How to increase event registration

You’ll have put a lot of thought, energy, time, and money into putting together what will hopefully be an event that allows you to reach your goals, whatever they may be.

But of course, if that’s going to happen, then you’ll need people to show up. All event organisers worry that a less-than-expected number of event attendees will turn up. But why worry when there are things you can do to boost ticket sales?

In this blog, we’ll look at some tried and tested methods to boost event registration and make sure your event is a bona fide success.

Marketing the Event

You can’t expect people to buy event tickets if they don’t know about it! There’s a lot of competition for attendees, so it’s important to ensure that your voice is heard. You’ll want to begin your marketing campaign well in advance of the event start date using various methods. This will include promoting your event on social media channels (using both organic and paid methods) and blasting out a well-crafted email to your email subscribers.

Pro Tip: Define your target audience (i.e., who you’re trying to attract to your event). It’ll help you to craft your marketing materials.

List on Event Pages

Try as you might, you won’t reach everyone that you’d like to reach via social media or your existing subscriber lists. Listing your event on event pages around the web (ones focused on the area where the event will take place or specific to your industry) will ensure that your event is seen by potential attendees outside of your existing catchment area.

It’s unlikely that you’ll get too many new ticket requests from these outlets, but you may get a few — and in any case, it’s usually free to list an event on these websites anyway, so you really have nothing to lose.

Clear Branding

Your event registration page is more than just a functional place where you can relay important information about your event. It also provides an opportunity to showcase your brand’s personality — and that can go a long way towards getting people to sign up for your event.

Your digital presence should reflect the general atmosphere, theme, and branding of your event. If it’s on point, then it may just convince those people who are sitting on the fence that it’s worth their time. It’ll certainly work more effectively than a faceless, personality-free page.

Build Hype

You’ll have worked hard to put together a top-tier event that your attendees will love. But your potential attendees won’t necessarily know that. If you’re a relatively young company, then your brand’s name alone is unlikely to be enough to entice large numbers of guests. As such, it’s a good idea to build some hype about what they can expect once they’re at your event.

Your event landing page could feature a list of guest speakers, snazzy graphics, and general information about the broader theme and intent of the event. In effect, people should see your landing page and think, ‘that’s an event that I want to go to.’

Work with Influencers

Influencers don’t always get good press, but the truth is that they can be highly effective — and that’s especially true when it comes to promoting an event. Your target audience will have brands and commentators that they look up to, so why not look at collaborating with them to promote your event? It’s an easy and uncomplicated way to gain access to a much larger audience.

You should also utilise the far-reaching impacts of your most celebrated speakers (providing you have one). A personal video message can go a long way toward building the credibility of your event and bringing more attendees on board.

Handle Logistics

People will be much more likely to attend your event if they have a good grasp of the logistics and event details. Sometimes, good events suffer because the organisers focus too much on promoting all that was awesome about the event and not enough on the all-important details such as how to get there, accommodation options, and so forth.

A simple FAQ on your landing page can demystify the key elements of attending your event. Indeed, it can be those details that tell potential attendees whether it’s even possible for them to attend. If it is, then they’ll be one step closer to buying a ticket.

Early Bird Offers

You’ll feel much more confident about your event once you’ve sold some tickets. The most straightforward way to increase event registration is to offer early bird discounts.

Of course, if you’re looking to recoup costs on your event, then you can’t offer cheap or free tickets permanently. However, it’s more than fine to offer a percentage of your tickets undervalue.

You may also offer the chance for attendees who pay full price for a ticket to get a second entrance at a discount. Once you’ve got your first few registrants then it’s likely that more will begin to roll in, especially since many of your attendees will spread the word about your event to their colleagues, friends, social media followers, and so forth.

Offer Incentives

Everyone loves getting something for nothing! You can create an additional incentive for potential attendees to register for the event by offering free swag and other freebies. For example, you could offer a free branded t-shirt or hoodie to the first 100 people that register for your event.
You may also offer free upgrades to a more platinum version of the ticket if the attendee registers by a certain date.

Ultimately, there are a million ways to offer incentives, so get thinking about what would make sense for your event. Just be sure not to offer too much — your tickets will sell if you follow all of our tips, so you don’t need to offer the world because you’re afraid that you won’t have attendees!

Utilise The Reviews of Past Attendees

People really do trust the opinions of other people. Indeed, one study found that people trust the opinions of other people almost as much as they trust the opinions of their friends and family.

If this is the second (or more) time that you’re hosting this event, then using the reviews and feedback of previous attendees will provide a fantastic opportunity to grow your event this time around. A positive review from a real-live person can be enough to convince someone who’s sitting on the fence to hit that register button.

Pro Tip: Be sure to collect feedback from this year’s event, so you can use them in your promotional materials for your next event!

Make it Simple

If you’ve done all the hard work required to bring an attendee onboard, then it’ll be crushing to lose them at the last moment. All too often, event planners make their registration process more difficult than it needs to be — and the event numbers suffer as a result.

Here at Jonas Event Technology, we’ve put together event registration forms that make registering for an event as easy as one, two, three.

Ongoing Marketing

You can’t just market your event once and expect all your available places to fill up. Marketing your event is like marketing anything else: you’ll need to have an ongoing campaign for it to be effective.

Most people follow a pretty standard decision-making process. They don’t make a positive decision the first time that they learn about an event (or item, etc.). They usually pull the trigger once they’ve been repeatedly exposed to it.

It’s important to begin your marketing campaign early so you have time to reach your target audience with all those important milestones.

This will also give you the time to retarget potential attendees who abandoned their shopping cart at the last hurdle or who didn’t quite make the cut for the group discount price.

Post-Event Care

The registration drive for your next event begins the moment that your current event is over. You’ll have a lot of names, email addresses, and other important data that you can utilise to increase repeat participation next time around. If your event has gone off without a hitch, then you should have a boatload of people who are interested in your brand. So it’s important to make the most of it.

A little bit of post-event care and attention can go a long way to getting the most mileage from your event and ensuring that next year’s event is bigger than ever.

Final Thoughts

And there we have it! Take all our tips on board, and we’re sure that you reach — or exceed — your target number of attendees. Remember, if you’re looking for additional help with your event registration, then be sure to get in touch with us here at Jonas Event Technology. We have the tools, skills, and experience you need to ensure that your event gets off to a great start.

To get in touch, simply give us a call at 01865 893560, send us an email at hello@jonas.events, or fill out the contact form on our contact page.