Author Archive

Prices Increasing September 1, 2021

Event Espresso is, and always will be, known for being exceptionally valuable for event organizers. You can host unlimited events and sell unlimited tickets for no additional cost.

We have not raised prices since August 2017. The cost to build and support more complex applications is increasing which necessitates an increase prices.

So, this is a friendly notice that on September 1, 2021 we will be increasing prices for new subscribers. You should lock in your lower price by buying now!

What Does This Mean for You?

❤️ You can subscribe to Event Espresso before September 1, 2021 and be grandfathered in to the current prices. This means that prices DO NOT change for existing customers with active support licenses before that date. That includes your future renewal discounts too. Once you purchase Event Espresso, you will never pay more than your initial price, as long as you maintain an active support license (as long as your subscription does not expire).

🎗 And when you subscribe, you will continue to get access to all the existing and new features we release for your plan. (That means we keep improving the product, but you don’t have to pay higher prices for it!)

👉🏽 Plus, the new Recurring Events Manager plugin and the new Datetime and Ticket editor are very close to being officially released. If you buy the Everything License now, the Recurring Events plugin for EE4 will be included with your plan.

What Prices are Changing?

This blog post would be too long to list all the prices, so here are the upcoming prices of our most popular Support License plans. You can see a complete list of changes here:

  • Personal: $99.95 includes Event Espresso core only.
  • Everything: $359.95 includes Event Espresso core and ~40 add-ons
  • Developer: $359.95 includes Event Espresso core for five sites, plus you can buy an add-on one time and get support and updates for five sites.

See a complete list of plans on our pricing page.

Why the Change?

We have not raised prices in FOUR years, but we continue to add new features, make improvements, release bug fixes, and provide the best support known to the WordPress community. The EE4 Everything License now includes almost 40 premium add-ons and we just announced that another add-on is ready for Beta testing. The EE4 Personal License is approaching double the standard features compared to the EE3 Personal License. Not to mention the mobile apps which you can use for free. Essentially all these improvements have come without any price increase.

It costs a lot more to serve a customer than before. Continually building Event Espresso on a more modern technical stack is more time consuming and expensive. We are building tools that will help you save time, earn money, and be successful with your event registrations and ticketing.

It’s also increasingly more difficult for our support team to wade through all the many possible conflicts between plugins, themes, and server configurations to help you. We’re also investing in more automation tools to make the development process more efficient and reliable as WordPress gets more complex.

Additionally, the pandemic has been hard on the events industry, but in order to keep the Event Espresso team working hard and making improvements, we need to keep up with raising costs and prices.

We are not going to compromise on quality. Our goal is to be the best event registration and ticketing plugin for WordPress. We know we have many ways to improve and you have a lot of feature requests. Many of you have been wildly successful, and we want to be around to help create more success stories. These small price increases will help us re-invest in the tools, people and processes that will help us all succeed.

We’re always working hard to improve Event Espresso. Sometimes the price has to rise along with those improvements to keep our hardworking team properly caffeinated and brewing a higher quality plugin for you.

I hope you will take this opportunity to get Event Espresso and lock in your lower price by buying now!

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reply so we can help you!

Posted in Product & News | No Comments »

3 Multi-Channel Marketing Strategies for Hybrid Events

3 multi-channel marketing strategies hybrid eventsThroughout 2020, organizations had to quickly pivot and adapt their strategies to focus on virtual event opportunities. Events were no longer in-person affairs ripe for mingling; instead, events occurred virtually from within everyone’s private home. 

Now, your newfound skills on Zoom and other online event platforms won’t go to waste! However, we can expect to see another shift in how events are handled moving forward. In the post-pandemic world, we can expect to see a shift in organizations’ strategies toward hybrid events rather than solely in-person or virtual.

These events incorporate both an online and in-person element to engage audiences who attend in both capacities. Luckily, you now have many of the skill sets necessary to host effective hybrid events. All that’s left to do is refine those skills and combine the two into an impactful single event opportunity. 

