Need Help -> Tracking Event Participation

Bryan Hogan
Bryan Hogan Member Posts: 5 VERIFIED MEMBER
edited July 2023 in Sales CRM #1

I'm looking for a simple solution (ideally, built-in to Pipedrive) to keep track of who is participating in what events our company hosts and/or attends. Any recommendations? 

Here's one idea/concept we're exploring:

  1. Create a separate "Events Tracking" pipeline for tracking all events, with appropriate stage names that reflect our event management process. (Inviting, Attending, Following Up, etc.)
  2. Create one deal for each event in the "Events Tracking" pipeline.
  3. Associate each contact to that Event Tracking deal, MAYBE by using a few custom activity codes that reflect the participation level of that contact. (Invited, Attended, etc.)

I'm not positive this is the right/best approach, but don't want to do this in a spreadsheet! Thus, any recommendations or ideas would be appreciated.

Thank you!

Comments

  • Amit Sarda (AmitSarda.xyz)
    Amit Sarda (AmitSarda.xyz) Member Posts: 1,608 VERIFIED MEMBER
    1000 Comments 250 Likes Fourth Anniversary 25 Answers
    edited February 2022 #2

    Hi Bryan,

    Do you track the entire event invitation to participation journey by doing activities? If so, having a pipeline makes sense. But you need to evaluate how many such events you can reasonably have as 1 event = 1 pipeline based on your current proposed solution.

    The other solution is to have a single pipeline, add the name of the event in the deal title, and when the deal is won, update a custom multiple options field in the person record with the event they attended.

    Another solution is to use the Products feature in Pipedrive and have each event as a product.

    Cheers!

  • Bryan Hogan
    Bryan Hogan Member Posts: 5 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited December 2021 #3

    Hi Bryan,

    Do you track the entire event invitation to participation journey by doing activities? If so, having a pipeline makes sense. But you need to evaluate how many such events you can reasonably have as 1 event = 1 pipeline based on your current proposed solution.

    The other solution is to have a single pipeline, add the name of the event in the deal title, and when the deal is won, update a custom multiple options field in the person record with the event they attended.

    Another solution is to use the Products feature in Pipedrive and have each event as a product.

    Cheers!

    Thank you for the response, Amit.

    The solution I'm testing is a single pipeline for all events, then an individual deal within that pipeline for each event. (Sorry, should have made that more clear!) This seems to work fairly well, although it takes a few extra clicks to associate contact activities from various organizations to a deal that's connected to a different organization. (Right now, we associate the event "deal" to our company.)

    Also, thank you for the suggestion regarding the Products feature. I'll be looking into that as well.

     

    Thanks again for your help.

  • Melanie Farmer
    Melanie Farmer Member Posts: 2 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited December 2021 #4

    Hi Bryan,

    Do you track the entire event invitation to participation journey by doing activities? If so, having a pipeline makes sense. But you need to evaluate how many such events you can reasonably have as 1 event = 1 pipeline based on your current proposed solution.

    The other solution is to have a single pipeline, add the name of the event in the deal title, and when the deal is won, update a custom multiple options field in the person record with the event they attended.

    Another solution is to use the Products feature in Pipedrive and have each event as a product.

    Cheers!

    Hi Bryan and Amit, we are doing what Amit suggested in creating a product called "Masterclass" but it still creates individual deals so, if 500 people come, that's 500 individual deals in the pipeline (each buying the product 'masterclass'. 

    If I filter by 'product' view, the pipeline is a bit cumbersome and overwhelming!  Will keep exploring and sharing and will follow what you do to resolve this too

  • Bryan Hogan
    Bryan Hogan Member Posts: 5 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited December 2021 #5

    Hi Bryan,

    Do you track the entire event invitation to participation journey by doing activities? If so, having a pipeline makes sense. But you need to evaluate how many such events you can reasonably have as 1 event = 1 pipeline based on your current proposed solution.

    The other solution is to have a single pipeline, add the name of the event in the deal title, and when the deal is won, update a custom multiple options field in the person record with the event they attended.

    Another solution is to use the Products feature in Pipedrive and have each event as a product.

    Cheers!

    Thank you, Melanie.

    We are still just getting started (learning a lot), but so far, our approach is giving us what we need. In a nut-shell, we:

    • Created one pipeline ("Event Tracking") for tracking all events, with just two phases: Preparing, Following-Up.
    • Create one deal for each event within the "Event Tracking" pipeline. The deal gets associated to the hosting organization. (It might be a local trade group. It might be our company if we're hosting our own event.) We also use "Expected Close Date" as the date the event is scheduled to be conducted. 
    • Log contact-specific event activity within that deal. Right now, we have three activity codes for event tracking (Invited, Attended, Thanked, Showed Interest)

    We also created a few reports that show:

    • # events scheduled/conducted per month
    • # event attendees per month
    • # event attendees that showed interest per month
  • Sarah Inman
    Sarah Inman Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited December 2021 #6

    Hi Bryan,

    Do you track the entire event invitation to participation journey by doing activities? If so, having a pipeline makes sense. But you need to evaluate how many such events you can reasonably have as 1 event = 1 pipeline based on your current proposed solution.

    The other solution is to have a single pipeline, add the name of the event in the deal title, and when the deal is won, update a custom multiple options field in the person record with the event they attended.

    Another solution is to use the Products feature in Pipedrive and have each event as a product.

    Cheers!

    Great solution Bryan. 

    I'm working on setting this up for our organization and I'm getting stuck on your last section. Where are you logging the contact-specific event activity inside the deal? 

  • Bryan Hogan
    Bryan Hogan Member Posts: 5 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited December 2021 #7

    Hi Bryan,

    Do you track the entire event invitation to participation journey by doing activities? If so, having a pipeline makes sense. But you need to evaluate how many such events you can reasonably have as 1 event = 1 pipeline based on your current proposed solution.

    The other solution is to have a single pipeline, add the name of the event in the deal title, and when the deal is won, update a custom multiple options field in the person record with the event they attended.

    Another solution is to use the Products feature in Pipedrive and have each event as a product.

    Cheers!

    Thank you for the feedback, Sarah.

    As to the logging question, we create a single completed activity that's for each contact that's associated to that event. For example, we conducted a session at a conference in November where we had ~48 attendees. This setup looks like this in Pipedrive:

    • A single Deal to manage all activity associated to the event. The deal name represents the conference/session name + date ("Conference X - Presentation Y - Nov 2021"). Also, we associate the deal to the organization/contact that runs the conference.
    • For each attendee of that session, we create (and mark as completed) an activity that's associated to the person/organization that attended. (We use a custom activity titled "EV-A" (meaning Event Attendee) for this purpose.) The trick when creating each activity is to be sure to specify the contact name and contact organization for each attendee as Pipedrive will default to that activity being associated to the name/organization associated to the Deal.
    • In the case of our Nov 2021 event, we ultimately ended up with 48 "EV-A" activities (one for each attendee).
    • This approach allows you to see event activity by event (via the Deal), event activity by attendee organization, and event activity by attendee.

    See example/snip below of the activity list that I see within a Deal (with attendee names/organizations redacted). Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!

    image

     

  • DawnM
    DawnM Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Name Dropper First Comment

    I'm experimenting with this solution. One Event Tracking Pipeline with individual Deals for each event. It looks like, rather than adding the individual activities for each individual person, you can add Participants to the Deal. And, you can upload them from a spreadsheet which will be handy. It will show the participants as a list in the deal. Has anyone been using it like this for events?

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