Aventri Success Story: MPI Greater New York

A robust events software with superior customer service

MPI Greater New York Chapter, a member of MPI, the world’s largest association for the meetings and events industry, is committed to positioning meetings and events as a key strategic component of an organization’s success. Established in 1977, the MPI Chapter of Greater New York (MPIGNY) is committed to promoting the advancement of the meeting industry by exposing members to latest industry news, information, and trends during educational programming and networking events.

Location: New York, New York Founded: 1977 Employees: 550+ members Industry: Meetings & Events

Meeting Professionals International (MPI), the world’s largest association for the meetings and events industry, is committed to positioning meetings and events as a key strategic component of an organization’s success. Established in 1977, the MPI Chapter of Greater New York (MPIGNY) is committed to promoting the advancement of the meeting industry by exposing members to latest industry news, information, and trends during educational programming and networking events.

Challenge

Solution

Event

MPI Greater New York Chapter Challenge

Prior to using Aventri, MPIGNY’s event processes were scattered; meeting announcements, registration, payment processing and post-event evaluations were each handled by a different company. While seeking an event software that would put everything in one place, it was important that the system reflect MPIGNY’s own expertise in event management, says Kathie Stapleton, the chapter’s executive director.

While researching several software options, the MPIGNY staff experienced an Aventri live demo and video tour explaining each of the modules. During the final decision making process, staff beta tested Aventri for an event. MPIGNY ultimately selected Aventri after finding the event process was seamless.

What also stood out was working with Aventri’s responsive support team, says Stapleton, both pre-event and during events. While the Aventri system is very user friendly, she explains, there have been occasions where help was needed. “Because Aventri has 24/7 technical support specialists available via phone or online, MPIGNY staff were able to get the help they needed well after business hours and even while they were onsite. Stapleton says: “Literally within minutes of sending an email asking for help, the Aventri team is back to me acknowledging the issue and subsequent resolution of it.”

MPI Greater New York Chapter Solution

Since using Aventri, event processes have become way more efficient. With the need to continuously recreate three types of meetings, MPIGNY is utilizing Aventri’s event cloning feature to quickly setup registration.

Attendees are enjoying using the software on their end as well. With Aventri, not only is registering for an event a very user-friendly experience, but other features, like autopopulating attendee information, makes it an even faster process for reoccurring attendees. “Our members love the fact that, once they input their email address, the registration form self-populates for them,” says Stapleton.

“MPIGNY members also can edit their attendee information postregistration, a huge timesaver for both attendees and staff. Stapleton adds: “The ability for attendees to modify their own records without having to call our office and the option to issue professional looking invoices directly from the member record is a huge help.”

MPI Greater New York Chapter Event

MPIGNY regularly hosts education events for its members and for its March 2016 program, the organization partnered with the Disney Institute for a session on employee engagement.

Using Aventri, the team responsible for planning “Disney’s Approach to Employee Engagement” created registration and information forms which included fields for program title and description, speaker information, venue information, specific ticket pricing and more. Without making the forms live and while still in test mode, the registration forms were sent to the meeting committee and to the Disney Institute who required advance approval of all materials and announcements related to that program.

Once registration was live, the MPIGNY team used the Aventri’s email module to send registrant confirmation emails, follow up emails to send to those who have not completed their registration and event reminder emails that were scheduled at their discretion. “Both after registration check-out and in the confirmation emails, our members particularly appreciated being able to see who is attending the meeting,” Stapleton says. “We like that this information is only available once you’ve actually registered.”

Following all their events, MPIGNY further utilized Aventri to send evaluation surveys. For this event, the survey was customized with additional questions that the Disney Institute requested to be included, and they were also happy to have access to the corresponding survey reports afterward, says Stapleton.

The reports and data that Aventri is able to provide is helpful for MPIGNY in planning successful events. She says, “The information we get from this important step helps us to plan future events that are truly meeting our members’ needs.”

Kathie Stapleton Executive Director

“We run three basic types of meetings and not having to recreate the wheel each time is a huge time saver.”