How to Increase Attendance at an Event: Strategies to Try Now!

Poor event turnout is every event organizer’s nightmare, but there are measures you can take to sleep well before your big day.

When members of your organization know they can count on you to deliver an annual package of informative updates, influential guest speakers and entertainment, they’re far more likely to attend your events and renew their memberships.

Putting on successful events will really benefit your organization. With stellar events, you will see higher retention rates, increased membership, happier and highly engaged members, increased revenue and a growing donor base.

In this blog, we’ll share tried-and-true strategies that have increased event attendance and solutions for common reasons for those low rates.

Why is My Event Attendance Low?

Assessing your current attendance rates at events will help you identify areas for improvement. Below, we’ve listed the most common reasons for low event attendance, plus their solution. 

Lack of Awareness

Have you ever heard about an amazing event AFTER the event has already occurred? Unfortunately, this can be the case for many events with low attendance rates. This lack of awareness is due to poor marketing. It’s essential to have a robust marketing campaign for event promotion to ensure potential attendees have all the information they need about your event.

Solution: Promote your event

Utilize all marketing strategies when it comes to event promotion. Event information and registration should be shared in the following ways:

• Your website
• Newsletters
• Email blasts
• Social media – Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Direct mail
• Word of mouth marketing

High costs

In today’s world, everyone has a tighter budget, so picking and choosing what events to attend can be difficult. Setting your ticket prices too high can be a huge barrier to many. Evaluate the cost of executing your event, the benefits your event offers and where you could make cuts to allow more attendees to come.

Solution: Provide payment flexibility

If you’re out-pricing too many potential attendees, offer payment flexibility. Perhaps you offer “buy now, pay later” as a payment option. This allows individuals to pay in instalments, making the cost less of a burden.

Another solution is to offer ticket levels such as standard, premium, and VIP. At a higher ticket cost, attendees may have access to free merchandise, beverages and exclusive parts of your event, whereas a standard ticket will only provide the basics.

Audience doesn’t resonate with the content and speakers

Providing value to your event participants is key. If attendees don’t resonate with the content your event provides or the speakers you’ve hired, they won’t attend. No one wants to have buyer’s remorse from an event they were originally excited about.

Solution: Survey your target audience

Sending surveys to potential event attendees before you start planning will ensure you’re providing compelling event content and captivating speakers. Listen to individuals about the type of event experience they’d like to have and what is valuable to them.

These surveys should also be sent out after your most recent events to gain insights into how well the event was executed and whether the content was valuable.

Location, location, location

If your event venue is difficult to reach or outside your event audience’s location, you may need to consider different options. For example, if your attendance records show that the demographics of your event attendees are located in Washington D.C., but you pick a venue in Baltimore, you’ll likely see low event attendance. 

Solution: Make events easily accessible

Make sure the location you pick aligns with the majority of your attendee’s demographics. If the potential attendees are all over the map, select a venue in the middle for the best chance of a high attendance rate. It’s also important to pick a venue with parking options and within close proximity to public transportation so attendees have an optimal experience.

How to Increase Event Attendance

We’ve given some solutions to the most common causes of low event attendance – now it’s time for tips and best practices to ensure your event attendance is higher than ever!

Leverage Event Technology

Event technology can help you boost attendance at your events and encourage your members to return year after year.

For example, you can use membership software to attract and retain your members. By offering members-only content, you can include exclusive event information, such as notices, forums and networking opportunities.

During your event, you can engage your members with fun image technology, such as photo booths, selfie mirrors and augmented reality experiences. Want to show off your organization’s work? Use installations and projections to capture attendee attention.

A powerful tool that improves the attendee experience is a mobile app for events. This allows your attendees to:

• Access important documents and logistics
• Review the event schedule and see speaker bios, session descriptions and locations
• See any event changes in real-time, like session location or times
• Instant check-ins by scanning their registration QR code 
• Connect with other attendees and leverage networking

Utilize Historical Data

What were the results of your last event? How did it compare to events of the past? Do you consistently have high event registration with low attendance? Did your attendees stay the whole time or leave early? These are the questions you should ask yourself before planning your next event. 

Getting data on past events will help future events perform the best and give attendees a positive experience. Pull this data before planning your upcoming event:

• Conversion rates on event promotion
• How many individuals registered for your event
• How many individuals attended your event
• Attendance rate
• Attendee engagement rate
• Event ROI (return on investment)
• Attendee satisfaction

Segment Your Audience

Segmenting your audience for your specific event is key to increasing attendance. You need to have a specific target audience for your event, and separating this group from your database of contacts will make your event marketing far more successful. Event promotion can be expensive, and you want to send it out to an ideal audience. 

For example, you wouldn’t send out multiple messages and invitations for a fundraiser focused on children’s education to child-free individuals. Too many promotional emails to someone who isn’t interested could result in unsubscribes.

Consider if your event has specific restrictions, like location. You’ll only want to promote to those near your organization’s location – you wouldn’t want to share registration information with people outside your region. 

