PopBookings
People remember the sheer scale of a major event—its size, energy, and impact. These gatherings pull together huge crowds for all sorts of reasons, whether to share key insights or just have a great time.
This is why brands invest money into marketing at events to be in front of their target markets and why the events industry is an $886 billion industry worldwide.
How do you make an event great? People. Without the right people, an event can go from major success to complete disaster. This is why finding the best event staff to help run your event is crucial.
How do you find these people? That’s where PopBookings comes in.
Software Designed to Find Industry Professionals
PopBookings provides an event staffing app that automates the complicated process of hiring event staff. The company’s software enables those needing to hire talent to work events to find it quickly and without hassle.
Event planners can post event details, check worker availability, and select the best fit for their gig. Worker profiles showcase experience, ratings from past jobs, and performance notes to assist in the selection process.
The main kinds of gigs booked on PopBookings include brand ambassadors, greeters, street teams, check-in staffers, bartenders, emcees, trade booth staff, in-store samplers, and various models and actors.
Overcoming Traditional Struggles
PopBookings was conceived by founders Erika Klotz, CEO, and Joe Abele, CTO. Both founders possess significant experience working in the booking industry. They started the company to overcome the often problematic, time-consuming, complex, and confusing manner in which finding qualified candidates can be difficult. The “old way” is to post jobs on Craigslist and manage everything using multiple spreadsheets on Excel.
PopBookings simplifies this convoluted process by giving event planners one platform to find workers, communicate directly, and nail down key details like dates, times, and pay—all in one place.
“There are many HR software apps and workforce management apps, but a lot of them do not focus on this type of staffing,” Klotz said. “Events like trade shows can sometimes only happen once a year. If you work with local staff, you might have someone work for you only one day in a market. This model doesn’t work for a lot of existing HR apps.”
Paying Dividends
Since its inception, PopBookings has made a significant impact. The company boasts over 300,000 users nationwide, filled over 100,000 shifts, and posted $60 million worth of jobs to its marketplace.
Additionally, the company received the prestigious LaunchKC grant worth $50,000. Furthermore, PopBookings has booked talent at notable events such as the Super Bowl, Coachella, CES, SXSW, and Formula 1 and has worked with established, well-known brands, including Snapchat, Heineken, and Honda.
Future Aims
Despite PopBookings’s success, the company has lofty future goals. Recently, the business launched a new mobile app for workers. Klotz and Abele are seeing great user feedback about the upgraded app, which has led to a 0% churn since the release.
Their lean startup team builds the app based on user feedback, which shows! More and more new use cases of companies booking talent on their marketplace “pop” up (pun intended!), like photobooth companies hiring attendants, CPG brands for in-store samplers, trade show exhibitors hiring booth staff lead generators, and many more!