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Party Tips from Tyler: Halloween Parties

Tamara — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:49:18 +0000

Tyler is our resident party expert. He works with many of our major event planners to help them to throw sell-out events and does hands-on party research every Friday and Saturday night (and occasionally on Thursdays). His teammates describe him as “devilishly handsome” (we refrained from posting a picture for your protection), “a righteous dude,” and “wrote the book on all that is social.”

Halloween party planning is in full swing and to help you prepare for a night free of horrors, here are some party planning tips from Tyler:

1. Tier your ticket pricing. Ramp up the ticket prices as the event approaches. This will incent people to buy tickets early and help you plan more accurately. You can tier prices by date (let people know that after a certain date prices will go up), by number of tickets sold (first 50 tickets sold are $20, then they ramp to $50), or by level of access (VIP vs. general admission).

2. Create an incentive to buy tickets online. When attendees buy tickets online, you get an upfront commitment that they are coming and you can gather email addresses to let them know about future parties that you host. You can create incentives to buy online by raising the price at the door so that online is cheaper, offering a free drink before a certain time with the purchase of an online ticket (added bonus of getting people to arrive earlier), and by creating hype around the event and instilling a fear that the event might sell out (which is completely true).

3. Run smooth entry management. The worst thing for a party-goer is waiting too long to get in. Have a separate entrance for people that bought tickets before-hand so that they can enter quickly and another line for people buying tickets at the door.

4. Brand your page. Embed images and videos into your registration page to give potential ticket buyers a feel for what type of event it will be. Here are some good examples:

Halloween International Ball

The Rise of Funkenstein

The Stay Puft Party

5. Get the word out. Use all the tools we provide like widgets and email invitations to spread the word and sell out early. Publish your event to Facebook and promote it on Twitter. Schedule emails to attendees two weeks before and then the day before to generate excitement and buzz and reminding them to invite their friends.

6. Encourage people to wear a costume. Have a costume contest and during the registration process ask what category they want to enter to get them thinking about the costume in advance. You can do this by creating custom questions in the registration process. Keep the categories general like scariest or most creative so that people who haven’t picked a costume yet can still enter.

Still looking for a great Halloween party to attend? Here are some great ones happening around the country:

techARTS – A Spooky Union, DC

Halloween International Ball, San Francisco, CA

GOTO’s 9th Annual Halloween Costume Party, New York, NY

Halloween Haunting 2009 at Lasalle Power Company, Chicago IL

GOTO Boston’s Halloween 2009, Boston, MA

Sarasota Pumpkin Festival, Sarasota, FL

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3rd Annual TechCrunch Meet-up at August Capital

Jack — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:03:46 +0000

In the words of Michael Arrington: “Real world events are a really important part of the Silicon Valley community. We meet and interact with so many people over the Internet and by phone and never have a chance to meet them in person. To have the chance to spend a few minutes talking in-person over a beer makes those relationships real. Small, intimate events are always best, but sometimes it’s fun to get a ton of geeky people together, too, and just see what happens”. At last night’s Third Annual Tech Crunch Meetup, nearly 1,000 “over caffeinated, slightly intoxicated entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and press” ambled about on the huge outdoor patio of the August Capital offices in Menlo Park. Proceeds from the event were donated to Malaria No More, a non-profit dedicated to the eradication of Malaria in the Third World. The only smudge on an otherwise perfect evening was the appalingly short supply of the mini-burgers that were served during the event. My wife Lauren and I watched helplessly as the servers walked past us with their trays held high in the air. It seemed we were never in the right place at the right time. Finally, we hatched a plot, waited outside the food preparation area, accosted one of the servers and were able to obtain one of the greasy little gastronomic gems. It was amazing.

Demo.com does Eventbrite

Jack — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 03:38:00 +0000

I want to give a shout out and thanks to the good folks at Demo.com, whose kickass event I just got back from attending. Demo chose Eventbrite for their Demo Alumni Party tonight in San Francisco, and I dare say it was a great success. For having been there myself, I can tell you the place was PACKED. The venue website indicates a “legal capacity of 225″. Yet sources close to the event disclosed that more than 600 people registered. Do the mizzath.