The Top 5 Techniques for Event Promotion to Increase Registration

In the chaos of planning an event, event promotion can often be short-changed or thrown a bit to the wayside. But without effective event promotion, your event registration numbers may miss the mark. Here are our top five techniques to drive event registration through event promotion!

First and Foremost, Email Marketing

Most event planners spend plenty of time utilizing email marketing to bump up numbers for their events, but you want to be sure you’re using every opportunity you can to fully promote your event. If you have any kind of newsletter that is sent out routinely, plan ahead and incorporate event promotion into the newsletter at least two cycles ahead. Switch up the content as the event gets closer, while stressing the need for immediacy. The greater exposure your email recipients have to your event promotion, the more likely they are to register for the event.

Encourage your employees to link to the event registration in the signatures of their emails. Chances are, they’re interacting with people via email on a regular basis in the same industry who would be interested in registering for your event. Moreover, put forward plenty of promo codes to incentivize potential attendees to jump on the chance to register. The more fleeting the sales seem, the greater the sense of immediacy and promptness. Playing to your attendees’ FOMO is a tried and true method for increasing registration count.

In addition to standard email marketing, effective event registration software will take your event promotions look uniform with your event registration website, making the entire attendee journey feel a bit more seamless and streamlined.

Partner on Thought Leadership

A bit more of an out-of-the-box method for driving traffic to your event registration website is to consider reaching out to industry publications. Your attendees are always consuming content, so do a little research and see where they navigate most. Figure out what content your attendees are looking at most often in the industry, and see whether or not you can collaborate with those publications to promote your event. Even if you’re not creating content that’s extremely specific to your upcoming event, you can often still backlink to your event registration website, giving your potential attendees a more indirect, but satisfying route to your event.

Search Engine Optimization and Blogging

As your event approaches, thoroughly evaluate which key words you need to drive traffic to your event registration site. Event promo through SEO and blog posts is a less invasive, more appealing method. Incorporate key words that connect your event registration site to your blogs, and don’t be afraid to promote those blogs via email.

Doll up your old content, too. Everyone loves a good makeover, and SEO is no different. If you can dig up old posts that are relevant to your current and upcoming event, use that as another means of event promotion. The more relevant your content is to your event, the more interest your attendees will have, both pre- and post-registration.

Pay Attention to Loyal Attendees

If your event is a recurring or is held annually, keep your loyal attendees in mind! All loyal customers appreciate being appreciated, and you want these event attendees to maintain a level of enthusiasm for your event. Consider sending out emails with early bird or VIP offerings, telling your attendees that you’re looking forward to seeing them again!

Additionally, incorporate referral links into post-registration emails. If an attendee has a referral link at their disposal, they might just shoot that email over to a friend to get them to tag along with them to the event. Even beyond this, loyal attendees are a great event promotion resource because they’ll spread your event by word of mouth, which is one of the most powerful tools out there.

Utilize Social Media Channels

It may seem like a go-to, but keep strategy in mind when you promote your event via social media. Cater different content to the specific channels your attendees will be consuming it on, but keep your hashtags consistent. Although you want all of your content to be engaging, you want your attendees to feel that your event promotion is putting out all one uniform message that connects to your event registration site. For additional social media event promo tips, read more here.