She is also the founder of Professional Presence Designs, serving small to medium sized businesses and churches with Webhosting, Website design, graphic designs, and Eventbrite page creation & integration.

Event organizers spend countless hours preparing for an event, so of course you want people to show up!  If your vision is to fill a sanctuary, classroom, ballroom or auditorium, it is always a damper when the attendance is lower than expected.  While empty seats can’t always be avoided, here are a few tips to increase your attendance:

Timing & Content

It is important to know the pulse of your niche and plan your event accordingly.  For example, a week-long national youth conference in late September will have lower attendance than the same event planned in July or August.  In this example, the target audience is in school.  While this example may seem obvious, there are subtle timing factors to consider such as seasons, holidays and other observations within your niche.

Perhaps the most important factor is content. Your event has to fulfill a need or desire in order for someone to justify attending. Tell people what they can expect so they understand why they are coming. Understand the needs of your target audience so you can provide what they are looking for.  Do a little research to determine if other events targeting the same niche are planned around the time of your event.

Advertise!

It is not enough to post a few flyers and hope people get the word.  Whether your event is paid or free, you are asking people to spend their time with you.  Time is a precious commodity. You’ll need to convince potential attendees that the event is worth their time.  Increase your event exposure by spreading the word through different mediums:

o   The Internet allows you to expand your reach globally.  Take advantage of the various places you can post your event online.  Eventbrite gets the ball rolling by submitting your event to several partner sites.  Continue the momentum by submitting your event to free and/or paid event listing services in your niche (e.g. Christian Happenings or The Elijah List) and in your local area.  If your budget allows it, consider paid Internet advertising such as Google Adwords.  You can also contact high traffic websites in your niche to see if they allow direct advertisements.

o   Social Media & Microblogging websites such as Facebook and Twitter allow you to connect with potential attendees on a more intimate level.  Proceed with caution here as most savvy web surfers can spot a self-promoting spammer a mile away!   Social media is supposed to be….well, social. In other words, you need to interact with people. Used effectively, social media can harness the attention and support of people that are interested in what you have to say, including your events.

o   Printed Media should not be neglected in lieu of the Information Age.  If your event is newsworthy, a well written press release may earn you free publicity.  Otherwise, you can inquire about ad space in newspapers and magazines.

o   Determine what radio stations your attendees are likely listening to and inquire about advertising packages.

o   Word of Mouth is the best form of advertising and is often neglected.  Spread the word and employ others to do the same.  Eventbrite makes it easy to award those that help you spread the word by using the affiliate program or setting up tracking links.  You can reward affiliates with a percentage of registration revenue generated through their affiliate or tracking link.

Offer discounts

Who doesn’t love a deal?  A discount is a great way to prompt people to register.  Eventbrite discount codes can give a percentage or fixed dollar amount off the listed price.  Here are some sample discounts:

o   If you have a newsletter, you can create a special discount code for your subscribers

o   Group discount for those that purchase a certain amount of tickets together

Location, Location, Location!

People have heard about your event and the price is right….now they will come, right?  Maybe!  Consider your location.  If your event is reaching a national or International audience and your venue is miles from the airport with no shuttle service you will deter attendees.  Other questions to ask yourself when considering a location:

o   If attendees will be on site all day and meals are not provided, is there easy access to restaurants?

o   Is the location easy to find?

o   Is the location handicap accessible?

o   If the event spans multiple days, is it at or near a hotel or other lodging facility?

If you need help finding a location, the Eventbrite Venues Directory is a good place to start.

Communication & Information

Make sure any information regarding your event is accurate and presented in excellence.  If the information is vague or inaccurate, this will deter people from registering as they will interpret the confusion as a sign of how the event will operate.

Most event organizers list some form of contact information.  Make sure email replies are timely, courteous, and well written.  Apply the same etiquette when speaking to potential attendees on the telephone or when leaving a voicemail.

Happy Event Planning!

Lakita

Related posts:

1. 5 Tips for Building Great Content and Driving Attendees to Your Event
2. How to Host a Kick-Ass Event

What is R4 Fashion and what was the genesis of the event?

R4 Fashion is an event bringing together students, social entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and general public to learn about sustainable design that provide an eco-friendly alternative to their everyday activities.

The whole message is that you can live your everyday life as you want it and still have a low carbon footprint. A fashion show delivers this message effectively since it is dealing with a sense of style and individuality. We are presenting sexy and fashionable attire using sustainable and organic fabrics.

The R4 comes from the original 3 ‘R’s of sustainability: reuse, reduce, ad recycle. However, eco-fashion also deals with responsibility, revolution, resilience, and resolution. It doesn’t have to begin with the letter ‘r’ but you get the point. Fashion has never played an important part in following the three ‘r’s so we present to you R4: the next dimension of fashion.

