Wedding venues are expected to be the brains, brawn and beauty when it comes to a couples wedding. And in terms of priority, couples place choosing a venue as the #1 priority after getting engaged. Now that’s a whole lot of pressure!

A venue rental is also one of the most expensive line items on any couple’s wedding budget, falling only behind food and beverage. And while operating a wedding venue comes with HUGE earning potential, it also comes with extremely high expectations from couples and loads of operational demands. Not to mention, today’s newest remote planning challenge (aka COVID), that’s left couples asking for more and more options to book, tour, and plan their entire wedding completely online.

It’s these demands that have venues realizing the need for not just business tools, or even wedding-specific tools, but a venue management system tailored to their unique venue needs. Specifically, venues are asking for more targeted marketing, custom lead management tools, venue-centric event management software, and custom analytics that help them run their business.

More qualified leads

If I had a penny for every time I heard a host ask for quality leads over quantity, I’d never need to write again. I cringe listening to host stories surrounding traditional marketing designed to drive the highest number of leads that may never result in a booking. Thankfully, there is a better way, which includes finding the right leads, combined with a streamlined process to achieve higher conversion.

Weven’s curated portfolio of nontraditional venues allows us to target our marketing towards couples that best fit your space. It makes us more efficient and provides you better matched leads.

For Example -- Think of finding a venue like shopping for a car. When shopping for a car, you can either go to a brand name dealership like Subaru or BMW; or, you can choose a mixed lot for all types of cars. You might find your dream car at the mixed lot, but it’s not without hassle, more back and forth questions, and a lot more luck -- think needle in a haystack type pain. Wedding Venues are no different. It’s important to make it easy for couples to find you amidst other similar venues they are searching for. If not, you risk lots of dead leads, low quality inquiries and a much worse ROI.

When leveraging Weven, customers enjoy a thoughtfully designed search experience that minimizes unnecessary questions and prioritizes successful match rate. Venues enjoy more qualified leads, resulting in improved conversion rates and significant time savings. In fact, last year alone, Weven hosts converted 3 times more couples than the industry average after having given a tour.

“We are very pleased with not only the number of bookings that we’ve received this year, but also with the high-quality clientele that Weven has delivered.”
~ Meredith, Happy Venue Host, October, 2019

Lead management tools made just for venues

You wouldn’t buy a haircut fit for everyone -- Of course not! There's seriously no such thing! Why should a CRM be any different? CRMs are carefully designed tools designed to manage your leads more efficiently, provide you better customer insights, and ultimately help you convert more sales. They also should integrate with your other business functions seamlessly. To do so, they need to be specifically tailored to your needs.

Imagine a lead management tool built just for wedding venues. It captures the leads from not just your website, but your three other marketing channels too. Next, it funnels them, automatically, into one simple dashboard. YES -- ALL leads, from ALL platforms, in ONE place. After, you can leverage your dashboard to respond to leads, quickly access your documents, share preferred vendors, and confirm deliverability and open rates from each of your leads.

A venue management system focuses on solving venue-related challenges and optimizes solutions to specifically meet those needs.

Venue-centric event management software

It’s not hard to find an event management software these days that tailors to specific industry segments like planners or vendors. But where you ask is the venue love? We asked the same thing.

At Weven we focus on the venue hosts who do it all. From collecting COIs, to streamlining vendor management, hosts enjoy a one-stop-portal giving them access to each of their booked events. Through a unique venue-specific planning portal, couples and their vendors plan and collaborate together which feeds venue host accounts with real time updates. No more chasing down vendor lists, or searching for the most up to date timeline. Simply log in to your account and find up to date info on each of your events.

"The feature that drew me into partnering our Garden with Weven Venues is the event management capabilities. We may have multiple people working to manage events, so a central communication area will provide each of us with the ability to quickly understand where each event stands.”
~ Scott, Venue Manager at Hahn Horticulture Garden, Blacksburg, VA

Wedding venue data and analytics

How should I allocate my marketing budget? How fast is my team responding to leads? What stage of the sales funnel am I losing couples? These are all important questions when running a wedding venue, but how do you find the data?

Weven’s venue analytics dashboard focuses on key industry and venue performance metrics that support key decisions you’re faced with each day. Without these insights, hosts risk overspending on an acquisition source that doesn't convert. Or worse, you might miss out on business insights affecting your overall client experience. Having the right data at the right time is key to growing or sustaining a healthy business.

Future Proof Your Business

In today’s competitive market, it’s not just enough to offer a pretty space.  Hosts are expected to literally be Super Hosts -- thanks Airbnb ;).  At the same time, couples are becoming more and more tech savvy each and every day.  Offering couples venue-specific tools sets you apart from the crowd and serves as an investment to secure future demand. Weven hosts offer couples a venue-specific planning portal complete with a custom wedding website builder, in-app messaging and insightful planning tools to help them plan on the go, stay organized and communicate easily with you, their most amazing host. 

Remember, investing in amenities doesn’t have to mean new chairs. Today’s couples value custom tools that not only help them plan but stay connected. Venues who value customer experience, work hard to adopt new amenities, and in today’s world, technology should not be overlooked.

Interested in learning more about venue-specific tools for your venue business? Learn more https://weven.cc/wedding-venues or schedule a call with a Weven team member today.