emails to your attendees automatically based on a schedule you create weeks, months or even years in advance. Using special "email merge tags," the specific event details such as date, location, venue and webmap, can all be dynamically inserted into emails which are otherwise generic but appropriate for the event type. When used effectively, this system will guarantee lower no-show rates, better informed attendees, increased customer retention and reduced customer support calls.

More people in your rooms will increase your sales .
Fewer support calls will decrease your administrative costs .

Decreased costs from event management administrative systems.

Decrease
Costs

Before You Proceed

If your organization is in its early stages with small numbers of staff and you feel that our array of systems might exceed your present needs, please download and read our free report to discover how valuable Signup Systems will be by understanding the potential costs of starting out without software you can grow into. And since all the systems below are available by default with every Signup Systems installation, you do not need to use all of them at the beginning in order to experience all of the benefits, which far exceed the costs.

Please note: Signup Systems software is accessed entirely using a web-browser so you can manage your business at any time, from anywhere in the world. Learn more about the benefits of a Signup Systems Installation.

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Marketing, Communications & Sales Systems

At Signup Systems we believe the success of event management companies starts with excellent marketing. No one profits if you create the best training programs and courses but nobody attends because you've been unable to put "butts in chairs," because no one has heard about the programs. As a result of the importance we place on marketing, we have created many systems designed specifically to help your marketing communications, marketing research, and marketing decision-making (If you haven't already, you really should read our free report that contains insider secrets to marketing and sales strategies specific to the event management industry).

For example, using Marketing Campaign Tracking & Sales Statistics you can target a number of different landing pages with signup forms or shopping cart offers and quickly discover which headlines, what marketing copy, and which offers are the most compelling and generate the most sales.

Automated Event Email "Drip" System - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Automate the vast majority of your pre-event email communications to attendees using a system that functions like an autoresponder sequence but counts down to the event start date. Increase customer retention, reduce no-show rates, and ensure your customers are well informed about their upcoming events—all automatically!

create email sequences for each different course type which automatically gets applied to new events you schedule
schedule emails on specific days leading up to the event start date, to automatically remind attendees about their upcoming course
automatically send emails to pre-sell and up-sell additional courses and products
send "keep 'em hot" emails to remind registrants of the benefits of your programs when they are booked long in advance of attending
use "confirmation" system with Event Email Drips to ensure your attendees get your final event information email—and know exactly which registrants have received the emails so you can concentrate administrative efforts on those who have not received the information
use email merge tags to automatically insert specific event information
full reporting of emails sent and those scheduled to be sent for all events, or on an event-by-event basis
schedule post-event emails to automate "follow up" communications for graduates
use Event Email system to broadcast to attendees by "Attendee State" such as "Guest," "Volunteering" and "Waiting List"

Opt-In & User Account Signup Forms - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Capture your potential customers' contact information on your public website so you can develop relationships with them over time until they are ready to purchase from you.

create verified (double) opt-in signup forms requesting as little as first name and email address only or requesting as much as all standard contact information plus gender and birth date
you have complete control over all signup form landing pages and verification request emails
create user account signup forms so your customers can later log into various Signup Systems services without having to retype their contact information
you have complete control over display and graphics so forms can fully integrate with your website design
easily embed signup forms on any web page using special codes or full HTML, both of which are provided for you to copy and paste
use signup forms to trigger autoresponders that automatically send your customers emails
signup form statistics are tracked so you can enhance your marketing communications
signup form links provided for you to email to your existing database, or for you to provide to advertisers or joint ventures
signup forms allow marketing campaign tracking so new signups can be permanently associated with a marketing effort
referral program link tracking to ensure your referrals are associated with the customers they send to you that sign up

Autoresponder Email Sequences - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Automatically send sequences of marketing emails you create in advance to anyone filling out a signup form so that you can automatically educate and inform your customers about your services and products until they are ready to purchase.

create reusable HTML and/or text emails with email merge fields to populate live contact information upon sending
build an unlimited number of sequential autoresponders using an unlimited number of emails up to 999 days into the future
assign autoresponder sequences to lists and then populate those lists using signup forms
use admin list tools to send a group of people a sequence all starting on the same day
modify live autoresponders on the fly and only cause new sequence emails to be sent to appropriate subscribers

Email Broadcast System - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Generate lists of people in your database, such as lists of graduates, of people from a specific city, or of only male subscribers, etc. and then broadcast an email to them for administrative or marketing purposes.

schedule broadcasts to take place at any time in the future, even months or a years in advance
security roles ensure only authorized staff can perform broadcasting functions
use broadcast approval system to ensure emails go to correct lists, are proof read and link tested before sending to your database
broadcast history report indicates which emails have been sent and to how many people
your emails are sent from a dedicated email server ensuring highest possible delivery rates and reliability
hourly broadcast report emailed automatically to designated communications staff

