Social networking has always been one of the key reasons people attend events.  And while nothing can replace the value of one-on-one meetings between potential business partners, social media is increasingly a good option for facilititating networking at your event — also a great way to promote your events.  Here’s an interesting list of 8 innovative ways to incorporate social media networking into your events.

http://ow.ly/QJYl

I’m a late convert when it comes to early bird pricing.  Back when I was organizing events for a non-profit, we were always on the look-out for ways to get people to register, and pay, early.  Our experience, quite frankly,  with early bird pricing for both conferences and fund-raising events was that this kind of tiered pricing didn’t work.

In contrast, MeetMax recently provided online event registration for an alternative energy conference, and 56% of their registrations came in before the early bird deadline.  So how do you know whether early bird pricing is going to work for your conference or event?  What should your expectations be for the number of people who will register for an event early?  Can you predict what your overall registrations will be based on the number of early registrants?

The relevancy and timeliness of the event content to the target market is probably the single biggest determinant as to whether early bird pricing works.  An alternative energy conference, featuring leading experts in the field, marketed specifically to people who work in that field, has highly relevant and timely content.  A fundraising event, held annually, while important does not have the same characteristics.

Another factor in the effectiveness of early bird pricing, is the distance people have to travel to attend the conference.  A national event would see better results than a local one.

The extent of the discount can be a factor; our client offered a 30% discount to incent early registrations.

Frequent communications to your target market reminding them of the upcoming deadline is a must.

To boost early registrations, and generate cash flow to help fund the event, you might consider offering an additional benefit as well as or in place of a reduced rate — a book, for example, or an introduction to the keynote speaker.   Or, think about providing an incentive that is a discount on colleague/friend registrations.  This would have the advantage of increasing your numbers as well as bringing in early registrations.

Of course, historical data is the very best way to predict whether early event registrations will be a significant percentage of your overall numbers.  Make sure your registration database includes a timestamp on registrations and that you have access to your event registration data from past events.

Wondering whether to use social media to promote your next event, and wondering how exactly to go about that?

I found a reference to a great example of using Facebook for event marketing.  Check out the National Association of Automobile Dealers on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/National-Automobile-Dealers-Association-NADA-2010-convention-Orlando-FL/187704176760?ref=mf)  In addition to a link to register for the event, there are video clips and photos from prior years, promos for top speakers, etc.

What are the elements of an effective event marketing website?  Drawing from my experience planning events, and from our MeetMax clients, with some additional insights from LinkedIn users, I’ve compiled the following list of elements of a successful event website: 

REGISTER ONLINE: Clear means to register online (and make it easy)

POST-EVENT MARKETING: Let registered attendees download materials after the event - for example, copies of presentations, exhibitor brochures. 

USABILITY. I want what I want, and it always can’t take too much time to find it.  Make the Navigation simple and straight-forward.

NETWORKING - The most valuable discussions at an event often take place outside the presentation rooms.  If you want a truly successful event, find ways to facilitate your attendees in connecting with one another. A great way to do this is to offer the ability to set appointments with exhibitors, speakers or sponsors in advance.

ENGAGING - People want similar information to what’s in brochures, but more engaging.  Take advantage of technology, for example by regularly adding extras such as speaker video-clips.  Update the content regularly and use email to encourage registered attendees to remain engaged with the event as it draws near.

COMPLETE – Content has to be complete and up to date.  You need specific content for different audiences — attendees, exhibitors, sponsors.

• For Attendees (Must-Have’s):

1.  Topic and Theme of the Event
2. Audience Description so I know what’s in it for me
3. Agenda (that is up to date)
4. Speaker information including their bios (again, up to date)
5. Session descriptions that actually match the content of the session.
6. On-line Registration Form with ability to accept credit card payments, along with other forms like P.O.’s or checks.
7. Logistics – Hotel, Travel, Directions, PARKING, Meals

• For Attendees (Nice to Have’s):

1. Dress Code
2. Spouse/Guest Information – either your guest program or some ideas of sights to see and things to do while the attendee is at the conference
3. Video snippets from last year’s event, for example the mainstage speaker

• For Exhibitors and Sponsors:

1. Description of Sponsor and Exhibitor packages
2. Ability to sign-up/register online
3. Attendee profiling including demographics, behavior, content interests
4. Ability to reach prospective attendees with a virtual presence, micro=site content 
   Chat/click-to-talk/schedule appointments

HELP IS AVAILABLE – one-click button to contact someone for more information or assistance and have a person focused on ACTUALLY answering the emails/phone

I read a new e-book on event planning recently, “Eleven and a Half” by Corwin Hielbert (www.redwagonmanagement.com), and was intrigued by his discussion of pricing for events.  It got me thinking about the different approaches to pricing that I have seen our clients use, and what I have observed about the impact that pricing seems to have on registrations and attendance.  

