19 Event Planning Checklists that Actually Help

And the pressure to get better at it every year is real. Your willingness and ability to adapt to the demand for a more strategic planner with more responsibilities is real. With the events landscape changing constantly, event professionals need to learn to take advantage of every tool at their disposal.

• Planning an outdoor event?

  Check out our article, The Best Outdoor Activities for Team Building (With Planner Checklist] — produced together with experts at the Arizona Office of Tourism, it includes 3 checklists covering 17 must-know points that could make or break your event.
  

To help you cope with the increasing demands of your role and guide you through the execution of your event, we’ve compiled a number of checklists covering various stages of the event planning process. Use these to make sure you’ve covered all your bases from sourcing the right technology to planning for every eventuality.

Here’s an overview of the 19 checklists we’ve prepared for you:

BEFORE THE EVENT	DAY OF THE EVENT	POST-EVENT

Once you’ve got the go-ahead to take on your client’s event, you need to start quickly. You should start the tasks below at least 4 to 6 months before the event. The faster you begin the better!

The tasks are divided into 8 phases:

Project Management and setting up	Venue Research and Contracting	Registration and ticketing
Sourcing partners and vendors	Sponsorship	Marketing
Communications	Health and safety

• Project Management and Setup

Event planners are (or should be) natural project managers, but event the best can benefit from a little help.

Here is your high-level event to-do list for executing proper project management and setup:

Here is a ready-made template for you to use:

• Venue Research and Contracting

• Registration and Ticketing

• 85% of all event planners use event registration software. And 59% of event organizers state that their use of event tech will increase. – 100 Event Statistics (2019 Edition)

As you can see, making sure that your event planning checklist for registration includes provisioning for registration software is in your best interest.

Here’s the event registration checklist:

• Sourcing for Partners and Vendors

Once you’ve handled your event planning checklist for registrations and ticketing, you can start sourcing for partners and vendors.

Here are the things you’ll need to cover:

• Sponsorship Overview Checklist

Event sponsorship is a big deal, but almost half (49%) of event professionals thought that their biggest challenge was finding sponsors.

• Almost half (49%) of event professionals thought that their biggest challenge was finding sponsors. –Event Sponsorship: 117 Ideas and Trends To Get More Sponsors in 2019

To get you started on the right path, here is an overview of the tasks you need to complete to win sponsorship:

• Marketing Event Checklists

Your challenge in event marketing is to position your event value to your audience in a way that resonates with them and reaches the most (and most qualified) prospective attendees.

Moreover, with the massive shift in corporate marketing budgets to events, planners’ marketing efforts are being held to an especially high standard – particularly when it comes to tracking and analyzing marketing ROI.

• The event planner-turned-marketing strategist is now required to provide a framework of KPIs and other metrics that allow them to measure their event marketing activations and make their performance tangible. – From Event Planner to Event Strategist, 2019

The benefit of using data to get your event marketing plan right is that it substantiates in a clear, actionable way why you should pursue the marketing efforts you pursue. A good promotional strategy will pull in event registrations, build a solid contact base, and secure brand recognition.

With that said let’s see what your event planning checklist should cover:

• How to plan an Event with Proper Social Media Marketing

Social media is an unavoidable part of event marketing but it’s also a tough one as 51% of event planners reveal that they struggle with how to use it effectively for marketing their events.

So you need to have an event planning to-do list for your social media marketing, and here it is:

For your social media content, follow these guidelines:

• Event Communications Checklist

Smooth communication with key members of your team is crucial for everything to work out as planned.

There needs to be consistency in the information you communicate both internally and to your attendees, which can be a challenge when you also have to find an efficient way to disseminate it.

To ensure quality internal and external communication, use this event planning checklist:

• Health and Safety Event Planner Checklist

As an event planner, one of your most important duties is to care for both your staff and attendees. Paying attention to the health and safety of all participants is especially crucial at big events.

This means you need to take reasonable preventive steps to make sure no one gets hurt, and you should have a plan in case of any emergencies that may arise.

Here is what your health and safety event to-do list should include:

• Technology Event Planning Checklist

From registration and event management software to onsite engagement, event planning technology is an absolute necessity if you want to have a hitch-free event.

Apart from improving everything from data integrity to networking and lead generation opportunities, technology allows you to cut down on the more menial aspects of event planning so you can concentrate on the creative and strategic side.

Moreover, attendees are used to a technologically facilitated life, and expect many aspects of the event and their interaction with it to be managed through their smartphones. This is why 91% of event organizers believe that event apps are still relevant to their events and 75% of event professionals who don’t use them stated that they would adopt them.

These stats point to one thing: you need to incorporate event technology to your event and have it ticked on your event planning checklists.

To properly harness the power of event tech, use this checklist:

• Event Checklist for Audio Visual (AV)

Top-notch event AV is vital to a successful event, and not just because the quality makes the event a memorable one for attendees. People tend to quickly notice if something seems off and one single mistake could ruin the event for them.

Follow this checklist to ensure that you don’t miss anything:

• Event Planning Budget Checklist

It may seem like a daunting task to pull together an event budget, but as long as you craft one that’s feasible and include contingencies in case of emergencies, you’re off to a good start.

Here’s what you should have ticked on your event planning budget checklist:

Check out this example:

More:

It’s the day of the event, and there’s never been a better time to have your conference planning checklist handy to guide you towards success. To make sure you can hit the ground running when the doors open, ensure you’ve got these 4 steps covered:

Conduct final checks	Check-ins and meet and greet
Catering	Health and Safety

• Final Checks Event Planning Guide

• Check-In / Meet and Greet Checklist

• Catering Event Planning Checklist

• Onsite Health and Safety Checklist

The event may be over, but your job as an event planner isn’t. There are still a number of tasks you need to tick off your event checklist. At this point, you need to tie in all loose ends and get feedback from various key players.

Do this in 3 steps:

Project management

Presenters and vendors/suppliers

Sales

• Post-event Project Management Checklist

• After the Event: Presenter and Vendors / Suppliers Checklist

• Sales Event Planning Checklist

IN CONCLUSION

Event planning can be really draining, especially when you don’t have the right things in place at the right time. Following this ultimate event checklist, you’ll be able to have a smooth transition from starting your event business to executing post-event sales.