By continuing to sell to your registrants after they sign-up, you can eliminate "buyer's regret", decrease no-shows, and increase your referral business. Use your confirmation and reminder correspondence as an opportunity to make your registrants feel GREAT about deciding to register for your event.
Help your registrants feel AWESOME…
Express sincere appreciation for choosing your event. Convey more enthusiasm about the benefits of your event. Provide special incentives to invite others. Encourage them to take advantage of the exclusive extras at the event. Give them something unexpected: a free raffle entry or e-freebie. Let them know how excited you are that they will be there.
Event Confirmation
A confirmation email is one of the most overlooked promotional opportunities for event organizers. Confirmation emails are also the most highly read emails because it directly responds to an action taken online. Send the confirmation immediately after registration is complete and include a warm welcome. Be sure to attach your added-value incentive such as a white paper or report that we spoke about in Tip #4 - Irresistible Extras.
Reminder Emails
Reminder emails are sent closer in to the date of the event in order to keep your event top of mind and create buzz for the nearing event. You can also use your reminder as an opportunity to allow them to "upgrade" their options: add more agenda items, golf outing, bring more people, etc. Remember to reinforce the AMAZING value they are going to get from attending your event.
Referrals
By keeping in touch with your registrants, you keep them excited about your event. In fact, try to make them so excited that they refer a friend or colleague to attend along with them. This type of word-of-mouth can increase your attendance considerably.
The Meeting Planner's Online Advantage: The #1 Myth about Online Registration Systems
We hear it over and over again. It's the number one myth about online registration systems that keeps many meeting planners from making their lives easier and their events more successful.
The Meeting Planner's Online Advantage: 6 Ways to Reduce 55% of Your Daily Workload
Industry-expert Corbin Ball estimates that only 20% of meeting planners are using online registration to its real potential. Meeting planners that are managing registrations using paper, emails, basic web-forms, in-house systems or installed software are doing 80% more work than they really need to be doing.
The Meeting Planner's Online Advantage: The Trick that Doubles Client Satisfaction by Doing Less
We all know that communication is the most important component in any relationship; and that can be applied to business as well. The more timely the information provided to your clients, colleagues and suppliers; the smoother your event will run and the happier everyone involved in your event will be.
