In order to have successful events or conferences, some form of registration is needed for various reasons. It is essential to a business or organization to know who is coming to their event. Knowing how many people will be attending is also essential. This information can be used to determine what the interest is among certain groups of people and how many would attend such an event as yours! You need to know who to focus your advertising on so as not to waste valuable income on advertising to uninterested parties.
Registration forms are the perfect way to do this. By asking a few pertinent questions of potential attendees and analyzing the data, you will know. These could be handled manually, but that wouldn’t be very efficient in today’s world. Who would have time for that? Instead, most event managers, (or whoever is in charge of organizing the events) will normally use some type of registration software.
What Exactly Is Registration Software?
Registration software is software that helps streamline the process of registering for events, conferences, meetings, or seminars that companies want to hold. With the right kind of software, many aspects of registration can be done automatically, for instance, payment processing. This type of software can handle online events as well as face-to-face events, and keep track of the members who register, their tickets, and much more.
Other benefits can be derived from registration software such as polls and surveys as well as feedback. Feedback can be useful information when setting up future events.
Features of Registration Software Might Include:
- Management of attendees: guest lists, seating, registrations, polls, and travel/lodging arrangements
- Event Calendar: customers can view the calendar and register or check themselves in for the events or meetings they are interested in attending.
- Tickets: ability to sell tickets or adjust ticket prices and/or quantities
- Reports and Analytics: ability to generate customized reports that show various types of data such as overall success of marketing strategies, types of memberships, and other analytical data.
- Payments: ability to process online payments from registrants
- Marketing: email campaigns, forms, promotions, discount codes, social media marketing
- Management of on-site events: handling of venues, in-person registrations, creating name badges, scanning barcodes, and other features
In order to get the most out of your software, make sure you know what it is capable of handling, and if it will meet the needs of your company or organization. Can it process registrations from mobile registrations? Many people do everything right from their cell phones rather than their computers, so it needs to be able to handle that type of input. Can it communicate with CRM software? This can be a significant plus as this type of integration can provide more leads and contacts for your business.
Registration Software Available
There are many brands of registration software available to choose from. Below are a few examples and some of the features they offer:
- Socio – offers more than just registration software. With their registration software, you have customization options to build your event registration pages the way you want, whether it is for a virtual event, face-to-face event, or a hybrid event. You can customize according to your own branded look that fits your company or organization. Attendee’s profile information and ticket information will merge into your event platform, app, and Socio Check-In. No more having to import spreadsheets. Ticket types can be customized with options to include promo and access codes. Payment options include paying by check, invoices, or instant payments. Checkout forms are also customizable. You can decide what information you want to be captured in your event platform. Analytic data can also be obtained such as number of attendees, page views, revenue generated, and more. Besides the registration software, Socio offers package deals that include platform and Socio streaming, along with support options. Discounts are offered for nonprofit organizations.
- Regpack – features integrated payments with registration, automated email, analytics, and more. With this software, you can manage registrations by embedding the process on your website as well as utilizing email marketing and producing reports on your progress to share with your team. You can send invoices through email or schedule payments and automatic billing for your registrants. Group registration can be done through an individual with group payment as an option. The registration forms can be customized with various templates for any type of event whether in person or virtual or both. Discount and coupon codes can be offered. This software can be accessed on all devices including mobile devices.
- Eventsquid – this software helps you to create automated event registration as well as website and mobile apps. You can set up communication with attendees, include volunteer signup, manage speakers, agenda, and reports. It only takes two minutes to set up your event website with this software. Designed for individuals to register just themselves or register others. Customized payment and pricing methods are available with the option to pay online or by invoice. If you are a nonprofit organization, you can even collect donations. Features include the ability to use any video or live streaming service you want for your events. Additional features include: mobile apps that will run on any smart device and on any browser instantly; graphs that indicate preferences and opinions of attendees; speaker ratings and presentations; sponsors; retrieval of leads; easy check-in process; reviews; and much more. From the dashboard, you can quickly view attendance, revenue, and other pertinent data regarding your event. One of the cool features is that the software keeps a running log of each attendee’s profile and any changes that are made by staff regarding their registration.
- Cvent Event Management – this software is actually a cloud-based software. With this, you are able to manage event budget and events as well as payment processing. You can also retrieve data and track attendance of not just one event, but several events. Attendees are able to see future events and connect them to their own calendars. Built-in reports as well as customized reports, can be exported. Some of the other features include mobile websites, customized websites, ability to manage contacts, and share information through social media.
- Neon CRM – a great option for nonprofit organizations is the Neon CRM, which is also a cloud-based software. Regardless of the size of the organization, this software can be an excellent way to handle fundraising events with donor and membership management. Data can be tracked on donations given online as well as offline. Registration for events with automatic reminders can be implemented and managed. Reports can be customized and retrieved from the data that is collected on donors and attendees. With each donor’s record, it shows the history of all that donor’s past donations with amounts and dates. Tax receipts can be automatically generated from this and emailed to the donors. Donation forms can be accessed that can even be branded with your organization’s brands.
Surveys and Reviews
Once your event is over, it is good practice to utilize the analyzed data from the software. With the features of your registration software that allow surveys and reviews to be accessed from your attendees, you can learn a great deal. This can be quite helpful in planning future events. Good registration software includes this type of integration for surveys that your attendees can complete after the event. From this data, you can determine whether or not you chose speakers that held the interest of your guests. Some questions might include:
- Were the speakers informative?
- Did they hold your interest?
- Would you recommend future events to others?
- Was the content relative to the organization?
- Were the accommodations such as the venue adequate?
- Would you attend future events of this type?
