How to Improve Your Event Attendance | Event Marketing Ideas — Transcript

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1. 0:00On today's Run of Show, we're gonna talk about how to get people to not just sign
2. 0:04up, but to actually show up to your events. Let's get started.
3. 0:13Have you ever been so excited to attend an event that you put it in your
4. 0:17calendar and you count down the days to when that events gonna happen, like you
5. 0:21just, you just cannot wait to attend? That's how we want our attendees to feel
6. 0:25about all of our events, right? We want them to be giddy with excitement, just
7. 0:29counting down the days to when they walk through those doors. But, how do you do
8. 0:34that? How do you make sure that people who actually sign up, actually show up,
9. 0:38right? We call that the RSVP to attendee ratio and it's a really interesting
10. 0:43indication of the health of your event program. Today, we're gonna walk through
11. 0:47how to measure it, we're going to set some benchmarks against it, and most
12. 0:51importantly we're going to talk about how to improve your RSVP to attendee
13. 0:54ratio. Let's walk through a real-life scenario that we're all throwing a
14. 0:59100 person event, okay. So, in order to fill the room with 100 people
15. 1:03typically, I like to send out about ten times the number of invitations, so that
16. 1:08would be inviting around 1,000 people. And then, I like to try to get
17. 1:13about four times the ratio of RSVP's to the capacity in the room, so that'd be
18. 1:18400 people. And, in an event you typically see people come on, on what's called a
19. 1:24flow. So, in and out of the venue throughout the event and so, you're
20. 1:27really gonna try to get actually about 150 people or more to
21. 1:31actually attend the event so, we're gonna look for about a 1.5 X attendance rate.
22. 1:35And the goal, the thing that we're going to talk about today is how to improve
23. 1:39the percentage between RSVP's and attendees. Now, to drive the attendance to
24. 1:45RSVP ratio, one of the most powerful concepts that I've been using is based
25. 1:49on a human instinct, a human drive called reciprocity. Now, I was first made aware of
26. 1:54reciprocity from Robert Cialdini in his book, "Influence." If you haven't read
27. 1:57it you must, it's a must read for anyone who's in the sales game and it's a
28. 2:01simple, but powerful concept. And I'm reading from his book here, "Reciprocity
29. 2:05is the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual
30. 2:09benefit," so giving and taking are to be repaid in equivalent measure. So, what
31. 2:15does that mean? For our event specifically, it means that if somebody,
32. 2:19like your attendee, gives you their investment, if they give you something,
33. 2:26they are going to be expecting something in return.
34. 2:29Okay, now how do we get people to give us things? And how do we use reciprocity to
35. 2:35drive attendance? So, I've developed a three-step process to use reciprocity to
36. 2:40drive the RSVP to attendance ratio. And the three steps are, get that attendee to
37. 2:46invest. Number two, is to confirm that they've
38. 2:50made a good decision and we're going to talk about the sequence of emails and
39. 2:53correspondences that will do that. And last but not least, is to lock it in. So,
40. 2:57let's walk through step by step how we do this. Now, the first step is to get
41. 3:02someone to actually invest in your event, to trigger the process of reciprocity.
42. 3:06And the best way to get someone to invest, is to charge for it. Money is
43. 3:10always an easy way to make someone feel invested. I threw an event a couple weeks
44. 3:14ago and we charged $18 and we saw about a 95% attendance
45. 3:20rate, which is insane, and it was only $18, but people felt like it was enough
46. 3:25that they didn't want to miss it. Another way to get someone to need to invest, is
47. 3:30to get them to apply. Now, this is a pretty interesting technique, it's quite
48. 3:33clever and we see it in a couple different event types that want to feel
49. 3:36more exclusive and they asked for people to submit an application to be accepted
50. 3:41to attend the event. That's a great way for someone to invest their ego, put
51. 3:46their ego on the line and feel like it's a more important event. I like that one a
52. 3:50lot. But, another way to do it is to get someone to invest time and energy into
53. 3:54attending your event. Anyone who's attended Burning Man knows
54. 3:58this very well, it takes a lot to get to that event and nobody misses it, because
55. 4:03you've booked your flights and your RV far in advance. If you can get people to
56. 4:07actually booked a hotel room or to book a flight in advance there's a high
57. 4:10likelihood that they're actually going to show up. And last but not least, and
58. 4:14this is simple, but useful, getting somebody to double confirm. Just
59. 4:20getting somebody to say and to give their word that they're going to attend
60. 4:24is a way for them to trigger to the process of investing in your event. But,
61. 4:29once they've invested the next step is to confirm that they've made a good
62. 4:33decision in this investment and to start to begin the next step of reciprocity.
