Are you feeling overwhelmed by all the work that needs to be done to let people know about your event?
Relax! There are lots of online event marketing tools for designing eye-catching graphics, promoting your event to the right audiences, and selling tickets. In fact, there are so many marketing platforms and event promotion tools that it can be tricky knowing where to start your search for the perfect solution.
That’s why we’ve created this guide.
Here at Eventbrite, we know a thing or two about events. That’s why hundreds of thousands of event creators from all over the world used our suite of tools to create, organize, and promote 5 million events in 2022.
But we also know that no two event creators are 100% alike — that’s why we want to make sure you know what to look for when you’re trying out different event marketing tools.
The 7 Best Event Marketing Tools: Reviewed
What should you look for in an event marketing tool?
If you find yourself wondering how you’re going to go about promoting an event, it’s worth looking into tools that can help you accomplish your event goals and event objectives.
There are a few different types of event marketing tools out there. Some platforms focus on helping you solve one problem or perfect one area of your event planning, while others deliver an all-in-one solution that supports every aspect of organizing events.
To give you an idea of how those solutions can turbocharge your event promotion, let’s take a quick look at some key benefits you can expect when you choose the right tools.
Boost ticket sales
Event marketing tools can help you sell more tickets — both directly and indirectly.
When we talk about indirectly selling tickets, we’re talking about tools that drive traffic to your website or event page to generate sales leads. If you can convert the leads those tools bring in, that means higher ticket sales.
Event marketing tools can help generate leads through email marketing, social media, and pay-per-click services like Google Ads. They can also give you a platform to direct your promotion efforts toward past customers or people that may already be interested in your type of event. Over a third of US customers say they’re likely to buy products they read about in email newsletters.
But the best event marketing platforms also support direct ticket sales if they’ve got the ability to list your event and create and issue tickets.
And if you want to optimize your audience targeting, event marketing platforms can help you reach the right audiences faster. For example, you can target audiences with ads based on their age group, previous events they’ve attended, the city they live in, or where they went to college.
Looking for more tips to help you fill seats? Check out our six top tips for increasing your ticket sales.
Open up new branding opportunities
In addition to helping you drive online traffic and create sales opportunities, event marketing tools also enable you to create a persona around your brand and your event.
Branding showcases your values and the personality you want customers to see at your events. A static ad in a local newspaper probably won’t showcase that personality — but with the right marketing tools, you can design graphics, artwork, videos, and gifs that jump right off the screen and tell users exactly who you are.
By styling your event branding using a sleek marketing tool, you can create a cohesive and professional event marketing campaign in no time. You can also customize various web components to create a holistic and 100% branded customer journey that removes friction and gives people confidence they’re making the right choice by purchasing a ticket for your next large-scale event.
Want to learn more about the importance of event branding? Take a look at our ultimate guide.
Streamline and automate workflows for larger events
Event marketing tools can save event creators a huge amount of time. Think about it: maintaining an active social media presence for a big event is enough to keep an entire team of people busy. So, what if you’re planning and promoting an event all on your own?
That’s where an event marketing tool — or, more specifically, automation functionality — saves the day.
For example, you can set up artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbots as part of your customer service strategy to triage your Facebook messages with FAQs. You could also use an email marketing platform to create automated attendee journeys for customers in which different emails are automatically sent to them based on when they visit your website or buy a ticket.
This automatic filtering and segmentation allows you to sort your audience data for optimized targeting. That means clearer communications and more personalized interactions that’ll establish a stronger relationship with your potential customers and expand your reach as a brand.
Finally, the best event marketing tools should be able to generate automated custom reports to ensure you’re focusing your marketing efforts in the right places.
For example, you could use reporting tools to set up automated event analytics reports that indicate which display ads are being clicked on and which aren’t so that you can make informed decisions and stop wasting money on non-performers.
Bolster attendee engagement
The right event marketing tool will enable you to facilitate better communication with attendees before, during, and after your event. This can help you build excitement in the run-up to an event as well as ensure you’re giving customers all the information they need to enjoy it.
There are also powerful tools in the marketing space that enable you to create event communities to foster year-round engagement.
You can collect customer email addresses and ask for permission to email them about future events they might be interested in. From there, all you’ve got to do is upload their data onto the marketing platform of your choice, and — voila! — you have a built-in pool of sales leads the next time you start planning an event.
Finally, event marketing tools allow attendees to share and promote your events. For example, setting up an event presence on social media platforms means users can tag and share your posts to spread the word organically — expanding your reach without you having to lift a finger or spend a dime.
Leverage big data for improved marketing
Event marketing tools are a fantastic way to leverage data to make everything about your event operations faster and smoother.
Some event marketing platforms have the ability to collect and sort customer data to build customer databases instantly. You can analyze that data and leverage it to optimize your marketing for future events or look at attendance rates to improve any upcoming events you have in the works.
