New to Me: Planing Pod
One great thing about going to Wedding MBA was seeing all the new CRM tech that’s available for creatives - the world isn’t just Honeybook and Dubsado anymore. Well, new to me. I want to review a couple of them over the next few weeks, and I’m going to start with Planning Pod.
Overview of Planning Pod, a CRM for Wedding professionals
Everything You Need
First things first, Planning Pod has all the tools you would ever need for your wedding or event business.
It’s built for client collaboration. Together, you can build floor plans, manage RSVPs and assign tables, confirm meal selections, create mood boards and wedding websites, and share wedding day timelines. Basically, if you think, “Wait, can I do…? The answer is Yes, yes you can. And since you can do these things, you can also offer them as separate services and upgrades without using (and purchasing) separate sites or apps. One stop, which is great. As much as I love Honeybook (and I do), it doesn’t have these collaborative features.
Less Automation Than I’m Used To
That being said, the downside of being able to offer all of these things in Planning Pod is that most of the client management is manual. For instance, While you can “connect” a proposal, contract, and invoice to an event, they’re all separate documents. Your clients access everything in their client portal, but in my opinion, that makes onboarding and project planning clunky. In the place of workflow automations, Planning Pod has “To-Do lists” with reminders you can schedule, but you have to do the actual work manually. There are a ton of different templates you can customize and easily apply to an event. Planning Pod has a lot of tools, but you can’t automate them.
Planning Pod Client Portal
Planning Pod’s calendar can integrate with your personal calendar, but there isn’t an appointment-scheduling feature. You would have to schedule your appointments elsewhere and put them in the calendar . Planning Pod is really big into task management and keeping you on course with each event. Pending and completed tasks are the first thing you see on your home page. It’s also very easy to add company team members, which is great.
New to Me, Good for You?
Planning Pod is good for you if 1. If you’re a wedding solopreneur with a VA, and 2. If you’re running a company with multiple team members who have different tech skill levels. Because of the lack of project workflow automations, it’s going to be a harder, more time consuming pull if you’re on your own, and the $109/mo price tag feels prohibitive. But that lack of automation can be an advantage with a larger team, because Planning Pod has specific, uncomplicated management steps that can be applied to every event, and the client portals keep every event in its place. Planning Pod is not rocket science, and that’s a good thing under the right circumstances.
Do you have questions about your CRM and how to make it work better for you? Let’s talk - Contact me to schedule a free consultation, and let me know what you need.
I’ll talk to you soon,
Liz
