Senior Event Manager in Croydon

Business: emap Brands: Quality Food Awards, DFNI, Motor Trader, Independent Retail News, Packaging News and others.

Base Location: Croydon / Hybrid (3 days from home, 2 days in the office)

Employment Type: Full time, Permanent

Start date: January 2024

Salary: £ Competitive + 10% Bonus

Visa sponsorship or remote working are not available.

emap is a progressive B2B subscriptions, networking and content business with industry-leading brands, reaching customers across multiple touch points including online, print, and face to face at events, exhibitions and awards.

About the company and the brands: emap’s Amber division in East Croydon consists of 15 exciting B2B brands and over 20 events annually including the UK and Irish Quality Food Awards, Frontier Awards and Environmental Packaging Summit to name just a few. The events portfolio is made up of conferences, awards, summits, and roundtables taking place in both the UK and Internationally, both in a physical and virtual capacity.

Overall Purpose of the Role: As a Senior Event Manager, you are part of an enthusiastic and busy event operations team running conferences, exhibitions, bespoke business events, award ceremonies, and virtual / hybrid events throughout the year. Supporting the Head of Event Operations, this role is for an experienced individual to help lead and develop a high performing team to successfully execute our portfolio of events. You will have operational responsibility from concept to delivery, using creativity and a keen eye for detail to deliver industry-leading physical and virtual events. Your aim is to produce commercially successful events that create quality business engagement for clients, enhancing and strengthening products and brands involved. emap brands rely on high quality events, and close relationships with the industries they operate within. This is a collaborative role which is both fast-paced and challenging while also being social.

Key Responsibilities:

• Manage a portfolio of pre-defined leading industry awards, conferences, and bespoke marketing solutions events (physical & virtual) on time, within budget, and to an exceptional standard – ensuring that brand values are met.
• Management of P&L / Budgets for individual events with a focus on value for money and maximising contribution to the wider business.
• Tracking and monitoring P&L of individual events – including revenue, costs and profit.
• Thorough knowledge and tight control of the cost base for each event, ensuring profit targets are met.
• Researching and sourcing and building relationships with venues, suppliers, and contractors negotiating to achieve the best value and service.
• Building and maintaining relationships with internal stakeholders to support the success and strategic aims of the event and / or brand.
• Manage customer relationships with critical and strategically important sponsors, speakers, and delegates, acting as a point of contact.
• Problem solving, decision making and escalating issues as they arise.
• Ensuring that the overall experience is positive, exceeds expectations and collate customer feedback identifying areas for improvement.
• Fulfil sponsorship deliverables with attention to detail to maximise return on investment.
• Analysing year on year performance and leading or participating in event debrief discussions, identifying future trends or improvements.
• Identifying areas for event growth and future opportunities for the brands.
• Proof-reading content throughout the event process.
• Take an active role in coaching and mentoring junior team members to ensure that the overall team are working to emap standards, values, and processes.
• Responsible for ownership, accountability, and reporting for all logistical elements of the allocated events.
• Implementing and scheduling event timelines and planning cycle according to planning framework, ensuring all deadlines are adhered to.
• Managing and assisting with full awards entry process.
• Managing awards judging days – both in person and virtually.
• Inviting and maintaining regular communication with judges and VIPs.
• Communication with speakers and hosts pre-event and management on-site, collating presentations, headshots and bios and coordinating AV requirements.
• Regularly updating and cleaning event databases in accordance with GDPR rules and regulations.
• Accurate and regular reporting upwards of revenues, profits and KPI’s vs target, recording weekly entries and shortlist conversion rates.
• Communicate regularly and coherently all relevant information and key developments with your line manager and full project team.
• Working with AV providers to create full-scale first-class event production, collating shortlist, winners, and sponsors content to create awards presentations etc.
• Liaise with event venues on menus, final numbers, specific event requirements and function sheet.
• Produce Risk Assessments and collate Health & Safety documentation from all third-party suppliers.
• Working with the Marketing and Editorial teams to deliver on brand digital and print collateral including proofing and testing event websites, ensuring all event content is brand-aligned and meets guidelines.

Skills and Experience:

• At least 5 years’ experience of working in a similar events role, preferably in a B2B environment.
• Experience in managing a team and can demonstrate strong leadership skills.
• Experience of delivering full-scale events – through the complete event life-cycle from conception to delivery.
• Demonstrable knowledge of managing costs within a budget.
• Excellent negotiation skills.
• Experience of risk assessments / health and safety / contingency planning.
• Client management experience preferred.
• Skills in developing virtual event offerings, including webinars, podcasts, whitepapers.
• Excellent organisation and administrative skills.
• Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills.
• Experience in working under the pressure of conflicting priorities.
• Previous experience with CMS platforms, such as Evessio beneficial.
• Advanced in Microsoft office.

Core Competencies:

• Clear, effective communication within your team.
• Exceptional verbal and written communication, with strong negotiation skills.
• A strategic thinker with excellent planning, and organisational skills.
• The ability to work well under pressure, maintaining high standards in a fast-paced environment while meeting multiple deadlines.
• Commercially focused with a strong understanding of finance, profit and loss statements and budgets.
• Able to read and interpret data effectively.
• Takes a creative approach to every-day challenges.
• Capability to multitask effectively, and prioritise a high-volume workload across multiple projects.
• A team player, but secure working independently and on own initiative.
• Proactive and confident – Not afraid to constructively challenge ideas, where appropriate.
• Confident at building strong working relationships both internally and externally.
• Flexibility in working hours on the lead up to events based on needs of the business.

Personal Attributes:

• Confident and enthusiastic events professional.
• Organised and resourceful.
• Self-motivated, self-sufficient and accountable.
• Deadline driven and results orientated.
• Team player.
• Sharp attention to detail.
• Adaptable and flexible to change.

Learning & Development:

At emap, we believe that employee learning and development are the key drivers of our success. To ensure continuous growth and meet the ever-changing demands of the workplace, we provide an environment that fosters continuous development for our employees. Our employees are encouraged to identify their areas of personal and professional development aligned with our strategic areas, including management development, health, safety & wellbeing, sales, events management, marketing strategy, editorial, and information technology. We have a structured framework designed to help equip our employees with the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviours to excel in their job roles, contributing to achieving our organisational objectives. To support our employees’ career development, we have designed specialised programs, as well as other stand-alone role-specific and generic courses, under the emap academy. This exciting position is a full-time hybrid role. 2 days in the office, 3 days from home. This could change over time depending on business needs.

Benefits:

• 25 days of holiday per year (with the option to buy or sell).
• Health plan.
• Life assurance.
• Cycle-to-work scheme.
• Discounted gym memberships.
• Retail discount vouchers.
• Rail season ticket loans.
• Private virtual GP access.
• Pension scheme.
• Income protection and more.
• Continuous learning & development opportunities.
• Seasonal flu jabs on site.
• One paid volunteer day per year.
• Summer and Winter parties.
• Work from home during August.
• In-house Excellence Awards and other innovation projects.