By Marlena Moore
Whether you’re preparing to host your nonprofit’s next fundraiser or organizing your association’s annual conference, your event’s success depends highly on attendance. After all, no matter how well you plan, an event is futile if people don’t show up.
Rolling out the right strategy to increase event registration will ensure your organization achieves the headcount it needs to engage members, acquire new support and enhance its reputation within the community.
Below are five tips to help you increase the number of people who sign up to attend your next event.
1. Understand Your Audience
The most common reasons people attend events are for networking, fun, recognition, and education. Generally, events that sell out address some or all of these audience pain points, desires and needs.
So, to boost your chances of success, you need to know what resonates with your audience members. For instance, do they prefer attending physical gatherings or the convenience of virtual events from home?
And if you have no idea, then look to your organization’s membership data for insights into their interests and preferences. Better yet, if you have membership software, use it to collect valuable member data.
Develop Buyer Personas
Marketing professionals use “buyer personas” to improve their product or service offerings. You can adopt a similar approach to increase event registration. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional, research-based profile representing your ideal members.
Companies usually have a few buyer personas to tailor their marketing messages to different types of clients and customers. While your organization may not be consumption-orientated, you can use the same marketing strategy for your organization.
For example, you might have a persona called “Philanthropic Pete,” which encompasses high net-worth individuals who donate large sums of money, and another called “Compassionate Carol,” who may not be as financially well-worth but is a dedicated volunteer.
Once you better understand your audience's needs, you can send pre-event surveys to see what appeals to them. And don’t be afraid to adjust your event strategy according to their feedback.
2. Promote Your Event on Multiple Platforms
Over 62% of the world’s population is active on social media. However, your event attendees will have different platform and channel preferences. So, using multiple platforms to boost awareness and reach different buyer personas is important.
People may respond better to messages shared across multiple platforms as repetitive exposure increases familiarity and a subconscious desire to take action. Consider promoting your upcoming events on the following platforms:
● Website: Advertising on your website capitalizes on your existing audience's interest in your organization. Compared to other platforms, it can yield higher conversion rates.
● Email: Regular email communication with your nonprofit members creates a sense of community around your event, building anticipation and maintaining interest from registration to the big day.
● Social media: Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn allow for interactive content and direct communication with a large audience of potential attendees.
● Text messaging: Fast and efficient, SMS lets you reach members where they spend loads of time—on their phones! And it's one of the cheapest forms of marketing.
To increase event registration, highlight the benefits of attending and encouraging people to register. Mentioning "Only a few spots left" will motivate people to act quickly.
3. Make it Easy to Register
Nowadays, it just takes a frustrating registration process to forgo attending your event. You won’t get a second chance to make a good impression. So, make it easy for attendees to sign up and pay their entry fee online with tools like a dedicated conference app.
Membership and event management software with online event registration features make the job easier for you and your attendees. They update people on event details and help you track who’s attending.
Some also have landing page templates for events. Landing pages are specifically designed to convert visitors to act - in this case, register or buy event tickets. A robust website builder will make this task easy.
A good landing page will increase event registration by:
● Including essential details such as the time and location: Consider common FAQs attendees may have and try to include them on the landing page. This reduces back-and-forth admin for everyone.
● Incorporating your brand across the page: A branded landing page gives a professional and trustworthy impression.
● Limiting the required fields in your registration form: Nobody likes filling out long forms. Where possible, use checkboxes.
● Being mobile-responsive: Optimize the page for easy navigation to increase engagement and conversion.
● Having a clear call to action: Direct the user on what to do next i.e. “sign up/register/pay” to increase the chances of registration.
Lastly, offering early-bird discounts is a valuable tool to increase event registration as it triggers the fear of missing out on a good discount. Your current members will tend to be more loyal, so it’s advisable to market these discounts to them first before alerting a wider audience.
4. Partner with Sponsors and Influencers
According to influencer marketing agency Kingfluencers, event sponsorship facilitates positive brand engagement 98% of the time. Combining sponsorships and influencers “fuses the excitement of the events with authentic brand advocacy.”
The logic is simple: An influential person participating in your event will encourage people to attend as long as they genuinely align with your organization’s cause. The key to choosing the right partnerships is:
● Understanding your event goals.
● Knowing what you want out of a sponsorship or influencer attendance.
● Adding value to potential partnerships.
Partnering with corporate event sponsors and influencers is mutually beneficial, as everyone benefits from each other’s audiences. You increase event registration and hopefully attract new organization members, and they gain exposure to new clients and followers.
5. Review Event Data
Collecting and reviewing event data offers insight into attendee satisfaction and subsequent areas that need improvement. Not to mention showing your stakeholders what worked and what you'd do differently at future events.
Some key metrics to watch include:
● Registration numbers: Know exactly how many people registered for your event, especially if a certain percentage of event tickets were free.
● Attendance rate: Compare how many people attended with those who registered. It's normal to have a discrepancy, but the smaller the difference, the more successful your event.
● Attendee demographics: Being acquainted with attendees' age, ethnicity, lifestyle, and interests ensures your future events appeal to the right people. It may even encourage you to angle different events for different buyer personas.
Remember to use your event management platform to send out post-event surveys. More than just a courtesy to show you care, it can improve future functions and increase event registration.
Some software also has email marketing campaign functionality to send messages throughout the year, informing people of upcoming events and helping you make sure you stay on their radars.
Your Event’s Success is in Your Hands
Understanding the thought process that encourages your attendee's event participation goes a long way to boosting head count. An easy online registration and event payment process, clear goals and objectives, and partnering with sponsors and influencers are some factors to remember if you want to increase event registration.
Lastly, remember to thank people for attending. You can do so via email with a post-event survey. This small yet thoughtful gesture cultivates solid and lasting relationships and ensures they remain eager to register for future events.
Marleena Moore is the Marketing Manager at Personify for the WildApricot brand. Her goal is to create impactful content to empower nonprofits and associations in their mission-driven work.