One of these skills? Marketing. Multi-channel marketing allows organizations to reach out to their audience on a number of different platforms, expanding brand recognition and making them more familiar with your upcoming event. 

This type of marketing is even more essential for hybrid events as your organization will need to appeal to a broad audience composed of virtual and in-person attendees. In this guide, we’ll cover three of the necessary strategies to make sure your multi-channel marketing is up-to-scratch: 

  1. Carefully Choose Your Marketing Platforms
  2. Personalize Messages When Possible
  3. Analyze Your Data After the Event

Ready to dive deeper into multi-channel marketing for hybrid events? Let’s get started. 

Carefully Choose Your Marketing Platforms

When you host hybrid events, you’ll need to reach multiple audiences at once. Particularly, one that prefers an online platform and one that can’t wait to attend your event in-person. Therefore, you’ll need to create a marketing plan that incorporates the communication strategies likely to resonate with each of these audiences. 

The platforms you choose will directly impact the way your audience eventually reaches your event registration pages

Your in-person audience will likely be more comfortable shifting back to their normal lifestyles, and will be more likely to see information about your event out and about as well as online. Therefore, they may do some additional research, also encountering your online promotion materials. 

Meanwhile, your digital audience will likely be more inclined to attend your event if they come across marketing materials as a part of your digital outreach campaign. They should be able to click through your marketing materials and land immediately on the event registration website. 

Direct Mail

Direct mail is a staple to any effective marketing campaign, and is well-designed for multi-channel opportunities as well. Direct mail response rates are ten times higher than email or social media marketing alone. However, you should be sure to direct people back to your digital platforms. 

Direct mail, when paired with digital marketing strategies, offers several advantages for organizations: 

  • Repeat exposure to your brand. Include your logo, brand colors, and other visual cues so potential attendees immediately recognize your brand if they encounter it on other marketing materials. 
  • Personalization opportunities. Segment your supporters and specifically reach out to those interested in receiving direct mail. Use these segments to also include personal information in event invitations to resonate specifically with each potential attendee. 
  • Increased registrations. Attendees who immediately want to register for your event can do so if you provide them with the web link or QR code directing them to your registration page. 

When you reach out to supporters via direct mail, don’t forget to provide them with an immediate opportunity to register for the event. Provide a phone number they can call to purchase a ticket, give the web link for the registration page, provide a discount code they can use online as they sign up, or you can even provide a QR code the recipient can scan from their phone. Be ready for these supporters to access your registration form directly from their mobile devices by optimizing your page for this channel. 

email marketing statistics

Email

Email is another staple of impactful marketing strategies, allowing your organization to directly reach people through their inboxes. Plus, you can directly link them to your event site and registration page to learn more about the opportunity. 

Segment your audience and send regular emails leading up to your event to encourage as many people to attend as possible. You might even set up an event drip stream of constant emails to generate excitement for the event, shifting to stewardship communications after registration. 

According to DNLOmniMedia’s guide, email marketing is especially important for nonprofit organizations, citing the following statistics about how it can impact fundraising in particular:

Social Media

Organizations’ interactions with social media have changed over time. While the platforms used to simply present posts in chronological order, there is now a complicated algorithm for the posts that show up on potential attendees’ news feeds. 

This article says that, “Facebook has started to prioritize groups in its algorithm. This essentially means that your supporters are more likely to see a post made within a group float across their timeline than one made on an individual profile.” Therefore, consider how you can leverage groups on social media sites to promote various activities and events. For instance, invite your attendees to join a specific online event group so that you can reach out to them before, during, and after the event takes place.

Personalize Your Message When Possible

Marketing materials sent directly to your potential event attendees, whether by direct mail, email, or even Facebook Messenger, should be personalized to communicate with the recipient. This means addressing them by name and including information in the message that will best appeal to the audience, providing them personalized links, etc. 

