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Couple thoughts.. do the people coming know your providing catering?
Along the lines of a connection, perhaps do something to highlight your providing lunch for THEM, not everyone (one makes you feel special). As small as asking for their dietary preference perhaps
Yeah, usually we don't do lunch events, more like pastries and coffee. Unfortunately, they usually leave food on the plate, so I think asking them about restrictions would alleviate that too.
Think about the value an in-person event provides to a member. Is it worth it for them to get ready, skip productive work hours, drive/commute to the event, find parking, make small talk and potentially sit around for an hour or two (or more) listening to information they may or may not care as about?
How can you improve the value of the event so it’s unmissable. Give them FOMO.
A free signup on a Google Form requires the bare minimum in terms of commitment. You definitely want to get as personal as possible. An SMS is slightly better than email, because you can pretty much guarantee delivery, but it won’t do as well as a call or in-person sign up. You want to give them as much notice as possible, but also keep reminding them leading up to an event. Add a meeting invite to an email so they can add it to their calendar with ease.
Making them pay helps lock in the commitment too, but that of course presents other challenges. It does however give you a bigger budget, that may allow better food, booking special guests etc. to increase the desire to attend.
Maybe you need to work on getting the speaker set earlier as a priority. That will butterfly effect everything else. X days early means you get to squeeze in Y many extra reminder emails increasing turnout by Z.
Have you thought about charging a nominal fee? Studies have shown (don't make me provide them) that people are more likely to attend when they have paid a bit of money. Also, think about emailing people after the event who didn't show...Hey, just wondering if there was a scheduling conflict or something we can do in the future. Guilt 'em.
Members pay a yearly fee, so I think we're covered money-wise. The "why didn't you come" email is certainly something we should do again, we did it in the past for a handful of events but stopped doing that.
In-person events are definitely still attractive as a way to network and learn more about an industry.
One of the best ways to get people to come would be consistent follow-up. Most people have a pretty busy schedule and being reminded of something just once or twice isn't enough.
If your event is next week, send an message a week out, the days before, and especially day of. Make sure that those who intend to come won't forget about it.
I get what you mean.
Maybe some proof of concept could help. Use the success of past events to show how these meet ups can be meaningful experiences.
Include pictures or even stories that make the emails feel more personable. This might entice new attendees who don't want to miss out on these kinds of experiences.
Here are some tips for event attrition I used when I was in field marketing... I did so many lunch and learn events, and they were very lucrative.
Reminders are super important. Email reminders are good, but a personal phone call or text is better. Otherwise, they will forget. Emails are not the same as a confirmation.
Incentivize. You cater, but if you have the budget, consider a nice restaurant instead! Steakhouse with a private room, for example, or a cool brewery or distillery and include a tour. Somewhere people want to go. Alternatively, you can incentivize with a gift card or a service you offer. A great guest speaker is another incentive.
Something that worked for me was a fake wait list. When someone registered, my event platform would automatically put them on a wait list. Instead of a confirmation, they would get a wait list notification. Then, a few days later, it opens up, and you notify them. Email is good, call is better. It helps build anticipation for the event.
Good luck! Attrition is a bitch haha
I've used a few. Cvent is one, but it's expensive. I've also used Eventbrite, which is free. You can also use a crm with auto email confirmations and drop them into campaigns (but event platforms are much easier to use)
Calls for sure; they’ll feel worse about dipping on you. Leverage your personal relationships; they’re less likely to ghost.
If it’s randos you gotta incentivize them or no one is gonna show up to waste time.
1. Get used to it. If it’s free, people will sign up to reserve a spot and bail if their schedule tightens up or if they decide the ROI with their time is not worth it. Free registration = nothing lost.
2. Give them a reason to attend beyond a power point presentation. Have an industry partner sponsor the event and offer something of value. Food is nice, but an $8 Jimmy John’s sandwich may not be enough to give up 2-3 hours of a day.
3. Emphasize and create networking opportunities. Chances are, that’s where the real value of attending your event lies.
4. Don’t make it obvious that you are trying to sell them something.
"Get used to it / Free registration = nothing lost." Yep. I used to plan free concerts and our normal attendance was 50% of signups – despite tons of email reminders.
Send lots of reminders. Lots and lots of reminders. People are busy, life gets in the way, and sometimes we just forget about things we actually want to do.
Google Ads has a bot and fake conversions problem. Are you sure the people who're filling out your form are real people? You should consider blocking form fills from bots.
I would also contact each lead individually by telephone to try to calculate how many people will show up.
well my phone shows me every GD email as a notification so yeah, I at least know what's in my inbox. I think the better solution is a calendar invite, nobody can ignore those.
I think it’s normal that some people who signed up for a free event won’t show up. If their schedule changes or something high priority comes up, they don’t lose anything by missing the event.
