Having had the pleasure to work with countless small and large event businesses, it is always a hassle to make an event business work.
There is so much that can go wrong from sending tickets and the check-in process to the actual performance of the event and the feedback you get from your customers.
Today we want to talk about the half you don’t want to worry about.
It’s already difficult to run the event itself, so we would understand that the digital part of things should stay automated, not a pain in the butt!
You need a plugin to handle ticketing, QR codes, check-in, event notifications, RSVPs, event calendars, commissions, event submission, booking forms, etc.
This guide will share actionable tips to increase event attendance while keeping event operations seamless.
Let’s give it a look:
How to Increase Attendance at Events? (Quick Look)
Understand Your Target Audience
Customer segmentation is one of those techniques that is required in all digital marketing aspects.
Getting to know your audience is the first step to creating events that not only succeed but significantly increase event attendance.
Segment Your Audience with Advanced Tools
The only problem with getting to know an online audience however, is that online businesses don’t get to see their customers face-to-face.
This is where Google Analytics, Heap, Amplitude, Userpilot, Mixpanel, Baremetrics, Klaviyo, HubSpot, and UpLead come in handy.
Out of all these Google Analytics is free, but it’s enough for a small business. Although, if you’re looking to invest in some analytics plugins, here’s our Google Analytics plugins blog for a more in-depth read.
Engage Attendees with Interactive Surveys
Interactive Surveys is a general term for any type of online interaction you might have with your website visitors or customers to increase event attendance rate; one of those would be RSVPs.
With Modern Events Calendar’s RSVP Events addon you can ask any type of question before the event starts.
This includes questions from actual RSVPing before an event to see how many people will show up to asking what kinds of drinks your attendees prefer for your event on the weekend.
Create a Strong Community for Your Events
Communities can become a significant part of our lives.
We have all found ourselves attending certain events just to keep meeting with the friends we have made along the way.
These communities can act as a small marketing campaign, with attendees encouraging more people to join.
That’s why you should make sure to welcome social interactions through your platform as well.
MEC’s BuddyPress integration assists you to build any type of community that will ultimately causes to increase event attendance rate.
With this useful integration, you can have groups and the option of private messaging between them.
You can even hold exclusive events for each group using the BuddyBoss Integration addon in case you want to build VIP groups and courses within your community.
Use Feedback to Refine Future Events
Last but not least, if you really want to increase event attendance rate for you business or venue, your attendees can be the most effective source of data.
When it comes to understanding your target audience, never overlook the anecdotes they can share with you.
You might get annoyed by reading a couple of negative comments on your social media after trying to set everything up perfectly, but those negative remarks are your friend.
Make sure to check your social media regularly, and if your website is the only platform, at least enable your single event comment section to turn one-star reviews into happy, returning customers.
Build Irresistible Marketing Campaigns
Let’s take a look at the marketing tools at hand with this ultimate event plugin.
Marketing campaigns are one of the most effective ways to increase event attendance. Focus on clear, targeted messaging to reach potential attendees.
This helps you to make sure no stone will be left unturned when it comes to having a broader reach and more influence for better marketing results.
Boost Attendance with discounts
Always try to create a sense of urgency for your potential event attendees.
We have all seen the effect of Black Friday sales at the end of November regardless of what type of business you’re running.
One of the ways to create that sense is by giving a discount to early bookers.
Modern Events Calendar’s price per date feature allows you to give a discount to users based on how close they are to the start of your event to help you increase event attendance for your venues.
It’s always an energy boost to have your events sold out a couple of days before the event date.
Maximize Event Reach on Social Media
Social media has come as far as becoming the main platform for a lot of online businesses.
No matter what you’re selling, your target audience has at least one social media account you can reach.
However, you might not be able to hire a social media agent to post events for you depending on how big your business is.
This is exactly where tools like MEC’s Social Auto Poster come to mind to boost & increase event attendance.
This MEC addon can post events for you automatically on almost all social media platforms.
You can even define intervals for how quickly you would like to share your Modern Events Calendar events on social media.
Enable Third-Party Event Submissions
The next tool to help you reach a bigger audience and increase event attendance is partnership with other event organizers.