Suppose you are holding more exclusive and smaller events, like a training or educational sessions. In that case, segmenting your audience will make sure your promotional efforts are seen by your ideal attendees.

This segmentation can be done through a variety of your contact demographics. These are some things to look at when making your email lists for event marketing purposes:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Interest groups and hobbies
• Length of time as a member

Offer Different Types of Sessions

People learn and have fun in different ways, so making your event as diverse as possible is essential to appeal to a wider variety of people. This will help increase association and membership event attendance. Some of the session types you can try include:

• Networking sessions: Allow your members to build valuable relationships with others in their industry.
• Demos and training sessions: Does your industry rely on new technologies or soft skills? Offer in-depth sessions on specific skills or tools to give your members a cutting edge in their work.
• Fun activities: These can be informal educational activities, such as fireside chats, or you can organize something utterly different from the rest of your event, like a city tour, scavenger hunt or evening entertainment.
• Job fairs: Many members join associations to advance their careers, which means your event is the perfect place to provide information on job openings in the industry. Set up an online job board and a booth for job seekers.

Managing a variety of sessions doesn’t just delight your members during your event — it ensures a unique and valuable experience that will keep people coming back year after year. We’d also suggest sending out a post-event survey following your event so that you can measure which sessions and aspects of your event attendees found most valuable.

Promote Your Event Effectively

Share your event details regularly across all your social media networks. Social media posts are a vital part of an effective event promotion strategy. If you’re representing a professional association, you can also share your event through your personal LinkedIn account. Does your organization use Twitter? Create your own event hashtag to help gain traction and generate a social buzz.

Having your event on your organization’s website is vital, but don’t just add it to your event calendar. Create a page specifically for your event. Here, you can provide more information, such as photos, a real-time social activity feed, your agenda and a link to the all-important registration page. This makes it easier and, therefore, more likely that people will sign up.

Other marketing efforts for your event promotion strategy include:

• Email marketing to your members and subscribers
  • Send out promotional emails to your email list
  • Include event and registration details in your regular newsletters
• Adding your event to Google Event Listings so it shows up in searches
• Creating a Facebook event that attendees can share
• Writing a blog post about your event
• Asking industry publications if they’ll cover your event or accept a guest post discussing it
• Adding social sharing buttons to event pages so people can easily share it

Get started on your event promotion as early as possible to build interest and attendance. Your members will need to plan for it, so don’t just spring your event on them at the last minute and expect a great turnout.

Optimize the Registration and Check-In Process

The attendee experience heavily influences an event’s attendance rate. If registration is a hassle, it may impact their desire to attend. Especially if your event is a multi-day affair, you need to have a streamlined registration and check-in process. If check-in was a mess on day one, people may not want to come back the next day.

Consider how registration and check-in were at previous events. A quick and easy process will have your attendees leaving rave reviews and likely coming back for your next event. 

Event technology can help you with optimizing these processes. Using event management software will transform registration and check-in with features like:

• Custom online registration forms
• Badge printing
• QR code check-in
• On-site registration
• Mobile app check-in

Offer Early-Bird Discounts

Many struggle with finances, and offering incentives like an early-bird discount can increase attendance at your next event. These discounts will create a sense of urgency and a concern that the discounted tickets could run out. In turn, more individuals will buy tickets, giving you a larger pool of potential attendees and higher attendance numbers. An early-bird discount also gives your event organizers a good idea of how many people to expect, allowing for strategic plans around things like catering needs.

Those who take part in the early bird discount appreciate the ability to save money, making their opinion of your event more positive. A good experience with an event increases the likelihood of them attending future events. 

Choose Your Date, Time and Location Strategically

There is always a seasonality to most events. Many organizations start their event planning in January when their budgets are new, and everyone is fresh off the holiday season with friends and family. To ensure your event has the highest attendance you can, you’ll want to avoid competing with other events that share your target audience.

Consider what types of events occur in your industry and when they typically occur. Strategically spacing out your event from other events that your potential audience would attend will increase the chances of having a high attendance. There won’t be a competition for which event to attend, and it will be easier for your attendees to budget for tickets, transportation and hotels.

Location is critical when planning your event. To lock in high participation and attendance, choose a venue that your target audience can easily get to. An event where attendees don’t have to travel a far distance or pay for hotels makes your event more appealing, giving you higher attendance rates.

Leverage Partnerships and Sponsorships

Partnerships and sponsors will widen your reach when marketing your event. When getting partners and sponsors for your event, include requirements for event promotion in your contract. This can consist of sending out stand-alone emails, highlighting your event in their newsletters and sharing event registration on the sponsors’ social media.

The larger audience you can reach with the help of partners and sponsors, the more people will register for your event. Plus, this boost in marketing efforts will raise awareness of your organization, potentially bringing in more members!

Connect Your Speakers with Your Attendees

Your speaker lineup is a huge draw to your event. It sets the tone and can significantly increase membership attendance. Choose speakers who are relevant to your industry or thought leaders and influencers who fit with the overall theme of your event. But why stop there?

