5 Best Practices for Hosting a Virtual Fundraising Event

Event Management

March 28, 2024

If your organization is looking for a savvy way to engage more supporters and grow your audience, look no further than virtual events, which have become a staple in the nonprofit sector. In fact, event organizers rank virtual events as having increased registrations, greater ROI, and greater attendee engagement when compared to in-person events.

We recommend hosting a few virtual events annually to leverage these benefits for your organization. And what better purpose do those events serve than helping your organization raise more funds?

Whether you need help with your virtual fundraising event’s marketing strategy or selecting the right technology, this guide is here to help. In it, we’ll help you carefully plan your virtual event by going over five best practices. Through proper preparation, you’ll be able to push forward your event with confidence and meet your goals.

1. Select the type of virtual event

Just as there are many different types of in-person fundraising events, there are various virtual event ideas that you can use to maximize participation and secure donations for your mission. A few of them include:

Gala
A-thon style events, like a virtual walk-a-thon
Charity auction
Panels and webinars
Online workshops
Fundraising challenges

When choosing which virtual fundraising event to host, consider what your audience of supporters and potential donors would be interested in. For example, if you are on the team of an animal shelter nonprofit, your supporters might be excited about a virtual walk-a-thon, as it’ll allow them to exercise with their pets. On the other hand, if you run a medical association, your audience might be more interested in a formal affair, such as a virtual gala.

If you’re unfamiliar with virtual events and don’t feel confident about removing the in-person element entirely, don’t worry—consider hosting a hybrid fundraising event instead! When done correctly, these events give you the best of both event formats.

2. Choose your event technology wisely

After you’ve decided on what type of virtual fundraising event you’re hosting, you’ll need to purchase technology that facilitates a smooth planning and hosting process.

At the very least, you’ll need a live-streaming tool, as most virtual events require some form of software that allows attendees to watch event proceedings. Additionally, depending on your organization’s needs, you may also need an application that allows attendees to stream themselves as well, such as for an online workshop event.

Other popular types of software you may find helpful for a virtual event include:

Nonprofit database or constituent relationship management solution
Virtual fundraising software
Mobile bidding tools

Be sure to properly vet any new technology before you invest in it. Do this by checking reviews, reading testimonials, viewing case studies, and scheduling demos with the provider. Prepare a list of questions about the software ahead of time, and be sure to get them answered during your meeting.

3. Strategically market your virtual event

One of the core advantages of virtual events is that attendees are not limited by their geographic location. Another benefit is that your attendee limit is not limited by your venue. That means that you can host a much larger number of attendees than if you were hosting an in-person event. As a result, you must make the most of your marketing efforts to get as many people to attend as possible.

As you determine how you’ll promote your virtual fundraising event to potential attendees, be sure to use marketing channels that allow for maximized visibility, such as:

Your website. Your nonprofit’s website is the first stop for any individual who wants to learn more about your organization and what you do. Take the opportunity to add links and call-to-action (CTA) buttons to your event information and registration pages to encourage supporters to attend.
Email. If you send email newsletters to subscribers, be sure to include details about your upcoming virtual fundraising event. Your email subscribers have already demonstrated their interest in your organization’s success and are therefore more likely to attend a fundraising event.
Social media. Promote your event through social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to maximize your outreach. Add the links to your event registration page within your post or directly on your social media profile so visitors can easily register to attend.

Don’t be afraid to reach out to your established supporters through their preferred methods of communication as well! Direct mail and text messaging are also popular and valuable marketing channels that you can leverage to increase registrations for your virtual fundraising event.

4. Keep supporters engaged throughout the event

Although virtual fundraising events have great potential for keeping attendees engaged, you’ll need to work a little harder than with in-person events. There’s a level of separation between you and your attendees, and you’ll have to creatively overcome this barrier to keep your attendees’ attention.

During the event, use the following strategies to keep attendee engagement high:

Gamification, such as leadership scoreboards or fundraising thermometers
Audience participation, such as creating breakout rooms
Interactive content, like polls and surveys
Live attendee chat systems

If you’re struggling to keep attendees engaged, do your research to find additional tried-and-true methods employed by experts. Elevate recommends you do this by reading fundraising books, which impart a wealth of knowledge and can inspire your nonprofit with fundraising and engagement ideas.

