Posts Categorized: Online Registration – Keys to Success

kchopson

How Tracking Your Live and Virtual Conference Attendees Can Help Your Bottom Line

Conference Attendees

In the mad rush to get ready for a conference, it is easy to ignore one of the most important metrics of show – namely, who actually attended. Planners often overlook this metric because the registration revenue is already in the bank so, in their overworked mind, it is not particularly important knowing who actually showed up. This is a major mistake because knowing your attendees from your no-shows is very important for your planning, marketing and bottom line. There are two things you should take into account when getting ready to verify your attendees. Know the difference between Attendance... Read more »

kchopson

How to Price Your Virtual Conference

virtualmoney

Make your virtual event profitable with the most cost-efficient virtual software solution available. See how our Virtual Conference software with Direct Zoom Integration can make your pivot easier! Transitioning from traditional face-to-face events to a virtual format can be a real challenge for planners.  One of the toughest problems is deciding how to price your virtual event. With the tough economy, it is especially tempting to simply not charge for your event. This article urges planners to take a close look at the economics of virtual events and really understand the value you are delivering to your attendees. Derrick Johnson,... Read more »

kchopson

How to Save Your Event and Time with Automated CEUs using Zoom and Virtual Conferences

VirtualEventsZoomEventRebels

After working very hard to put on a great virtual conference, the nail in the coffin for the planners’ exhaustion is often the issuing and collation of meeting related surveys and CEUs. If the work is performed using paper and/or spreadsheets, the resulting toil is usually a mountain of tedious and error-prone management of forms. The work is labor and time-intensive and, consequently, unnecessarily expensive. The good news is that EventRebels Online Registration and ERCEU CEU management software has a direct integration with Zoom Meetings and Webinars that makes it easy to track who attended your Zoom meeting and issue... Read more »

kchopson

How to Deal with Abandoned Online Registration Forms

Most people associate “abandoned carts” with e-commerce sites like Amazon or Walmart.com. But did you know that online conference registration sites often have their own “abandoned” cart issues? Since online registrations are usually not “carts” per se, it is best to think of the problem as an abandoned online registration form. But the results are the same – someone started the process of purchasing but stopped before the process was completed. For a conference, the abandonment problem can be described as when a person started a registration form but left before the process was complete. While it is well known... Read more »

kchopson

Four Ways to Integrate Your Membership CRM with Your Online Registration Form

Many professional trade organizations offer preferential conference registration pricing to their active members. This is an important technique to encourage membership growth by providing a clear, tangible value to being a member. In fact, your online registration form is a great way to grow your membership. The trick is finding the correct combination of software products that make it easy to validate active membership during the online registration process. Unfortunately, many online registration software products do not provide an easy way to validate membership. However, there does exist online registration software designed for membership organizations. Such products use a number... Read more »

kchopson

Seven Ways to Protect the Privacy of your Event Attendees

GDPR phone

Privacy is a top of mind concern for many organizations these days. High profile data breaches, the new European GDPR law, and the upcoming California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) has made it imperative that all organizations protect the data of their customers. Securing and protecting the customers’ privacy is not just the job of the IT department – it requires the effort of all employees with access to the organization’s data. Meeting planning departments are no exception to making privacy a top priority. As we mentioned in Why Would Hackers Attack Your Conference? there are many reasons why planners can... Read more »

kchopson

EventRebels announces a round-trip iMIS Integration Solution

The iMIS membership management software product is one of the most versatile CRM products available to associations. However, when an association wants to use third-party event management software for managing its conferences and trade shows, it can be very difficult to move data from iMIS to and from the event software package. EventRebels has had a long-time web-service integration to pull data from iMIS for the purposes of validating memberships and driving pricing. Now as part of our partnership with Association Technology Solutions (ATS), EventRebels announces a full-round trip solution of EventRebels to/from iMIS systems. The solution is part of... Read more »