Marketing Campaign Tracking & Sales Statistics - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Track customer acquisition and sales for your marketing campaigns using click-through statistics and conversion rates to refine and improve your ROI from advertising or joint ventures.

create marketing campaigns with multiple parts so advertising campaigns across several media can be tracked independently and collectively as part of an overall campaign
test multiple landing pages to determine most effective conversion and sales rates before expanding scale of campaign
use automatically generated campaign links to track clickthrough rates both for inbound or outbound marketing efforts or joint ventures
when combined with signup forms, campaign tracking is performed automatically as new people signup or make purchases
combine both campaign and referral tracking to allow your referral program members to contribute within the context of a special marketing campaign
associate individual campaign parts with joint venture partners, then broadcast promotional emails directly from campaign system
use up-to-the-minute sales statistics for each campaign with clickthrough and lead conversion rates to refine or expand successful marketing efforts

Referral Link Tracking - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Empower your customers and strategic partners with referral links that tell you who referred customers into your database, and optionally, which marketing campaign they belong to.

public website support for sign ups into your referral program including creation of unique referral phrases and referral program agreement acceptance
use the broadcast email system and email merge tags to send referral tracking links to anyone in your database that is willing to refer new customers to you
pull reports on number of referrals, referral sales, and numbers of attendance records generated by customers referred into your database

CAN-SPAM Compliant Unsubscribe System - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Use our built-in "Unsubscribe" page to ensure your customers can remove themselves from your email communications if they choose, providing you with instant compliance with CAN-SPAM Unsubscribe laws.

use our default email footers to ensure a link to your unsubscribe page is displayed on every email sent from Signup Systems
three levels of unsubscribe to allow your customers to remove themselves from autoresponder lists, only accept critical emails, or completely unsubscribe themselves from your system
unsubscribe status displayed on primary customer contact page so your organization can avoid contacting customer by phone or other means while still maintaining record of them in your database

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Event Sales & Support Systems

The biggest mistake training companies make when choosing software to run their business is believing that standard e-commerce software used by companies that sell physical products online can somehow be modified or massaged into software suitable for event management needs. Only software designed from the ground up with specific event management needs in mind will truly support your growing business or capture your current business accurately. Signup Systems was initially created to manage one of the largest personal development companies in the world and has been used since 2003 to capture registrations and manage event based sales for hundreds of thousand of attendees around the world. The systems below were all built with your needs in mind.

For example, our Event Calendaring system allows you to display upcoming events dynamically indicating whether or not the events are sold out and how many seats remain. It will then provide a link to register if appropriate. But because we know that you may want to fill up events happening next month before selling into events for next year, you can create calendars that only allow signups into specific upcoming events even while showing event dates well into the future.

Event Calendars - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Our Event Calendaring system is extremely powerful and provides you complete control over visual and graphic layout. Calendars are created in the database to show upcoming scheduled events and can be filtered by event type, by groups of event types, by location, and even by country and state/province.

take registrations online directly into specific events
display distant future events but restricting registrations to them while seats remain in earlier scheduled courses
display the number of seats remaining to establish urgency for nearly sold out events
provide web map links for your venues and hotel and booking info for each event to minimize support calls from registrants
automatically embed event calendars in your emails using simple email merge tags

Database Supported Course & Product Catalogs - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Store your event and product descriptions in the database so they can easily be displayed throughout your website using a single link or as part of your shopping cart catalog.

sell course credits which customers can schedule into specific event dates during checkout
use single links in emails or anywhere on your website to sell seats for specific events
updating database course and product descriptions automatically updates existing catalog pages

Multi-Currency, Multi-Domain Shopping Cart - Systems to Increase Sales

^ up ^Use the shopping cart system to sell your courses and products in any currency you accept

use different domain names to sell in different currencies, i.e. www.yourcompany.com and www.yourcompany.ca for US & Canadian dollar shopping carts.
use shopping cart tax handling to ensure compliance with appropriate tax laws
use different domains to sell your courses with all data centralized in your Signup Systems database

Password Protected Special Offers - Systems to Increase Sales

^ up ^Sell your courses in packages or sell single courses at discount pricing using the Offer System, while also using passwords and/or expiry dates so that only those with the proper "code" can buy them.

use passwords and expiry dates to provide special pricing or offers for select groups
use with printed coupons or gift certificates only available to customers with "unlock code"

Attendee Registration Support Pages - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Use our "Registration Options" page where attendees are able to perform a number of actions that they might otherwise need to contact your company directly to perform, which then will reduces the costs associated with administering your events.

allow attendees holding multiple seats on behalf of family and friends to reassign those seats to their guests so your office staff won't have to perform this action manually
allow attendees to issue or reissue your event specific "final confirmation email" so they can arrive on time and be better prepared for your events
allow attendees, when appropriate, to transfer their registration to later event dates

