Event Marketing

Ryan J Bell

This is a scary statistic. Imagine how much more successful your event would be if you could get just half of those “undecided” folks to register. Imagine how much more energy there would be in the room, not to mention how much extra cash would be in your company’s bank account.

It’s NOT an insignificant number.

This is why automatic follow-up with registrants who “bail out” before they’re done securing their seat is very important.

Online registration makes life far easier on both event planners and registrants, but the right system can also increase attendance and decrease cost for your company.

If you don’t have an automated way of tracking folks who abandon registration forms half way through and following up with them, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. No, it’s worse than that. You’re burning up cash that would otherwise be yours!

Think I’m over exaggerating? Think again…

Let’s say you’re shooting for 200 people at your event. And let’s say 300 people hit the registration form. If 50% of them bail out during the registration process, you’re left with only 150 registrations. But if you’re able to capture even 20% of those who started to register but didn’t finish, that’s an additional 30 registrants! Of course, the numbers will be different for every event. And, the larger the expected turnout, the larger the impact.

This is where the automatic follow-up comes in. If you have this capability, you can often persuade 20%, 30%, or more to come to your event who would not have come otherwise.

If you’re a full-time event planner, you’ll look good in front of your superiors for increasing attendance. And if you’re a business owner, you’ll experience the joy of a fatter bank account.

Right now, most event registration systems do not offer automatic follow-up with people who started to register but didn’t finish, but it’s a capability worth searching for because it can offer you great rewards. Make sure to find a system that will encourage ‘fence sitters’ to come to your event rather than give up on it because it is an easy an effective way to increase your attendance and profit for every event.

Ryan J Bell

A lot of systems give you limited flexibility. You get their look and feel with any number of data fields for customization and that’s all. This can really limit your ability to create a seamless experience for your registrants from your website and marketing materials to the registration experience.

Therefore, I recommend choosing a system that gives you full control over the look and feel as well as the information you capture during registration.

You see, every event is different: maybe you need critical information that’s unique to the people attending your event, or maybe you need to collect different information from different types of registrants such as attendees and exhibitors. This type of information is easy to gather when you have full control over your online registration forms, and it’s even easier when it’s a “point and click” process that takes no time at all to master.

Many systems available give you full control over your registration forms. You can collect as much or as little information as you like, guide your registrants to their specific registration type, and change the background to match the look and feel of your web site.

Various pricing options such as variable pricing based on attendee type, discount codes, and early-bird pricing can make registration easier for both you and your registrants, encouraging a higher number of registrations. Make sure to choose an online registration system that will easily charge different rates for vendors versus regular attendees and will automatically accept discount codes and time-associated pricing based on your settings and deadlines.

While specific pricing plans will make registration easier, picking your colors and adding you company logo to your registration website makes your registrants feel comfortable by creating a consistent look-and-feel that carries over from your web site to your order form.

It is even better when you can use all of these options with just a few clicks of the mouse.

To make event planning easier for both you and your registrants, choose an online registration system that will not only remove the hassle of paperwork but will also be fully customizable to the specifications of your unique event.

Ryan J Bell

Next thing you know, you’ve got problems: You discover the system doesn’t work as well as you’d hoped. You call Customer Service, but can’t seem to get the help you need. So, you decide to switch services. But to your dismay, you discover you’re going to lose a lot of money if you switch now because you’re locked into a contract.

Frighteningly, this scenario is not uncommon. A lot of unsuspecting folks get into bad deals with less-than-ideal products… and then have to pay a fortune to switch.

For this reason, it is essential that you only use services that let you “try it before you buy it.” This prevents you from getting locked into a system that isn’t right for you. With a system like this, you should never have to worry about getting “stuck” because you can try it out for free… plus we offer pay-as-you-go pricing and never require you to sign a contract. You should only use our system if you LOVE it, and you should never be forced into using it.

Similarly, it is important to find a system that offers pay-as-you-go pricing, that never requires you to sign a contract, and who’s sales team isn’t on commission. This way, if you only do one event a year, you only pay to take registrations for that one event, don’t have to pay any unnecessary monthly fees or maintenance costs, and only pay when you’re actually processing registrations with the system.

