How do you get more participants at your events

1. Have I given clear terms of sale?

When the pandemic caused large numbers of events to be cancelled, we saw people gain a heightened awareness of sales conditions. Suddenly, everybody needed to know; what am I entitled to if an event is cancelled?  Will I get my money back?  What if I suddenly become unable to participate?  What rights do I have as a consumer?

Terms of sale are a requirement for payment on delivery and are important to have in place. It is neat to give your participants important information that can suddenly become very relevant.  In LetsReg, you can add your sales conditions to the registration form, and it can easily be reused for several events.

2. Do I provide enough information on the registration page?

It is easy for your participants to get lost in a sea of information if your event information is not presented in an appealing way. Therefore, you should try to read through the registration page as a customer to ensure that it is easy to discover the small details that may be vital to them. You should consider whether there is enough information to answer questions that may arise during the registration process, whilst ensuring that you have not included too much text. Including a FAQ section may be a workable method of providing this.

After sharing the link to your event registration page, this becomes an important landing page which should provide all the necessary information.  A good rule of thumb is to ensure that you greet your participant with enough details to drive their interest into an enrollment.

3. Is it difficult to sign up?

The more difficult it is to sign up in a form, the less likely it is that the participant will choose to make a purchase. You should ideally create simple forms that do not ask for more information than necessary; if you do need to ask for lots of information, you can adapt the form so that only the fields that need to be filled in are displayed. Many event organisers choose to use a event booking system to make the buying process easier for their participants.  Regardless of which provider you use, it is important to go through the steps.  Consider how much information you are requesting, and how natural it will feel for the participant to fill out this form.  This way, you can get more participants by making their sign-up process easier.

4. Have I promoted my event correctly?

To get as many participants as possible to your event, you need a marketing strategy.  It is important to consider which channels you will use and how you will communicate.  You should also have a good landing page for events where participants can sign up. With customised designs on the registration page, you can give a professional and good first impression.

Designs that match your website can be obtained through a registration system; this will provide your participants with a consistent and holistic user experience.

Before sending your booking link out, ask yourself; are you proud of your registration page?  If you are, you can share the link on websites, social media and newsletters.  It is also worth investigating how you can create attention to build familiarity around you and your company.  Social media and PR can be excellent channels here!

5. Have I chosen the right sales strategy?

Naturally, ticket sales have a start and an end date, and most people will plan for this.  Many, however, forget the phase in between; the period when the tickets are available.  If you divide the ticket sales into three phases, you can make a plan for how to maximise the potential in each phase.  Find out what to do so that the participants who have signed up can share the event further, therefore increasing the number of registrations whilst enabling you to learn a lot about your customers.

6. How to engage existing participants?

It is easier and more sustainable to keep existing customers than to find new ones.  It can therefore be very informative to ask your attendees for feedback; existing customers are also usually receptive to hearing more about your future events.  Through a registration form, you can recruit participants to your newsletter via consent.  LetsReg has a separate consent module that allows you to obtain consent to be added to the newsletter list in accordance with the GDPR.  In the newsletter, you can promote future events and send out offers for courses.  The newsletter is easy to forward, and in that way, existing participants can become good ambassadors for your courses and activities.

7. Do your participants find a course date that suits them?

If you offer many courses, it is important to have a clear website with a course calendar where it is easy for your customers to find a suitable date.  The search page for your events can preferably contain both a free text search and a filter.  If your participant can choose the place, date and type of course, they will be able to easily find a course that suits them.  With an online course system, a search page will often be included; if you link the course system to the website, the calendar will be updated automatically.