5. Follow up with attendees after the event

To maximize the value of your event, don’t forget to follow up with attendees afterward. Thank your long-time supporters for their continued support, and steward any first-time supporters. Plus, show your gratitude to those who made a gift during the event.

This is also a great time to solicit feedback on your fundraiser. MemberClicks recommends including the following questions in your post-event survey:

Overall, how would you rate the event?
What did you like most about the event?
What did you like the least about the event?
How could this event have been improved?
How likely are you to recommend our event to your peers?

The answers to these questions are especially valuable if this is your first time hosting a virtual fundraising event. They’ll provide a springboard for you to make valuable changes that improve future events.

Although virtual fundraising events may seem intimidating, they are similar to in-person events on a basic level. You need to plan thoroughly, attract attendees, delight them during the event, and strengthen your relationships after your event. Be sure to evaluate your virtual fundraising success through key performance indicators and your feedback survey so you can continue to grow and fulfill your mission.

Simplify the complexity of managing your meetings and events with a powerful suite of tools

Make your virtual attendees gather with ease. From small to large and complex events – plan and manage all of your events in one flexible platform – Attendease.

Learn More!

Guide: How to Design the Perfect Event Registration Landing Page

Event Management News

April 28, 2022

Building an engaging, high-converting event registration landing page is about more than just adding an image and writing a few snappy paragraphs. Like every good marketing plan, event marketing things take strategy and intent. A great event website should be an on-brand, captivating, one-stop shop. It’s a central hub that answers all your visitors’ questions in one fell swoop, all while building hype and getting them excited to attend your event.

Landing pages are unique pages outside your main website that often appear in response to a marketing email, online advertisement, or targeted search engine result. A landing page is a follow-up to a promise made in content elsewhere—the place intended for visitors to “land” after being introduced to you on social media, in print, or anywhere else you’ve targeted your marketing efforts. Because of that, landing pages make a terrific ground zero for your event, as they are often the very first step your visitors truly take towards being an attendee! The goal of a great event registration landing page is to have users complete an action, such as filling in a form or purchasing a ticket.

In this article, we will focus on specifically curated landing pages, but many of the strategies here can be interpreted and applied to the homepage of your website, too!

Are you ready to create a high-converting event website? Here are six proven techniques that will help you do just that.

Event Information + Hero Image

Let’s start with the essentials: your event information. Ensure that you clearly communicate the name of the event, the date/time, and the location—don’t make visitors search for it! It’s often best to include this information as close to the top of the page as possible, either as a part of a prominent, full-width banner at the top of the page or shortly thereafter.

Speaking of these full-width banners—or “hero images” as they’re often called—consider including a photo that captures the event’s spirit, such as a shot of the crowd from your last event or even a beautiful photo of the city in which your event is being held. A visual representation of your event helps make a great first impression and build hype for your event, ensuring that people keep scrolling.

Unique Value Proposition

Your unique value proposition (UVP) clarifies your brand and event into one clear, concise message that states what you do and why someone should want to be a part of it. In some cases, this could be as simple as taking an existing tagline from your branding, combining it with copy describing the experience, and simplifying it until you could clearly answer the question, “What do you do, and what’s in it for me?”

Remember, this is not a tagline. It does not have to be snappy. Clarity is key, and shorter is generally better. Brainstorm a few ideas with your team and select the best one to display on your website. Be sure to use your newly brainstormed UVP on your advertisements and email marketing pieces.

Benefits of Attending the Event

Once you’ve synthesized your event in a single statement via your UVP, it’s important to state some key benefits of attending your event in a little bit more detail. Whether it is the variety of sessions to choose from, world-class speakers, networking opportunities, or all the above, your prospects should be able to quickly and clearly learn exactly why they will want to attend. And if you have data to back it up, even better!

Event Speakers & Sessions

If you only have a few speakers or sessions, feature them on your landing page with some details (brief biography, achievements, etc.) to describe what to expect from each speaker or session.

If you have many speakers and sessions, you may decide to feature only the most popular ones—those that people are most likely to recognize or that are most likely to drive conversions—on your landing page and instead have a link to a page with more details about all speakers and sessions for those to wish to dig deeper.

