A First Hand Suggestion for 2012

Guest Post By:
Justin Gritzmacher, ETS Coordinator
Active Network| Events

Our Event Technology Seminar Coordinator, Justin Gritzmacher, is our guest author for today’s blog post. From traveling around the country running our Lunch and Learn series, Justin has had the opportunity to frequently interact with Event Organizers and learn more about their needs. One big trend he sees for 2012 is the impact of social media as a tool to engage attendees, even during the event off season.

Traveling around the country hosting Active Network’s – Event Technology Seminars, I am fortunate enough to meet a wide variety of event organizers. I get to hear about ideas that have worked…and some that have not.

Looking back at 2011, I have seen a few trends in the Events Space. Using Social Media is one trend I suggest you try to incorporate into your events as we head into the New Year.

Social Media has changed the way we live our lives. Using sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter provide an outlet to engage attendees year round with good informed content, while keeping them aware of information relevant to your events. Many event organizers I’ve talked with are capitalizing on these technologies to help run larger and more successful events.

By creating communities for your events you can pass information to all your attendees, and potential attendees, year round making interaction more constant, instead of only during the time surrounding your event.

Social Media will allow you to find out more about the types of people interested in your events, and what they are hoping to accomplish while at your event. With this information organizers can make effective changes as simple as changing start time or venue, or more complex changes like adding new content or even changing the event scope.

When you are not running events, keep your attendees engaged with white papers or links to interesting articles about topics relating to your events, or even short informational webinars. This way, attendees never have a chance to forget about you or your events. Year round interaction will help plan events that directly meet the needs of your audience.

Once you have created a steady stream of interaction, you will begin to have a “captive” audience that is a perfect group to send your first round of invitations when the time comes. The people in these groups will be more excited and educated about your event, and will be much more likely to sign up. Channel the excitement and energy generated by these attendees to help increase your registrations. If your attendees are excited about your event, they will become your ambassadors, promoting your event for you. In this respect, social media can be a cost effective way to branch out your marketing efforts.

As we close out 2011, I hope that these few tips make you optimistic, and help your events reach new heights in to 2012.

Written By: Michelle Nikolayevsky

What does RegOnline’s $3.95 get you?

While there are a plethora of event registration and event management companies out there, do you know who to choose?  All offer various pricing, but what is included in that price?

RegOnline costs $3.95 per registration and includes:

1. Unrestricted account access
   • Create as many events as you’d like.
2. Mobile Suite of Services
   • Onsite Mobile Check in, Mobile Registration, Directory Maps and Schedules
3. Customizable Templates
   • Use Theme Designer to make events match colors, logos and branding.
4. Pay As You Go Pricing
   • No contracts no hidden fees
5. Free Access to Help Center
6. Unlimited Free Tech Support
7. Webinars and Teleconferencing
8. Scanning Technology for on-site check in
9. Include different Registrant Types
   • Create as many different registration types as you need to fit your event.
10. Discount Codes
11. Group registration
12. Badges/certificates
    • Create custom badges and certificates
13. PCI Level 1 Security Protection
    • Keeping sensitive information safe
14. Social MediaPromotion Tools
    • Promote event to everyone through Facebook, Twitter and more!
15. Email Invitations
16. Merchandise
    • Incorporate merchandise as part of your online registration experience.
17. Search Venues
    • To host your event
    • For accommodations for guests
18. Access to the RegOnline eMarketing Center
    • Educational tools and tips to enhance your event.

We are continually developing additional features to provide a robust experience, to create more value for our customers.  If you are looking to add more, there are a number of additional features including surveys, donation forms, Professional Services, and more that can be incorporated for an additional price.

Have a question?  Leave it below, or contact an Account Manager for details today.

Written By: Michelle Nikolayevsky

Guest Post: Can One Person Really Do it All?

Guest Post By:
Andrew Steiner, Senior Marketing Manager
Active Network | Events

This is the second post from Andrew Steiner, Senior Marketing Manager for RegOnline. Andrew draws upon the daily experience of setting up our Event Technology Seminars, and how RegOnline makes it possible for his colleague Justin Gritzmacher to single handedly manage it all.

My colleague and I have run more than 75 events (three since my last post) with another 20-25 events before year’s end. These hour and half “lunch and learns” are designed to educate event organizers on different technologies that could expand the size of their events, help them manage more efficiently and intelligently, and build lasting relationships with their attendees.

Did you know that all of these events can be managed by one person thanks to RegOnline?

My colleague, Justin Gritzmacher, is responsible for organizing our events from start to finish. While he books venues, plans meals, and works onsite, he is also responsible for filling the room for each event.

At any given moment, Justin is working on the various stages of multiple events. We generally run three-four events every week, with 50 registrations each. On an average day Justin is working with registrants, sending out invitations for an event, sending out reminders for another, collecting post-event survey data from attendees, and compiling a report on the success of our events as a whole. Justin is doing all of this for events that run back to back, continuously throughout the year. There is a ton of information to keep straight and lots of little tasks that must get done.

And through 78 events, Justin hasn’t asked for help once. He is still doing it all on his own. This may not be that impressive to some, but many organizers are responsible for their events from start to finish. Many are inundated with a workload similar to Justin’s, not seeing how it is possible for one person to run all of these events on his own.

I am sure you are thinking that he must spend countless hours printing out name badges and preparing emails. But the truth is he doesn’t. Justin uses RegOnline to efficiently and intelligently manage events. Instead of using one system to send out emails and another to track attendees and compile survey data, Justin uses RegOnline to do it all. This allows him to cut out much of the busy work, and frees him for more important tasks like working with vendors or identifying ways to improve the attendee experience.