Tweak your messages to potential attendees by leveraging the data in your CRM to: 

  • Segment your audience. For example, an animal shelter might reach out to a segment of cat-lovers differently than a segment of dog-lovers for an upcoming adoption event. 
  • Use personal information. Most effective marketing platforms can automatically populate information like names, addresses, and engagement history on a template for easy personalization. 

When you’re creating your messages for your audience, it can be incredibly helpful to start with a donor letter template to be sure all important elements are included. However, make sure you customize those templates to make them your own. 

Analyze Your Data After the Event

After your event ends, make sure to analyze the metrics you’ve pulled from the different marketing channels and messages that you sent. This data can be pulled into reports to help you better understand the strengths and opportunities in your marketing campaigns. 

The following channels are incredibly helpful for collecting and analyzing the data from your marketing campaign: 

  • Marketing channels. Your marketing channels, specifically the digital ones, can be configured to collect vital information about how your supporters interact with the promotional materials. For example, you might analyze open rates, click-through rates, and more.
  • A/B testing. If you conduct A/B testing throughout your campaign, you can adjust the images, languages, or other elements in your marketing messages to determine what your audience prefers in their communications. 
  • Surveys. One of the best ways to learn about your audience’s preferences is simply to ask! Ask them how they found out about your event and why they decided to attend to determine which marketing channel and message was most effective for them. 
  • Repeat attendees. When supporters come back again and again, it’s clear that your marketing efforts and strategies are making an impact on them. If you have difficulty recapturing your current supporters, you may consider revamping your efforts and revitalizing your strategy. 

Of course, after your event, you can’t change the attendance rates at the event itself. However, you can influence the event attendance for your next engagement opportunity. By collecting and analyzing important metrics regarding your marketing strategy after this event, you can optimize future strategies to even better appeal to potential attendees. 

Multi-channel marketing is the best way to appeal to the greatest possible audience for your next event. As hybrid events are able to reach a greater number of people than solely in-person or virtual opportunities, you’ll want to cast your net as wide as possible. Going through these steps for each of your upcoming events, you’ll be able to continue optimizing your strategy for continuous outreach improvement.

Tags:
Posted in Product & News | No Comments »

60 Event Planning Skills to Hone Your Craft

Blog banner for 60 Event Planning Skills to Hone Your Craft

Event planning and management require a sophisticated set of skills. There are a lot of moving parts that you need to manage in order to pull off a successful event. Whether you are planning events on your own or as part of a team, you should cultivate a very well-rounded skill set. In this article, we discuss the specific skills within these categories that you will need to successfully plan your events: organization, creativity, leadership, communication, people skills, finance, marketing, customer service, technology, and sales.

(more…)

Posted in Event Planning | No Comments »

How to Promote an Event on Social Media

Blog banner for How to Promote an Event on Social Media

Some people love social media and for some, it’s a sore subject. No matter how you feel on the topic, though, one thing is for sure—events are inherently social–and using social media to promote events is important if you want to drive great attendance numbers and sell tickets online

It’s the single easiest and most cost-effective way to get your message out, reach the masses. Social is the number one channel for brands to connect with consumers, according to Sprout Social. Furthermore, social media marketing scales appropriately within your budget constraints. And while more is always best, it’s easy to get lost in the passel of different social media platforms and the need for different strategies for each. 

What we recommend when using social media to promote events is to focus on the core four—Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. But first, let’s get familiar with what is a social media event and how to use it for your business or organization. (more…)

Posted in Event Marketing | No Comments »

The Ultimate Guide to Crafting the Perfect Event Confirmation Email

Blog banner for The Ultimate Guide to Crafting the Perfect Event Confirmation Email

As an event organizer, you need to send out important event details and communications with your event attendees. Sending automated event confirmations emails is one of the most efficient and modernized ways that this can be handled. If done correctly, the event confirmation emails can support your event business and goals and provide great customer service.

