Everything’s lined up – you’ve got all of your speakers and travel booked for your event. Signage and materials are done and delivered. Your budget is locked. All that’s left is to open registrations and wait for the people to pour in, right?
Not quite.
Your registration period requires just as much care and attention as every other stage of our event planning and execution. Rather than being a time to wind down, this is when you need to hit the ground running ensuring people know who you are, where you’ll be, why they need to be there – and how to get in on the action.
Online Registration Is A Must
Gone are the days where online event registration was a sometimes-thing. Today, if you’re not offering online registration, you’re not getting seen.
But online registration doesn’t begin and end with an online registration form. You need to ensure your website and landing pages are easy to find, attractive, and geared to get people over the line and book. It needs to provide an online payment portal – a secure one, at that – and a list of the major events people can expect to see.
Social Media Is Your Friend
Word of mouth is still one of the most powerful marketing tools available to people today, and social media provides structure around that word of mouth. Create share links for your event that allow people to quickly and easily share your information to their friends and family online – “click to tweet”, “share on Facebook”, etc.
Be sure to add your event as an event page on Facebook, so people can join the page for updates and receive a calendar reminder. All of your online marketing assets should contain social sharing widgets so that your best content can be shared with the world and grab attention.
Keep in Touch
Your online registration platform should have automatic reminders and notifications built in. Combine this with manual notifications to make sure people are up to date. Even with a Facebook event page and an up-to-date website, never assume your audience is checking for updates themselves. They might be busy, have a lot on their plate, or it could just slip their mind. Send out notifications when details and information changes so that nobody is left out of the loop.