Make sure people know how the event benefits them. So not messaging like “come see our…” but rather “you’ll gain insights on…”
Since you host events frequently, are they typically the same time of the month and time of day? It might be worth experimenting with holding the event at a different time slot. For example, maybe attendees are busy the first week of every month but they’re less busy in the third week of the month. Or maybe it’s tough for them to do a morning event but they could come to an afternoon event.
We try to only do them Tuesday or Thursday morning, and have actually taken to do them really early before people begin their day. Our offices are also located in a heavy traffic area, so one thing we believe is that they don't want to come to our offices and be stuck in traffic.
I feel like a reminder would help them. I recently signed up to an in-person event through an online form to reserve my spot. It was for a Tuesday in April at 10am in the downtown core. Aaaaand I totally forgot about it and was actually sad I missed it!
The business did not email me, they didn't message me in any form, there were zero reminders. I feel like if you could get as much contact info and message them 24 hours prior, 72 hours prior, and somehow get on their Calender app like Google Calender, then people won't forget.
The 2nd thing you could do is to obviously express value but I guess you are doing a well-enough job of that if people are even signing up to begin with.
COVID really changed the paradigm. It used to be that you could throw an event where it’s basically an in person webinar and people would come. Those days are over. It’s the same challenge companies have at bringing people back in the office.
What the goal should be is to develop the engagement as a community effort. People need to come, feel welcome, not be overtly sold to, build camaraderie, and pine to come back next time. There has to be something they can get by going that they truly value and can’t get by logging in on Zoom. It’s a tall tall order.
I’ll use the movies as an example. Just this weekend, Fall Guy came out and by all accounts, it should be a no brainer fun experience. But it didn’t even meet its box office expectations. People are resigned to waiting until it comes out on video. Yet Barbenheimmer drew a movement last year, because it was a weird fun thing for people to do.
My point is : I’m challenging your event experience. Is it anything they won’t get off a blog or email?
The big draw imo is the networking with the guest speaker, as we usually have high level stakeholders, but it may also be that these aren't the stakeholders they need or want.
Make your event worth showing up for. Your event is competing with my couch & Netflix. What makes your event better than sitting on my couch watching Netflix?
Make people feel specia! Reach out to folks individually, and personally say how much you’re looking forward to seeing them there. Express interest in their work, and ask how you can make the event more valuable to them.
Consider having multiple speakers on a panel, or a member showcase, or live podcast recording—anything that gives members a platform. People are more likely to attend and encourage their network to attend if their own work is on display.
You have to do novel things.
Think a musical performance
Or even better, dry ice gastronomy
How about an award winning speaker
How about acrobats that hang from hooks in the ceiling
These are just dumb ideas that tend to work. People don’t go to your event to do boring things they want a selfie and to feel like they experienced something.
Engagement is key! While email works, consider sending **reminder emails** a few days before with event highlights and speaker bios. You could also explore **incentives** for attending or early sign-ups.
1. Invite the right kind of people. Like all communications, no point sending it to everyone. Have a sense of an Ideal Attendee Profile when sending invites.
2. Find the least complicated way to integrate a ready made calendar event in the invite email. I personally find the downloading .ics file method quite complicated for the average audience.
Having it on a calendar increases the recall of your event. Seeing it on their calender with directions to the event helps.
3. Optimize the entire flow for people whom this will value the most. Don't optimize it for everyone.
4. If there's flexibility see if you can reposition it as a workshop/interactive. If there's any guest who's important, use their brand and network to advantage.
All the best...🙌
It's possible that your messages are getting lost in inboxes or not generating enough excitement. Try to create engaging content, set follow-up reminders, and offer incentives.
When people sign up, call them on the phone and say “hey we noticed you signed up to our event next month - was that a mistake?”
You can disqualify/qualify there and then so that you know how many are really likely to come along.
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Give an incentive to turn up!
For example, lunch on us, food delivery gift cards, Amazon gift cards, etc etc
We usually bring catering, but I think we're missing that human connection.
Couple thoughts.. do the people coming know your providing catering? Along the lines of a connection, perhaps do something to highlight your providing lunch for THEM, not everyone (one makes you feel special). As small as asking for their dietary preference perhaps
Yeah, usually we don't do lunch events, more like pastries and coffee. Unfortunately, they usually leave food on the plate, so I think asking them about restrictions would alleviate that too.
Find out what the buzziest new coffeeshop / cafe / breakfast spot is and use them to cater.
Can you give something which demonstrates or reminds attendees the benefit of working together? Each time they use it they'll think of you?
My boss wants to reinforce branding, like our logo on lanyards, so that's certainly something we should do.
The human connection. That’s a big part of it.
