Use these Salesforce features to enhance your next event.

Top 5 Salesforce Features for Streamlined Event Management

You might not know it, but your Salesforce CRM can be an impactful part of your event management strategy.

Salesforce is rich with features that can enhance and simplify the event planning experience, and with the right apps in tow, you can tackle all aspects of event management in one place—your CRM! 

For those who might be unfamiliar with managing events in Salesforce, you’re in luck. In this post, we’ll break down the best Salesforce features and show you how you can use your CRM’s built-in tools to plan better events.

Here are the features we’ll cover:

  1. Contact profiles.
  2. Dashboards and reports.
  3. Salesforce mobile.
  4. Custom fields.
  5. Salesforce inbox.

When you understand how to get the most from these features, you’ll be able to use them to propel your events forward in innovative—and profitable—ways.

Bonus: Are you a nonprofit looking to enhance your fundraising events and other initiatives? See how Salesforce can help by reading Double the Donation’s reviews of the top Salesforce apps for nonprofits just like yours!

Contact profiles are a Salesforce feature that allow event planners to learn more about their guests and design more strategic events.

1. Top Salesforce Feature: Contact Profiles

What’s the Salesforce feature?

It goes without saying that the ability to store customer, lead, or other important contact information within your database is one of the primary functions of any CRM, Salesforce included.

In Salesforce, you’ll be able to create accounts for all the businesses, organizations, and individuals you interact with and store contact details relating to each of those accounts.

Within each business or person account, you’ll have access to as much data as you need to keep tabs on your customers in a meaningful way. For instance, you can store:

  • Contact information, including address, phone number, and email address.
  • Social media accounts, with a real-time feed visible in Salesforce.
  • Activity history, with relevant notes or documents attached.

You can also customize the information displayed within contact (or account) profiles; that way, you have the most relevant details and data on hand for whatever project you’re taking on, including your next event.

How can this Salesforce feature impact your event?

The data stored within your CRM’s accounts and contact profiles should be the backbone of all of your initiatives. Who your customers are can inform everything you do, including marketing, sales, and yes, even event planning!

When you have a comprehensive understanding of your audience, you’ll be able to plan a more intentional event that caters to your customers in effective ways. 

Let’s look at just a few examples of contact profile data that can affect your event strategy:

  • Event location — where will you host your event based on the geographic locations of your potential attendees?
  • Guest list — whom will you invite to your event, and who is most likely to attend based on activity history, interests, and other factors?
  • Event agenda — what content will your customers be most interested in, and how will you organize the event schedule in a way that appeals to a variety of guests?
  • Ticket options — how will you break out ticket pricing based on guest type (i.e., members, non-members, VIPs, major donors, etc)?

Use the Salesforce contact profiles features to create a strategic ticketing plan.

This Salesforce feature at a glance: The data in your contact profiles can—and should!—play a major role in all of your company’s efforts, including your event strategy.

Salesforce's dashboard and reporting features can help event planning teams view their event progress during and after their event.

2. Top Salesforce Feature: Dashboards and Reports

What’s the Salesforce feature?

Having a complete data set won’t mean much if you can’t view your data in a manageable way. Luckily, Salesforce’s dashboards and reports can help you get a grip on the information that matters most.

To understand what these tools can do for your organization, let’s first explain the difference between a dashboard and a report:

  • A Salesforce report is a list of records that answer a question or set of questions defined by the user. Essentially, you set the criteria for what data you want to see, and the subsequent report presents the data that meets that criteria.
  • A Salesforce dashboard presents your report data in a visual way. Each dashboard component relates to a report, and you can combine multiple dashboard components to build out a full visualization of related reports.

Together, these features can provide deep insight into how your company is performing based on virtually any metric.

With a native Salesforce app, you can see all of your event and constituent information in one place.

How can this Salesforce feature impact your event?

Without knowing how your past events have succeeded (or fallen short), you won’t be able to move forward with upcoming events in a strategic way. That’s where Salesforce’s analytics features can be a game changer.

With dashboards and reports, you’ll be able to organize relevant data to plan better events. For example, you might compile data on:

  • Ticket sales broken down by price and type.
  • Total event revenue and type of revenue (i.e., ticket sales, merchandise, additional donations).
  • Attendance per event, session, track, or guest type (i.e., member vs. non-member).
  • Guest engagement based on post-event survey results.

Measure your event success using your Salesforce event management app's reporting and analytics features.

This Salesforce feature at a glance: Using Salesforce’s dashboards and reporting tools will allow you to view your events’ effectiveness in a meaningful, actionable way.

Salesforce's mobile app gives event planning teams access to all of the Salesforce features on any device.

3. Top Salesforce Feature: Salesforce Mobile

What’s the Salesforce feature?

Salesforce knows that in today’s world, mobile matters more than ever. That’s why they’ve designed Salesforce1, a mobile app that can meet your team where you are, whether that’s in the office, on a sales call, or at your event venue.

Salesforce1 gives you total access to your Salesforce data no matter what device you’re using. That means you’ll be able to:

  • View account and contact profiles.
  • Quickly search through data to find what you need.
  • Collaborate on team documents.
  • Update and manage records.

Plus, the Salesforce mobile interface is highly customizable and scalable to fit any organization or role. You’ll be able to quickly configure the app to fit your mobile needs, without any heavy coding or a need for development knowledge.

How can this Salesforce feature impact your event?

The advantages of mobile Salesforce access are pretty obvious—you get to have all of Salesforce in your pocket!

