How Lyft Can Help Increase Attendees To Your Event

Ridesharing services have become increasingly popular due to the freedom and convenience they offer users. Event managers often look for ways to attract more attendees to their event. As such, ridesharing is an option you should consider at your next event. Partnering with a ridesharing service can increase attendance and provide a convenient service to customers.

Lyft, a popular ridesharing app, innovated the ridesharing sector to make it easy to partner with companies throwing events. They recently created a service called Lyft Events that aims to make reliable event transportation possible. With this service, you can offer discount codes for rides to your event, treat your guests to quick, cheap transportation and ensure attendees arrive at the correct location.

Why Millennials Love Ridesharing

There are several reasons millennials appreciate ridesharing and use it regularly. In fact, in 2018, 36% of U.S. adults reported using a ride-hailing service, up from 15% in 2018. These numbers go up for younger users, with 51% of 18–29-year-olds and 43% of 30–49-year-olds having used a ride-hailing service.

Due to the growing popularity of these services, it’s wise to understand why millennials enjoy ridesharing so you can use the information to your advantage when planning events. To assist your understanding, these are some of the top reasons millennials love ridesharing.

1. It’s Easier Now for Millennials to Socialize and Get Out

With ridesharing, adults can easily get out and about without owning a vehicle or having to figure out a bus route. With a smartphone, they can call a ride through the app. As a result of how easy it is to order a Lyft, people are more likely to attend your event.

The statistics back this claim up. Almost half of Lyft riders are likely to go out and explore new areas of their city due to the ridesharing service. Additionally, due to using Lyft, over a third of users are more likely to show up at a community event.

2. Millennials Care About Partying Responsibly

Millennials love going out and having fun, but they’re also conscientious about driving while impaired and don’t want to put their safety or others at risk. Due to this increased concern, ridesharing has become a way for adults to have a fun night out without feeling tempted to get behind the wheel of a car.

3. Less Desire for Car Ownership

The fantasy of owning a car and hitting the open road has lost its appeal for millennials. For adults between the ages of 22 and 37, more than half say the money spent on car maintenance is not worth it. In addition, 59% of millennials say they’d rather do something more productive than driving. In another study, 78% of millennials say it’s difficult to own a car due to the cost of gas and maintenance.

As a result of these negative feelings toward car ownership, a sharing economy is now an attractive option to millennials. To play to these feelings of negativity around driving cars, you’ll want to advertise the option to take a discounted ride to your event.

What the Rise of Ridesharing Means for Event Creators and How You Can Take Advantage of It Now

Due to the popularity of ridesharing, you’ll want to take advantage of it when you throw an event. There are several ways you can use ridesharing for the benefit of your company and your event attendees.

The following points discuss the advantages of using ridesharing for your event:

1. Help People Follow Through and Increase Your Revenue

Lack of attendance is a major issue for event hosts. If people don’t show up, revenue goes down. Unfortunately, 46% of people are no shows to events they receive an invite to. One of the top reasons people don’t attend events is due to transportation difficulties. For those who rely on a friend to drive them home from an event, ridesharing makes it possible for them to have a backup if plans fall through.

People are more likely to attend an event if Lyft is available in their area. If your marketing materials show a clear partnership with Lyft, your events could see increased attendance and elevate the transportation experience. Higher attendance will equate to a raise in revenue.

2. Ensure Safety for Attendees After the Event Is Over

As an event host, you’ve likely taken safety measures to ensure a successful event. While it’s great to provide customers with safety during the event, you should consider attendees safety leaving the event. If your event offers alcohol, having Lyft available to customers will make for a safe journey home. People are 71% less likely to drive when impaired from a substance if a Lyft is available.

Encourage attendees to use ridesharing by giving them a subsidized Lyft ride code they can use to get a discount on their ride. This promo code will put ridesharing on attendees mind and incentivize them to take the safest option home. By partnering with Lyft, you will act responsibly and make it easy for your attendees to act responsibly too.

3. Give Attendees a VIP Experience

Event attendees expect everything to be as convenient as possible, and your VIP guests’ expectations will be even higher. You’ll want to make a good impression from the beginning. Instead of making them drive to your event or take a crowded shuttle, you can partner with Lyft to provide private, convenient transportation before and after your event.

Showing how you value your most important guests, not only at the event but before and after, will make them feel appreciated by your organization. This appreciation will make them have a better time, and if you’re throwing a charity event, could potentially lead to larger donations.

4. Attendees and Hosts Can Avoid Expensive Parking Prices

If your event takes place in a city where parking is tight or costly, plan ahead so guests don’t choose to stay home or enter the event with a bad taste in their mouth. Some companies offer vouchers to attendees who park their cars, which makes them bear the brunt of parking costs.

