Increase event registrations with a growth marketing mindset

Filling the room is one of the most important measures of an event’s success, so it’s understandable that planners focus on increasing registrations before events. However, there are countless moments throughout the entire event lifecycle in which you can encourage event registrations.  

This article will explore how adopting a growth marketing mindset can help you capture new event registrations and motivate existing attendees to keep coming back for more. 

What is growth marketing for events? 

Growth marketing is a holistic approach that goes beyond acquiring new customers – or new attendees. It also incorporates strategies for retaining existing attendees and increasing their lifetime value.  

By constantly testing, analyzing, and improving marketing strategies, the mindset helps event marketers come up with new ways to engage prospective attendees and increase value throughout the entire event journey.  

It challenges us to think beyond the first point of contact, all the way through to the initial purchase and beyond. It’s a powerful approach that you can use to consistently increase event registrations in crowded environments where people’s attention spans are often at their limits. 

Since the event lifecycle is cyclical, you can easily use growth marketing principles to create demand and capture registrations at every phase of your event.  

Let’s explore how you can apply this mindset to boost registrations and set your events up for success: 

1. Provide benefits for early registration 

2. Remove friction in the sign-up process 

3. Use content marketing to build hype 

4. Capture the event experience for future promotions 

5. Get an early commitment for your next event 
    

Provide benefits for early registration 

People wait until the very last minute to book their event tickets. In the lead-up to a recent AirTime customer conference, 48% of people in EMEA booked their tickets in the last two weeks before the event. This number was 38% in the US and 29% in APAC.  

However, last-minute registrations can make planning the logistics of your event tricky. So, at EventsAir, we encourage our customers to create enticing benefits that incentivize attendees to secure their tickets sooner. These can include:  

• Incremental price increases. This gives you an opportunity to reach out at various times during your promotional calendar to create the fear of missing out on a good deal, rather than limiting yourself to early bird only.  

• Speaking of early bird, if you’re going down this path, the early bird pricing must have a significant discount to inspire action. An alternative idea for offering an early bird benefit is to provide hotel discounts for groups of people registering and traveling to the event together.  

• Open your attendee app early and gamify the registration process to encourage attendees to register and get in the running to win prizes sooner. 

• Exclusive communities and networking opportunities that people can join as soon as they register (see how The Delegate Wranglers foster community connection before their events).  

Remove friction in the sign-up process 

People are busy and you should make it as easy as possible for potential attendees to register for your event, from anywhere at any point in time. They might also be making a significant investment to attend, so make it easy for them to get buy-in from the wider team.  

It’s not uncommon to include a ‘convince your boss’ download on your registration website. We recently did this for AirTime, the document outlined the benefits of the event and could easily be customized before being shared. Interestingly, it was the second-most clicked link behind the register button on the entire website. 

Here are some other tactics you can use to prevent registration drop-offs on your event website:  

• Make sure event information, pricing, and registration are easy to find. 

• Check that your website and checkout are easy to use from any device (especially mobile!) so people can register when they’re on the go. 

• Provide different payment options, such as credit card, apple pay, buy now pay later, or requesting an invoice, so people can purchase at any point in time. 

• Include testimonials and social proof to reduce any anxiety about attending. 

• Consider providing live chat functionality on your website so people can easily ask questions and use this data to inform your communications.  

• Make sure your terms and conditions are fair and simple, don’t charge for name changes and give people the opportunity to cancel with notice.  

• Give people other ways to attend if they can’t be there in person.  

• Don’t extend early-bird deals, creating ambiguity about when the best ticket price will be available.   

Use content marketing to build hype 

After you have launched registrations, you will have two audiences to target in your event marketing. There are the people who have already registered and those who you still need to get in the door. In the lead-up to your event, you should share plenty of content with both audiences to remind them of the amazing experience they could have.  

Don’t just rely on a hard sell and build excitement with plenty of teasers and testimonials from previous events. The pre-event phase is also the best time to get potential guests talking about your event and recommending it to others. If you want to create a real buzz, experiment with these content marketing techniques: 

• Empower potential guests to make their own decisions about registering with highlights, videos, and testimonials from previous events.  

• Foster the creation of user-generated content in the lead-up to the event. For example, you could add a gamification element to your pre-event promotions by rewarding attendees who record and share a video about which session they’re most looking forward to.  

• Leverage your sponsor’s networks to raise awareness of your event. Your sponsor could share a LinkedIn post explaining why they’re excited about the event, tagging the event page and partner profiles to increase the chance that the post is seen by their networks. 

• Leverage your keynote speakers and promote their involvement by sharing pre-event interviews, webinars, whitepapers, and teaser videos. Always get these inclusions detailed in the contract.  

• Create promo kits and templates with graphics, messaging, and social media handles that speakers and sponsors can use to promote the event themselves. 
    

Capture the event experience for future promotions 

As challenging as events can be to orchestrate, you should already be thinking about how to generate registrations for your next event on the big day. The event experience itself is a goldmine of content that can be used in future promotions. Be ready to capture it with some of these tactics:  

• Incorporate photography and videography into your AV setup to record keynote sessions and testimonials that can be used in future promotions.  

• Reward guests for creating user-generated content and event testimonials.  

• Interact with guests during their breaks to create quick vox-pops and videos.  

• Help guests co-create content during the event, such as a roadmap, artwork, or music.  

• Provide beautiful spaces for your guests to take photos and reward them for sharing event content on their social networks.  

• Engage virtual attendees by encouraging them to screenshot and share event highlights. 

Get an early commitment for your next event 

If people are having a great time at your event, they are more likely to register again.  

Capitalize on the buzz you have created during your event and start promoting your next one while people are still excited. You can launch and promote your next event as soon as the current one finishes with the following strategies:  

• Have a registration portal readily available in-person and online. Consider offering a discount to inspire action, or the option to ‘buy one get one free’. 

• Send a follow-up email to all attendees encouraging registrations for the next event. 

• Repurpose your keynote sessions into promotional content. One session could be used to create a blog post, 5-10-second speaker soundbites, educational videos, and testimonials. 

• Use the data from live polls and Q&As to drive continued post-event engagement. 

• Invest in a video editor who can edit your videos and quickly make them sharable.  

• Consider using AI to repurpose the event experience for content easily. Speaker sessions could be transcribed and turned into articles quickly using tools such as ChatGPT.   

Make an immediate impact 

You don’t have to adopt every growth marketing hack and tactic at once. If you adopt the opportunistic mindset of growth marketing, you’ll start finding new ways to increase registrations within every aspect of event management.  

About Kelly Harvey 

Kelly Harvey is the CMO at EventsAir, overseeing all global brand and growth efforts, from strategic marketing to content, communications, PR, performance marketing, and creative development. Her career spans 15 years and she is a big believer in using data to drive marketing decisions and the power of storytelling to build brands.  

This article was adapted from Kelly’s AirTime 2023 presentation. If you would like access to more insights from the event technology team at EventsAir, then register for AirTime 2024.