Too, as mentioned above, the sales team is highly important to your customer satisfaction. With a non-commission-based and overstaffed sales team, so you never get a “hard sell,” and your calls will hopefully get answered over 90% of the time by a real person and your emails are responded to within a couple business hours.

The bottom line is you want to try out a registration service before you’re financially committed to using it. Avoid signing long-term contracts or getting roped into a system that’s not right for you. Make sure that you can do all the research needed before you pay to find a friendly easy-to-use system that offers everything you need.

Ryan J Bell

You want your registration forms connected with your merchant account, which is connected to your database, which has easy reporting capabilities. This is extremely important because the system you are using may be only partially automated.

For instance, your system might take online registrations that are then emailed to you, but never put in a database. So, you still have to manually key in the registrant’s information and build your database by hand. In other cases, you may have to manually process payments. Or, your system might capture a registrant’s information and put it into a database. But to get reports you have to go ask the programmers to write reports to capture the information you need. You might have to wait 24 hours… 48 hours… or most likely longer.

These are all consequences (or “side effects”) of using a system that is only partially automated. It is not necessary or worth it to settle for a system like this.

When choosing your system, make sure it is fully automated and fully integrated. This will give you the greatest ease of use and satisfaction over the long haul.

Some example of complete integration:

• Self-service changes & cancellations – No more unnecessary phone calls. Save time be letting your registrants make changes and cancellations themselves!
• Real-time credit card processing – Get paid immediately. The money appears in your merchant account instantly.
• Automatic email receipts – Confirm registrations within seconds by using their mail server to send automatic email receipts to registrants.
• Automatic sold-out and waitlisting management – Avoid overbooking an event. Get people on a waitlist to fill cancellations.
• Integrated accounting system – make accounting and reporting easy by keeping track of everything for you.

Many of these will be important to you, and once you try them, you’ll find many that you can’t live without.While online registration is an excellently effective way to make event planning easier, the right system – one that is fully automated and integrated – can make the leap between manually managing your online registration and letting the system manage your registration for you (while you use your time for matters more important to you).

Ryan J Bell

A lot of event planners struggle to get up-to-the-minute stats about who’s coming, how many people are coming, and how many spots are left. This is because they’re hand-counting forms, tallying up call-in registrations, and manually updating Excel spreadsheets to find the right numbers.

This is so unnecessary.

Using an online registration system for the event can remove all such tedious paperwork from your job by providing complete, up-to-the-minute reports for all your events and meetings?

With the right online registration system, you can pull up all the data you need, including total registrations, cancellations, revenue collected, and more with just a few clicks. You can view the raw data, or see it in colorful charts and graphs. You get unlimited reports, including the financial reports you’ll need for accounting. You can also export your reports to PDF, Excel, or plain text for easy emailing to executives and senior level managers.

Another reporting feature that is worth searching out in your online registration system is Smart Links. You can give out this automatically generated link to any interested parties so they can access reports in real-time. Rather than calling you, they can just hit the “Refresh” button in their web browser – a huge time-saver. Automated reporting capabilities like this can literally save you hours of wasted time and effort.

Finding the right system that offers simple ways to get the most recent data in any form you need (charts, graphs, PDF, etc.), is very important to making event registration easier for both you and your registrant and for more manageable for you.

Ryan J Bell

All online registration systems will allow you to automate your event registration by moving registrations from manual to online, but only some will have the ability to process payments online. There should be no PDF downloads, no printed forms, and absolutely no faxing or mailing allowed. You should never have to take credit card numbers over the phone and manually key them in because all registrations should be processed instantly over a secure connection. Registration fees should show up in your merchant or bank account effortlessly.

Many planners still process payments by hand, either by paper or phone. But this is a massive waste of time and energy. Why spend human effort to do something a well-equipped web site can do better, faster, and cheaper? The clear answer is that you shouldn’t.