R4 Fashion was born out of the Sustainable Technology Education Project (STEP) of the University of Waterloo in Canada. STEP is a non-profit student organization aimed at promoting sustainable design/technologies and an environmentally friendly lifestyle in the community. We hope this fundraiser will be successful in supporting us in our mission, and maybe open the door to establishing chapters in other universities in the province of Ontario.

Are there particular highlights that you are excited about?

I’m excited in how far we came over the last year. We began with a small concept of a fashion show taking place in our university hall to a high profile event in the heart of Toronto featuring some of Canada’s top designers and Toronto personalities.

For instance, the most interesting part of the show is the emerging designers competition where a winner will be selected from our special guest jury: Kelly Drennan (Fashion Takes Action), Gail McInnes (managing editor Toronto Fashion Incubator), Amanda Brugel (Canadian TV/Film star), and designer Evan Biddell. The evening is emceed by Candice Batista, the host and producer of “A Greener Toronto” on Rogers TV.

It’s great to see those names behind a fundraiser like R4 Fashion for STEP. It shows how supportive the community is, especially in raising environmental awareness.

You have some prominent speakers and designer guests, how did you convince them to participate?

Convincing prominent designers and guests to participate was not difficult. I believe they wanted to because they care about these issues and wished to support our cause. In addition, it’s also something they enjoy doing. All we did was pick up the phone and call. Never be shy.

How big a role does social media play in this event (marketing, etc.) and how specifically are you using it?

Social media is the biggest tool we are currently using. As we are in Waterloo, Ontario and the event is in Toronto, our marketing in Toronto was predominantly dependent on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. It allowed us real time market research and definitely gave us a strong tool in reaching our target customers. Through social media we were identify key players and find out what groups, events, and discussions that were involved in. We could then approach them with a very targeted message. Whether or not they could attend the event, they could help promote it throughout their networks. We were able to build a large strategic network in spreading the word about R4 Fashion and STEP.

Most importantly, social media really eradicated the need for formality. You begin conversing with a person as if you’ve known each other since high school. It makes for a comfortable environment, and facilitates the building of strategic relations.

What was the hardest part of putting together this event?

The hardest part was financing this project. Four months into planning the recession began to play its part. Finding sponsorships was not an easy task in that economic climate. The good thing was that we were reaching out to a variety of businesses: energy, environmental, fashion, entertainment, design, and even educational.

Luckily as we are a non-profit student organization in the University of Waterloo, and were able to benefit from endowment funds of the institution. However, that only goes a certain distance.

We focused on in-kind sponsorships instead, and at this moment, we are working on promotion to increase ticket sales.

Do you have any best practices to share with other event planners who are throwing fashion-oriented events like this? Were there specific things you had to think about given the genre?

If this is your first time doing a fashion-oriented event, make sure you work with individuals who know this field. I am thankful for Kelly Drennan, founder of Fashion Takes Action, who has guided me in organizing this effectively by sharing her expertise.

Knowing the industry key players beforehand is also imperative in organizing your time more effectively. You’ll be able to know who to contact directly, rather than spending hours (or days) on the phone trying to find the appropriate person for marketing of public relations.

And most importantly, know how to adapt to the environment. Learn the language and what is the current mood of the industry. You may dress well because it’s fashion oriented, but you better hope what you speak matches the attire.

No related posts.

]]> http://blog.eventbrite.com/r4-fashion-project-eco-runway/feed 1 http://blog.eventbrite.com/enlist-waitlist-management-today http://blog.eventbrite.com/enlist-waitlist-management-today#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:55:23 +0000 Julia http://blog.eventbrite.com/?p=761

Centralized management of contact lists

Do your attendees need more time? Eventbrite comes to the rescue!

]]> When it comes to creating useful, intuitive, and easy-to-use features, Eventbrite often looks to its legion of experienced and savvy event organizers who know what they need.  Well, we received our marching orders on Waitlist Management and we’re excited to let you know that attendee overflow management is no longer a pain point!

In line with our mantra, events made easy, Waitlist Management is a snap to set up and manage.  You can indicate how you want the waitlist to trigger (by ticket type or event capacity), set up the size of the waitlist, collect custom information from waitlistees, and create a time limit for waitlistees to purchase tickets for your event.  On the management side, you can view the waitlistees as they sign up and you can release tickets to people as they become available.  Potential attendees will receive an email notification instructing them on how to purchase tickets and how long they have to secure their spot at your event.

Learn how to set up a waitlist and manage your waitlist.

Related posts:

1. Centralized management of contact lists
2. Do your attendees need more time? Eventbrite comes to the rescue!

]]> http://blog.eventbrite.com/enlist-waitlist-management-today/feed 1 http://blog.eventbrite.com/eventbrite-town-hall-invitation http://blog.eventbrite.com/eventbrite-town-hall-invitation#comments Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:57:45 +0000 Tamara http://blog.eventbrite.com/?p=787

The New Eventbrite – Powered by Coffee and Redvines

Update on Rackspace Outage

]]> Hear ye, hear ye! Come one, come all to Eventbrite Town Hall!