Attendance Reports by Email - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^When used to inform your marketing efforts, these attendance reports can help you focus on increasing enrollment for events which are under-performing and properly plan staffing, event support and costs for your live events based on current registrations.

receive twice per day automated attendance reports by email
reports sent to private list of recipients established by your organization
use special estimating logic to convert actual attendance numbers into likely turn-out rates factoring in no-show probabilities

Graduates-Only Web Pages - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Create special sections of your website only accessible by graduates of a course so that you can provide opportunity and reasons for customers to return to your website repeatedly which will increase customer loyalty and provide new opportunities to up-sell.

create graduate website sections for each of your different courses
username and password protected graduate pages ensure that only graduates can access private materials
use nested graduate pages for progressive course levels

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Event Management Admin Systems

These applications represent an interface between your administration of events and the actual events themselves. Use these scripts to predict how many people will attend, what kind of sales you can expect to make when offering your back end courses, and what the total revenue is likely to be. Print name tags, produce registration rosters, and create special attention lists for attendees. When used effectively, these systems will help you make informed decisions, save money in administrative costs, and generate higher turn out rates of well prepared attendees.

For example, the Final Confirmation Email Automation System allows you to send an email containing all the relevant details your attendees need to know in order to show up well prepared. Not only can the sending of this email be done automatically, a report will tell you exactly how many people have received it so you can concentrate your administrative efforts on contacting those who have not.

Event Creation & Management Tools - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Create course or training "types" in the Product Database and then schedule an unlimited number of dates for each event type. You can then manage your events individually with an array of tools and reports.

schedule events in the system and choose venues, locations, room capacities, start and end dates, and whether or not waiting lists are available
use default event presets to simplify and speed up event scheduling and creation
use the "Vague Date" value to communicate general time or season of upcoming events until specific event dates are nailed down for instance, show "Summer 2012" on event calendars until the venue contract has been signed
use event import tools to import all your past events or to quickly import your entire schedule of upcoming events from a spreadsheet
use our special 'at event' registration tools to "check in" attendees as they arrive to produce definitive "in attendance" lists

Attendee Registration Reports - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^There are many different types of attendee related reports that you can use to ensure your business is managed efficiently. Get reports of past "Graduates" and get upcoming event reports with expected revenue. Generate attendee registration reports for producing name tags, confirming payment and projecting 'at event' sales.

use event attendee "states" to track registrant enrollment from initial registration, to confirmation of status and finally to graduated status upon course completion
pull reports of all upcoming events showing capacity, number of attendees, and estimated turn outs based on no-show estimates
for those with the appropriate security role, attendance reports can even show amounts of money collected for upcoming courses, amounts still due, and percentage of total attendees who have paid in full
get reports in HTML or on spreadsheets of attendees for any or all of your courses, whether past or future, based on state or time period.
pull lists of all attendees scheduled for the future or pull lists of graduates from all courses
export your lists to further refine them or to find people from specific cities, states or countries, and then re-import your refined lists for broadcast emailing or other business functions
following your events, use attendee registration reports to perform mass state changes converting those who attended to "graduated," and those who didn't attend to "no show" so that permanent records are kept and so that financial accounting logic ensures revenue is properly tracked
use our "Reg List" report prior to your event to collect all relevant attendee information in a single place for the purpose of event planning, accounting, name tag generating, and at-event sales forecasting

Final Confirmation Email Automation - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^If your organization uses some kind of "final confirmation" email for attendees that summarizes pertinent details of an event to ensure they arrive on time and are properly prepared, you will love this system! It not only helps automate the sending of this email, but will tell you which of your attendees have actually received the final confirmation and which have not. Properly implemented, this system will guarantee higher turnout rates, better-informed attendees and significantly reduced administrative costs.

"attach" a different final confirmation email for each of your events, or reuse a similar email for the same event types while utilizing email merge tags to automatically insert event-specific details into the outgoing emails
use the Automated Event Email "Drip" System in combination with this system to produce the best results with the least administrative effort
save valuable time and money by concentrating your phone contact efforts only on those customers who have not yet received the final confirmation email

Post-Event Sales Reports - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Once all your at-event sales have been data-entered, and at any time in the future, you can pull up event sales reports that will break down the amounts of money collected, amounts still outstanding, and a summary of all the products and courses and offers purchased by your customers at a specific live event.

generate sales reports for individual events or for all sales during a given period of time
use order form "source" to generate reports for a given period of time for Internet or Phone sales
reports breakdown sales by offers sold, individual items sold, and the money collected and amounts still outstanding

Attendee Notes, Transfers & Status Tracking - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Every registrant in our system is tracked with an "Attendance Record" that permanently stores all relevant information enabling you to perform forensic investigations of your attendees in case of payment or registrant controversies. Further, use attendee states, such as "Tentative" to more effectively communicate about registrants throughout your organization.

