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One of the key performance indicators of highly efficient event-organising bodies is the number of attendee registrations per event. There are various ways to execute the task of attracting interested parties, empowering them to register for your event, and retaining their numbers during the day of the event.
A good starting place would be to set up the registration process.
Depending on the design and nature of your event, the registration process may become sophisticated. For more complicated registration paths, some organisers would scramble on the actual methods to employ. Fret not, there are now solutions to complex requirements in today’s digital age.
Here are some tips that you can follow to streamline the registration process for your upcoming event:
1. Use an event management software
The most logical approach would be to use specialised software for registrations. There is no more room for Google Forms, use of Excel spreadsheets, and manually sending confirmation emails to attendees. The entire process of registration is now automated by many event management software such as Eventscase.
Using an online solution would allow you to set up various parts of the registration process with ease. Eventscase allows you to configure everything from the registration page of the event up to finalising the automatic emails. Another upside to using event management software is that most of them offer complementary solutions for the event website as well. Thus, incorporating the registration process with a well-designed website is now possible to set up within the same solution.
2. Create different registration paths
A major challenge in setting up registrations for big events is having to segment different types of attendees.
Sometimes this requirement is rooted in your business model. For example, if you have a membership system, you may want to offer members a discounted price and other perks compared to non-members.
Other times, segmenting different attendees would simply be based on attendee types. In an academic symposium, you may want to ask speakers different questions compared to attendees. With event registration software such as Eventscase, you can easily apply these differences by configuring the registration form to work one way or another depending on some conditions and filters.
3. Accept credit card payments
It is a travesty that in 2021 there are still some event organisers that would only accept offline payments such as bank transfers for event registrations. Have you ever seen messages like “To confirm your registration, pay the amount due to this bank account and send an email to info@example.com with the proof of payment.”? The use of event technology, per se, is an alien concept still for many event organisers around the world.
By using software like Eventscase, you can easily accept online payments through its integrations with major payment gateways such as Stripe and PayPal. If you are going to use Stripe, you just need to log into your account via Eventscase and it will be automatically connected for all incoming transactions.
If you are going to use PayPal, we recommend that you secure a Business or Enterprise account so that your registrants won’t have to log into their PayPal account and pay directly with their debit or credit card upon registering.
4. Incorporate sessions registrations during the process
If you are running an exclusive event where different sessions have limited capacities, you may also incorporate session registrations into the sign up process. Eventscase makes this possible with the ability to activate registrations per session and setting parameters such as the capacity per session and the number of sessions attendees can register for. This is consolidated within the registration process and becomes the last step before attendees are asked to pay for paid events.
5. Attach confirmation tickets in the email.
Look into the possibility of attaching confirmation tickets to the email that attendees will receive after successfully registering for your event. The confirmation ticket can act as proof of registration and, should it contain a QR code, can be scanned for check-in during a physical event. You may specifically request attendees to print out the PDF ticket in this case.
Conclusion
Different event agencies, PCO’s and exhibition organisers have different registration requirements. If you have bespoke requirements that are truly unique to your organisation, you may also look into requesting for software customisation or better yet looking for in-house solutions by working with software developers.
Regardless, no matter how complex your registration process is, logic would dictate that they follow the same fundamental steps such as gathering attendee information, accommodating payment methods, and sending confirmation emails. The easiest way for you to go about the entire process would be to rely on standardised registration software such as Eventscase.
Do you want to know how technology can help you in managing events before, during and after they happen? Book a demo today.