How to increase event registration

Have you seen a decrease in attendance at your events? Are you looking to increase event registration and promote your events? Learning how to increase registration for an event can feel overwhelming.

Lucky for you there are several strategies that you can use to increase registration. These include utilizing social media, leveraging email marketing, collaborating with partners, providing valuable content, and making registration easy. We’ll go through each in more detail and offer suggestions for how you can leverage each one to attract and better engage your ideal event attendees.

Configio provides you with all that you need to effectively manage your events and create a terrific experience for your attendees.

Importance of streamlining event registration

Streamlining event registration is crucial to make it as easy and accessible for attendees as possible. The easier it is for people to register, the more likely they are to attend the event. In addition, streamlined registration processes also reduce the number of abandoned registrations. This can impact your overall attendance numbers.

One way that you can streamline event registration is to make it available online and allow attendees to register at any time, from any location, and on any device. By providing multiple options for registration, you make the first step of your event much more accessible and convenient. For example, you can allow attendees to register through a website or on your social media platforms.

Next, streamlining event registration can lead to higher attendance numbers and overall, a more successful event. Additionally, it is also important to gather registration data on event attendees for various purposes, including understanding how to craft event content and sponsorship pitches.

Registration data provided by your attendees can offer invaluable insights. Often, this can be actionable data when it comes to managing your event and planning your next one. That’s why ensuring that your registration process is smooth and seamless should be non-negotiable.

By using event registration technology, like Configio, it can be and with less effort and costs than traditional registration processes required. Highly customizable, Configo offers beautifully branded registration websites. This allows you the flexibility to capture every registration, whether early bird or last-minute.

Promoting your event helps increase event registrations

One might argue that your event is only as good as its promotion. After all, if no one knows about it you’re not going to get the numbers of attendees required to make it worth your while. Or even worse, an unattractive ROI for event stakeholders.

Ideally, your event management solution should support email marketing and built-in search engine optimization tools to easily promote your upcoming event or conference, making is easier to leverage the strength and reach of the following:

Harness the strength and reach of social media

By using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to promote your events you can reach a large amount of people. You can utilize social media by creating a dedicated event page and sharing it across your social media channels so people can engage with it. This is a great way to advertise and reach a wide audience in an easy and convenient way.

Email marketing can empower your event

You should also consider using the power of email marketing. Build a list of potential attendees and send them a mass email to promote your event. Make sure your emails are clear and concise. Also, include a call-to-action button that will take the reader directly to your registration page. If you’ve hosted events in the past, create a second list of those attendees who have experienced your events and want to know about upcoming opportunities. Nurturing email lists to reach a wider audience is easier with event management solutions because it keeps your data organized, making consistent communication faster and easier.

Influencer strategy can increase event registration

Using an influencer strategy can also be a powerful way to promote an event, especially if you have a specific target audience that you are trying to connect with. Start by defining your target audience and identifying the demographics of the people that you want to attend your event. This will help you determine which influences are more likely to resonate with your audience.

You can then look for influencers who have a significant social media following, but who also match the audience you are trying to reach. You can use social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to find influencers who are relevant to your event.

You would be surprised how easy it can be to reach out and collaborate with influencers because it gives you both an opportunity to learn and grow. Micro influencers are people with a smaller following, and they are more than likely to want to help because it will expand their brand and network at the same time.

Know your audience

Gathering data on event attendees is essential to understand how to craft event content and sponsorship pitches. By collecting attendee data, event organizers can gather more information. Moreover, this will help with tailoring the promotion of their event specifically to the attendees.

You should collect data including their age, gender, and location to ensure the event content is relatable to the attendees’ interests and preferences. For example, if many of the attendees are young professionals, the event content should focus on topics that are relevant to this demographic. The places where you advertise the event will depend on this information as well.

Data on event attendees can also be used to attract sponsors. Sponsors often look for events that align with their target audience, and attendee data can provide valuable insights into the audience’s characteristics. This information can help event organizers create sponsorship packages that cater to the sponsors’ specific needs.

By connecting with the sponsors your audience wants to learn from, you position yourself to increase event registration and create enthusiasm for your event.

Another way is to reward those early birds and encourage anyone on the fence to go ahead and sign up already!

Incentivize early registration

One way that you can encourage people to register for your events and ensure your attendance rates are up by incentivizing early registration. As an event planner, you always want to make sure that people are signing up for your events. But, it’s even better if you have a solid headcount early on.

You can easily motivate potential attendees to register early by including some incentives if they do so. You can offer discounted ticket prices, exclusive access, or even limited time offers for people who do it. You’d be surprised at the amount of people that are willing to do something if they get rewarded in the process.

Circling back to your sponsors, include them on these incentives. Consider offering a small group conversation or meet and greet to those who register by a specific date. This can also help gauge just how interested your attendees are in interacting with your sponsor or guest speaker.

Streamline the check-in process

Nothing is worse than having a hectic check-in process for an event you are trying to attend. The event check-in is one way to help attendees make the most out of their experience. Ultimately, ensuring they come back for future events.

There are ways to streamline the check-in process to make it a seamless experience for attendees and one foolproof way is to integrate a robust event management platform that does it all.

Streamlining the check-in process can improve customer satisfaction and increase efficiency for attendees and your team. By offering an online check-in process, you can allow guests to check-in before they arrive. This will be time and reduce lines at the front desk.

There are also a few other things that you can do to help speed up the process including:

• Pre-authorized credit cards
• Digital key technology
• Self-check-in kiosks
• Mobile check-in

These strategies will help with streamlining the check-in process and providing a better overall guest experience. Since there’s an app for everything these days, it’s easy to integrate a mobile event app. This not only increases event registration but create the event experience of your dreams.

“Core-Apps was able to accommodate everything we needed from our event apps with the app functionality and design, as well as responsiveness for any questions. Attendee feedback was overwhelmingly positive.”

— Brad Gardner, Pasquotank County Solid Waste Director

How event technology can help

We’ve all been to an event that has not quite mastered the art of registration. Whether they fail to send a confirmation or misplace attendee records, it can lead to a lot of frustration and confusion for everyone involved. These mishaps all can stem from human error. While this is a normal occurrence, it can be avoided with the use of technology.

Event technology is the icing on the cake for event registration and management. Not only can it make event registration more efficient, but it also offers features specific to increasing event registration, including promotional tools and tracking.

If that all wasn’t convincing enough, consider these recent event technology statistics:

1. 72% of event organizations say that virtual event technology will play a crucial role in their event strategy.
2. Using event technology can increase attendance by 20% and productivity by 27%

Increasing event registration

Increasing event registration can be a challenging task, but with the right strategies, techniques, and technology, it is more than achievable. By following the tips outlined in this blog post, you can create a compelling event registration process. This will encourage more attendees to sign up and participate in your event.

Some takeaways for increasing event registration are:

• Create a clear and concise event registration process
• Promote your event using a variety of channels, including social media, email, and word of mouth strategies
• Offer incentives to encourage attendees to register early
• Provide valuable and relevant content that highlights the benefits of attending your event
• Use data and analytics to track your registration progress and adjust your strategies accordingly

By implementing these tips and focusing on providing a seamless registration experience for your attendees, you can increase the number of registrations and ensure that you have the most successful event!

We understand that planning an event can be stressful and getting people to register can be a major challenge. That’s why we offer a wide range of solutions to help boost your registration numbers.

“Configio was able to tailor the software to fit my needs. The support that I receive is always friendly and reliable.”

Alicia Danenberg – Chatham University

Don’t let low registration numbers hold you back. Schedule a demo today and learn how we can help you increase your event attendance and make the most out of every event!