use "Active" and "Active-Confirmed" states to determine which attendees have received your "final confirmation email" and which have not
apply "Graduated" or "No Show" states following events to permanently track those who completed your courses and those who did not while ensuring all the financial tracking of revenue is performed
transfer attendance records from one scheduled event date to another with a simple form submission and record transfer reason in a permanent history
use the attendee notes to ensure your at-event staff are informed about relevant issues for any of your attendees
reassign attendance records to different people with a simple form submission
use our "Course Credit" feature to keep track of people who can't actually be registered for a specific event date, but still have the right to take some future upcoming event
review complete attendee history including details about when changes occurred, which changes occurred, and which administrator performed the change

Volunteer Management Tools - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^If your organization uses volunteers to help staff live events, you can use our Volunteer Attendee States to keep permanent records of your volunteers while also simplifying the organization of and communication to this special group of people prior to and after your events.

track volunteers using the same system for tracking attendees so that all reports, lists, and attendee support systems can be used to find and manage volunteers
four Volunteer Attendee "Statuses" allow you to manage those volunteering for upcoming events, those who volunteered at past events and those who cancelled or no-showed
pull reports of past volunteers from specific event types and use No Show and Cancelled states to filter for your best performers
if your volunteers pay for partial tuition, meals and/or accommodations at your events, all revenue and sales are managed as they would be for any attendee
use the attendee notes field to record post-event performance ratings for later use when gathering lists of volunteers for future events

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Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems

Our CRM systems will help you provide better customer service, up-sell products more effectively, make call centers more efficient, and permanently track customer communications. Search for, create new, and modify the records of your prospects, customers and leads. You can then easily access all the critical information about their relationship to you, such as their full purchase and payment history, their attendance history and list of upcoming courses, plus the history of conversations and issues you have recorded about them. By having your entire event management admin systems and your CRM in a single software package, you'll save administrative costs and increase sales.

For instance, the Customer Communications History & Issue Tracking tools, called the 1-Call System, can be used to track incoming customer issues from start to finish, but can also be used to schedule follow up calls for your sales team.

Customer Contact Information Database - Systems to Decrease Costs

Use our "people" pages to track everything from basic contact information and demographics to complete purchase, attendance, and payment histories.

create, import or signup an unlimited number of people in your contact information database
tag records in your database as duplicates of the same actual person
manage email subscription status and use our Unsubscribe and Email Bounced status notices to ensure the highest communication standards with your customers
review email sent history for any emails sent from your installation and resend emails with a single click
assign special "Roles" as appropriate to your staff to provide or remove access to the various administrative scripts, reports and systems
customer specific report pages for each customer will show you what a customer has ordered, what you've shipped to them, and what payments they've made toward which orders

Customer Communications History & Issue Tracking - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Use our "1-Call" system to ensure every customer communication is logged and all issues are tracked, starting with the person who takes the customer call to the final person who resolves the issue and reports back to your patrons. (The client issue tracking system is called the "1-Call" system because it's creation was intended to ensure customers only need to place "one call" to have any issue resolved.)

create permanent communications history records for any issues you want to keep track of for any customer in your database
create an unlimited number of 1-Calls for each customer... ...every 1-Call functions like a conversation "thread" which can be updated or added to at any point
each 1-Call has both an "Owner" and "Assignee" so that all customer issues can be delegated to appropriate administrators while an Owner remains accountable to the customer
"Active" and "Resolved" states in combination with the "Must Resolve By Dates" automatically generates a To Do List on the "My 1-Calls" page for each of your administrators
send email directly from the 1-Call system and retain a record of what was written, by whom and on what date. A 1-Call "Email Merge Tag" allows a reference number to be included in the email to customers to help orient your phone staff to the specific issue quickly
notification of 1-Calls appear strategically on various administrative pages so your staff can be made aware of issues for customers at the moment the information is most relevant
the 1-Call system is tied into the Accounts Receivable System so that all contact with a customer regarding money owed is permanently logged
the "My 1-Calls" page provides a full view of each administrator's currently active 1-Calls, providing a manager with an overview so they can intercede as needed
1-Call breakdown report shows the number of issues each administrator currently has allowing for better distribution of issues in the event of bottlenecks, staff illness, or staff turn-over
use 1-Call system as an intra-office delegation tool. For instance, a marketing manager can create 1-Calls for other staff to perform sales calls and can schedule the action so it will show up as a priority as the deadline approaches.
import past call-logs or any other form of text based data you need to migrate from your existing database in order to preserve "conversations" you've had with your customers in the past
use the import 1-Calls tool to create a mass of 1-Calls for any purpose such as delegating sales calls or recording significant notes for a specific group of people

Order Form Management System - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Create and modify your customers' order forms and take real-time credit card gateway payments, record scheduled credit card payments, take cash, and process check payments. Keep complete and permanent purchase histories for all your customers so you can serve your customers more effectively and up-sell more successfully when making new offers to them.

