Hosting a B2B event is a great way to promote your brand on a larger scale. Be it offline or online, promotional events are at the top of the chain when it comes to showcasing the value of your product or service to customers.
To give you an overview of how big the business of organizing conferences and event registration is, we’d like to share a stat from the United Kingdom that would blow your mind!
Before the pandemic, the country recorded yearly spending of £31billion on just B2B events. This is just from one country. Can you imagine what the market would be like on a global scale!
In a space so big, event registration plays an important part in making your promotional gig a success. It ensures that attendees are who they say they are, and it allows organizers to know how many people will be attending.
Events are usually planned months in advance and there are many unknowns along the way. To fight these uncertainties, businesses invest in reliable registration services.
What is event registration?
Well, this depends on who is asking. From an organizer’s point of view, it is the process of signing up attendees for an event. This usually includes collecting contact information, such as name, email address and phone number, as well as payment information (if applicable).
From an attendee’s point of view, it is the process of registering for an event and providing the necessary contact and payment information.
However, it is important to note that event registration is not the same as event attendance. An attendee only needs to register for an event, but not necessarily show up.
In such cases, the crucial task of any organizer is to make sure that registration and attendance are not completely disparate. As a registration specialist, your job is to make the registration process as easy and painless as possible for attendees, while ensuring you receive all the information that you need.
This brings us to our next important question:
What is the role of event registration?
The whole point of registering for an event is to ensure that people who sign up are actually planning on attending. It’s also a way to collect contact and payment information from those individuals, but this process varies depending on the type of conference you’re hosting.
For example, if you have a small conference with one hundred attendees or less, you might be fine emailing everyone’s contact information for the event. If your conference has over a thousand people though (or if there are security concerns), you will probably need to require each attendee to provide their own unique access code.
Lately, virtual events are also becoming the talk of the town. In a recent survey, it was observed 41% of event organizers use Zoom for their small virtual events, while 29% of them relied on Microsoft Teams.
While the description we have painted above might portray registration for events as easy, the job of a registration specialist is not that simple. However, with the help of these five unknown facts, we hope this process becomes a tad bit uncomplicated for event organizers like you to implement.
5 lesser-known facts about event registration
1. You can integrate blockchain technologies
Blockchain technologies are on the rage now. And it has managed to find its way into the world of event registration. Now, it’s not as complex as you may initially think.
The entire registration process is a pretty big one and the number of details involved can be overwhelming for both organizers and attendees alike. At its core, blockchain technologies provide a digital ledger that records every transaction made on it in chronological order so none are missed or edited later down the line. This can be especially helpful for events with a large number of attendees and transactions.
For example, if you’re an event planner, you can use blockchain technologies to create a unique registration code for each attendee. This will help ensure that no one registers more than once and also helps keep track of who is attending your conference.
The introduction of a time-segmented consortium blockchain for robotic event registration could play a crucial role in establishing a transparent process that works on the execution of smart contracts.
2. Contactless registration solutions are a boon
Since the pandemic, the world is experiencing a new wave of contactless transactions where everything is carried over QR codes and website URLs. This has also made its way to the world of event registration.
You can see that the use of contactless transactions is becoming very popular among attendees and organizers. As more people shift from cash payments, the popularity of using smartphone wallets as a substitute for cash and cards will rise. By integrating this payment method into your registration process, you can easily ensure that the entire payment experience is as smooth and efficient as possible.
However, keep in mind that contactless transactions are still a relatively new concept for most people today. Thus, it’s important to provide clear instructions on how they should use this feature if you’re planning on implementing it into your workflow.
3. Event tracking: Secret to your success
We can’t reiterate enough how important it is to analyze the performance of your events. This is especially true if you’re looking to host more than one conference in the future.
Tools like Google Analytics can be extremely helpful when it comes to understanding how people are finding your event, what they’re doing when they get there, and where they’re going once they’ve left.
By tracking this data, you can begin to see patterns forming and determine which areas you need to improve on as well as the ones that are working. This data can be used by both event organizers and attendees alike for future events.
Usually, the analytical data include statistics on entrances, exits, dwell time, bounce rates, and re-entries.
With the use of this data, organizers can improve their overall event experience and attendees can use it as a reference point to decide whether or not an event is worth attending again.
4. Custom tickets sell more
Do not underestimate the power of custom tickets!
Allowing ticket buyers to customize their tickets can help increase the value of your event and also attract more attendees. Instead of choosing from a predetermined list, they will be able to choose what name or nickname is printed on their ticket as well as how it appears (font, font colour).
Customized tickets also help you reinforce your branding among your target audience. This can be crucial when it comes to building a positive image for your brand and ensuring that you’re seen as an authority in the industry.
Lastly, people love being treated like VIPs! By allowing them to customize their tickets, they’ll feel more special knowing that no one else has the same ticket type/designation as theirs during registration. Maximize this to gain a higher conversion in your next event registration campaign.
5. It’s a customer experience
Event registration is not a stand-alone process, it’s part of your overall customer experience.
Your customers expect a seamless and problem-free registration process regardless of the channel they use to register (website, phone, in-person).
This is why it’s important to have a centralized system where you can track all registrations whether they’re made through your website or over the phone.
Moreover, it is a good segway into your next initiatives like email marketing. After recording the details of your attendee, you can follow up with a personalized email to encourage them to share their experience with friends and family.
The end goal of event registration is not just about getting more people into your event, it’s also about making sure that they have a positive overall experience throughout the entire registration process!
There are many things you can do to simplify the registration process for everyone involved: contactless transactions, automated tracking, and personalized follow-ups. We hope these five unknown facts have become a bit not-so-unknown for you today.
If you found these facts useful then why not share them with your network! This will help them elevate their event organization game and allow them to get more attendees than earlier. Share this article through your favorite social platforms!