Social Proof and Testimonials

Do you read Google or Yelp Reviews of restaurants before committing to a dinner out? Have you asked your network for recommendations of a great mechanic? Does the phrase “award-winning” push you towards purchasing a product? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you have been influenced by social proof and testimonials. If you can be influenced by social proof, so can your attendees!

You can generate excitement and trust by sharing prior attendee impressions of your event. Reviews and quotes are an incredibly powerful tool for inducing a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) and can take your audience from “might go” to “can’t miss”! If your event has drawn high-profile attendees in the past, adding these people’s company information and position alongside a photo can also be a smart move so prospects in similar positions or industries may find the event even more relevant to them.

Call to Action (CTA) Button

After reading all your amazing content, what do you want users to do? A “Register Now” button will lead users from your landing page to the event registration page so they can complete the action you want. Have a clear call to action and ensure it stands out from the rest of the page, either with a larger font, a different color, or a pill button.

Implement These Six Techniques to Improve Event Conversion Rate

Your event landing page is your opportunity to tell the story of your event: the what, when, where, why, who, and how. Follow these six techniques to improve your conversion rate and pair them with authentic imagery and videos to create a page that will make visitors want to transport themselves to your event immediately.

What platform to use to build your event website? Try Attendease’s website builder! Attendease offers an easy-to-use dashboard so you can quickly design your website without needing an army of designers and developers. Choose from one of the free templates available, or create your own. Because Attendease is a complete event registration platform, you can have your entire registration process—calendar sessions, email communication, attendee surveys, and more—connected to your website. And if you manage multiple events, fear not: you can easily clone a past event to create a new one with the click of a button. Talk to our team to learn more!

Let’s Talk!

Best Event Management Software Stack for 2023 [Infographic]

Event Management News

February 4, 2020

2023 Event Technology Guide: An integrated event management software stack to help you manage your event throughout your entire event lifecycle

“Focus on being productive instead of being busy” is the advice from Tim Ferris, entrepreneur and international speaker. We couldn’t agree more. With so many technology options available, it can be overwhelming to choose the best event management software that will help you be productive, rather than busy. While technology can help simplify the event management process, having isolated tools that don’t communicate between each other can make the work more difficult, instead of helping. So here is a list of the best event management software solutions that work well together to help you efficiently manage your entire event lifecycle, from beginning to end.

Before your event

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Slack + GanttPro

TEAM COMMUNICATION

Event management is not a one-person job. You are likely working together with a variety of professionals to put your event together. From the planning stages up to the end of the event, Slack and GanttPro offer robust solutions to keep your team in touch and streamline communication and task assignment, while keeping track of all your tasks.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Want to track tasks assigned and completion status from different team members? GanttPro can help you create visual charts to show you all your to-do list, deadlines for different tasks, and task status, making it easier to have a bird’s eye view of your event planning process. Having a Gantt chart to manage all the moving parts of your event will make it easier to manage all tasks, no matter how big or small, including venue booking, VR contracts, catering services, media kits, and more.

EVENT MANAGEMENT

Attendease + Slack + HubSpot + Salesforce

Website Builder

In order to promote your event and accept registrations, you will need to build an engaging online presence, probably a website. Using Attendease’s publishing platform you can easily create your event website using one of the many templates available. Whether you are planning a webinar, conference, product launch, or retreat, look for a website builder that offers attractive, customizable web templates to fit your event goals. With an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface, you can create your website without needing an army of designers and developers.

Ticketing & Registration Management

It’s a great idea to integrate multiple tools in order to get the most out of your event registration software. With Attendease you can integrate registration forms to your event website. You will be able to create different passes based on your event requirements, including early bird pricing, promo discounts, pricing tiers, and more.

Attendease integrates with Slack, HubSpot, and Salesforce, so you can automate all your efforts and stay on top of your event registrations. Here are some examples of tasks you can automate from the Attendease platform:

Stay informed of the most important event and attendee updates, directly on your Slack account, including attendee registration, updates, and cancellation.
Connect with HubSpot or SalesForce to bring in new contacts based on event registrations.
Through HubSpot, you can also track attendee interactions with event sessions, including scheduling a session, adding to a session waitlist, or checked in at event/ session.

SPEAKER, EXHIBITOR, AND SPONSOR MANAGEMENT

Attendease users can use workflows to automate the process of managing speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors. All three workflows work in a similar manner, and will make your life so much easier when managing your next event!

