Trade show season is in full bloom. The calendar is full of events—everything from industry-wide trade shows sponsored by corporate marketing to regional conferences and local seminars staffed by local sales teams and admins.
Lots of exposure and networking opportunities lie ahead. That’s the good news. The bad news is, you’ve been tasked with coordinating and overseeing these events nationwide—literally hundreds of shows coast to coast for which you must provide banners, signage, pop-up displays, collateral, and promotional materials.
Even if you were equipped to manage multiple vendors over several months and across multiple time zones to secure the necessary materials for each of these events, that’s only half the battle. Once the deliverables have been produced, there remains the challenge of getting them all delivered where they need to be, when they need to be there. That means boxes need to be packed, shipping labels printed, and detailed delivery instructions provided. And since many of these items are reusable and need to be shared by several different groups, you also need to organize shipments between events and venues, often with razor-thin margins of error.
Unfortunately, very few marketing professionals have the experience and background (not to mention the time or desire) required to conduct vendor management at such a scale. Even the most talented individuals lack the skills required to simultaneously source commercial print jobs, manage packaging, order branded promotional products, and perform all the underlying fulfillment services. Bottom line is, you’ve been asked to perform multiple jobs disguised as a single position, responsible for hundreds if not thousands of tiny and timely details. Things can go sideways very quickly, and they often do. It’s not your fault.
Managing myriad events simultaneously demands more than just expertise. Because there are only so many hours in a day and days in a week, success requires working with a partner who has all the right credentials: software that helps maintain schedules and keep everything organized. Experience with fulfillment, printing, and shipping. Physical warehousing capabilities. And, perhaps most important, a history of effective event management.
The Right Partner Makes All the Difference
OnFulfillment offers a holistic solution to the event support challenges facing marketing professionals like you. Featuring exceptional fulfillment capabilities, decades of printing, production, and shipping experience, and a proven track record in event management, OnFulfillment will revolutionize your approach to event logistics.
With OnFulfillment, event management support transcends mere coordination. Instead, it becomes a strategic endeavor grounded in expertise and efficiency. Every aspect of your event—from banners to signage, booth furnishings to promotional giveaways, scheduled deliveries and returns—is managed via a powerful software platform that allows you to coordinate all your activities from the comfort of your office. Branded merchandise, customized collateral, special signage—all can be ordered right from your desktop and scheduled for delivery virtually anywhere in the world.
Behind the scenes OnFulfillment handles all the heaving lifting, preparing and packaging materials for shipment. Return labels are also included for reusable items, saving time on the show floor during tear down. Materials returned to the warehouse are scrutinized with meticulous attention to detail, cleaned and refurbished if necessary, ensuring that every resource is primed and ready for the next engagement.
Focus On More Strategic Issues
The benefits of partnering with OnFulfillment aren’t limited to mere logistics. By outsourcing routine and repetitive event management tasks to a dedicated expert like OnFulfillment allows you to focus on your primary role as a custodian of the corporate brand.
Freed from the shackles of logistical minutiae, you can refocus your energies on more strategic and revenue-enhancing initiatives such as brand management and lead nurturing. With OnFulfillment as your strategic ally, assuming the burdens of event coordination, you’ll be free to rediscover a sense of purpose and fulfillment as a brand marketeer.
Event Management Under OnFulfillment
What might life be like with OnFulfillment as your event planning ally? Let’s take a look.
First and foremost, no longer are you relegated to shuffling between buildings and storage rooms, taking inventory of available signage, collateral, and branded swag to determine what you have and what you need to order for the next event on the calendar.
Instead, OnFulfillment can assume responsibility for filling all your event marketing requests—everything from banners, signage, and booth furnishings to promotional giveaways like pens and water bottles. Items are taken from inventory, professionally packed, and prepared for delivery to the event. Through your software portal, you can track shipments and review usage and inventory reports. For reusable items that need to be returned, OnFulfillment will include return labels with the original shipment and inspect materials when they return to the warehouse. This includes inspecting for damage (and making the necessary repairs), cleaning items if necessary, and ensuring everything is ready to go for the next event—at which point the cycle begins again.
Not only does OnFulfillment offer an experienced staff to make sure all your events are managed and executed flawlessly, they deliver ancillary benefits to your employer as well. No longer will they be paying professional marketers like you to spend 20% or more of your time taking inventory, ordering print runs, sourcing branded giveaways, and chasing down shipments. With OnFulfillment, you get a strategic partner who not only helps you manage event materials and logistics but also provides the sophisticated software tools and support required to bring efficiency and control to an otherwise chaotic process.
See What OnFulfillment Can Do for You
Given the current corporate environment and the welcome return of trade shows, conferences, and seminars, both virtual and in-person, mastering event management is paramount to your organization’s ongoing success. Curious to see what life might be like with OnFulfillment as your event planning ally? We’d be happy to show you.
Learn more about how OnFulfillment’s comprehensive event management solution—combined with decades of experience—empowers you to effectively plan, manage and conduct successful in-person, virtual or hybrid events. If you’d like a more personal description of these services, visit our Contact Us page to request a meeting. Simply complete the form and include a request for an event management overview in the comments section.
