Event Registration Process

Don’t we all love data?

If you don’t then now is the time to find the love. Why? Well lets start with a couple of quotes to get us thinking….

“You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.”- Daniel Keys Moran

“Most of the world will make decisions by either guessing or using their gut. They will be either lucky or wrong.”- Suhail Doshi

As an event organiser how many of you can honestly say your data is amazing, that you know what data you track and record, why you track and record it and how you are going to use that data to enhance your marketing campaigns to not only attract more visitors to your events but to improve your registration to attendee conversion rates.

If you think you could do more with your data the following points may get you thinking and hopefully show a few simple changes that can drastically improve the quality of your data and how you use it, which in turn could lead to an increase in registrations for your event.

1. What data do you collect from your registration forms?

The humble registration form is your chance to get high quality data from your audience to really enhance your marketing campaigns by creating highly targeted, segmented content for your visitors. Spending time thinking about your registration form and the questions you ask, and how you are going to use the responses from these forms for current and future marketing campaigns is essential for getting the best quality data from your audience.

Recently I have had conversations with event organisers about the questions they ask on their registration forms and in many cases they are asked out of habit and the responses filed away just in case they are needed in the future. Changing the way in which we think can often be a tough decision to make, but by altering the questions asked to improve the data you receive can really enhance your marketing capabilities thus improving the success of your registration process.

2. How do you use that data in your marketing campaigns and is your email marketing solution up to scratch?

Now you are starting to receive high quality data from your registration process its time to use this data to captivate your audience and target individuals based on their persona and interests. One way in which this can be achieved is by segmenting your data and then using your email marketing software tool to create a campaign that is segmented for different groups of individuals based on, for example, the products they are interested in which is a question you have gained responses from on your registration form. This way, you can create a single email for a campaign with sections of the email that alternate depending on their interests, rather than making multiple emails for different individual profiles. A and B testing can then also be used to assess the impacts of each email campaign by analysing open and click through rates within your email which, coupled with your registration reporting software, can be used to see which campaigns saw a spike in visitor registrations.

3. How to you store your data and can individuals update their details and mailing preferences?

This post is not designed to focus on GDPR but this needs to be considered when you think about how you are storing and managing your visitors data. Being secure and compliant are obviously essential criteria for any data management solution to offer but having features such as built in preference handling capabilities that allow visitors to update their details and contact method preferences are also key considerations to remain compliant. A preference centre will ensure your visitors data is kept up to date and that they are only being contacted about the areas they want to be contacted about.

Being able to integrate your data management solution with your registration forms will allow you to store the segmented data from your visitors without manual entry. This should then integrate with your preference centre, allowing you to have segmented campaigns sent only to the individuals with the set preference method ensuring you stay compliant in an integrated and automated solution.

4. How do you report on your data?

Does your event registration solution allow you to report on your registration data pre, during and post event? How successful were your registration forms? Can you see up to date reports detailing how many registrations you have on the run up to the event, how does this compare to last years event, how are your marketing campaigns impacting on the number of registrations you are receiving?

Does your email marketing solution show you your open and click through rates?

Onsite, do you receive up to date attendance figures throughout the day? After the event do you have access to attendance figures including information about your audience such as the geographical spread etc?

Do you send out NPS (Net Promotor Score) surveys to your exhibitors and visitors to see their thoughts on the event to help you improve for next year?

Is the data stored securely post-GDPR? Do you use this data and information for your future marketing campaigns and to improve your events year on year?

All this data you are receiving from your audience shown within a reporting tool can quickly allow you to see a great amount of detail about your events and your audience and how you use this data can really make a difference to the success of your events.