One of the easiest ways to understand the purpose and power of an event confirmation email communications is to consider the overall process as compared to an in-person registration process. If you think about what has to happen to make the in-person event registration, or ”sign up” process a success you’ll begin to realize all the actions and communications that also have to happen. Because the process of registering or buying tickets online is remote, or not “face to face”, the event confirmation emails are going to have to be even more sophisticated, accurate and timely so that attendees have confidence in your event. The event confirmation emails are an essential part of the selling process.

(more…)

Tags:
Posted in Event Planning | No Comments »

The Ultimate Guide to Event Attendance Tracking

 

Blog banner for The Ultimate Guide to Event Attendance Tracking

Tracking attendance at events can be valuable for most organizations that host events. Attendance tracking can make your business more profitable and help you more efficiently achieve your goals. Most people think that tracking attendance at your event is complicated and hard. 

However, that really depends on how you set up your attendee tracking process and what technology you use. There are various ways you can track event attendance at your events. 

You can go the simple basic and free route by using a piece of paper with a list of attendees or you can go the modern route that is less prone to errors and can issue advanced functionality like generating electronic tickets, and using mobile apps to scan and validate tickets at the door. 

Neither of these methods is wrong, rather they are different from one another and have advantages and disadvantages to each situation. In this article, we review the different methods of attendance tracking and their benefits.

And finally, we’ll take a look at how Event Espresso can help your organization take the next step in modernizing your event registration process which includes adding an attendance tracking system to help you quickly process event admissions and automatically receive a standardized attendance record and attendance report.

(more…)

Tags: ,
Posted in Event Planning | No Comments »

7 Ways to Upsell Event Registrations and Tickets with Event Espresso

More ticketsUpselling can be good for your business and great for your attendees too. Good upselling is more about excellent customer service than it is about aggressive sales tactics. The opportunity for upselling your event is all around you. Event Espresso, which is an online event registration and ticketing plugin for WordPress, offers you many opportunities to upsell your events so that you can maximize your event revenue. This article will share what upselling is, the argument for upselling, upselling strategies, recognizing upselling opportunities, handling objections and tracking upsells for your online event registration and ticketing with Event Espresso and WordPress.

(more…)

Posted in Event Marketing | 2 Comments »

Save 25%-50% During Our ONLY Sale of the Year, and it is Happening Now!

Our 2018 Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sale is happening now through November 30th. You can make your online event registration with WordPress more efficient, powerful and save 50% at the same time. This is the best way to invest in your events and your business.

  • Get Event Espresso for the first time and save 25%
  • Renew your expired support license and save 25%
  • Save 50% on add-ons for your Personal support license
  • Save 50% on add-ons for your EE4 Developer license and use that one purchase on five sites

See our 2018 Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sale page for details.

Please Share: Cool. @EventEspresso is 50% off during their ONLY sale of the year for #blackfriday and #cybermonday #eventprofs Share on X

Plugins and a Support Team

We all know from our own experiences that it’s difficult to find good help and that great service is rare. With your active Event Espresso license you not only receive one-click updates and renewal discounts, you also have access to our GREAT support team.

Reviews of Event Espresso
https://www.facebook.com/eventespresso/photos/a.425052244206566/2188279187883854/

Get the best online event registration and ticketing plugin and support team in the universe!

See our 2018 Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sale page for details.

Posted in Product & News | No Comments »

New Feature: Control How Long to Retain a Record of Processed Messages

Event Espresso is the best WordPress event registration and ticketing plugin available. We offer the most powerful features like a Messages Activity and Queue System that is not offered in any other event registration and ticketing plugin for WordPress. This powerful system makes sure your server is not over-burdened with sending lots of messages during busy event registration periods and allows you to view the status of messages, resend messages, and delete messages from the Message Activity list table. The Messages Queue system is just an example of our awesome features.

new-feature-message-retention-settings
(more…)

Tags: ,
Posted in Product & News | No Comments »

Event Espresso