By now, you've likely heard of the concept of AI and how it's redefining our day-to-day work. From programming to catering and everything in between, just about every industry is finding ways to capitalize on AI's power and automation.  Event planners are no different and in 2024, we’re finding new ways to utilize AI and revolutionize the way we conceptualize, organize, and execute events. And while an AI can’t necessarily plan your event for you, it’s really good at helping you get over the “blank page” stage of planning to get the creative juices flowing and aggregating your own data for a quick and concise summary you can use to gauge your event’s metrics. What’s more, AI is capable of analyzing pre-existing rulesets (like CMP guidelines) to quickly give you valuable insights and help you operate within specific parameters.  It’s for this reason that individuals who are using AI effectively are more efficient than those who have not yet incorporated this into their planning arsenal.  In this blog post, we'll explore the myriad ways you can leverage AI to optimize your events, enhance attendee value, and, ideally, save you a little time!

Utilizing your Tools
AI is like having a virtual assistant who works tirelessly to streamline your event planning process, from handling mundane tasks like scheduling, budget management, and vendor communication to more nuanced tasks like analyzing past attendees' behaviors, preferences, and feedback to create personalized and engaging experiences. You can utilize AI to enhance your event experience in many ways. However, this tool is only as powerful as the data you give it to work with.  So whether it’s analytics from last year’s event or simply how you ask it to complete a certain task, being as descriptive as possible is paramount for getting the most out of your AI tools.  Below we’ve created two examples of prompts and how they affect ChatGPT’s responses.

Now let's take a look at the output if we flesh out our command prompt a little bit more:

As with all word processing, don’t forget to proofread!  While fast and robust, AI is not infallible and is prone to making mistakes. Even when the information is correct, AI responses can sometimes, unsurprisingly, come across as flat or robotic. As such, it’s important to give a human touch to all your responses to ensure you’re properly conveying your company’s voice and to avoid any AI-detecting firewall parameters to ensure your emails arrive at the intended recipient.

Below we’ll explore some practical ideas on how AI - specifically ChatGPT - can assist with the planning process. We’ve included some prompt ideas with specific phrases you can emulate and the AI response to give you an idea of what to expect to see how AI can facilitate your own planning process. Use the table of contents below to jump to a specific prompt!

• Creating an Event Concept
• Sourcing Speakers
• Sourcing Sponsors
• Sourcing A Host City
• Sourcing A Venue
• Arranging Your Venue
• Building an On-site Menu
• Creating an Attendee E-mail Invitation
• Generating a Pre-Event Attendee Survey
  
• Creating an Event FAQ
• Creating Thought-Provoking Questions for Speakers
• Arranging On-site Speeches
  
• Creating Social Media Posts
  
• Creating Post-Event Survey Creation and Emails
  
• Creating Thank You Emails to Attendees and Sponsors

Creating an Event Concept:
Whether it’s helping to brainstorm and refine your event concepts, AI can assist in laying the fundamental groundwork for your event. By providing relevant themes, audience engagement ideas, solutions to industry pain points, and innovative approaches to live events in general, AI can help ensure that your event concept aligns with current trends and attendees' expectations, setting the stage for a memorable experience and a successful event.

Sourcing Speakers:
Leveraging AI’s natural language processing, event planners can streamline the speaker selection process. By providing either a list of potential candidates or simply the topics you’re hoping to address at your meeting, AI can analyze speaker profiles, bios, and past performances to recommend suitable candidates. This not only saves you some time but also ensures that the chosen speakers align with your event's goals and resonate with the target audience.

Sourcing Sponsors:
Believe it or not, AI can aid in sponsor procurement as well!  Whether it’s suggesting potential candidates based on past event sponsorships or brands that align with your event goals to crafting compelling sponsorship proposals. AI can analyze other successful proposals and industry trends and then use this information to create pitches that resonate with potential sponsors, increasing the likelihood of securing valuable partnerships.

Sourcing a Host City:
Bleisure travel is quickly becoming a trending topic in the event’s world and AI can assist in making your destination event as memorable as possible.  Use your AI to analyze factors like accessibility, local attractions, and historical event data to find the perfect destination for your event and your guests. AI can also help with building some fun itinerary ideas for during the off-hours to enhance the overall experience for attendees and ensure they get the most “leisure” possible for their bleisure travel!

Sourcing a Venue:
In addition to finding a perfect city, AI can also assist in finding the perfect venue.  By inputting criteria such as capacity, location, and budget, your AI can generate a list of suitable venues, complete with relevant details. This accelerates the decision-making process and can help secure a venue that aligns with the event's needs and enhances the overall atmosphere.