kchopson

Why Your Online Conference Registration Form Should Look Like Your Web Site

Dollar Sign Skeleton Key

It happens all too often. An organization creates a beautiful web site for their conference or trade show, only to have their brand obscured by an online registration form that looks like a cheap invitation. Apparently someone thought that the idea of a consistent marketing message ends at the time of registration. This, of course, is a big mistake. Here is why: It breaks the fundamental rule of a consistent marketing message. The site builds up the notion that you are going to have a great conference, but the registration form has the appearance of a second-rate operation. Your brand... Read more »

kchopson

18 ways you can make a GREAT Online Registration Form for your Conference

Register Button

Have you ever had an online registration form that was both inflexible and unattractive? An inflexible registration form is one that does not allow you to control what fees and questions a registrant receives based on how they answered other questions on the form. An unattractive form is, well, ugly – such as a cheap looking invitation. If your online registration form has either of these qualities, you are diminishing the brand of your event and your organization. While building an event brand takes a long time of hard work, that impression can be brought down quickly by giving a... Read more »

kchopson

Saving Time by Getting Your Event and Organization Software to Talk to Each Other

IPAAS Workflow

Are you a meeting planner that spends too much time moving data from one software system to another? When you make an update to your conference schedule software do you also have to copy the changes to your website and then again to your mobile app? Do also you need to duplicate your attendee information in the organization’s CRM? How about being concerned with moving financial data from your online registration system to accounting? If you have one stop shop conference software, you may be able to avoid some of this tedious, error prone work. However, in most cases, there... Read more »

kchopson

How to get started with Conference Management Software: Part Eight – Powerful Registration Reporting

In this series we have been reviewing how event technology can be employed at various points in the lifecycle of an association’s annual conference. One of the key advantages of using first rate online registration software is that you can collect critical data about your attendees. However, if you cannot manipulate the information in the manner you need, your online registration system may be creating a bunch of hidden costs by not giving you functionality that high end platforms provide. Here are some reporting features your online registration software should have. Most importantly, you need to be able to export... Read more »

kchopson

How to Use Registration Data to Boost Conference Attendance

Reports

Did you know that your registration database of past meetings can be a goldmine of information that can increase your marketing efficiency and boost attendance at your next conference? If you have been using great online registration software to record your attendee data, you may have the keys to catapulting your registration numbers to the next level. Here are some ways you can use your registration data to reach your goals.Week over Week reports. It is common practice to see how your show is trending compared to previous years. Week over Week reports comparing factors like total registrations and revenue... Read more »

kchopson

How Verifying Your Conference Attendees Can Help Your Bottom Line

Conference Attendees

In the mad rush to get ready for a conference, it is easy to ignore one of the most important metrics of show – namely, who actually attended. Planners often overlook this metric because the registration revenue is already in the bank so, in their overworked mind, it is not particularly important knowing who actually showed up. This is a major mistake because knowing your attendees from your no-shows is very important for your planning, marketing and bottom line. There are two things you should take into account when getting ready to verify your attendees. Know the difference between Attendance... Read more »

kchopson

How to get started with Conference Management Software: Part Four – Opening Online Registration

Event technology can provide a bewildering range of choices for the meeting planner. A good place to start making sense of the range of options is to look at how software can be utilized at the various stages of the event lifecycle. In this series, we will look at the lifecycle from the point of view of an association’s annual conference. In past weeks, we have looked at software that often goes live immediately after the prior year’s conference. In this part of the series, we look at tools that can help you in your day-to-day work in the months... Read more »

kchopson

How to get started with Conference Management Software: Part Three – Setup Online Credit Card Processing

Online Credit Card

As was seen in the first issues of this series, navigating through the myriad of event technology choices can be one of the toughest assignments a meeting professional can face. Just breaking down the possibilities into categories can be a daunting assignment itself. A helpful way to approach this problem is to see how software can be utilized at the various stages of the event lifecycle. Many activities for next year’s show begin right after the current one ends. To keep things simple, we will look at the lifecycle from the point of view of an association’s annual conference. This... Read more »

kchopson

Ten Signs That You Are Using Sub-Standard Online Registration Software

Have you heard of someone who bought an online registration software package that promised to deliver an attractive form and save time, only to find these expectations were not met? Did they get a lot of complaints from registrants? Was the software so limited that the planner had to spend long, late hours creating spreadsheets to manage tasks the software could not handle? Fortunately, there are some tell-tale signs that an online registration package is sub-standard. If you look for these during the evaluation process, you can be spared the pain of the unfortunate planner.Online registration form looks like a... Read more »

kchopson

Is Your Online Registration Form ADA Compliant?

