Breaking down the event success formula: All for one and one for all.
Increasing the number of registrations might be seen as the main goal of the event marketing efforts but is not limited to it, though already being a key element thereof. Increasing show-up rate and following up to build stronger relations for your next event/offer are also as much important as the number of registrations itself.
Increasing the show-up rate is especially critical for the free event providers. Even the most successful events have no-shows. Things come up; people can’t make it. Moreover, skipping a free event has no financial consequences. Accordingly, free events tend to see much higher dropout rates — up to 50%, according to a survey of free event creators, published on Eventbrite.
Follow-up communication is another important factor to elaborate on. In the fierce competition of almost every business vertical, marketing is all about building relationships rather than one-time sales interaction. For that reason, keeping engagement high with the attendees even after the event helps a lot for your next event or with your premium offers.
To simplify, let’s break down important factors of an event’s business performance into a formula:
Event’s Success = # of Registrations x Show-up Rate (%) x Business value of each attendee ($)
Calculating the business value for each attendee is complex since there many determinants related to each other. Even for the paid events, value per attendee is different than the ticket price since you initiate a relationship with a new customer, and it is highly probable that you can sell a new service / product again further along the road. Hence, taking future interactions into account is important to understand the real value of each attendee. For free events, it is all about generating leads and creating engagement for future business transactions. Overall, building relationship with attendees at the post-event phase can change the value per attendee.
There are many event-marketing ways, tools, and approaches that can improve the business success depending on the context and characteristics of your event. For the purposes of this article, I will only focus on how our product – Mini Course Generator – can assist you in improving each formula component with the following targets:
1. Getting more registrations
2. Increasing show-up rate
3. Increasing value per attendee by follow-up communication
Before diving into details, let me first introduce the product briefly since I will refer to it in the following part of this article.
What is minicoursegenerator.com about?
We built this product to enable training providers to attract new leads and build better engagement with their audience through mini courses. In other words, interactive mini courses can be used as lead magnets and lead nurturing tool, which can help to create further engagement and arouse more interest compared to non-interactive content. With mini-course format, presenting knowledge and asking questions can be blended smoothly.
How can it benefit with specific use-cases?
OK, let’s get back to the use-cases and how Mini Course Generator can be used therefor.
Getting more registrations
- Create more excitement and arouse curiosity: Compared to only text-based or video-based communication, through this tool, it is possible to present your motivational content in a more structured way in a mini-course format and benefit from the power of questions in order to bring out knowledge gaps and motivate for training. Just simply add the link of your mini course on your event’s landing page.
- Offer something share-worthy: Make people share your event in their own network through share-worthy mini-courses. Such a content-delivery method can provide more value than monotonous e-books as well as text-based-only promotions and can help to spread the word.
- One size does not fit all: Customize your marketing communication in different channels depending on channel’s specific interests and needs. Similar to A/B tests, prepare a few free mini courses with different titles / slightly different content and share these separately according to the audience’s interests to get more reaction.
- Show your event more valuable (even it is a free event): If possible, offer a paid ticket and free seats at the same time. The idea of a paid ticket even entices more the free seat registrations for the value perceived. You can offer two ticket options, namely free for only attending events and paid tickets for additionally accessing mini courses related to the event.
Increasing show-up rate
- FOMO effect: Offer some exclusivity to the people only if they show up – like sending a premium mini-course as a follow-up after the event for free.
- Build empathy: Understand your audience by asking their expectations, taking their questions or assessing their knowledge level to customize your event content thanks to the questions that you can use in the mini course.
- We all forget: Send reminders with motivational content and awareness raising questions on mini-course format instead of only reminding them the time of the event. The more you can draw the attention to the contributions of the event to the attendees, the higher the engagement will be for the event.
- No pain, no gain: People are more likely to value something if they put an effort into it. Make people deserve the promo code for a paid event – like completing a mini-course and offering a promo-code at the end of it, which allows for free attendance.
Increasing value per attendee with follow-up
- Keep the fire burning: Send reminders as key takeaways and feedback & assessment questions through a follow-up mini course to see what has been well understood and well-received to segment your leads and customize communication afterward for better engagement.
- Show must go on: Spread your new offers for premium services or next events with a more engaging content format to impress and excite them more. Simply set a new course, create its link, and share it in your e-mail newsletters.
As stated above, there are many ways for creative event marketing and the sky is the limit. One tool to benefit from is minicoursegenerator.com and it suits perfectly especially for the events organized by training professionals and content creators.
Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions for your specific use cases or if we can help with anything! → [email protected].