Are you afraid of empty chairs? They are definitely the bane of every event planner and can discourage you from even wanting to host events. Here’s a guide for improving attendance at your events that will boost event attendance so that you never experience that again.
Key reasons to increase attendance at events
There are a few things that frequently go wrong at events that can affect attendance. Here are the five principal reasons you may have low attendance at your events:
- Participants drop out
Perhaps their plane is delayed, they’re ill, or they have simply let you down at the last minute. Anything is possible.
- Zero attendance
No one shows up, and it’s a complete disaster because of such poor turnout on the day of the event. What could be worse?
- Technology failure
This is embarrassing and can make your event look unprofessional when the speaker’s microphone fails, the video presentation doesn’t play, or the Internet drops at the worst possible moment.
- Unexpected weather conditions
If you’re planning an outdoor event, it’s critical to have a wet weather plan. No one can fight the unpredictable power of nature!
- Epic queues
Waiting in long queues at check-in is not something event attendees really want to be doing at your event. Avoid queues by utilising high-quality onsite event technologies.
The 10 most powerful ways to increase event attendance
If you want to increase traffic to your site, bring more attendees to your event, and attract new customers and keep the old ones well informed, then you’ve come to the right place. GEVME has a number of event attendance tracking tips to share with you.
Define your target audience.
Often your target audience analysis will be based on specific factors, such as location, age, income, etc. Identify your customers that are most likely to respond positively to your event invitation.
How it works
Knowing your target audience well allows you to choose a date that works best. The time of the year, day of the week, and time of day all make a difference when it comes to attendance.
Plan each step of your event.
Develop a vision for your event and then develop your event branding, deploy your event marketing campaign, execute email marketing, determine your tech needs, etc.
How it works
Many of your prospective attendees want to visit well-planned events immediately before or after another event to capitalise on those people already being in town. You should always be alert and well organised in order to grab the customer’s attention—and hold it!
Personalise the event.
Event personalisation has been trending for years. In today’s smartphone-centric world, we expect our worldwide event experience to be personalised as well.
How it works
Personalise your events to increase attendee satisfaction with GEVME’s personalised registration, customised event websites, mobile apps, and more.
Give incentives.
Incentives require in-depth planning. Be sure to provide your attendees with useful merchandise, freebies, early-bird offers, and other exclusive perks.
How it works
When you provide giveaways, you highlight the importance of the attendees, as well as their loyalty, and let them know they’re special, which motivates them to keep up with future events.
Promote an event in advance.
As a general rule of thumb, promoting your events at least 90–180 days in advance is recommended.
How it works
When you know the most important aspects for our event in advance, there’s already a guarantee of people coming. One important thing to do is build your advertising and event marketing campaign beginning right at the time of its announcement.
Take advantage of email marketing.
Email marketing helps with increasing attendance at events and can double your event traffic. Inform attendees and provide them with registration and ticketing in the easiest way possible.
How it works
As a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to your audience, trigger emails or newsletters within your campaign will enhance your relationship with the attendees.
Simplify the registration process.
Another way to simplify the registration process and boost attendance is to provide a reliable event platform.
How it works
GEVME registration provides rich app features and gives your registrants a user-friendly registration experience.
Create quality content.
One of the ways to increase attendance at events is to create additional pages linked to existing content.
How it works
The text should be structured, diverse, easily readable, and interesting and should have suitable illustrations and CTAs. Information laid out in a continuous stream is negatively perceived and can deter the attendees.
Optimise your event website.
Carefully work out the primary and secondary key phrases to make your headline work. Follow with sentences and paragraphs, etc. Use a website builder with an appealing design.
How it works
This allows you to stick to certain positions in the search to improve it and make it more effective. This will enable you, in turn, to increase your event website traffic through primary and secondary requests.
Get media coverage for your event.
Media stories are an engaging way to deliver information and attract attendees to your event. The media needs to attract and hold their audience’s attention, so boost your event publicity through the help of the local media.
How it works
Media coverage familiarises people with your event, meaning that more guests will come.
Event attendance management software to use
Smart event guest management is data driven. To collect all the necessary data from event attendees, you need to implement a robust system that allows for the managing of attendees, gathering of information and tracking of changes, etc. How do you get people to attend an event? Use a fully integrated event system such as Gevme, which is a fully integrated event management and event marketing software platform that simplifies your event planning and attendee management process. Wow your attendees with excellent software at their disposal.
Event attendance tracking and measurement
A different aspect is measuring the event results. The Gevme attendance tracking software makes your events more organised and predictable but also provides necessary ways to increase event attendance: email marketing, surveys, mobile apps, and real-time, onsite tracking tools that measure the attendance and success of your booth by going far beyond business cards.
Conclusion
Knowing your audience and their desires, raising revenue through ticket sales and promoting the event in advance, good onsite tracking apps, and other advantages will give you the opportunity to scale up operations and boost attendance. To increase your event attendance and succeed, use these 10 powerful ways to increase event attendance, implement professional event platforms, and research expert opinions.
Feel free to leave your own suggestions on how to increase event attendance in the comments below.