If you think about it, most of the busy work organizers deal with on a daily basis is actually created when separate systems are used to manage an event. The logistics coordinating multiple systems creates more busy work than actual value, and organizers and pulls them away from what they do best; designing a great event and providing a terrific experience for attendees.

Through RegOnline, Justin is able to get a lot more done in much less time through email and survey tools, attendee databases and reporting features. When he wants to send a reminder email for an upcoming event, he doesn’t have to upload email addresses. The system knows which registrants to email based, and almost every email he sends is automated. This  frees him up from having to worry about them before and after each event.

Putting together reports is easy because all data is housed in place. No more importing or exporting when it’s time to build a report. And because RegOnline is web based, Justin can access it from wherever he is using mobile devices. This allows him to get up to the second accurate information from his reports on the fly.

Using RegOnline has allowed Justin to cut out most of the busy work that organizers typically deal with, and made it possible for him to organize all 78 events by himself.

Now, if you are an event organizer that hasn’t had the opportunity to work with a centralized event management system, I strongly suggest that you give it a shot. To learn more or to sign in for a free test account, visit RegOnline today.

Written By: Michelle Nikolayevsky

Guest Post: Lessons Learned from Event Technology Seminars

Guest Post By:
Andrew Steiner, Senior Marketing Manager
Active Network | Events

This week, Senior Marketing Manager Andrew Steiner serves as  guest writer for the RegOnline blog. His posts  focus on the lessons learned from running the Event Technology Seminars over the past six months. Today’s post will discuss the initial struggles to fill their events , while the next will focus on how one individual can manage the entire process.

We have held 75 Event Technology Seminars since March. After running these live events, we have learned a few things about managing meetings.

The hour and a half “lunch and learns” were designed to educate event organizers on different technologies that could expand the size of their events, manage events more efficiently and intelligently, and build lasting relationships with their attendees.

As our events began we had to put the very concepts we were teaching to the test. We had to drive as many people as we possibly could to sign up for the events we plan to hold in 2011. And all of it had to be managed by just one person.

In the process of organizing our first 75 events we confirmed a few facts about getting people to sign up.  Location still matters. The size of the invite list affects the number of registrations. And price still has an impact on attendance rates.

But we’ve also discovered in today’s event world, these aren’t enough anymore. Focusing on these factors helped get us some qualified registrants to sign up, but in the beginning we were continuously struggling to fill all available seats.

Like most event organizers, we immediately began to focus on our marketing materials. We tweaked the emails, we looked into developing direct mail pieces, and we even hired professional copywriters. None of it worked. The lack of results forced us to step back and ask the question, “Why aren’t people responding to us?” We were offering a valuable education and even a free lunch.

The answer hit us like a ton of bricks. People just don’t believe us.

Consumers are bombarded with marketing materials loaded with promises that will never be fulfilled. They have seen enough of statements that tell them to “Act NOW!” only to have another chance to act in a month. And they are tired of signing up for events because “seats are going fast” only to discover that the event wasn’t even sold out.

If our invitees really didn’t believe us or they didn’t have the same level of trust in promotional materials as they used to, we had to ask the question, “Who do they trust?”

That answer was simple. Consumers tend to listen to their colleagues and friends more than anyone else. Word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing tool out there. And we needed to use it to promote our events if we were going to fill the seats.

We immediately went out and found targeted contact lists focusing on exactly who we were hoping to attract to our events. We asked them to register and to invite any colleagues or friends that may be interested in attending with them. We made it easy for registrants to mention our events on their Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and LinkedIn profiles. But most importantly we encouraged them to forward the invitation along.

We empowered our own registrants to become promoters for our events. And the results were almost immediate and were exactly what we needed. Almost every event since the adjustments has been sold out. And if we hadn’t made the changes, I believe we would still be struggling to fill our events.

Because of the terrific response, we have been forced to increase the number of events we are planning in each city. And we managed to break our registration goals for the year before the end of the third quarter. Essentially we are practicing what we are teaching and you could do it too.  You can encourage your attendees to promote your events through word of mouth advertising by making it possible for them to forward your invitation along to their colleagues and friends. You can also allow your registrants to promote your events through their Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts.

Go ahead and give it a shot. And if you do it effectively, like we did, the results you’ll see will be shocking!

To learn more about how to get more registrants by empowering attendees to become promoters, open a free account,  and we will be happy to teach you more.

Written By: Michelle Nikolayevsky

Let Us Treat You to Lunch

Guest Post By:
Drew Steiner, Event Technology Specialist
Active Network | Events

Earlier this week, we talked about five ways you can improve your registration process. Yet another way to improve the process is by attending one of RegOnline’s complimentary Event Technology Lunch Seminars.

We would like to invite you to join us at one of our seminars.  Over lunch, you and other industry professionals will hear how technology can help make your life easier, while boosting event ROI. Some of the main takeaways you’ll receive, besides a full stomach, include:

• Emerging event technologies, including social networking tools and mobile technology
• Ways to cut costs in half while increasing attendance by 20 percent
• Best practices in event registration and attendee management

We like to keep these discussions small and interactive so spots are limited and will fill up soon. Below are a few upcoming dates. Check out our Event Technology Seminar site for a full schedule of dates and locations.

I hope to see you soon!

Written By: Michelle Nikolayevsky