• If your event has no fee associated with it, the number of no-shows will be higher than if you are charging a fee. 
• Time-definite pricing, i.e. early-bird pricing, does generate registrations just before a deadline, but you have to plan to several communications to your invite list to remind them that the early-bird pricing is about to expire.
• Highly segmented pricing, where you have many different pricing groups that registrants can locate themselves in (members/non-members, certified/non-certified SMB, new/returning attendee, etc), is often confusing and you may see a higher percentage of people abandoning their registration than if you simplified the pricing structure.
• Offering promotional discount pricing to generate registrations as the event gets closer may alienate the attendees who registered early.  Instead, consider an incentive to encourage already-registered attendees to register a colleague or two to join them.

One of our clients has a new 1-on-1 coordinator scheduling meetings for an event happening at the end of the week. She called today to find out how to do the scheduling in MeetMax. Forty-five minutes later, she had all of her meetings scheduled: 61 attendees, 21 with meeting requests, 6 companies, 54 total meetings. Here’s how we did it:

• Schedule requested meetings for the tier 1 attendees first, using a batch scheduler to make this process quick and simple.
• Repeat for lower tiers of attendees, until it looks like there are no more fillable requests.
• Then go through the list of unscheduled attendees, and use the information provided by the attendee, when they registered, to determine who is willing to participate in small group meetings. Schedule these meetings by combining attendees who have indicated similar levels of knowledge of the company with whom they will be meeting.
• Continue this until you have scheduled all attendees and/or filled up the available timeslots for each company.
• Review the rooms grid to make sure that the number of meetings in each timeslot does not exceed the available number of rooms. Adjust the schedules as necessary.

The secret to efficiently scheduling meetings: Collect information about each request (priority, preferred meeting size, knowledge of the subject) when the attendee registers.

Most of our clients do some form of email marketing to promote their upcoming events.  Some create very sophisticated invitations in terms of graphics, fonts, colors and links, and some use very simple communications that look more like personalized letters.  Some email to the same list multiple times and others send just a single email.
So, which approach leads to higher registrations?

If you are like me, you get inundated with offers for free white papers that promise to tell you how to execute a successful email marketing campaign.  After reading a half dozen of these free white papers, here’s how I boil down the keys to email success:

• The quality of your list is the key determinant of success.  Your list should be email addresses for people who have requested that you send them invitations.  
• Content is the second most important element.  Write a strong subject line.  Make the content relevant to the reader.  Have a clear call to action.  Optimize the top 250×250 pixels with compelling information, so that the reader will scroll down “below the fold”. 
• For some people, you have to contact them multiple times to get a response.  Successful fundraisers know that for some donors, they need to send up to 4 reminder letters to secure the next year’s gift.  The same thing is true for event marketers.
• Measure the business result — how many people who received the invite then went on to register for the event.  Tracking just open and click-through rates doesn’t tell you how effective your email marketing is — it only tells you that someone read it.

What’s been your experience?  Have you got a winning formula for email marketing for your events? 

MeetMax and our sister company, Wall Street Webcasting, provide live and archived webcasts for 1000’s of conference sessions each year.  So, it is probably no accident that with the economy being what it is and event organizers working hard to maximize registrations,  I’ve heard from a number of people about how they would like to use webcasting to build attendance at events virtually.  Here are just two:

    * An international academic conference is planned for a week in a large city in Asia.  The organizers expect 2000 people to attend the 100 conference sessions in person, but they want to expand their reach by producing a shortened version for people to attend remotely.  Ten sessions will webcast live with viewers able to submit questions to the speakers via email.  The 10-session online version of the conference will then be available in an archived version for viewing later.  Different registration fees will apply for attending in-person, attending the live webcast version, or viewing the archived conference webcast.
    * A regional venture conference gives CEOs of start-ups an opportunity to get their story out to potential funders, partners and the media.  To expand their audience beyond local funders, they want to webcast the presentations.  To convey the sense of excitement in the room live, they will incorporate a Twitter feed into the webcast screen and display in the presentation room the Tweets from people attending both in person and remotely.