What is Eventbrite Town Hall?

Eventbrite Town Hall is a place where we can gather with our customers to share a brief update on what we’ve been working on and then answer questions and discuss any issues that you want to talk about. It’s all the fun that a public company gets with an investor call, but since we’re not public we get to meet with you, our wonderfully *brite* customers instead. It will be an open forum featuring you and our founder and president, Julia Hartz.

We will limit it to 25 attendees so that we can have a good discussion with an intimate group.

When is the first Town Hall?

Tuesday, November 17th at 11am Pacific

How often will they take place?

We will hold Town Halls on a monthly basis.

How do I register?
Right here!

Related posts:

1. The New Eventbrite – Powered by Coffee and Redvines
2. Update on Rackspace Outage

]]> http://blog.eventbrite.com/eventbrite-town-hall-invitation/feed 0 http://blog.eventbrite.com/5-tips-for-building-great-content-and-driving-attendees-to-your-event http://blog.eventbrite.com/5-tips-for-building-great-content-and-driving-attendees-to-your-event#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:09:13 +0000 Tamara http://blog.eventbrite.com/?p=745

Event planning tips from author Judy Allen

PayPal X Innovate 09: Tips on hosting a developer conference

]]> We’ve gotten the advice numerous times that the key to a successful event is ensuring great content for your attendees. To get more insight and gather some best practices, we spoke with Felicity Chapman, CEO of Outside the Cube, a co-working environment for professionals to think, work and connect by providing connections to each other through events and an open work space. Outside the Cube provides three to four events per month that members can attend at no extra charge such as the upcoming events 18 Hour Startup and Successful Public Relations: Telling your story and being heard.

As an event organizer, Felicity is constantly thinking about how to consistently put on great events and we were lucky enough to sit down with her to get some best practices.

Here are Felicity’s tips for creating great event content:

1. Fresh Eyes: Be prepared to look at your message with fresh eyes especially in the early days.  Who is your ideal customer?  What does he/she value?  What is he/she looking to get out of your event?  Put yourself as much in this person’s head and brainstorm their needs and how your event answers one or more of these needs.  Are they looking for entertainment or great networking or a completely different kind of experience like an 18hr. startup?

2. Benefits: What are the benefits of your event?  What will people get out of it?  Put this at the top of your event listing.  Is this THE rock experience of the century or a once in a life time tasting of vintage wines that any conoisseur would be luck to attend?

3. Competitors: What events are you competing with for your target market?  Are they offering similar events?  How is yours unique? You need to make your target confident not only that their experience with you will be better, but also a great value for their money.  Budgets are tight, and especially if they have not yet bought into other events with your company, you need to elicit confidence that they will benefit from paying for your event.

4. It’s in the title: Doing yet another social media presentation?  While certainly a timely and valuable topic, there are tons of social media workshops out there these days.  How will you grab your audience?  Create an action oriented title for your event that goes back to what your customer values. Examples: Listen First! Build revenue utilizing social media.  Open doors: The 18hr Startup Experience.  PR on a Shoestring: Generating media and revenue on a tight budget.

5. Call to action: Your audience has found your event and thinks it is interesting, but what converts them from thinking to acting? You need them to decide to come.  Have you offered a special discount?  Have you made it exclusive (space is limited type of event)?  Have you made it free but created some kind of accountabliity?  After the initial benefits you need to make sure to include a direct response statement and then repeat it at the bottom of your listing.  This provides your audience two opportunities to jump in.

Check out Outside the Cube’s calendar of upcoming events:

Related posts:

1. Event planning tips from author Judy Allen
2. PayPal X Innovate 09: Tips on hosting a developer conference

]]> http://blog.eventbrite.com/5-tips-for-building-great-content-and-driving-attendees-to-your-event/feed 1 http://blog.eventbrite.com/introducing-your-personal-event-marketing-team http://blog.eventbrite.com/introducing-your-personal-event-marketing-team#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:38:42 +0000 Tamara http://blog.eventbrite.com/?p=691 When you sign-up with Eventbrite to collect registrations or sell tickets to your event, you get access to a rich set of event marketing tools right out of the box. And you don’t have to be a tech whiz or a social media guru to take advantage of this tool set. It’s powerful and effective, yet easy to use (I tried to find a good analogy, but most powerful things like rocket ships and nuclear reactors aren’t easy to use).

We like to think of our tool set as a virtual event marketing department – so even if it’s just you working to sell out your event, now you have a whole team helping you achieve your goals. And if you already have an event marketing department, we’ve recruited some top notch players to turbo boost your efforts.