To delight your target audience, you can go a step further — directly connect your attendees with your speakers. You can do that with initiatives such as:

• Organizing separate Q&A sessions with speakers
• Connecting speakers and attendees in an online community or group chat
• Allowing speakers to run live polls to get in-session ideas and feedback

Giving your attendees access to your speakers can help them look forward to an exciting experience they can’t get anywhere else, and have the chance to ask questions and share ideas. Your speakers also get more information from their audience, which allows them to tailor their talks to your members and create a more attractive event.

Read More: The Best Nonprofit Event Management Software

Discover the Value of Video

Video is a great way to attract attendees to your event. Live streaming is far more immersive than simple slideshows or PowerPoint presentations, and you can even use it to expand the reach of your event.

There’s only so much capacity in any physical venue, so not everyone will be able to attend your event. While there’s a ton of value to meeting people in the flesh, live streaming still allows you to connect with all your members online. This shows your dedication to giving people the necessary information, even if they can’t physically attend your event.

Live streaming can also make your event more shareable on social media before, after, and during the event. That’s because videos can show:

• A sneak peek of the event space before your event starts
• Interviews with volunteers and the organizing team
• Announcements, such as the reveal of a new speaker
• Q&A sessions where speakers answer members’ questions
• Updates on how your event planning is progressing

Videos can increase your organization’s event attendance for both this event and future ones, and they will also show potential members what they’re missing out on — especially if you share them on Youtube or your website after the event. 

Read More: The Event Planning Checklist Used By Top Event Planners

Connect Attendees to One Another

One of the biggest factors in why someone chooses to attend an event is the fun social aspect. Meeting other like-minded individuals in your industry is incredibly valuable to attendees. Your event technology can provide an easy way to help your attendees make these connections.

Having an event portal where attendees can network, browse exhibitors and content and start conversations is a great way to increase engagement. This tech empowers them to explore and connect prior to the event, allowing them to make the most of their time on-site. 

Use Attendance Tracking and Analyze Attendee Data

Attendance tracking is a vital part of your event tech stack and will make a huge difference in your event attendance. Tracking what sessions have high engagement and participation will tell you what kind of content resonates with your audience. This allows you to provide better opportunities for future events. This also gives you exact numbers on who comes to your event without manually updating a spreadsheet.

Attendee data will give you massive insights into your events. You can effectively measure ROI, engagement, CE credits, participation and preferences. Analyzing this information will improve future events by tailoring the attendee experience and selecting the right partners and sponsors.

Keep Attendees on Their Toes

There are some aspects of an annual membership event that need to remain the same year after year, such as delivering valuable and relevant information to your attendees in a suitable venue. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t shake things up from time to time.

In fact, keeping attendees on their toes is a great way to get your members excited and increase event attendance.

Try some of these ideas:

• Announce a mystery speaker in the run up to your event
• Give out association swag at the door
• Raffle off a bonus training session or lunch with a speaker
• Enter all attendees into an exclusive competition
• Organize a surprise member activity
• Recognize long-time members with anniversary announcements
• Implement a new event theme

Use the element of surprise to get people talking about your events, having fun and looking forward to the next edition.

Show Appreciation to Event Attendees

It’s important to say thank you to everyone that comes to your event. Send out an email to all event attendees thanking them for their participation. Plus, this is a great time to give your post-event survey to get feedback on their experience.

Making attendees feel valued will be the cherry on top of a fun event. Event participants will want to come back next year and will rave to their friends about their experience, increasing the likelihood of attending future events.

Curious about how to write a thank you email for attending an event?

Here’s a sample thank you for attending our event email

Subject: Thank you for attending! 

Hi [first name],

Thank you for coming to [title of event] on [date]! We appreciate that you took the time to attend and support [organization name]. Hopefully, you had a fantastic time and made great memories!

We’d love your feedback on how we did. This will help us continue to execute great events and provide you with the best experience. Please complete our survey here [link to survey] and include any questions or recommendations for our next event.

Again, thank you so much for being a part of [event title]. We can’t wait to see you at our next [meeting/fundraiser/conference/etc.]!

Best wishes,

[Your name]

[Name of Organization]

Boost Event Attendance with WildApricot’s Event Management Tools

Your annual events are one of the best ways to reach out and connect with your members. Take advantage of this opportunity to get to know your people a little better and remind them why they want to be a part of your organization.

You can do this easily with event management software.

Event management software allows you to easily build registration forms and pages, automate your promotion strategy, track and analyze attendee data and streamline your follow-up process.

At WildApricot, we offer event management solutions using our all-in-one cloud software. Level up your next event and increase attendance with these features:

• A website builder with a built-in payment processor
• Online registration tools
• A fully searchable contact database
• Mobile event registration through the mobile app
• An emailing system with professionally designed email and newsletter templates

Try a 60-day free trial of WildApricot today!