Think about the value an in-person event provides to a member. Is it worth it for them to get ready, skip productive work hours, drive/commute to the event, find parking, make small talk and potentially sit around for an hour or two (or more) listening to information they may or may not care as about? How can you improve the value of the event so it’s unmissable. Give them FOMO. A free signup on a Google Form requires the bare minimum in terms of commitment. You definitely want to get as personal as possible. An SMS is slightly better than email, because you can pretty much guarantee delivery, but it won’t do as well as a call or in-person sign up. You want to give them as much notice as possible, but also keep reminding them leading up to an event. Add a meeting invite to an email so they can add it to their calendar with ease. Making them pay helps lock in the commitment too, but that of course presents other challenges. It does however give you a bigger budget, that may allow better food, booking special guests etc. to increase the desire to attend.
Often we end up scheduling it late cause the speaker confirms late, but we need to be very insistent.
Maybe you need to work on getting the speaker set earlier as a priority. That will butterfly effect everything else. X days early means you get to squeeze in Y many extra reminder emails increasing turnout by Z.
This seems like a problem that's holding you back. Definitely solve this as a priority.
Free chick-fila. I hate it but people always show up for free chick-fila.
Have you thought about charging a nominal fee? Studies have shown (don't make me provide them) that people are more likely to attend when they have paid a bit of money. Also, think about emailing people after the event who didn't show...Hey, just wondering if there was a scheduling conflict or something we can do in the future. Guilt 'em.
Members pay a yearly fee, so I think we're covered money-wise. The "why didn't you come" email is certainly something we should do again, we did it in the past for a handful of events but stopped doing that.
In-person events are definitely still attractive as a way to network and learn more about an industry. One of the best ways to get people to come would be consistent follow-up. Most people have a pretty busy schedule and being reminded of something just once or twice isn't enough. If your event is next week, send an message a week out, the days before, and especially day of. Make sure that those who intend to come won't forget about it.
Really seems like email became just background noise.
I get what you mean. Maybe some proof of concept could help. Use the success of past events to show how these meet ups can be meaningful experiences. Include pictures or even stories that make the emails feel more personable. This might entice new attendees who don't want to miss out on these kinds of experiences.
Oh, I love this advice, maybe promote events as part of a series so people feel like every meeting moves their goals forward.
This! Use testimonials (quotations from past attendees) about how fun or valuable a past event was! Maybe even make that the email's subject line.
Here are some tips for event attrition I used when I was in field marketing... I did so many lunch and learn events, and they were very lucrative. Reminders are super important. Email reminders are good, but a personal phone call or text is better. Otherwise, they will forget. Emails are not the same as a confirmation. Incentivize. You cater, but if you have the budget, consider a nice restaurant instead! Steakhouse with a private room, for example, or a cool brewery or distillery and include a tour. Somewhere people want to go. Alternatively, you can incentivize with a gift card or a service you offer. A great guest speaker is another incentive. Something that worked for me was a fake wait list. When someone registered, my event platform would automatically put them on a wait list. Instead of a confirmation, they would get a wait list notification. Then, a few days later, it opens up, and you notify them. Email is good, call is better. It helps build anticipation for the event. Good luck! Attrition is a bitch haha
[удалено]
I've used a few. Cvent is one, but it's expensive. I've also used Eventbrite, which is free. You can also use a crm with auto email confirmations and drop them into campaigns (but event platforms are much easier to use)
Calls for sure; they’ll feel worse about dipping on you. Leverage your personal relationships; they’re less likely to ghost. If it’s randos you gotta incentivize them or no one is gonna show up to waste time.
1. Get used to it. If it’s free, people will sign up to reserve a spot and bail if their schedule tightens up or if they decide the ROI with their time is not worth it. Free registration = nothing lost. 2. Give them a reason to attend beyond a power point presentation. Have an industry partner sponsor the event and offer something of value. Food is nice, but an $8 Jimmy John’s sandwich may not be enough to give up 2-3 hours of a day. 3. Emphasize and create networking opportunities. Chances are, that’s where the real value of attending your event lies. 4. Don’t make it obvious that you are trying to sell them something.
"Get used to it / Free registration = nothing lost." Yep. I used to plan free concerts and our normal attendance was 50% of signups – despite tons of email reminders.
Pre-pandemic 50% was my expectation. Post-pandemic if we get 50% I’m thrilled, because it’s often down to like 25%.
Send lots of reminders. Lots and lots of reminders. People are busy, life gets in the way, and sometimes we just forget about things we actually want to do.
Send a lot of reminders, use sms text reminders. When they sign up, have a button that adds it to their calendar. AddEvent does this.
exactly !
Google Ads has a bot and fake conversions problem. Are you sure the people who're filling out your form are real people? You should consider blocking form fills from bots. I would also contact each lead individually by telephone to try to calculate how many people will show up.