Workflows work in six simple steps:

Create custom application forms
Publish forms on your website
Invite speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors to register
Review and approve or reject applications
Automatically publish approved applications to your website
Let speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors manage their information. They can add their own bio, and all you need to do is approve it. Everything will be updated on your website with the click of a button.

SESSIONS & CALENDAR SLOTTING

best event management software_session-slotter

Manage sessions for your event using an intuitive calendar slotter from the Attendease platform. Attendees will have access to their personal agenda, and they can also join waitlists, if the session they are interested in is sold out.

EVENT PROMOTION

HubSpot + SalesForce + AdRoll

EMAIL COMMUNICATION

Manage your email marketing needs from HubSpot, or SalesForce (or another email platform you use.

Using these platforms you can:

Manage email layouts, based on the message you want to send.
Send email blasts: Remind registrants of an upcoming event, invite attendees to participate in surveys, or inform them of other events they may be interested in.
Send a single email: If you would like to send an email to a single recipient on behalf of your event you can do so with the send single email function.
Send unique messages to specific groups of people (e.g. previous attendees, current member, and non-members).

SOCIAL MEDIA

Use the HubSpot publishing tool to pre-schedule social media posts. You can also use their social media monitoring tool to track mentions to your brand and specific hashtags.

ONLINE ADVERTISING

Take advantage of online advertising opportunities, including retargeting ads. These ads would show to users who visited your website, but didn’t purchase a ticket. Ads would show on other sites your audience is browsing, such as a news site or Facebook. You can manage online advertising directly from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google AdWords. If you want to manage all ads from one place, try AdRoll.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)

Optimize your website for search engines, with these SEO techniques for event websites and manage these from your website platform. There are a number of techniques you can use to get your site ranking on the first page of search engines, like Google.

During the event

ATTENDEE EXPERIENCE

Boomset + Sli.do + Livestream

STREAMLINED REGISTRATION PROCESS

Best event management software_registration

No one likes waiting in line. With Boomset, you can avoid long waits and delight attendees right at the beginning of your event, with onsite and self-service check in options. Start by building out your event on the Boomset web platform, where a user-friendly interface guides you to collect on-site registrations, check in guests on the app, scan QR codes, and activate RFID.

To make it even easier, Boomset allows you to print badges onsite, so you can avoid stress, delays, and errors of pre-printing. This includes on-demand paper, plastic, or wristband badges.

CASHLESS PAYMENTS AND VOUCHER REDEMPTION

Best event management software_registration 2

Boomset also offers RFID technology, so you can discreetly incorporate wearable RFID chips to track when guests arrived and how much time they spent in a specific area or attending specific sessions, without imposing on their event experience. RFID technology easily tracks attendee movement to give you more accurate lead generation ROI in less time.

In addition, Boomset’s RFID technology features cashless payments, meaning attendees can purchase food, drinks, or merchandise, and pay by scanning their RFID-enabled wristband. The wristband is linked to each attendee’s credit card beforehand, so process can be automated. Cashless payments provides a better experience, with fewer lines and faster service. Not selling food and drinks? Not a problem! Using the same RFID technology you can provide food and drink voucher to attendees, eliminating the paper trail and avoiding human errors in the process.

AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT: Q&A AND POLLS

With Slido you can easily increase attendee engagement during your event. Guests can go to your Slido page or event app and send their questions, which can be moderated by your team. As questions are approved, they become available for all attendees to see, and upvote them. You can then select the most popular questions and show it on screen, during the presentation, so the speakers can address the questions selected. Similarly, you can ask polls, which can also be accessed on your Slido page or mobile app. Results can be shared during the presentation. Slido integrates with Powerpoint, Keynote, and Prezi, as well as live streaming tools, including Livestream, Ustream, YouTube & Vimeo.

LIVE STREAMING

Speaking of live streaming, this is one of the newer trends in event marketing, and it’s only increasing in popularity. Whether you’re streaming to social or producing an event streamed around the world, Livestream’s hardware and software can help you look like a pro. Use Slido to engage your audience by asking questions live, and seeing the results in real-time.

