Event

With years of experience under our belts from all sorts of events, we have been brainstorming in the Inconnection office, our top tips for getting people to events so that you get that all important return of  investment and a top notch event that gets the results you want! 

Timing is Everything

With busy schedules and an ever increasing demand on time, it’s best to give people plenty of notice in advance of your event. Leaving enough time will also give you the opportunity to promote your event via internal intranets and social media. You could also create a HTML invite to send to prospective attendees electronically, with an ‘add to my calendar’ feature. All of these options increase the awareness of your event as well as the chances of a high turnout. Ideally, for a good turnout, you need to invite people at least a month out from the event date and always consider holidays and any other factors which may affect invitees availability. It’s also worth considering the timing of your event invite landing. So if it’s an email, the best time for B2B emails is usually Tuesday or Thursday around lunchtime, however consider what works best for your audience. Same goes for direct mail, postal invites get great cut through but are likely to be lost in the bustle of Monday mornings. 

Find your Hook

There needs to be something about your event that answers the question: ‘so what?’ this could be:

• The content of your presentations
• Key note speakers
• Special guests
• Workshops and sessions such as 1 on 1’s that would be particularly useful to attendees

All of the above are great pulls, so let them know about it! Your hook could be in the location, location, location….maybe you have a wow factor venue such as The Shard that will knock the socks of your attendees! be sure to big up the fact that your event is being held in a spectacular venue, with great transport links, or maybe you have ‘exclusive use’ there’s a lot to be said for making people feel special, we all like it don’t we!?   

Keeping your Guests in the Loop

Delegate management is so important when it comes to attendance of your events and one of the best ways to do this effectively is by using a registration site. This will equip you with various functions and reports that will help support the whole delegate management side of your event. For example, displaying in depth information around the event such as location, timings and agendas. Registration sites also give the option to send out updates and reminders from the system. You can also generate reports to monitor who has registered, which also works as an automatic mailing list for the next time you run the event. Perhaps giving loyal attendees the first heads up and an early bird offer or discount.   So there you have it, 3 top tips to drive attendance to your event, let us know what you think in the comments below!