You can even use the data sets your tools generate to build custom client personas that will help your team better understand who your customers are and where to reach more of them. By interrogating those attendee demographics, it will be a lot easier to coordinate data-led retargeting campaigns and personalizations that’ll make users feel like you’re talking directly to them.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Take a look at our guide on using big data for event marketing to find out more about how popular tools in the event marketing space can give you more information to help you create successful events.
What are the best event marketing tools for event creators?
Choosing the proper tools for your event marketing tasks is important — that’s why we’ve rounded up these options to assist with event promotion, measurement and analytics, social media promotion, and ticketing.
1. Eventbrite
Here at Eventbrite, we believe in making things simple. That’s why so many event creators use our all-in-one platform to support their entire event marketing process.
Launched in 2006, our platform is home to more than 800,000 event creators. In 2022, we helped create and market 5 million events — translating to more than 284 million tickets sold.
So, what makes our events platform so special? Above all else, it’s a one-stop shop for event creators and marketers.
You can create an event page and promote it on our sprawling events search engine for people to discover. You can also create and sell tickets — and thanks to our marketing tools, you can manage all your social media channels and automate email marketing on one dashboard.
Not only does that make life easier for event creators, event managers, and other event professionals, but it also helps you stand out from the sea of competition with better marketing campaigns and optimized promotions that target the right people.
Key features
What makes Eventbrite stand out from the crowd is its wide range of features. It combines ticketing, social media advertising, email marketing, and customer relationship management under one roof. It also includes:
- Ad management: Eventbrite enables you to use analytics and A/B testing to customize messaging and drive ticket sales.
- Custom branding: With Eventbrite, you can set up custom event pages and even embed a checkout widget directly on your own website so everything matches your brand style.
- Better insights from better data: Eventbrite lets you create Smart Audiences using proprietary data to boost email engagement, ad performance, and ticket sales.
- Automation: Use AI to pre-fill event details for quicker campaign launches, automate social media campaigns, and set up automated emails.
- Audience engagement: Eventbrite’s integrations with social networks like Facebook enable you to actively promote and sell tickets on a range of social media platforms.
- Email marketing: Eventbrite allows you to gather subscribers, send over 10,000 emails a day and automate your workflows.
- Built-in audience: Eventbrite lets you create a custom event page and promote it for free on the world’s biggest events search engine, increasing ticket sales and ensuring your event turns up both on the Eventbrite search engine results and lands high up on Google and other search engine pages.
No matter what type of event you’re marketing or who you’re trying to reach — Eventbrite has the tools to help you make it happen.
How Eventbrite helps event creators
Want to hear from real event creators about how they’ve used Eventbrite to supercharge their event marketing?
Take a look at event creator Something Dope for the People, who used Eventbrite marketing tools to manage and optimize their email marketing broadcasts. Something Dope was able to reach the right people faster — leading to email open rates three times higher than the industry average and driving 2.5 times more traffic to their event page.
And if you want to leverage social media to sell more tickets, look at how LA-based event creator Secret Movie Club used Eventbrite.
Founder of Secret Movie Club Craig Hammill struggled to reach the right audience and sell tickets to screenings — and then he turned to the event marketing platform Eventbrite. By taking advantage of its social media integration with Facebook, he started selling tickets directly through Facebook — doubling ticket sales.
Meanwhile, craft brewing pioneers Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. used Eventbrite to tweak their social media marketing strategy to ensure they were reaching all the right people. Using Eventbrite’s A/B testing feature and budget automation, Sierra Nevada boosted its returns on ad spend to 10x.
Sounding good so far?
Sell more tickets on the world’s largest online event marketplace.
2. Bizzabo
Founded in 2011, Bizzabo is another all-in-one event management software tool for B2B event planners coordinating in-person, virtual, and hybrid events. Bizzabo has the functionality to support ticketing, event registration, and event promotion.
Bizzabo’s core features mirror some of the functions you can expect to gain using Eventbrite. For example, both platforms offer:
- Email marketing capability that lets you segment your audiences
- The ability to measure event campaigns with tracking codes, pixels, and integrations via Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager
- Create a custom event page to promote your event
While Bizzabo could be a good option for some event planners trying to set up new events, it’s worth noting the platform has a few downsides, too.
- High cost: Bizzabo doesn’t signpost its pricing structure online. But according to Capterra, the average price is $15,000 per year.
- No event search: Unlike Eventbrite, Bizzabo doesn’t have a built-in event search function or a discovery tool. That means it’s going to be more difficult for other Bizzabo users to find your events.
