How to increase event sales with your Association Management System (AMS)

Many associations are looking to diversify their income streams outside of membership to provide greater stability, and events provide a great revenue opportunity; but how do you ensure maximum capacity at your events?

There are many ways to improve event sales, and technology has a key role to play in making this happen by allowing you to understand your audience so you can better target them with relevant events.

In this blog we share some tips to help you utilise your database and technology tools to ensure your events are seen by your audience, you get the most clicks and more registrations for your events.

Personalise your communications

Everyone gets flooded with emails daily, so if you want your email marketing to be opened it needs to pull the reader in and be highly relevant to them. This is when event filters are highly useful, because you can use them to see the history of all your members, i.e., what events they have previously attended.

You can then use this information in your communications to make members feel more special, for example if a group of members have attended events on a particular topic why not create a custom email for them with: We know you’re interested in TOPIC, as you’ve attended our previous events – great news we have another event coming that you might also like to attend!

Reward loyalty

Using the event filters can also allow you to offer rewards to loyal members who frequently attend events. Whether this is a simple gamification process of people earning points or badges for the number of events they attend each year or monetised as in discounts or early access to Early Bird rates.

Rewarding your members will boost engagement and encourage them to get involved more frequently with your events as there is something in it for them.

Engage your registrants

 Often when promoting events, we focus solely on getting more registrations – while this is important – it is also important to connect with people who have already registered. Use it as an opportunity to get them excited about an event e.g., send them information on the speakers or even record an interview with the speakers offering a sneak peek on their session.

You can also use tools such as broadcast SMS to send reminders to people who have registered.

Getting registrants involved before the event also provides an opportunity for them to assist in the promotion e.g., create graphics for the event that say, “I’m attending” and encourage registrants to share them on social media.

Create an easy experience

Ensuring the registration process is simple and easy is key to securing more registrations – reduce the number of clicks and information required for forms. Using an event management tool that is integrated with your AMS can simplify the process as it connects directly to your database.

Having this direct connection will ensure member details are consistent and constantly updated as you can set questions in the registration form to confirm details. It also allows you to automate tasks like CPD points getting added to member records.

The above are some of the ways to increase your sales for events, but there is plenty more including post-event surveys where you can collect testimonials and images to use in the promotion of the next event.