Pandemic or Not, Events go on Without a Hitch using HeyForm

2020 has been a roller coaster. We’ve gotten used to expecting the unexpected and riding the waves of uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our lives, forcing us to rethink everything from the way organizations are run to how work is done. And many large events, including exhibitions, and conferences, had to be cancelled or held online.

This is the reality that Jenny and her colleagues at her event management company have been facing since March 2020. With mandatory stay-at-home orders and nonessential businesses asked to close, these restrictions had an immediate impact on Jenny’s company, which organized close to 75 events per year.

A trade show was cancelled, other events started being called off and nearly all the company’s employees started to work from home. In the middle of this, Jenny used HeyForm to collect crucial information in a way that was organized, quick, and efficient.

HeyForm helps tide over COVID-19

The company had been using HeyForm for more than six months, and to Jenny, it seemed the best option to use in the time of crisis as well. HeyForm was used to ask hundreds of exhibitors, sponsors and attendees, what they wanted to do with the money they paid for the different events.

“Things were starting to fall through the cracks,” Jenny said. “From my previous experience, HeyForm is both powerful and flexible, and seemed the right tool for the job. And using the forms to the full potential is the best decision we made.”

Many of Jenny’s clients opted to hold virtual events, rather than in-person ones, during the pandemic. In the face of it all, the company continued to use HeyForm to create new, branded exhibits and sponsorship applications for these virtual events.

Quickly Adapting to Cancellations

Jenny also made rapid modifications to event cancellation forms. This allowed exhibitors and sponsors to request a full refund, roll that amount over to a future event, or participate in a virtual event and receive a partial refund.

HeyForm provided Jenny with the tools she needed to put a professional touch on the data-collection process. She was able to create PDF templates and link them to specific online forms. Whenever an exhibitor or sponsor filled out the event cancellation form, or an application for a virtual event, the PDF template was populated with the submitted information. These could be attached to personalized auto-response emails.

“From helping us track data and status, to attractive thank you pages that users automatically saw after filling up forms, HeyForm helped us provide a great experience to our exhibitors, clients and sponsors,” Jenny said.

Emails made Easy with HeyForm

Event managers and contract administrators receive a notification email once exhibitors or sponsors submit a response via HeyForm, along with the PDF copy of their responses. Users also get the flexibility to modify the sender and reply-to fields for the emails that go to sponsors and exhibitors.

“This reassured exhibitors and sponsors about the legitimacy of the correspondence” Jenny said. “It also allowed the forms to appear quick and easy to fill out, despite the conditional rules we had set in the back end.”

Integrations for Easier Workflows

With the help of HeyForm’s Google Suite integrations, event coordinators were able to automatically get submitted information in the secure format needed to update the database and financial records. Easy integration with Slack and Telegram meant that we could communicate our updates, within and outside our organization, without a hitch.

“Without HeyForm, the managers would have had to track thousands of emails manually and accurately update the financial records,” Jenny said. “All of the data we had or were receiving had inconsistent information. With HeyForm, we were able to create a structure around which we could manage the information gathering. With the constantly shifting dynamics of the pandemic, HeyForm helps us deliver quality to our clients.”