Improving event attendance
Empty rooms are rarely a promotion problem. How to programme events people want, promote them in waves, and read the numbers that matter.
Guidance from Portava Academy for the team running a membership organisation.
In short
- Attendance problems are usually programming problems that look like promotion problems.
- Design each event around a specific member's specific reason to come, and name it in the title.
- Promote in waves of announcement, reminder and final call, because each wave converts a different kind of member.
- Treat registrations, attendance and repeat attendance as three different numbers with three different fixes.
When a room is half empty, the instinct is to promote harder next time. Sometimes that is right.
More often the promotion was fine and the event was not. It was designed around what the organisation wanted to say rather than what any specific member wanted to get.
Attendance is decided at programming time. Promotion only amplifies the decision.
Programme for a person
The strongest events answer a question a nameable kind of member is actually asking. The owner wondering what auto-enrolment costs, the retailer losing sleep over energy bills, the new member who knows nobody.
Design each event by finishing the sentence "this is for the member who…". If the sentence will not finish, the event is a calendar entry rather than a draw.
Put the reason in the title. "March member evening" asks the member to do the work of guessing. "What auto-enrolment will cost you, with the people who run it" does the work for them.
The title is the promotion, and everything else is amplification.
Protect the mixture too. A calendar that is all formal briefings starves the members who come to meet people. All mixers starves the ones who come to learn.
The reliable pattern is a spine of repeating formats, such as a monthly breakfast people can attend by habit, with occasional set pieces that give the year its peaks.
Promote in waves
One announcement is not a campaign. Different members decide at different distances.
The planners book on announcement. The majority need the reminder a week out, when their calendar is real to them. A worthwhile group decides in the final 48 hours, especially when the final call carries honest scarcity such as "three places left".
Three waves through your established channels, each giving a signed-in route to book, is the whole method. The registration curve after each wave tells you which of them your members respond to. From then on you are promoting on evidence.
Your own past attendees are the warmest audience you have. "You came to the last one, and the next is on the 14th" outperforms any cold announcement. The portal's attendance records make it a five-minute job.
Read three numbers
"Attendance" hides three different problems.
Registrations measure whether the event and its promotion created intent. A low number is a programming or reach problem.
Show-up rate measures whether intent survived until the day. Chronic no-shows respond to day-before reminders. For habitually missed free events, a nominal charge makes registration a decision rather than a reflex.
Repeat attendance measures whether the event delivered. People vote on the last event with the next one.
Each number has its own fix. Averaging them into a single disappointment fixes none of them.
The habit that compounds is the debrief. Spend ten minutes after each event on what pulled people in, who did not come that you expected, and what you would not repeat. Rooms fill on accumulated judgement, and accumulated judgement is a choice.