Section508Logo

Is your website ADA compliant? Section 508 is the key portion of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) that deals with websites. The provision was enacted in 1998 to make available new opportunities for people with disabilities and to encourage development of technologies that will help achieve these goals. For years, developers have often created websites that are Section 508 compliant only if the site is part of a government contract or have an audience that requires these standards. However, in recent years, there has been an increasing amount of cases where websites that are not compliant have opened themselves... Read more »

kchopson

EventRebels Supports Stripe Payment Gateway

Online Credit Card

EventRebels is now supporting the Stripe payment gateway, one of the hottest processors around. Stripe has a simple setup and pricing model. The product also makes it easy for newcomers to online credit card processing to get on the air. EventRebels supports Stripe for both their EROnline Online Registration and ERShow Online Trade Show and Exhibitor Management products. With Stripe, EventRebels now supports over a dozen payment gateways. This wide variety of gateways allows support for all kinds of customers ranging from organizations that are new to meetings technology to sophisticated conferences with over 10,000 attendees. EventRebels payment processing support... Read more »

kchopson

How to Use Your Online Registration to Make Your Conference Program a Success

Crowded Room

Ever plan a conference where some rooms are overflowing while other rooms sit mostly empty? Did you ever have to face angry attendees that were turned away from a highly anticipated presentation because the session could not sit another person? Planners know that the latter case can seriously “ding” your overall conference survey scores because people do not forget the sessions they were forced to miss. Fortunately, you can use your online registration form to solve many of these problems. By letting attendees build their itinerary at the time of sign up, you can get an accurate picture of what... Read more »

kchopson

Conducting Surveys Using an Online Registration Form

Feedback Button

It is well known the getting a high response rate from surveys is difficult. One way to get around this is to place questions that are important to you on forms that people will need to fill out. One such place is your membership form. Another area is the online registration form. The registration form is a great place to get answers for critical data such as demographics. The registrant will already be entering personal information, so asking additional personal information in this area will already seem somewhat natural. Here are some tips to get the data you need on... Read more »

kchopson

Create a Superior Event Badge

Do you want to get your event off to a fast start with a great badge? When set up properly, badges can convey a lot of information in a relatively small amount of space. They can be crucial for networking and gaining access to sessions and events. Take care to create badges that work; review our list of tips and tricks for crafting the perfect conference badge below. Names should be printed in a large, sans-serif font, with first and last names on separate lines. Attendees should be able to glance at a badge and immediately locate the name. Make... Read more »

kchopson

Mobile Monday: Mobile Credit Card Processing With PayPal Here

Event Rebels Mobile Monday

We wrote recently about how some apps that are using the camera of your smartphone to process credit cards. Of course, these are in addition to well-known apps such as Square which uses a device attachment to turn your phone into a cash register. E-commerce giant PayPal has also introduced a number of mobile solutions. One of these products, PayPal Here, uses a device like Square to process credit cards. Getting started with PayPal Here is easy. Just log into your PayPal account and fill out a short application. You will then be sent a text with a link to... Read more »

kchopson

Increase Your Workshop Survey Response Rates

Event Rebels Tech Tuesday

There are few ways to better determine how your audience feels about your workshop than a survey. Until recently, most workshop questionnaires were conducted by having a stack of paper surveys placed on a table at the back of the room. If the planners were lucky, a few people would grab a piece of paper and turn it in before the conference was over. However, most attendees ignored the survey because they were in a rush to get to the next event, or didn’t want to hassle with finding a pen and a hard surface to complete the survey. For... Read more »