create unlimited order forms for a customer in any currency and with state, provincial and federal taxes as appropriate
see all orders for a customer at a glance
when creating order forms to record sales that took place at specific live events, the system will automatically choose the correct currency and taxes from the related "Venue," reducing time and eliminating administrative errors
use the Order Form "Duplicator" to significantly reduce order form data entry times
"Order Form Payment States" tell you at a glance whether money is due, whether the order has scheduled payments, and if all payments are up to date, or whether the order is paid in full
your administrators can process real-time credit card payments once your merchant accounts and payment gateway are enabled
live payment gateway refunds can also be performed as needed with the click of a button
if you accept payment plans from your customers, you can record scheduled credit card or scheduled check payments to properly account for your orders
when scheduled payments are used on orders, our system uses "intelligent money allocation" logic to ensure money collected is associated with goods and services already provided before those for events taking place in the future
create order form related communication tracking so that customer care issues for a specific order can be permanently referenced
order tracking for each individual "Sold Item" (anything you sell for money using an order form) ensures complete forensic accountability for all deferred and earned revenue
if your organization offers Gift Certificates as part of your marketing & sales strategy, you can apply your gift certificates to orders like payments
our order form handling system is extremely powerful and allows you to make changes at any point after order creation while retaining permanent record of all changes. This flexibility is essential for event management companies selling services to be delivered in the future since so much can change for your customers between the time they place an order and the time they take the event.
full payment history displayed on each order form page including failed credit card payment records

Customer Attendance Tracking - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Associated with each customer contact information page is a report dedicated to the customer's attendance history where your administrators can see at a glance all past, course credited, and upcoming attendance records.

sections for past and upcoming attendance records are displayed separately
if your organization will allow "Course Credit" attendance records, these will be displayed on this page along with a link so that you can schedule the credit for a specific event date
attendance record history is summarized to show relevant information such as which event the record relates to, what system Offer it relates to and what the Attendee Status is so you can quickly determine if further administrative action is required
send several kinds of attendee specific emails directly from Attendance page with a single click

Customer Critical Alert Notification - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Some types of information about a customer will be true for that customer always, and needs to be communicated to your staff who actually manage the live events. For instance, if a customer has a medical condition, such as a wheelchair, you can record this in the Critical Alert form to ensure your customers' needs are known throughout your organization.

critical alert information can be stored for each customer
when a critical alert exists, the contact information page will display an alert for administrators who may be dealing with the customer at that moment allowing them to determine if the information is relevant to their current administrative action
critical alert information appears on the "Reg Lists" for at-event staff

List Creation & Management Tools - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Easily generate and manipulate "Lists" of people in your system for a variety of business purposes, such as call-back lists, graduates lists, and broadcast email lists etc.

create or modify existing lists easily from many of the report pages using a simple and ubiquitous list manipulation tool
send email using the broadcast system to all the people with email on a list
create lists for use with the signup form system so that anyone completing a specific signup form will be automatically added to that list, i.e. a monthly newsletter list
export lists of people in CSV form for generating name tags, mailing labels, or for any kind of mail merge action
lists can be owned or shared by your administrators so that a group of people can contribute to or modify a list, or a list can be made private by taking ownership as needed by your business procedures
autoresponder sequences can be attached to lists so that anyone added to the list will begin automatically getting the sequence of emails
use expiry dates with lists when generating lists for temporary purposes to ensure your list system does not become cluttered and unmanageable

Data Migration & Import Tools - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^If you already have a great deal of customer and event related information in your present database, use our import data scripts to migrate data into your Signup Systems database quickly using simple spreadsheets. Further, these same data import tools can be used to creatively eliminate costly arising from slower data entry efforts.

import customer contact information, events records, past attendance records, and even "call-log" or other text records into our issue tracking system.
spreadsheet templates provided for easy importation
import history records indicates the percentage of imports performed successfully and an export report provides details of import failures so further imports can be performed with greater success
contact information import can either update or ignore existing records allowing migration to take place over an extended period if necessary
import tools can be used to migrate existing data from your current system or can be used to create new record quickly rather than using less efficient data entry processes

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Product & Offer Handling Systems

Anything that generates revenue for you, whether a course, a book, coaching, or even a cancellation fee can be represented in our Products database and you can create an unlimited number of goods, services & fees. Once your products are created, use the Offer system to package them together in powerful and compelling ways to increase sales and set your company apart from your competition.

For example, you might create an offer which includes tuition for four of your courses for the price of three and includes free books, CDs or DVDs as further enticement to purchase. And then when a customer purchases the first offer, you can up-sell a second offer which includes tuition for a family member or guest at further discounts. Here's the secret for creating compelling offers: when the price of an offer is obviously and greatly exceeded by the value of the items in the offer, it becomes extremely difficult not to purchase, especially when the buyer was already seriously considering purchasing one or more of the included items at regular price.