Arranging Your Venue:
Okay so you’ve got your venue picked out and now it’s time to organize!  As we mentioned earlier, one of the awesome things about AI is its power to operate within certain parameters you set out for it.  Graphic-driven AI models can help design elaborate floor plans for you if you’re able to give layouts from your venue and can work within guidelines to ensure your layout suits your event’s individual needs!

Building a Successful On-Site Menu:
By analyzing data from previous events and considering attendee preferences, AI can assist in creating menus that cater to diverse tastes and dietary restrictions. This can help make sure that the culinary aspect of the event aligns with past successes while being sensitive to DEI considerations.

Creating an Attendee E-mail Invitation:
Now that you have the groundwork laid for your event, it’s time to send some invitations!  Use AI to assist in crafting personalized and engaging email invitations by tailoring messages based on attendee profiles, preferences, and historical data. Collaborating with AI can make your invitations not only informative but also more resonating with recipients, increasing the likelihood of attendance.  It’s not just invitations either!  Use AI to advertise early bird discounts, last-minute sign-up reminders, and promotional marketing for the event.

Generating a Pre-Event Attendee Survey:
Along with the invites, AI can facilitate the creation of pre-event surveys to gather attendee preferences and expectations. By generating tailored questions and analyzing responses, you can gain valuable insights that help in fine-tuning the event details to meet attendee expectations which optimizes your event’s value.

Compiling an Event FAQ:
No doubt once invitations are out, prospective attendees probably are going to have some questions.  Using AI, you can efficiently create comprehensive FAQs that address common attendee queries.  Utilizing data from past events and anticipating potential concerns, AI can generate informative and user-friendly FAQs, saving time and providing attendees with the information they need to enhance their event experience and take some pressure off your team when it comes to answering questions pre-event.

Creating Thought-Provoking Questions for Speakers:
Keynote speakers are a big draw for attendees, so ensuring your guests get the most out of your speaker sessions is vital for boosting the attendee experience.  By considering the event theme, audience profile, and speaker expertise AI can aid in generating thought-provoking and relevant questions for speakers. 

Arranging On-site Speeches:
Whether you’re delivering the opening commencement at the cocktail hour or closing out the event with an inspirational farewell, AI can assist in organizing on-site speeches by generating speaker introductions, key talking points, and agenda details. While you’ll understandably want to give these results a pretty generous human touch, using AI here can help smooth the flow of presentations and give you a cohesive framework to build your speech around.

Creating Social Media Posts:
If you’ve read our Social Media blog, you know how big of a role social media can play when it comes to differentiating and elevating your event.  AI can enhance your social media engagement by generating creative and compelling posts. By analyzing trending topics and attendee interactions, AI can help create content that is relevant and resonating with your target audience, increasing online visibility, and generating event excitement.

Creating Post-Event Survey Creation and Emails:
You’ve likely noticed that a lot of these AI ideas include utilizing data from past events.  AI can actually help streamline the post-event survey creation process by generating insightful questions and analyzing the feedback you receive accordingly.  Not quite sure what to include on your survey?  AI can assist with that too!  Use its suggestions to create a starting point for your survey and then tailor the questions towards your event specifics for some truly tailored feedback.

Creating Thank You Emails to Attendees and Sponsors:
Along with your post-event surveys, you likely want to send some thank yous to both your attendees and your sponsors.  AI can automate the process of creating personalized thank-you emails. Utilize your on-site attendee interactions analytics and sponsorship contributions to  generate some heartfelt messages that express appreciation, strengthen relationships with key partners, and keep post-event engagement high!

Editing Existing Content
While we've established that AI is great at laying the framework for content, it can also play the role of editor in your planning process. AI enhances your written content, whether you're refining emails with professional buzzwords or giving a fresh twist to old verbiage. It ensures proper punctuation and collaborates seamlessly for improved quality. Try taking something you've written and asking your AI processor for comments, edits, help, or to refine it and have it guide you to a perfectly edited paragraph. Feel free to play around with the prompts and requests, as it will reply to the exact words in different ways, even when they're synonyms.  This makes for a more polished final product and saves you and your team a lot of time. So give it a try, and remember, the more content you submit, the more likely the output is to sound human!

Conclusion
A lot of experts agree that while AI won’t necessarily be taking anyone’s jobs, individuals who have integrated AI into their toolkit and are utilizing it to its fullest potential might.   As a result, the integration of AI into event planning is not just a luxury or a buzzword anymore, but a necessity. Event planners who embrace AI technologies will find themselves at the forefront of innovation, delivering unforgettable experiences and maximizing attendee value with tailored content unique to your business.  Dazzle your attendees and sponsors, make less work for your team, and get ready to bring your events into the future!