However, for events, the importance of this accessibility can’t be overstated. With a mobile-ready Salesforce event management app, you’ll be able to manage event data on-site come event day and view real-time updates as guests check in and interact with your event.

Your event planning team shouldn’t be the only ones benefiting from mobile optimization, though; your guests should also be equipped with plenty of on-the-go options, such as:

  • Mobile registration through a responsive event microsite.
  • Mobile passbook tickets.
  • Mobile agenda management to view and edit their event schedules.

By taking advantage of Salesforce’s mobile app, your team (and your guests) will have the freedom to manage their event experience how, when, and where they’d like.

This Salesforce feature at a glance: Salesforce’s mobile app, Salesforce1, can give you the full functionality of Salesforce on the go, leading to a more flexible event management experience.

Use Salesforce's custom fields feature to create a unique data set that corresponds to your event's various needs.

4. Top Salesforce Feature: Custom Fields

What’s the Salesforce feature?

Within Salesforce, you have a plethora of customization options. Adding unique fields is one of the simplest—but most powerful—ways you can augment your standard CRM capabilities and build out a Salesforce CRM that works exactly how you need it to.

Adding custom fields enables you to track the information that’s most important to your organization. You can add a custom field to any object, including contact profiles, opportunities, or campaigns.

The custom field creation process is fairly straightforward, consisting of 5 basic steps:

  1. Create a new custom field relating to a specific object.
  2. Set a field type for your new field (e.g., checkbox, date/time, text, URL, etc).
  3. Define your new field’s attributes, including label, name, help text, and default value.
  4. Determine security and permissions for this field.
  5. Add your new field to page layouts, either automatically or manually.

And there you have it—your custom field is ready to go!

If you’re looking for custom fields that go beyond the basics, hiring a nonprofit technology consultant might be the right next step. With a tech-savvy consultant behind you, your organization will be able to implement unique fields specific to your particular needs. In addition to improving your event management, detailed information about your donors can be beneficial when soliciting major donations, planning your annual fund strategy, and so much more. 

Of course, hiring a consultant takes time, but with DNL OmniMedia’s tips, you can find the right professional for all your customization needs.

How can this Salesforce feature impact your event?

Event planning adds another layer to the Salesforce data you store. As you collect data during registration, from pre- and post-event surveys, or through other event-related sources, you’ll need to add custom fields to ensure all the information you want to keep is properly stored within your CRM. 

For example, let’s say that you want the answers from your registration form to transfer to your contact profiles for future reference. That might mean creating custom fields such as:

  • Dietary restrictions.
  • T-shirt size.
  • Communication preferences.
  • Membership number.

Use Salesforce's custom fields feature to file event survey results in your CRM.

When you have this information stored in your guests’ Salesforce profiles, you can also use it to auto-populate registration forms for future events, streamlining the experience for your guests even more!

Bonus: Learn more about Salesforce event registration by reading this helpful post!

This Salesforce feature at a glance: Adding custom fields to your Salesforce objects allows you to see more of the data that’s relevant to your organization and your events.

The Salesforce Inbox feature can help your event management team stay on top of event communications.

5. Top Salesforce Feature: Salesforce Inbox

What’s the Salesforce feature?

With Salesforce’s simple built-in email tools, your team can centralize your email communications directly within your CRM.  Essentially, Salesforce Inbox infuses your email client with the intelligence of Salesforce.

Using Salesforce Inbox, you’ll be able to:

  • View CRM data within your inbox as you send emails.
  • Use Salesforce email templates to maintain consistency across your staff.
  • Sync your calendar for easy scheduling.

Since email communications are an essential part of most businesses’ daily operations, having connected email and relationship management tools is vital. If your organization is missing out on this functionality, Salesforce Inbox can be your missing link.

How can this Salesforce feature impact your event?

Email is a crucial component of event marketing and communications. It’s often the most common way to communicate with guests, potential attendees, customers, leads, and other contacts.

Salesforce Inbox can drive your email communications forward throughout the event planning and follow-up periods. For instance, you can use it to:

  • Design professional (branded!) email templates for all event-related scenarios to save your staff time.
  • Send personalized mass emails to get the word out about your event or follow-up with prospects generated by the event.
  • Monitor email open and click-through rates to measure how your emails are performing and determine appropriate next steps for each recipient.

When you can connect with your event guests in the most effective, efficient ways, you’ll spend less time sorting through your inbox, drafting email copy, or transferring email data into your CRM, and more time nurturing those important customer relationships.

This Salesforce feature at a glance: Salesforce Inbox can allow you to plan out your email marketing and communications strategy more strategically with the help of your CRM data.


Now that you know what Salesforce can do for your event, it’s time to get planning!

Check out these additional resources for more information on Salesforce event management:

  • Salesforce Event Management: The Essential Guide. Learn everything there is to know about what it takes to plan a stellar event using your Salesforce CRM in this in-depth guide. We’ll cover everything from finding the right software to perfecting your event planning process!
  • Top 10 Salesforce Apps. Build your perfect CRM system by discovering the best apps in the Salesforce AppExchange. These 10 game-changers can help your team with everything, from event planning to time management and more.
  • Salesforce Event Management: Why Native Matters. Looking for an event management tool that will enhance your Salesforce system, not limit it? You’re in need of a native app! Learn why native Salesforce apps are so important by reading this helpful post.

Learn more about Salesforce Event Planning with our simple 7 steps!

0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *