How to Guarantee Interest in Your Virtual Event

by Alex Schnee

As virtual events become the norm, knowing how to help potential attendees find your event and go through the registration and checkout process can be what makes your event a success. As an event organizer, you want to know everything you can do in order to guarantee that you will have signups and that you will also have the attendance you are expecting.

Here are some tips to guarantee that you will have the type of event you want and can feel proud of.

Market it several weeks before

Many events fail because they don’t have the right marketing strategy. Getting the word out there doesn’t have to be expensive, and you should have a plan when it comes to running ads, sharing on social media, and looking for personalities to share that you have an event coming up. Of course, finding a balance between marketing it too soon and not giving it enough time can be a challenge, but once you hit the sweet spot, you’re more likely to gain attendees.

Provide easy registration

A simple way you can help to ensure that people will attend your event is by making the registration process easy. This is why you might not want to use a tool like WordPress event registration, since it can be overly complicated. You especially want to make sure this is true when it comes to the checkout process since this is most likely where attendees are going to abandon carts. Make the checkout process is easy and that they have the option to checkout as a guest. This way you don’t have to worry about them abandoning their carts or forgetting to complete the process.

Remind attendees

A few days before the event, you’re going to want to make sure that you take the time to send out an email with all the information your attendees need to join. Virtual events can be easy to forget, and attendees might schedule something forgetting that they have signed up. This is why you might also want to schedule an email with login information a few hours or minutes before, as well. This can go a long way toward increasing attendance.

Follow up

After the event, you will want to follow up with those who attended and those who did not separately. Thank those that were there and offer a list of upcoming events that they might be interested. For those who didn’t attend, you might want to offer a recording of the event—especially if they might have paid to attend and missed out. You should also keep them updated on any additional events that they might find interesting, as well.

In summary

Much of what makes a virtual event a success is the same things that go into making an in-person event successful. Once you have marketed it correctly, provided information, and followed up, you’re likely to come away feeling accomplished and satisfied with how your event turned out.