5 Tips for Offering a Memorable Event Registration Experience
Organizing an event is a powerful way to bring together a group of like-minded people. Before you can host an event, you need a way for attendees to register. Event registration is one of the first opportunities for your organization to make a memorable impression of your event.
As Chip Heath and Dan Heath share in their book The Power of Moments:
“When people assess an experience, they tend to forget or ignore its length — a phenomenon called ‘duration neglect.’ Instead, they seem to rate the experience based on two key moments: 1) the best or worst moment, known as the ‘peak’; and 2) the ending. Psychologists call it the ‘peak-end rule.'”
Making your event registration easy to use can jump-start positive feelings towards your event.
Here are five recommendations to offer a memorable experience for attendees that register for your events.
1. Create a simple event registration page
An event registration page has one main goal; to get your attendees to register for your event. Here are some key elements of a registration page for an event:
– Name of event
– Registration options or tickets
– Description of event
– Date and time
– Event location
At a glance, those details help an attendee understand:
1) What an event is about.
2) When it’s taking place.
3) How to register.
The content of your event registration page can have other areas that help describe the event. However, they should support the goal of encouraging an attendee to start registration now.
Next, we’ll check out a way to help attendees register quickly.
2. Ask attendees for only information that you need
Once an attendee has started a registration, you need to collect some information from them through an event registration form. The saying “less is more” are wise words to follow when setting up a form.
Why does this matter?
Place yourself in the shoes of one of your attendees. They are likely busy just like you. A short registration form is more appealing to someone busy with limited time. Here are examples of fields for an event registration form:
– First name
– Last name
– Email address
A name and an email address are basic contact details, and they can be filled out in seconds. If you need additional custom information to make your event a success, then collect it as well. However, avoid the temptation of creating a long registration form by reminding yourself that your attendees are busy and have limited time. Only collect as much information from attendees that is essential to make your event memorable.
Let’s now talk about how to receive payments.
3. Collect a payment online with a card
Offering online payments is a win-win for you and your attendees. You don’t have to worry about the hassles of following up about offline payments like checks. When an attendee pays online, you receive your funds for the event registration, and their spot is immediately confirmed for the event. That’s a win-win for everyone.
Plus, an online payment helps automate the registration process.
Next, we’ll take a look at how to set expectations for an event.
4. Send a registration confirmation email to let an attendee know what to expect
Once a registration is confirmed, you want to send an attendee an email to summarize the upcoming event details. The registration confirmation email is also a chance for you to help your attendee prepare and look forward to the event.
As happiness researcher, Gretchen Rubin writes in her book The Happiness Project, “To eke out the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory.”
Here are examples of materials that you might include to help your build anticipation for different events:
– Conference: an agenda showing an overview of the conference.
– Class/workshop: an introduction with recommendations from the instructor.
– Golf fundraiser: details on the “why” behind the fundraiser.
– Church service: information on where to park on arrival and how to check-in.
– Online webinar: virtual meeting link with Zoom.
We’ll discuss sharing a courtesy reminder about an event for our final set of recommendations.
5. Remind attendees about the event a couple of days before
A couple of days before the event, send your attendees a reminder about the event. Remember, they’ve taken action by registering for the event. A reminder is a gentle nudge to bring your event to the top of mind.
It’s also an opportunity to share the materials that you mentioned in the registration confirmation email.
Remember that organizing events is a way to bring people with a common purpose together. 5 ways to offer a memorable event registration experience are:
- Create a simple event registration page
- Ask attendees for only information that you need
- Collect a payment online with a card
- Send a registration confirmation email to let an attendee know what to expect
- Remind attendees about the event a couple of days before
Would you like to learn more about creating an event registration system? Check out this event registration guide where you can follow a 4-part process to make event registration easy to use for your attendees.