Know-How Exchange : Customer Behavior

You need a simple but effective registration process. Hosting a successful event is about user-friendliness. If you make it easy for attendees to attend the event then they will attend. I would create a simple online registration form, a landing page describing the event and buy some traffic to your landing page and registration form. If you need help creating a landing page and registration form for your event let me know.

Thanks to you both for your comments.

Levon, we do have a website - clean, simple, and with online registration capabilities, so I'm not worried about that. I agree that it's an important consideration.

NuCoPro, our goose could in fact already be cooked - I take your point about giving people enough notice to include it into annual budgets. We started to get the word out through our own channels prior to year-end last year, but unfortunately didn't have enough info to warrant a big push (it's a first-year event, so we had nothing about previous years' conferences).

I was hoping to avoid the school budgeting issue by setting the event in July, since school budgets turn over on July 1 and they'll theoretically have "new money" for the event. But we'll see if that theory worked out - we've seen a few POs, but not many.

I'm more optimistic about our business and chamber targets, who may have more spending flexibility - we'll see. But your comments about registration patterns mirror the anecdotal data I've found, as well as our own experiences to date. We've had the quick burst of early registrations (without an early-bird discount - an error on my part), and are now waiting in silence to see whether we'll see the secondary surge. Thanks much for your notes.

Hi Frank,

We've seen evidence of a last-minute rush at other stages of our event - first with applications to present, and now with our case study competition. Both received a huge boost in the last 2-3 days prior to the deadlines, with several people asking for extensions.

The registration deadline is an excellent idea - I'm going to put that in place.

Hi Juliet,

Thanks for your thoughts. We chose July as a result of feedback from out target audience - I publish a monthly e-newsletter for this market, and last year did a survey of readers to get their thoughts on a new conference. One of the questions focused on the best month for such an event, and July ranked first, with January coming soon after. I should note that our audience is less the rank and file teacher and more the administrator, who's in the building all year long.

On the marketing front, I think we did a good job getting the word out, and we'll continue promoting right up until the start date. But the question for this first-year event is whether anyone wants to come - I guess we'll find out soon enough. What I've heard here and elsewhere is that the bulk of registrations take place less than 60 days out, mostly in the 0-30 window. I suppose that makes sense - it's when I tend to register for events - but the waiting will give you heartburn :-)

Thanks again for your thoughts -