63. 4:37And you know, I'm a proud founder of an event called, The Summit Series. And The
64. 4:42Summit Series is a big conference for entrepreneurs. The next one's in LA and as
65. 4:47this event is coming close, the team has been emailing me with just really clever
66. 4:54announcements about chefs, and you know, one about a new speaker that's coming.
67. 5:00And one about the details about the venue and every single step of the way
68. 5:04making me feel more and more excited about the event that I've purchased a
69. 5:09ticket to. And we've actually- our data shows that you have about five emails in
70. 5:14the sequence before people start to not become interested and you start to not see
71. 5:18any effects on the RSVP to attendee ratio. But, you have that those five
72. 5:23emails to really drive home the concept of this being a great event that they
73. 5:29need to attend. So, last email is really interesting, I call it the lock it in
74. 5:32email. It's a really important one and it should always come from a personal email
75. 5:36address or a text message or phone call, but the important part is it comes from
76. 5:39a person. And this email is to schedule a commitment with the attendee and you
77. 5:46know, you would typically want to use this on only your VIP's, but if you have a
78. 5:50big enough team you can use this on everybody at the event. And the goal is
79. 5:53to schedule a time, a specific location, and a person that that attendee is gonna
80. 6:01meet with. And the more specific you can get like saying, "9:15, right outside the
81. 6:07venue, to the right of the door and you're gonna be meeting with a new
82. 6:11CEO that I think you should really meet." If you can get specific like that, you're
83. 6:16gonna see people feel committed to attending your event. The reason for this,
84. 6:20it's a lot easier to flake out on an event than it is to flake out on
85. 6:24another person. If people schedule commitments they typically try at least
86. 6:28to show up. Okay, before we break, a couple other things to think about as you're
87. 6:33planning and measuring and improving your RSVP to attendee ratio. Number one
88. 6:37is, keep really strong track of the RSVP drop-off rate. You know, we have a couple
89. 6:42clients where every single time someone doesn't attend their event,
90. 6:46but says they will, they use that as a leading indicator to try to understand
91. 6:50what went wrong. They follow up the very next day and find out why that
92. 6:55person didn't attend. They don't take it personally, but they focus on it. The
93. 6:59number two thing is, keep track of your emails. Emails are another great leading
94. 7:03indicator to measure and to improve your RSVP to attendee ratio. If people aren't
95. 7:09opening your emails, there's a high likelihood that they're actually not
96. 7:12attending. Another secret on that one, keep track of if people are actually
97. 7:15adding their calendar invitation to their calendar, that's pretty sneaky and
98. 7:20a good one. And last but not least, people get people. If you can show that people
99. 7:25are attending your event and they're telling other people and you can display
100. 7:28that, that's the type of stuff that actually drives attendance. So, you're
101. 7:32gonna want to show- you're gonna wanna get RSVP's as early and often as you can and
102. 7:36then get those people to commit and tell their friends about it. We found that
103. 7:39that is the number one way to drive RSVP's. Okay, before we break, quick recap
104. 7:44of what we talked about. You want to use reciprocity to
105. 7:47drive attendance and the way to do so is to get the attendee to invest. You want
106. 7:51to confirm that they made a good decision with that five-step process. And
107. 7:55last but not least, you want to lock it in with a specific personal confirmation
108. 8:01that they are gonna meet someone on site. Okay, that was a mouthful, but I think we
109. 8:06did it. Best of luck with your events, we're gonna see you next time on the
110. 8:08next Run of Show.
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