You should choose a system that allows you to use your own merchant account to collect payments or use the company’s merchant account if you do not already have one. The company’s merchant account should also be able to accept all payment types quickly so that your registrants can pay using Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, Check, Purchase Order, Cash (onsite), Pay at the Event, Purchase Orders, Wire Transfer, Echeck, Paypal, and should even accept partial payments and taxes.

If you already have a merchant account your system should be integrated with multiple merchant accounts (and their gateways) so that it is easy to plug your merchant account into the online registration system

Also, make sure to check that your online registration system is highly secure. If at all possible, it should be compliant with Visa’s strictest security requirements (only 200 companies in the world currently qualify). That means you–and your registrants–can have peace of mind knowing their payment information is totally secure from prying eyes and devious criminals.

Your online registration system should most definitely remove any entering of payment information on your part but should also be able to accept your merchant account or offer you its account, and it should be able to accept payments in multiple different ways. Make sure that your online registration system is doing everything possible to decrease your workload, including making payments entirely automated.

Ryan J Bell

Using an online registration system to register attendees for your next event can significantly diminish your workload and increase attendance, but automated follow-up by email is essential for the success of your event. In fact, there are two different (yet still very important) ways to use it:

1. To send out automatic confirmations to newly registered attendees.

2. To send out reminder emails to registrants as the date of the event approaches.

Automated confirmation emails will build confidence with your registrants. They’ll know instantly that they are “IN” and confirmed for the event. It’s one less thing for them to have to think about. What’s more, you won’t have to deal with pesky questions like: “Did my registration go through?”

Unfortunately, there will always be no-shows at every event. In fact, some meeting planners report no-show rates as high as 30 percent! Depending on your cancellation and refund policy, these no-shows can cut right into your bottom line. They can make or break your event. However, with automated reminder emails, you’ll naturally get a much higher rate of attendance. And you’ll reduce your no-shows to a bare minimum.

A user of automated confirmation emails, Brian Hodge, wrote: “Best event yet. Ninety percent show-up rate out of the sign-ups and lots of positive feedback.”

A 90% show-up rate is quite good, but many meeting planners do even better.

When searching for an online registration system that offers automated confirmation emails, it is important to consider that they can be completely personalized with names, agenda selections, receipts, balances due, and if possible, links to conference materials, maps, surveys, and more.

Ryan J Bell

Upon first viewing the bail-out rate an event professional new to web analytics might be quite shocked by the figure, but the truth is that some amount of bail-out is natural. Any website that does business online needs to recognize that comparison shopping, the need to approve expenses, questions on how much to order, or plain-old lack of attention-span due to the amount of information available on the web all contribute to customers walking away from their virtual shopping carts. So some amount of bail-out is a necessary part of the internet sales process.

However, experienced internet merchants will also tell you that you can always improve your process too. So what should you look at in the bail-out information to help you decide what to do first?

The first thing you need to address is the overall bail-out rate. If 100 visitors come to your registration page, and 80 of them bail-out it is most likely a strong indication that your form needs some work. One of the most common issues in this case is that your potential registrants are not well enough informed about your event to make the decision to register final. For instance, if you don’t tell registrants the price up front, when they see the price, they may balk and leave your form. This also applies to questions they will need to answer about their registration, for instance: flight information, group member registration, or payment methods (maybe they want to pay with AMEX but you only accept Visa).

Once you have addressed the overarching issues regarding the bail-out rate you now need to investigate where in the process your potential registrants are leaving the form. Are they bailing out on the pricing page? Maybe the price is too high, or not explained clearly enough. Are they leaving from the additional options page? Maybe the options are too complicated. Are they leaving at the payment stage? Maybe you should consider offering additional payment options. Finding out where the most visitors bail-out in your funnel allows you to take a critical look at each stage of your process to help streamline the entire funnel.

So how do you find the bail-out rates on your form? A few select online registration systems have begun offering integrated analytics programs as part of their standard service. But what if your current software doesn’t offer this functionality? You can add a free stat monitoring program to any form which allows customization. In this case, you will need to compile the stats yourself by finding the total number of visitors to the first page of registration, and then the total number to each successive page. This will give you an idea of how your funnel is working.