Would you like to accept online payments and registrations for your upcoming courses, classes, and conference events? We talked to the South Dakota Office of Emergency Management understand how they approach their course registrations.
Meet the South Dakota Office of Emergency Management
The South Dakota Office of Emergency Management (SDOEM) helps professionals such as emergency managers, public works officials, first responders, organization volunteers, and other emergency response personnel prepare ahead of time for crises through in-person training courses.
As former Navy SEALs Jocko Willink and Leif Babin wrote in their book Extreme Ownership, “Through careful contingency planning, a leader can anticipate likely challenges that could arise during execution and map out an effective response to those challenges before they happen.”
When an emergency response professional attends a training course with the SDOEM, they learn the skills needed to anticipate and plan for emergencies that happen in their communities. And when those crises occur, they can communicate effectively with response teams from different organizations.
Before using Event Smart
We had a conversation with Marissa from the South Dakota Office of Emergency Management about how they were previously handling course registrations and why they switched to Event Smart.
The SDOEM was already using another service, and as a government organization, they wanted a service that would help with security for venues and course participants.
Marissa shared:
“We wanted a service that would provide us with better security for our venues and the participants. Event Smart allows us to manage the emails registrants receive and the information contained in them. The first email lets registrants know they are awaiting approval to attend a training. Once approved, they receive the approval email that contains venue address information.”
This approach lets SDOEM screen participants as they can review registrations and approve those participants who are a good fit. At that time, Event Smart follows up with information about where a training course will be held.
Marissa also told us about the moment that the SDOEM chose Event Smart:
“You can choose plans that include many different features, or pick individual features that are right for your organization for incremental costs. From looking at many different services, it was obvious from the start that Event Smart was the choice for us.”
How the South Dakota Office of Emergency Management uses Event Smart
The SDOEM offers one day and multi-day courses for emergency response personnel. From first responders to county commissioners, each course is tailored for a specific type of audience.
Attendees can browse their course registration website and see upcoming courses through an Event Calendar. One thing that their courses have in common is that they capture information from interested participants and hold them for review as part of an attendee screening process.
Here is an overview of what that looks like:
A participant clicks to start a registration
Registration details are collected from the participant
The participant receives an email notification that their registration is now under review (and the event organizer is also notified)
A team member at SDOEM can then review a registration to approve it or leave it as not approved if someone is not a good fit. Participants that are updated to a registration status of approved for a training course will automatically receive an email with the venue and location details.
We asked Marissa to tell us how she would describe Event Smart to someone who hasn’t heard about it, and this is what she shared:
“Event Smart gives users a lot of control, even without many features added on. There are tutorials that are easy to learn from, but mostly the site is set up in a way that makes creating and managing events so user-friendly. But don’t worry — if you need any assistance, the Event Smart team will be there for you.”
How to set up a course on a course registration website with Event Smart
Do you need a course registration website for your upcoming courses? Create your course registration website through Event Smart today or contact us about your upcoming event.
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