Meet the team members, they’re psyched to get working for you. And now, your personal event marketing team:

The Incredible Embeddable Ticket Form: Drop the ticket widget right into your website or blog like this and don’t worry about sending your traffic elsewhere to buy tickets. Learn more

Customizable Buttons and Links: Create custom links and buttons to match your event’s style. Embed these babies anywhere on the Web – in emails, web pages, blogs, etc. Learn more

If you really wanted to you could make a really long link and make it hot pink and post it to your site for people to click on and register for your event, but probably you would use something much shorter.

Wonderous Widgets: These little buggers will do wonders driving traffic to your event page. Display a countdown to your event or showcase a calendar with all your upcoming events. Learn more or check out a countdown widget in action here.

The Social Media Hulk: This team member packs a serious punch. We understand the power of social media for event marketing and provide a whole suite of tools to help you take advantage of viral marketing. Publish your event to Facebook or Twitter and when your attendees register, with one click they can post the event to their Facebook and Twitter feeds to let all their friends know they are attending.

Prime Time Email Invitations and Communications: Invite your network to your event through easy email invitations or schedule email reminders as the event approaches. If you want to send more personalized email, check out our integration with MailChimp for high-powered email marketing. Learn more

Macho Man Discount Codes: Select the number of discounts to give out, create unique codes and offer promotional discounts. Generate a buying frenzy when you tell people that the first 10 people to buy a ticket with the code will get a discount! Learn more

Thunder Promotion Across the Web: If you mark your event as Public in our directory (you can check in the “Additional Options” section of the event creation page), we blast your event out to all major search engines, event indexing sites, and our public search directory, making it easy for event seekers to find.

Wicked Smaat Analytics: Track conversions on registration pages using our analytics tools or with your Google Analytics account. Understand how sales are tracking and see the results of all your promotional efforts. Learn more

The team is pumped to get into the action. Ready to get started? We are too. Set up your event

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]]> http://blog.eventbrite.com/introducing-your-personal-event-marketing-team/feed 1 http://blog.eventbrite.com/our-ctos-photo-is-out-of-this-world http://blog.eventbrite.com/our-ctos-photo-is-out-of-this-world#comments Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:46:18 +0000 Tamara http://blog.eventbrite.com/?p=674 Our multi-talented CTO, Renaud Visage, took a great pic of the NY Planetarium and it was featured on the Bing.com homepage today!

No related posts.

]]> http://blog.eventbrite.com/our-ctos-photo-is-out-of-this-world/feed 0 http://blog.eventbrite.com/putting-the-social-back-in-social-media http://blog.eventbrite.com/putting-the-social-back-in-social-media#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:38:06 +0000 Tamara http://blog.eventbrite.com/?p=654

Tapping the power of social media for event promotion

Social Media for Social Good: The Social Good Conference

]]> With all the ways to connect digitally these days and the explosion of social media sites like Facebook, Ning and Twitter, we’ve increasingly heard the question “do you think events are dying?” The hypothesis here is that people are meeting online, so they no longer need to meet in person. We see quite the opposite. The number of events hosted on Eventbrite are increasing rapidly and the scope and themes of the events are exploding at a mind-blowing rate. We are constantly discovering new and interesting events around wonderfully obscure topics. It’s the long tail theory applied to events. But the difference between events and music/book/movies is that events needed more than the internet for the long tail to be realized, they needed social media.

I believe that social media is actually the catalyst to more live events not less.

Before social media if you were into nude yoga in Austin, or concerned about breast cancer awareness in Philly, or an entrepreneur in Leeds, or a transitioning professional in Albuquerque , or liked to drive your Audi crazy fast in Lakewood, CO, it was difficult, if not impossible to find many others like yourself. But this is precisely what social media is good for. It enables individuals to connect with other like-minded individuals who share a particular passion or point of view. It fosters sharing of information and allows it to travel at lightning speed, reaching the people who care about it most. I love the illustration here on this post, our kick-ass designer, Ryan Bailey, created it to illustrate the explosive power of social media and how one person can instantaneously be connected to others through the social graph.

The implications of this new way of connecting and communicating are wide reaching and few individuals or companies will escape its impact. But my purpose here is to talk about events. Now that people are finding each other more easily and connecting around subjects that they are passionate about, the next step is gathering together in person to share these experiences. We are not content to merely connect in the digital world, a ☺ is no substitution for the real thing, so people are gathering. Now, more than ever, they are finding each other and then meeting over breakfast or creating conferences, exchanging real handshakes experiencing the magic and excitement of events.

Here at Eventbrite we understand the power of social media in making real world events happen, and we work every day to build a product that leverages these tools to help our event organizers find the people that will make their events come to life.

Related posts:

1. Tapping the power of social media for event promotion
2. Social Media for Social Good: The Social Good Conference

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