Five Tactics Every Event Management Professional Should Use To Increase Attendance

In the past, we’ve talked a great deal about how you can tailor events for your attendees. We’ve talked about how to make guests feel comfortable, how to keep them entertained, and the importance of listening to what they’re saying. What we haven’t really talked about is how to get them to your event in the first place.

Certainly, we’ve touched a bit on event marketing – avenues you can use to increase awareness, tactics you can utilize to get people interested and draw their attention – but we haven’t really gone into specifics. Today, that changes. We’re going to take a look at a few methods you can use to increase attendance at your events. 

Personalize

If you’re sending out generic invitations, people are going to assume you’re hosting a generic event. Instead of simply mass-producing invitations, take steps to personalize things – treat each attendee as a unique individual. Now, for larger events with thousands of guests, this seems a little impractical. 

It isn’t if you’re smart about it.

A gesture as simple as automatically attaching each guest’s name to their invitation can go a long way. And while you aren’t going to be able to talk to every person who declined an invitation, you can still reach out and communicate with a few of the people who ditched out to see if you can figure out why they decided to not attend.

Hype Them Up On Social Media

Social media is one of the best things to happen to public relations since the invention of the printing press. If you’re willing to put in the effort (and you have some idea of what you’re doing), you can get people on a social network hyped up over just about anything. That includes your event.

Stir up conversation. Tease guests about what they’ll see, share photos and video; get people buzzing and more will eventually come. If you want a great example of how to do this, look at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, or San Diego Comic Con. Both conventions have a social media team, and both teams have an excellent grasp of what they’re doing.

Communicate Through Modern Channels

Email is so last year; snail mail feels like a throwback to the middle ages. Everyone these days has a Smartphone, and it’s one of the primary avenues through which most people communicate. See where I’m going with this? Look into setting up a SMS alert system; this will allow you to notify your guests of any changes to the event and look incredibly professional while doing so.

Make Registration Easy

I’m going to come right out and say it – people these days suffer from a very distinctive brand of laziness.  We’re willing to put in a certain degree of effort – which directly correlates to how much we want something. If anything requires more effort than that, we’ve the tendency to give up. This attitude pervades pretty much everything…including event registration.

Make sure your registration process is streamlined, and offers several different channels through which guests can sign up. Otherwise, you’re bound to have more than a few people

Above All, Do Your Homework

Know your audience. Gather as much information as possible about the event you’re planning to run. If you’ve data from past events, look at it and see if you can use it to improve your current conference. Use all the information you have available – and if you don’t have enough, seek more.