There are many ways to throw money at an event in order to boost its attendance. For those with bottomless pockets, this is fine. Some of us, however, need to stick to a budget. So how do we balance reaching these new targets, without bankrupting ourselves? Turns out there are quite a few ways to go about it.
Here are the best ways to boost event attendance without breaking the bank:
1. Revisit Past Registrations
Data you collect from previous registrations can be a minefield for valuable insight. Who were your attendees last year? What were their demographics? Were more people registering for single-day attendances or multi-data attendance? Did you get bigger corporate presence, or non-profit? Take a dive into your existing data and find out who to concentrate this year’s marketing efforts on.
2. Get Online With Registrations
Registration for your event should be as straightforward, intuitive, and painless as possible. The modern solution? Online registration. No physical paper, no calling in; just entering in forms from wherever and whenever the attendee is comfortable. Use event management software to design custom invitations that are branded to your event, so it doesn’t look like a cheap off-the-shelf invitation form.
3. Have Secure Payment Methods
Giving out bank or credit card details is always a risky proposition online. People are wary of scams and data leaks even from major companies. When creating online payment portals, there are a few ways to put people’s minds at ease:
Use secure https:// links for payment portals.
Make sure — and highlight — that your registration software vendor is Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant.
Choose a vendor that offers a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) toolkit to remain
compliant in European nations.
4. Get on Top of Email Marketing
Use the data collected from tip 1 to craft effective, targeted email marketing campaigns. Follow the basic guidelines for creating great email invites:
Attention-grabbing subject line — that’s not spammy.
A message that acknowledges your highly targeted recipient. Responsive email design to look good on any platform. Set up smart conditions to exclude people already registered, and provide an easy opt-out. Track everything you can — opens, bounce-backs, click-throughs, opt-outs, etc.
5. Get Social
Social media campaigns can also be highly targeted to reach your desired audience. Again using that valuable data from tip one, you can make sure you get your message exactly in front of the people you found to be most interested in previous events.
Be careful with hashtags. It’s always a good idea to create a hashtag to associate with your event; just make sure it’s not being used for something else, or at least, not something already popular.