3. vFairs
vFairs is another all-in-one events platform. It’s been around since 2016, and around 50,000 exhibitors use vFairs to put on a range of virtual, in-person, and hybrid events.
vFairs shares some key features with Eventbrite, too. Both platforms offer you:
- An AI-powered assistant that can help you autofill content fields
- The ability to create custom landing pages for events
- The ability to create and send custom event emails or use premade templates
Although vFairs has some good core features you might find useful, it’s worth noting that the platform has some drawbacks.
- No free trial: With vFairs, there’s no free trial, and the pricing is not transparent. To find out what it’ll cost you, you have to get in touch with their team.
- vFairs may be expensive for large events: According to G2, the platform has a registration cap on some of its pricing plans that’s pretty low — starting with a cap of 500 registrations on its Registration & Ticketing Package. Translation: vFairs makes you pay extra for larger events, which may not be ideal if you’re trying to plan large-scale events on a budget.
4. Hootsuite
Keeping track of all of your social media accounts can be a juggling act, which is why Hootsuite offers a tool that allows you to manage them all in one place.
You can also track all your event-related social media activity, schedule and publish content, track who’s talking about your event, and measure your social media reach.
Hootsuite has some fantastic features in common with Eventbrite marketing tools. Both platforms include:
- Scheduling to optimize your social media posts
- An AI-powered assistant that can help you generate captions and come up with content ideas
Hootsuite is a handy social media marketing tool, but it has a couple of limitations you should be aware of.
- It’s a partial approach: Although Hootsuite is great for social media management, that’s all it does. It won’t offer a holistic approach to event marketing that includes other types of channels.
- Caps on user numbers: Hootsuite’s bottom-tiered plans don’t allow for a huge number of users, so it can be an expensive tool for larger teams.
5. Buffer
Buffer is another social media marketing tool that’s gained a lot of popularity in recent years. Buffer was founded in 2011 and has some big-name clients on its roster — and it has a few helpful features that Hootsuite doesn’t have.
For example, with Buffer, you can:
- Benefit from a simpler dashboard split into three categories (publish, reply, and analyze)
- Schedule comments on Instagram posts
- Get unlimited posts on each paid channel (platform cost is priced on a per-channel basis)
Buffer is a pretty useful social media marketing tool. But like a lot of the other promotional tools we’ve covered so far, it’s got a couple drawbacks to bear in mind.
- It’s not a holistic solution: Like Hootsuite, Buffer only handles your social media management. It doesn’t support you with email marketing or include discovery tools.
- Accuracy: Users report that Buffer’s post schedule optimization function isn’t always accurate.
6. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the world’s leading email marketing tools. It’s been around for a long time — but in 2021, it was purchased by software giant Intuit. Since then, Mailchimp has started to roll out a lot of useful new features to enhance your email marketing efforts.
Key features of Mailchimp include:
- An intuitive drag-and-drop email design
- A range of sleek email templates to save you time on email campaigns
- A calendar view and the ability to schedule sends to your email lists in advance
- Subject line recommendations
Mailchimp might be the king of email marketing, but you need to remember that it’s got a couple of limitations.
- Pricing is based on contact numbers: Mailchimp has a basic plan. However, if you want to communicate with a large audience and use advanced features, it’ll cost you more.
- It’s a partial solution: Mailchimp does email marketing really well — but it isn’t as comprehensive as tools like Eventbrite when it comes to managing social media marketing for your events.
But that’s not the full story. If you want to take advantage of Mailchimp’s email marketing capability and Eventbrite’s wide range of functions, you can integrate your Mailchimp and Eventbrite accounts to take your event marketing to the next level.
7. Canva
Don’t have the money to hire a graphic designer? With Canva, you can create social media graphics, posters, and other design elements using simple, customizable templates.
You can use a wide range of templates for free, and event creators can purchase additional design elements if needed. Your resulting image will look professional and go a long way to making your event look attractive to potential attendees.
With Canva, you get:
- Simple drag-and-drop graphic design
- Great editing features like background remover
- Instant animation
Canva is a really cool tool for event marketers to use, but there are a couple of things to consider.
- Canva only covers your designs: It’s not a comprehensive marketing platform. Canva is a great way to create designs for your event, but it doesn’t help you share those designs on social, email, or anywhere else.
- Canva uses a freemium model: Canva is free to play around on — but if you want to unlock premium design and branding features, you’ll need to pay for them.
Ready to choose your event marketing tools?
If you want to create unique events that your clients and customers will remember, you need the right tools. Event marketing tools can give you the data and functionality you need to reach the right people with the right messages — ultimately landing sales and filling up seats.
Just remember that there are very different types of event marketing tools, and some are designed to do more than others. With Eventbrite’s all-in-one solution, you’ll be able to plan, coordinate, and analyze a wide range of event marketing activities using one convenient dashboard.
Manage all of your event marketing in one place with Eventbrite.