After the event

EVENT ANALYTICS

Google Analytics + Attendease + Boomset + Sli.do

best event management software_reporting

As an event professional, you know how important it is to analyze your event metrics. You can use a combination of tools to gather different types of analytics metrics and gain valuable insights. In our opinion, the best event management software tools for analyzing data are the following:

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Measure website traffic and engagement by specific channels
Measure website user-journey and top visited pages
Learn which marketing campaigns are driving more traffic and conversions

ATTENDEASE

Integrate with Google Analytics for comprehensive website traffic data
Track registration goals
Track revenue by event and business unit
Survey attendees to define overall sentiment
Collect and measure data from form answers
Track member attendance across multiple events

SLIDO

Discover the most popular questions and topics: Learn which questions resonated with your audience and view the summary of the most frequent topics in a word cloud.
Meet your event influencers: Find your most active and passionate participants who asked the top questions at your event.
View all your poll results at a glance: Quickly browse through your polls or expand individual poll results to dig deeper into your audience responses.
Share the insights in a beautiful infographic: Generate an infographic from your event data and share it with your colleagues or participants via email or social media.
See detailed analytics by individual rooms.
Get an overview of all events under your account.
Export all your event data into pdf or xls files.

BOOMSET

Lead retrieval: Allow exhibitors to digitally collect contact information and generate leads at your event easily, at their fingertips
Real-time reporting: Give users all their information in one place via organized reports downloaded directly from the Lead Retrieval app. Event organizers can also view, download, and send reports to themselves and end users.
Easily verify attendance for CEUs or certifications, determine popular sessions for better future planning

ATTENDEE SURVEY

Attendease + Sli.do

ATTENDEE EXPERIENCE AND NPS SCORE

Finding out how attendees enjoyed the event is key to learning what went right, what went wrong, and what you can do even better for your next events. Both Slido and Attendease will provide you with attendee survey capabilities, as well as data visualization, so you can analyze the results. A robust event management platform will allow you to easily gather useful data such as the “Net Promoter Score” from your attendees after they have experienced each of your sessions and other aspects of your event. This particular analytic is a gauge of loyalty and customer satisfaction. Net Promoters are your most important influencers, and well worth knowing inside and out. They are your loyal fans, who will sing your event’s praises to their friends and colleagues. They generally account for about 80% of your referrals and can help you close new sponsors or exhibitors with their passion.

It’s a Wrap!

“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.” – Thomas A. Edison

Managing an event is no easy task. There is so much to take into consideration, and so much work to do. Using the best event management software tools will help your team manage each piece of the event experience, from start to end. Increase your productivity by selecting the best event management software tools that integrate, so you can work smarter, instead of harder. What tools to you use to manage events more efficiently?

Best Event Management Software Stack [Infographic]

Infographic_ INTEGRATED EVENT TECHNOLOGY STACK — Integrated Event Technology Stack Infographic

Attendease Wins Best Attendee Management Tech at #ETL19

Event Management News

November 9, 2019

We are pleased to announce that Attendease has been nominated for two categories under the Event Tech Awards 2019: Best Event Management Platform, and Best Attendee Management Technology, and we are taking a trophy home!

The awards are now in their seventh year and it’s the most important recognition awards in the event industry.The Event Tech Awards recognizes the achievement of companies delivering outstanding digital and technological solutions to the events industry and it takes place in London, each year. This is not Attendease’s first rodeo tho, in 2016 we won the awards for Best Event Website/ Mobile Site. #GoTeam!

CEO Todd Heintz receiving the Event Tech Awards 2019 for Attendease

Want to learn more about Attendease? Contact our team to book a demo!

How to Gather and Use Attendee Data

Event Management News

October 22, 2019

Having a deep understanding of your target audience is the first step to achieving your organization’s goals successfully. Whether your event is targeting consumers from a specific demographic or professionals from specific fields, having the right data at your disposal can be crucial to the success of your event. Here are three ways you could use attendee data and how you can gather it.

Give prospects a taste of the event

Show prospects what they can expect from the event by showing data from previous ones. That can include demographic information, such as geographic regions attendees are from, age, job titles, industries they work for, and more. You can also share general event stats, such as how many people have attended the event in the past. This will not only give a glimpse of what to expect from the event and who to expect to meet, but it can also create FOMO (fear of missing out), which can be a ticket sale booster for your event. Here is an example of how Pass Summit shares attendee data from previous events on their registration website, and Adobe shares survey data as social proof of attendee satisfaction. You can view other best practices for event websites in this article.