Unlimited "Products" Database - Systems to Increase Sales

^ up ^Naturally, our database allows you to track and sell "products" called events, but it can also be used to track and sell physical products such as books, CDs & DVDs. You can even create items in your database to collect service charges such as course transfer fees or meals & accommodations surcharges.

create an unlimited number of "products" in your database representing your goods, services & fees
each "product" is identified with a unique ID number referred to as a "Stock Keeping Unit" or SKU which can have its own unique name, description, pricing structure, tax exemption status, and shipping rates
create SKUs as one of three general types: events, memberships or products. Products can be used for all physical goods or non-event services or fees
store an HTML description with each SKU for use with your public shopping cart
create categories to further define your SKU types for administrative and marketing purposes. For instance, you can create event categories to indicate whether your events are "workshops", "camps", "seminars" or "Introductions".
establish category level, or individual SKU level tax exemptions as needed

Membership Management Tools - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^If you presently offer or are considering offering monthly memberships, we have systems to support some models of membership programs which are an excellent way to generate ongoing monthly or annual revenues.

create memberships automatically upon graduation from your courses
sell memberships and create scheduled payments to generate monthly income
use members' only private web pages tied into membership payment status to grant or restrict access
send emails automatically from the membership system each month as part of your program
create membership programs which charge a single flat fee, monthly fees, quarterly or yearly
membership status shows up on your Reg Lists so that members of your programs will be known to you when attending live events so you can provide VIP services or better predict membership sales

Offer Creation & Management System - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Our "Offer" system allows you to group one or more of the goods & services you sell into a special package which you can then sell at a single price. Companies using offer packaging strategies invariably outsell their competition who's appeal to the public often appears one dimensional. With our offer system you can create incredibly compelling packages to appeal to customers who want to get the most from their money and don't mind spending more than they set out to, so long as they can see they are getting outstanding value.

One of the most successful trainers in the world and a New York Times best selling author once confided: "People don't buy products, they buy packages." (Get the free report to find the who said this.)

create special packages, called "Offers", that can include several product SKUs together offered at a single price
create offers which contain both courses and products and establish internal pricing for each item in your offer while only showing your customer the single overall offer price
create offers which allow customers to choose between two OR more items in the offer. For example an offer could contain Item 1 & Item 2, and a choice of either Item 3 OR Item 4. Combining AND and OR options in offers allows you incredible packaging control to increase the appeal of your offers, while simultaneously reducing the administrative costs of managing such complex packaging structures.
store HTML with each offer for selling on your public website
set passwords for your offers so they can be sold using coupons or gift certificates
use offer expiry dates so that "take-away" marketing techniques can be used to increase urgency and sales
use special designations called offer "types" and "features" to create on-the-fly purchasing benefits for customers such as "premium seating" at your events, or "meals included" to increase sales
associate offers with the specific events you presented them at for tracking and administrative purposes
attach lists to offers so that anyone purchasing the offer will be added to the list and if it is associated with an autoresponder, the customer will begin getting the sequence of emails

Product & Offer Enabled Shopping Cart - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^While the majority of your sales may take place at your live events and be data-entered by an administrator afterwards, Signup Systems also comes enabled with a fully functional shopping cart and payment processing system so you can sell all of your events, products and offers on the Internet.

enable "shopping carts" for any domain name you own and wish to sell from while still populating a single database
use your event calendars to sell seats directly into specific events online
allow customers to add "course credits" SKUs to their shopping carts and then schedule themselves into specific events upon checkout
sell elaborate offers online that can include several different course types, physical products, and "either or" choices and upon checkout the customer will breakout the offers using a simple "checkout wizard".
international companies can actually use multiple different payment gateways to collect payments in different currencies all within a single Signup Systems installation and all populating a single unified database
use a single line of code to place events, products and offers onto your web pages giving you complete control over the structure and layout of your online catalog
use "Add-Ons" so that if one item is purchased using the shopping cart, a second item is presented as a "must" purchase. For instance, purchasing a seat at one of your events could trigger an Add-On requiring the customer to also pay for meals and accommodations.
use "Up Sells" as a way to make purchasing recommendations to a customer when an item they add to their cart triggers the system to up-sell another item or offer of your choice.
built in logic allows you to offer a course for free while also requesting a credit card as part of an agreement that could require the customer to actually attend the free event or pay a "No Show Agreement" penalty. As long as your at-event "back end sales" are sufficiently high enough, offering your introductory programs for free but with a No Show Agreement can be an incredible tool for filling your rooms and increasing your sales volumes dramatically!