As an alternative to parking, Lyft is a more attractive option that can be inexpensive and reduce the stress of finding parking. For companies who plan to pay the parking fee for their attendees, offering guests a ridesharing deal can be a cheaper option than paying for parking spots. Along with costs, ridesharing is more convenient since attendees won’t have to find parking or walk to the event’s location.

Tips for Crafting a Better Event Experience With Lyft

Due to the benefits ridesharing companies like Lyft offer organizations attendees, you’ll likely want to partner with a ridesharing service in the future.

To make this partnership successful, you should follow the tips listed below:

1. Select Pickup and Drop-off Spots

You want to ensure consistent quality services for all of your attendees. By designating a place that drivers are meant to drop-off and pickup attendees, you’ll ensure attendees don’t get left somewhere farther from the entrance than needed. Additionally, it will give drivers a clear objective and avoid any clogged up roadways filled with confused motorists.

If the front door to the venue is on a busy street that could become congested with the steady flow of Lyfts, or be generally unsafe for cars to stop, you want to find an alternate location for the Lyfts. If you’re a smaller venue, one drop-off and pickup location will be adequate. For larger events held at festivals or arenas, you want to include multiple locations, as there will be multiple entrances and exits.

2. Work With Your Venue Contact

If you’re renting a venue for an event, you don’t want anything intercommunicated between the transport provider and the venue. To ensure they work well together, reach out to your venue contact and include them in your planning. They may know when and where there is high traffic at the venue, and the best location for a pickup and drop-off zone.

You may be surprised by what you learn, so don’t waste your opportunity to learn from them.

3. Integrate Ride Codes

With Lyft Events, you can provide up to 500 attendees with ride codes. These codes will offer discounts to riders and incentivize attendees to use the ridesharing service instead of driving themselves before or after the event. For events where drinks are served, these codes can help keep everyone safe.

In addition, the codes can be crafted to fit your budget. You can adjust how much of the ride you’re subsidizing, making it easy to not go over a set amount of money. Whether or not you plan on paying for a fraction or the entirety of rides, you should offer a discount code, as it will make people more likely to use the service.

4. Use the Lyft App to Map Your Venue Location

With a designated pickup and drop-off zone, you’ll need to make sure drivers know how to get to those locations. To do so, you can easily map the venue location and the appropriate zones in the Lyft app. You can do this by establishing a geofence that sets up a radius around a chosen location.

5. Communicate All of Your Options Clearly

To ensure that all of your attendees understand the ridesharing options available to them, you should give them multiple ways to find the information. You can use signage on your website, send out email campaigns that include it and provide it on website FAQs. If people don’t know you’re offering a service, they probably won’t use it.

How to Use Lyft Events

As you know, ridesharing is an excellent way for events to provide convenient transportation options for attendees. Lyft Events provides an easy platform for companies to use when they are trying to deliver a better experience for attendees.

You can find an overview of what you’ll need to set up a Lyft Event below:

1. Register Your Event and Account

First, make an account or sign in to a previous account to begin creating your event. You’ll then provide basic information about the event like its start and end date, along with the start and end time.

2. Pick Up to Five Locations

After setting up your account and entering information, you’ll select up to five pickup and drop-off locations for drivers to take event attendees to. These locations make for a better experience for event attendees and drivers.

3. Set a Budget and Number of Guests for Your Event Codes

To incentivize people to use Lyft instead of driving their own vehicles or taking public transportation, you’ll want to offer an event code. Depending on your budget, you can offer codes that will pay for an entire ride or a fraction of it. Additionally, you’ll set the maximum number of codes so you don’t go over budget.

After you complete this step, you’ll need to complete your purchase and agree to Lyft’s terms.

Interested in Other Ways to Make Event Management Easier?

As you plan, you’ll probably want intuitive, easy-to-use event management tools to assist you. Ridesharing is one of the tools you can utilize. Another tool is an event management platform.

How Can Event Management Software Help?

Configio offers an event management software that goes beyond what’s typically offered by providing advanced functionality that operates and oversees every aspect of your event. For example, the software gives users a responsive website builder to help make their conference websites more attractive and built-in marketing tools to help drive traffic to your website. Additionally, the software automates many time-consuming processes like emails for reminders, recommended products and abandoned carts.

Along with automation and web design, you can manage staff positions and assignments to have greater control over your event. With Configio’s software, you can analyze data from past events, such as sales growth, attendee preferences and monitor your site’s traffic and conversions.

To see what the software can do for you, you can request a demo to try out the product itself. If you’re interested in discussing the program more in-depth, consider sending us a message or giving us a call and one of our representatives will happily speak with you.