Personalized marketing messages

Once you are able to identify specific groups, you can better target them when promoting your event. Whether you are using remarketing banners or sending email blasts, you will be able to craft personalized messages for each segment you create. Think of the benefits of attending the event based on each segment’s needs to create impactful messages and winning campaigns. When sending emails, remember to follow the privacy policies in place, such as GDPR in Europe and CASL in Canada.

Measure results

We can’t talk about data without talking about analytics and results. Without data, it’s impossible to gauge results properly. If you want to know if you hit your goals, you will need to have specific KPIs to measure. Plan this before the event and check the data after to see how you did. Here are some KPIs you should consider for track for your next event:

Total number of attendees
Total revenue generated
Sponsor dollars
Most sought-after sessions

How to collect attendee data

Now you know what to do with the data you collect, but how do you collect it in the first place? Glad you asked! You can collect attendee information from registration and survey forms. Then, all you need is a visualization tool to put all the data into easy-to-read charts so you can better read what the numbers have to tell you.

We are excited to announce we are expanding the analytics capabilities in the Attendease event management platform so that you can better gauge your event data and make informed decisions. The new Registration Analytics screen includes 5 panels that display:

A summary of key event registration metrics
Registrations over time
Pass distribution
Group distribution
Pass purchases over time

The Form Answers Analytics screen includes a panel for each field from your event registration form(s) and displays the percentage of registrants who responded with each option.

The new analytics dashboard is in Beta, and we will continue to add new categories and functionality with future releases as we expand upon this module. Want to see how it works? Get a personalized demo to go over the Attendease platform and see how you can manage your events more efficiently.

See Demo

New on Attendease: Image Gallery & Carousel Content Blocks

Event Management News

July 4, 2019

Using compelling images on your event website is a simple, effective way to make a statement. When people consider whether or not to attend an event they are thinking about the experience. What will I learn? Who will I meet? How will I benefit?

Give your audience a sneak peek at what you have in store—snaps of the venue, pics from last year’s bash, photos of breakouts or workshops, and of course a glimpse of the keynote speakers. The two new blocks we are introducing will give you exactly what you need:

Image Gallery

The image gallery allows you to host a set of images for your audience to browse. There are several layout options available to give you just the look you need. Users can interact with the gallery to browse the selection or you can set the gallery to cycle through automatically. Here are a couple of examples:

Image Carousel

The Image Carousel content block is the perfect solution if you want to add some motion to your website and present several slides of images and text for your audience to take in. Users can interact with the carousel or you can set it to cycle through automatically. Here are a few examples:

Visit the Page Editor to add these to your event websites now!Not using Attendease yet? Contact us to find out how you can easily build event websites without an army of designers and web developers!

Attendease + Marketo. The new integration is here!

Event Management News

June 25, 2019

You’ve planned great events and you’ve checked off everything on your list. What happens to all your valuable information with all the new faces that attended your events? Attendease has added yet another integration that’s no stranger in your event sales and marketing efforts. Your Attendease information can now easily flow into Marketo programs and leads.

Set Marketo Automations

Programs created in Marketo can now be linked to Attendease events. Mapping your Attendease global fields to Marketo fields to collect attendee information will make it a snap to harness your leads. Selecting triggers will provide your team with up-to-date information about their leads throughout their event journey from initial registration through to submitting a survey.

Email Templates & Blasts

Planning on using Marketo’s email and landing page? You can set up assets in your base program and make use of custom tokens created in Attendease to streamline this process.

In addition, you will be able to import your Marketo recipient list into Attendease, allowing for a quick way to send announcements and other emails to a specific distribution group.

Ready to start using the Attendease X Marketo integration? You can find the step-by-step guide here.

New Features: Attendee Applications

Event Management News

April 9, 2019

Attendee Applications

There are certain exclusive events that require attendees to be vetted. Whether these events are internal, invite only, or simply have a limited capacity, there are times when you need an application process. We recently released an attendee application process.

With the new attendee application experience you can build an application form, add it to a page on your event website, and then set default messaging for approvals and rejections (as well as identify who should be notified when new applications are submitted).

Once you begin receiving applications you’re able to review each of the submissions and approve or reject them. Approved attendees can be sent a private invite or registration code to gain access to registration. Alternately, you can choose to upload and auto register approved applicants.