Product & Offer Sales Reports - Systems to Increase Sales

^ up ^There are a number of reports that can be run for finding sales of products and offers that you can use to refine or expand your marketing.

pull reports to summarize the number of orders and total sales from individual or groups of SKUs
pull reports on the sales of specific offers or groups of offers
limit reports to specific periods of time, order form payment states and/or order form sources
export reports for further analysis in spreadsheet format

Product Sales Shipping Tools - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^You may have already discovered the benefits of recording your live events and providing those in CD & DVD packages both as free add-ons or for sale in offers designed to increase event sales. If your organization sells any king of shippable goods, Signup Systems can manage this for you. Regardless of where your sales of physical products take place, at live events or on the Internet, if you need to ship them to your customers, you will find our product sales shipping tools to be both simple and efficient.

use the shipping report page to find all order forms containing items "To Be Shipped"
the shipping report is sorted by order form age so the oldest orders are given priority for shipping
automatically send emails to your customers with shipping tracking number and shipping company website address to reduce customer service calls
"premium shipping" logic exists which you can use at your discretion to allow some orders to be prioritized in the shipping cue
ability to mark products as "On Backorder" for later shipping
details of which items are shipped, when, what tracking number, and with which shipping company are all recorded permanently to support customer enquiries

^ TOC ^

Finance & Accounting Support Systems

Nowhere is the difference between standard commerce and event management commerce more significant than in the area of finance. Your company may have to deal with the complexities of scheduled payment plans using credit cards and checks, and the money that is paid for your courses most likely doesn't become revenue until the day the course is complete. Because payment for tuition is often made far in advance of the event taking place your ability to account for such things as taxes, referral or sales commissions, and even attendance transfers is anything but simple. Fortunately, most of these complex issues are fully resolved in Signup Systems providing you better business intelligence for decision making and reduced administrative costs.

For instance, we track the fulfillment status of everything you sell so that only when you actually deliver a good or service do we recognize the money paid for that as revenue and we simultaneously break out the tax. Reports can be run and exported as spreadsheets which include detailed itemizations of each transaction so that your bookkeeping can be performed in as little or as much detail as you'd like. Finally, we even account for revenue reversals when goods or services are refunded or returned by the customer after previously being recognized as revenue.

Real-Time Payment Gateway Processing - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Use your existing ecommerce merchant accounts and payment gateway with Signup Systems payment gateway processing systems to collect money in real-time from your customers. If you don't yet have ecommerce merchant accounts, we can help you using one of our partners who is happy to deal with speaking and training companies (an industry you may already have discovered tends to have difficulty getting accounts with typical merchant account providers).

take credit card payments from your public shopping cart
run credit card payments in real-time when data entering orders taken at your live events
all payments and even declines are recorded to assist your administrators in auditing your sales and handling accounts receivable issues
record previously taken payments in a non-capture mode so that you can migrate your existing business into Signup Systems
credit card number verification logic reduces administrative errors and increase successful processing efforts

Scheduled Credit Card Payment Automation - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^In order to close more sales you may need to allow your customers to establish payment plans. Fortunately, Signup Systems was designed to easily handle this otherwise complex task. Create an unlimited number of scheduled payments in the system associated with one or more different credit cards and all your payments will be processed automatically while you sleep on the scheduled date.

schedule unlimited payments with an easy to use interface that allows you to spread payments out evenly or spread them out in any way your customer may prefer and even allows you to use a different credit card for each payment if necessary
payments are run by your Signup Systems installation starting in the early hours of each new day automatically so that by the time your administrators arrive every morning all your payments will be processed
pull reports at any time to find all credit card payments run in any given period of time whether they were scheduled payments or executed in real-time
failed payments result in order forms appearing on your accounts receivable pages so you can immediately begin contacting customers to recover missing payments
all scheduled payments are displayed on order form pages for easy customer support
scheduled credit card payment reporting pages summarize amounts to be charged and also breaks down payments into individual payments so they can be preprocessed with a button click if necessary
extremely robust system capable of processing tens of thousands of credit card payments automatically every day

Scheduled Check Handling System - Systems to Increase Sales & Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^While taking scheduled credit card payments is fairly common for event management companies, many either choose not to accept scheduled check payment plans or do allow them and spend an unreasonable amount of time handling and accounting for these checks. Signup Systems provides a very elegant solution for handling scheduled checks which makes it possible and even easy to manage this payment method allowing your company to accept scheduled checks if you don't presently, and significantly reducing the administrative costs of handling check payments if you do.

record unlimited scheduled check payments in the system to completely reflect the checks you have whether spread out evenly or sporadically
record check details such as the name on the check, the check number and any relevant notes
easily put checks "on hold" upon customer request so they are processed on a different date than their actual check date
support to properly track cancelled orders with scheduled checks exists so checks can be voided, destroyed or returned to customer as appropriate and full accountability is maintained
all scheduled payments are displayed on order form pages for easy customer support
check payments applied toward order forms automatically on scheduled date and then reported so that appropriate checks can be deposited
unique scheduled check ID number can be stamped or written on back of checks to make later retrieval for deposit trivial

Multiple Currency & Tax Management Solutions - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^If your business is international in scope now or plans to be in the future, Signup Systems will allow you to grow your business into new countries so that as you expand you can continue to use a single installation and single database to bring all your international business together administratively. US and Canadian currencies are available by default, but you can create any currency you want in the system and add the appropriate federal and local taxes to ensure your sales are properly accounted for in each tax jurisdiction.