The frontend event submission feature enables you to have other hosts post their events on your website and get a percentage every time someone books an event on your website.
You can even provide them with a dashboard using the User Dashboard addon so that they can access their own events and bookings.
Increase Attendance with Email Notifications
Modern Events Calendar wouldn’t be THE complete tool to increase event attendance without the inclusion of email marketing in its arsenal.
MEC’s event notifications cover several types of automated emails to help you reach customers more effectively.
This cheap and yet effective tool can help increase sales and create a bond with your audience if done correctly.
MEC stores all the bookings and former contacts in the reports menu.
This data can be sorted based on events and date to help you target the right people.
You can then bulk send them enticing emails every time you want to start a campaign.
Don’t forget to create discount codes with MEC and include them in your emails for better conversion.
However, as simple and effective this strategy is, you don’t want to spam their inbox with too many emails as it can have the exact opposite effect.
Tailor Your Marketing Strategy with Actionable Insights
This is where you need to know how well your events have performed or which one has been the most profitable and what you can do to have other events perform as well to ultimately increase event attendance.
Of course, you can compare how much money you’ve made with each event manually, but if you have more than a couple of events per week that might not be the right approach.
With Modern Events Calendar’s own Advanced Reports Addon you can see how many bookings you have for each event or how much money has been made and more.
You can then use this data to see what you have done right or wrong with each event from an objective, statistical point of view.
Simplify Registration and Ticketing
Registration is the last step of turning leads to customers, but it doesn't mean you are guaranteed success if you get them to the last step.
A clanky booking process can frustrate people out of your website, so always make sure to prioritize simplicity and reliability in your registration system.
Streamline Ticketing with QR Codes
In order to increase event attendance, event organizers need to make sure only paying customers can get into the venue.
This is where the need for a reliable check in process comes in handy.
The only issue is that with most event plugins you need to purchase a third-party ticket scanner app, not with MEC!
Modern Events Calendar has developed a dedicated free Android app for the Ticket and Invoice addon that can get connected to MEC with a simple API key.
Simply give the code to your team and they will be able to check people in by scanning the QR codes generated on each ticket.
Enhance Experience with Seat Selection
Another important option to increase event attendance for event venues is where attendees will get to sit.
You might also want to charge more for certain seats depending on where the stage is or make sure people will choose the right table at a restaurant.
Of course that can only be done on a visual map with numbers.
With the MEC’s Seats addon not only can you assign exclusive numbers and prices to each seat but also create your own layouts.
This amazing tool displays which seats are available and even locks seats during the booking process to avoid double- bookings when multiple attendees are booking simultaneously.
The Seats addon is a great investment to reduce confusion at the venue and create a professional environment for your attendees.
Optimize Your Events for Mobile Users
A significant part of providing a seamless booking experience for users is paying attention to the type of devices people use to purchase those events.
Nowadays, most visitors use their mobile phones to make a purchase, but most business owners or developers create those same events on a PC.
So make sure to run some tests with a guest user to help identify and resolve issues that might have been overlooked while setting up events with the point of view of an event organizer.
Another advantage of mobile optimization is getting better SEO performance, as Google ranks mobile-friendly websites higher than the rest of the competition.
Fortunately though, all Modern Events views and elements are responsive, so you don’t need to worry about manually optimizing events for smaller screens.
Conclusion
As mentioned above a huge portion of your event’s success goes back to having the right tools to manage your business more efficiently.
From ticketing to the check-in process and getting advanced reports, Modern Events Calendar stands as the ultimate solution for event marketing, management and receiving payments.
The feature-rich Modern Events Calendar addons help you tailor the core plugin into a specialized tool for your business while keeping the prices manageable for small businesses.
No matter what your business is, you can rely on MEC for everything event related and to increase event attendance rate.
In case you face any issues or questions down the line, you can always count on Modern Events Calendar’s team of experts to answer your questions as soon as possible.
Webnus offers round the clock support for premium AND free users.
Plus, with Webnus’s risk-free 30-day refund policy, you can move forward with confidence.
So, why wait? Let’s get started!