Attendee Matching by Group

You are likely familiar with our Attendee Matching feature which allows you to send email blasts to all registered attendees, to all checked-in attendees, or to a specific group of pass holders. We have just released an enhancement which will allow you to send email blasts to specific pricing groups.

Announcing Attendease Design Enhancements

Event Management News

March 11, 2019

Your branding is a powerful statement. Your brand conveys a variety of messages (subtle or not so subtle) about your product or company. Think benefits, values, culture, and personality (to name a few). We want to make it easier for you to stay on brand so we’ve added some design enhancements this week to help you make a statement.

Default Email Template Themes

We offer a number of email templates which allow you to stay on brand while you communicate with your attendees. Configuring those templates, however, can take a bit of time. So when you need a great looking default email template fast, you can now simply choose from a light or dark theme (to contrast with your event logo) and it will look great right “out of the box”. This default template will now apply to all of your outgoing emails that you haven’t chosen an alternate template for.

Featured Content Block (for Mobile)

The Featured Content Block (the marquee or banner image with text overlay used on most event websites) is often the first thing a user will see when they arrive on your website. We have added two enhancements to make this block adapt better to different screen sizes.

Add a mobile specific image
Now you can add a separate image that will only be displayed on screen widths associated with mobile devices (phones and most tablets). This gives you greater flexibility by allowing you to select the scale and crop of the mobile-specific image rather than relying on the platform to auto-crop and auto-scale it for you. In other words, if you use this feature the image will typically look better on phones and tablets!

Auto heading and text sizes on mobile devices
In the past, the heading and text sizes for the overlay were applied consistently to both desktop and mobile versions of the block. Due to the differences in screen size this could result in the heading and text sizes looking too big or too small depending on the device you were viewing them on. We have now implemented a mobile-only set of rules to control the heading and text sizes so these elements look great all the time.

New Accordion Block

We’ve added a brand new accordion block to the Attendease CMS that can be used on your event website and organization portal pages. This block is very useful when you want to toggle between hiding and showing a large amount of text like on an FAQ page, for instance.

New Form Builder Display Options

You now have access to some new options on your forms Display tab to make your Attendease registration forms even more beautiful. The new Spacer lets you add vertical space anywhere on your form, and the new Separator Line lets you place and customize horizontal lines between form fields or form sections.

Better Form Validation for Your Attendees

We’ve reduced the confusion for your attendees when they have missing or invalid data when trying to submit their registration forms. By adding some animations and style changes to the form in those cases, this aims to reduce attendee drop-off at one of the most crucial steps of the attendee lifecycle… Registration.

We hope these enhancements make your design related tasks faster, easier, and more efficient!

Announcing new Attendease Marketing Module Features

Event Management News

September 17, 2018

We’re excited to share exciting updates to the Marketing module on the Attendease platform. This includes an easier way to add analytics and advertising conversion tracking snippets, and a more robust email platform to manage your event email marketing campaigns. Keep reading to learn the details!

Website Analytics & Conversion Tracking
Capture useful metrics about visitors to your event website by using tracking tools. Adding tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, or LinkedIn Insights to your event website is now easier than ever.

If you have already added these in the Custom Head Script section of your event website, you can continue using your existing implementation or remove it and enter the ID into the corresponding field to replace the code.

More options for the Advanced Session Schedule
Introducing more settings that allow you to customize the look and feel of the Advanced Sessions Schedule! You now have greater control over the colors of this section, alignment of text and sessions, and more!

Updates to the Card Row block

A versatile block used for a multitude of purposes needs to be flexible in order to suit everyone’s needs and different events. That’s why we’re excited to announce the latest update to the Card Row block. You are now able to choose the position of the text on the card, make edits to the look and feel of the image with Image Presets, and more!

Click below to:

Email Templates

A new, flexible way to build an email template in Attendease. Design beautiful email blasts to effectively communicate with your audience and share your message. It’s easy to get started with our eye-catching, customizable email templates. Pro tip! You are now able to create a unique template specifically for your registration confirmation emails. Here are examples of two of the new layouts:

We hope you are as excited as we are for these new features! Stay tuned for future enhancements as we continue to improve our platform capabilities. Want to try Attendease and see it for yourself? Book a demo today!