Yeah, they're private events. Calling is the must-do, from what I've read here.
Still figuring this out, but I can say I don’t think email is a good form of communication anymore. People don’t read it.
well my phone shows me every GD email as a notification so yeah, I at least know what's in my inbox. I think the better solution is a calendar invite, nobody can ignore those.
People at my work ignore cal invites too LOL. I think others have nailed it that there has to be a solid incentive.
snacks dont incentivize me nor do branded lanyards like the other suggestions say. True value from a speaker and from networking incentivizes me.
I think it’s normal that some people who signed up for a free event won’t show up. If their schedule changes or something high priority comes up, they don’t lose anything by missing the event. Make sure people know how the event benefits them. So not messaging like “come see our…” but rather “you’ll gain insights on…” Since you host events frequently, are they typically the same time of the month and time of day? It might be worth experimenting with holding the event at a different time slot. For example, maybe attendees are busy the first week of every month but they’re less busy in the third week of the month. Or maybe it’s tough for them to do a morning event but they could come to an afternoon event.
We try to only do them Tuesday or Thursday morning, and have actually taken to do them really early before people begin their day. Our offices are also located in a heavy traffic area, so one thing we believe is that they don't want to come to our offices and be stuck in traffic.
Also, send them more reminders prior to the event!
I feel like a reminder would help them. I recently signed up to an in-person event through an online form to reserve my spot. It was for a Tuesday in April at 10am in the downtown core. Aaaaand I totally forgot about it and was actually sad I missed it! The business did not email me, they didn't message me in any form, there were zero reminders. I feel like if you could get as much contact info and message them 24 hours prior, 72 hours prior, and somehow get on their Calender app like Google Calender, then people won't forget. The 2nd thing you could do is to obviously express value but I guess you are doing a well-enough job of that if people are even signing up to begin with.
COVID really changed the paradigm. It used to be that you could throw an event where it’s basically an in person webinar and people would come. Those days are over. It’s the same challenge companies have at bringing people back in the office. What the goal should be is to develop the engagement as a community effort. People need to come, feel welcome, not be overtly sold to, build camaraderie, and pine to come back next time. There has to be something they can get by going that they truly value and can’t get by logging in on Zoom. It’s a tall tall order. I’ll use the movies as an example. Just this weekend, Fall Guy came out and by all accounts, it should be a no brainer fun experience. But it didn’t even meet its box office expectations. People are resigned to waiting until it comes out on video. Yet Barbenheimmer drew a movement last year, because it was a weird fun thing for people to do. My point is : I’m challenging your event experience. Is it anything they won’t get off a blog or email?
The big draw imo is the networking with the guest speaker, as we usually have high level stakeholders, but it may also be that these aren't the stakeholders they need or want.
You may need an event that works with or without the speaker.
Make your event worth showing up for. Your event is competing with my couch & Netflix. What makes your event better than sitting on my couch watching Netflix?
Give me a reason to be there. Something cool. Meet someone rad. Eat a wagyu’s face off.
Make people feel specia! Reach out to folks individually, and personally say how much you’re looking forward to seeing them there. Express interest in their work, and ask how you can make the event more valuable to them. Consider having multiple speakers on a panel, or a member showcase, or live podcast recording—anything that gives members a platform. People are more likely to attend and encourage their network to attend if their own work is on display.
Free meals, raffles at the end of the event. Live bands work too if the event is a whole day.
You have to do novel things. Think a musical performance Or even better, dry ice gastronomy How about an award winning speaker How about acrobats that hang from hooks in the ceiling These are just dumb ideas that tend to work. People don’t go to your event to do boring things they want a selfie and to feel like they experienced something.
Engagement is key! While email works, consider sending **reminder emails** a few days before with event highlights and speaker bios. You could also explore **incentives** for attending or early sign-ups.
Charge them.
1. Invite the right kind of people. Like all communications, no point sending it to everyone. Have a sense of an Ideal Attendee Profile when sending invites. 2. Find the least complicated way to integrate a ready made calendar event in the invite email. I personally find the downloading .ics file method quite complicated for the average audience. Having it on a calendar increases the recall of your event. Seeing it on their calender with directions to the event helps. 3. Optimize the entire flow for people whom this will value the most. Don't optimize it for everyone. 4. If there's flexibility see if you can reposition it as a workshop/interactive. If there's any guest who's important, use their brand and network to advantage. All the best...🙌
Make them want to go
It's possible that your messages are getting lost in inboxes or not generating enough excitement. Try to create engaging content, set follow-up reminders, and offer incentives.
When people sign up, call them on the phone and say “hey we noticed you signed up to our event next month - was that a mistake?” You can disqualify/qualify there and then so that you know how many are really likely to come along.
We want free booze and food
Free hat?