Event planning. It can be an extremely stressful process for an event planner to go through.
However, there are countless events that go on each year in the United States alone. People keep coming back to said events, so new event planners may be wondering how to copy that success.
The event planning industry is worth over $5.6 billion in the United States alone.
So, how do you join the others on that successful list? Well, you need to make sure that each part of your event is running smoothly.
That starts with smooth event registration. How do you ensure that the registration process goes smoothly? What are the biggest things that you need to know?
This is your guide.
Organizing Tickets and Ticket Prices
If you want to have a smooth event registration process, something you have to consider is having an event registration system that can organize your tickets efficiently.
When it comes to this, think about the different types of tickets and sales offers you want to have. You may have people that are loyal to your company or people that are willing to pay more to get the first batch of tickets for your event.
That is something called an early bird ticket. Your event registration process should give people that want to buy tickets before the general public an opportunity to do so.
You can also go the opposite way with early bird tickets and offer discounts to people that buy tickets before a certain date. If you want to offer other special rates, you can set it up where groups that buy a minimum number of tickets can also get a discount.
Then, you may have event partners and sponsors that help promote this event. Part of promoting an event is to offer promo codes for people to buy tickets to that event for a discounted price.
If you are planning to team up with that kind of company, make sure your registration system has an option to enter promo codes online.
Proper Registration Forms
The next thing you are going to need is a proper registration form. You need to think about what information you want to learn from people that are planning on going to your event.
If this is a pure corporate event, you are going to want to know if everyone going to it works in your company. You can have people click on options such as if they work for the company, how many years they have worked for that company, what branch they work in, what department they work in, etc.
On top of that, there can be a section for people that work for other companies in the industry. If people like that are coming to your event, leave a section that can have them mention what company they work for. Also, give them the same options such as how many years they have been in the industry and what department they work for.
You can also find out useful information such as the age of your attendees, the gender of the majority of your attendees, and if everyone attending is from the same region.
That can give you a better idea of what your audience is. From there, you can work on planning your event around that audience. If you already were in the process of doing that, having this information can be confirmation that you are on the right track.
Analysis Tools
Going off the above, it is key to have as much information as possible about your event at the click of a button. It can start with having personal information of people and keeping track of stats for that.
However, you need to take it a step further and have event performance tools. One of these is very simple and you can start with being able to keep track of how many tickets you sold before the event. That can be a great sign of how successful the event can be, especially if you are limiting walk-in ticket sales for your event.
The other thing that you can keep track of is additional pre-sales. This can be anything from paying extra money to hear a guest speaker at the event, paying extra money for an autograph and photo session, and more.
Then, there is the ability to keep track of what sales you make during the events. This can depend on what types of deals you have with the vendors. You can have something where your company is in charge of all of the booths, you can get a percentage of vendor sales, or they could get to keep all of the profits if they pay you an upfront fee.
Whatever the case is for your event, have a system that allows you to keep track of all of this data.
Choosing the Right Platform
As someone running a big event for your company, you are going to want to make sure that the platform you do this on causes no additional headaches. On top of this, you should consider what platform is going to give you the most value.
One platform that you can use is Eventbrite. This is an event registration system that can give you some good benefits.
A good benefit for some event planners is not getting charged a service fee for free events. Eventbrite in that situation is just a platform where a business can put a set number of tickets available on the website.
Another benefit for event planners is that they are not required to cover the fees for their tickets listed on Eventbrite. There are two types of fees here.
The first fee is the service fee. That is 3.7% of the ticket price plus an additional $1.79.
Then, there is the payment processing fee. Here, ticket buyers are paying an additional 2.9% fee for payment processing.
As an event planner, you do have some flexibility with this. If you do not want that burden to fall on your customers, you have the option of covering the service fees yourself on Eventbrite.
While it will likely carry a decent additional cost for your event, you could gain favor with people that are attending your event by not putting that burden on them.
Have Aggressive Marketing Campaigns
Now that you have an idea of how you are going to sell tickets to your event, you need to make sure that people know about it. This is especially the case if your event is new or you are mostly relying on public ticket sales.
The best way to do this would be to use email marketing and social media marketing.
Your social media pages could have thousands or even millions of followers. If you use those platforms to your advantage and add some promotional content for your event, you could see a decent spike in event interest and ticket sales.
Email marketing can produce a similar result if you have the right email list. Simply find a list of leads of people that have shown interest in your company and people that browse your web pages. You should have a marketing campaign developed in no time.
Stick to Your Deadlines
Finally, you are going to want to try to stick to the deadlines that you set for your tickets. Not every event will face this but those that do need to set the right deadline the first time.
This can be anything from early bird tickets, RSVP for an add-on event, buying regular tickets, and more. It helps to keep these deadlines because you want to create a sense of urgency and let people know you are serious about these deadlines.
There are some companies and some events that advertise deadlines but then create a new deadline right after that. Sure, you might get more ticket sales for one event. However, if you do this long enough, your audience will lose respect for your word.
Start Your Event Registration
These are some tips that you can use for your event when it comes to event registration.
You need to make sure that enough people know about it with your marketing campaign. Have a registration form that gives enough information about your audience to analyze the data later. Finally, come up with ticket sales, early bird pricing, and any group discounts that you want to offer.
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