Canadian and US currencies built in to system by default, but you can easily add any other world currency to account for your sales
create federal or local (state/provincial or even county/municipal) taxes as needed
allow a tax to be applied on your public shopping carts or restrict the tax to only being applied administratively
system logic automatically tracks revenue and tax and exports reports in spreadsheet format so you can account for taxes payable with any bookkeeping solution you use

Accounts Receivable (A/R) Management System - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Collecting payments on courses you've already delivered, or ensuring attendees of upcoming events have paid in full before attending can be an extremely complicated and frustrating process. Fortunately, Signup Systems provides tools to not only bring the accounts receivable issue to your attention, but also to track your communications efforts with the customer to the point at which you either successfully collect payment or are forced by uncooperative customers to declare the account "Uncollectible". Our A/R system turns this essential business task into a highly efficient solution which will ultimately both save you money and help you capture more revenue.

use separate A/R system report for physical products, membership & courses to ensure the most appropriate communications and methods are used to when collecting money owed
our system allows you to alternatively send emails and make phone calls to customers who have outstanding payments until after a preset number of collection attempts you can designate the order as "Uncollectible"
full integration with our customer communications tracking solution so that a full history of your efforts to collect can be permanently recorded
create emails to reflect the escalating urgency of each progressive communication attempt that can be sent automatically from the A/R system. Use special email merge tags so that the customer can be made aware of the issue's details such as the amount owing, the order form associated with the issue, and the reference number they should note when contacting your company to make payment.
each A/R issue has a different administrative "owner" so that when multiple staff are performing collections actions, they can avoid cross-talk that might otherwise confuse or anger your customers

End-to-End Revenue Accounting - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Because your company most likely doesn't generate "revenue" at the same moment that you complete a sale, Signup Systems has designed automated solutions for tracking money collected by the system as payments from the point at which the money is received and held on deposit as "deferred revenue", to the point at which it becomes "earned revenue" when your attendees complete your courses. Anything can happen between the time the customer places the order and actually attends and if you don't separate your deferred revenue from your earned revenue your company can be operating in the red without knowing it or paying tax on refunded sales.

payments made into the system are automatically accounted for using "On Deposit" accounts which can be compared at any time to your bookkeeping records
revenue "recognition" performed automatically as you "graduate" attendees after your live events
taxes collected for sales are also broken out when revenue earned so that tax only needs to be paid at the time it's due and not before
full reporting for all possible streams of revenue recognition is available for your bookkeeping needs
automated revenue reversals performed when items are returned or graduated attendees are refunded including reversal of taxes paid out so that when bookkeeping, these reversals can be recovered
full transaction level accounting performed and available so that a forensic audit of your accounts can be performed by your organization

Payment & Revenue Reports - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Payments and revenue are handled as two separate but related systems to most accurately reflect the realities of most event management businesses which often take payments well in advance of the courses being sold. To ensure your business has all the essential information needed for business intelligence and accounting purposes, we supply reports for both payments and revenue recognition.

payment and revenue reports can be pulled for any given period of time and exported in a spreadsheet format for analysis and accounting purposes
revenue reports can be exported for all revenue related transactions during any given period of time
generate reports separately for revenue earned from physical products & fees, membership fees, or tuition from completed courses

Payment Reconciliation Tools - Systems to Decrease Costs

^ up ^Whether you accept cash, check or credit card payments, you'll want to be able to fully reconcile these payments against your actual bank accounts to ensure that administrative errors are kept to a minimum and to eliminate the possibility of fraudulent payments being created in an effort to pay for tuition without using actual money. Using the payment reconciliation tools you can ensure that all the "money" tracked in your database actually represents real money you've received.

internal "merchant account" system allows each individual possible payment type to be uniquely reconciled by you. For instance, US Cash is one payment type (merchant account) that is different from a Canadian Visa payment type
an auto-reconcile tool exists which allows you to import a spreadsheet from your payment gateway to instantly reconcile all your payments processed through that gateway saving your accounting staff endless hours of reconciling payments individually
create reconcile records for groups of payments all at once and later merge those reconcile records together

Event Management Software Systems You Can Grow With

Increase Sales

Decrease Costs

Before You Proceed

Marketing, Communications & Sales Systems

Event Sales & Support Systems

Event Management Admin Systems

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems

Product & Offer Handling Systems

Finance & Accounting Support Systems

Event Management Software Solutions for Trainers, Speakers and Seminar Companies

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Sales

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Costs