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Accept Event Payments with Square using Credit Cards, Google Pay, and Apple Pay

Attendees participating in a business conference.

You can now use Square to accept payments for your event registrations or tickets using Event Espresso. Event organizers in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Republic of Ireland and France can receive debit card or credit card payments from attendees worldwide. Plus, Google Pay and Apple Pay are available in select countries.

Receive payments for event registrations through Apple Pay and Google Pay

Event payments are available for Google Pay and Apple Pay via Square. Here are the countries where the services are available. (more…)

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New features: help attendees avoid email address typos, apply a promotion code to an existing registration, plus more!

In this post, we’ll highlight a few improvements that are now available in Event Espresso. These can help you whether you are organizing in-person events, virtual events, or a mix of both types.

1. Ask attendees to confirm their email address by entering it twice

Have you received an email from a frustrated attendee that registered for an event but didn’t receive their ticket or confirmation email? I imagine you went through steps like this to solve this problem:

– Logged in your WordPress dashboard on your website
– Pulled up the attendee’s registration in Event Espresso
– Spotted a typo on their email address in the Contact Details section
– Updated their email address to fix the typo
– Resent their confirmation email or ticket through the Registration Details area
– Replied to their email

Mistakes happen. I recently booked an appointment online for routine service for my car. While setting up the appointment, I typed my email address wrong — an email address that I’ve had for over ten years! Luckily, I realized what I did and fixed it before sending the appointment request.

What if you could almost eliminate having to fix typos on attendee email addresses?

(more…)

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What makes a memorable and engaging virtual event?

Studio with three men

Photo credit: Nathan Riley

Since the beginning of 2020, I’ve attended over 25 events online. I created a list with the ones that I remembered vividly like a positivity workshop, calls with vendors, a live course on habits, team meetings, and more — all to find out “what worked well” with each of them. Then I looked for patterns that made each of them memorable. Not all of the virtual events were engaging, so I focused on the ones that were.

In this article, I’ll distill my experiences into actionable advice to help make your next virtual event memorable and engaging. We’ll start by talking about visualization.

Carol Dweck, in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, introduces us to the concept of a concrete plan, which is created through thinking about what you want to do in vivid detail. Dweck says, “These concrete plans — plans you can visualize — about when, where, and how you are going to do something lead to really high levels of follow-through, which, of course, ups the chances of success.”

What Dweck is suggesting, in other words, is that doing some planning in advance can skyrocket your chances of following through. (more…)

Posted in Event Planning | 2 Comments »

Supporting our customers through COVID-19

Photo credit: Pixabay

Last updated: Thursday, April 16th

As author Brené Brown writes in her book, Daring Greatly, “Connection is why we’re here. We are hardwired to connect with others, it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it there is suffering.”

This post will be a living document with resources to help you stay connected with friends and family and your attendees wherever they may be in the world. (more…)

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Options for your events during a crisis: postpone, cancel, or reschedule

Photo credit: Northfolk

Activities like events bring us closer together by creating a connection. We create new memories during these shared experiences. During challenging times, your events may be affected. So what can you do if you find yourself unable to host in-person events for a while?

Here are three ways to overcome moments of uncertainty and take action with your events. We’ll begin with how to postpone an event below. Then we’ll cover how to cancel an event and how to reschedule an event.

1. Postpone an event

How does the thought of postponing an event make you feel? You’ve invested lots of energy and time with your team, and now you are forced to make a decision. It can feel frustrating.

I understand and want to share another perspective to consider.

Try thinking of postponing an event as “now is not the right time, and I know I can host my event in the future.” In doing so, you are 1) showing your attendees that you care about them and their wellbeing enough to say “this is not the right time for us to hold this event,” 2) giving yourself some space, and 3) allowing an opportunity for your event in the future. This change in how you think about delaying your event can instantly brighten your outlook.

One of my roommates from college had to delay his wedding because of coronavirus. Here is part of the conversation that we had:

(more…)

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New features: remove “Use Attendee #1’s information for ALL attendees,” add attendees to past events, and more

In this post, we’ll highlight a few improvements that are now available in Event Espresso. We are still working on major new features like Recurring Events, but we like to sneak in some useful upgrades here and there too.

Filter by venue in the events overview screen

Do you host events such as classes & workshops at different event locations? Now you can see events for a specific venue in your events overview screen.

From your WordPress dashboard, go to Event EspressoEvents. The new dropdown menu for All Venues appears between the “Show Active/Inactive” and “All Categories” dropdown menus.

Click on All Venues and choose a venue. Then click on the Filter button.

You’ll then see events for a specific venue. Afterward, you can click Reset Filters to see all events again across your venues. (more…)

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How the Los Angeles Center of Photography used Event Espresso to have a “smashing success” with their Exposure Weekend event

Blog banner of the Los Angeles Center of Photography Used Event Espresso

Nestled in sunny southern California, in the heart of Hollywood, is the Los Angeles Center of Photography (LACP). We had the privilege of chatting with Brandon from the LACP.

LACP is a nonprofit 501c3 organization devoted to photographers and the photographic arts. The organization offers classes, workshops, exhibitions, portfolio reviews, and more, all to help photographers advance their skills and careers.

What does the Los Angeles Center of Photography do?

Whether you are a photography expert with years and years of experience or you are just getting started as a novice, the LACP has resources available to help you level up with your photography skills.

Photo credit: Julia Dean

When asked about one of their memorable events, Brandon told us about their “Exposure Weekend.” Hosted in the third week of July, the multi-day event was described as a smashing success, and we knew we wanted to hear more. (more…)

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Announcing the Automated Upcoming Event Notifications add-on

Automatically send out event reminder emails for upcoming events

Has this happened to you before?

You hear about an upcoming event and eagerly register online to confirm your spot. Then you continue with life, and somehow you forget about the event. You’ve now missed an event that you were looking forward to, and it feels like you’ve tossed money away.

I know the feeling because I’ve had the same thing happen to me. It is more common than you think, and it may be happening for attendees that register for your events. Just like you, your attendees are busy, and they may also forget to show up for your next event.

The good news is that you can nudge your attendees by sending event reminder emails. (more…)

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Import a list of attendees from a CSV file upload with the Event Espresso Importer

Do you have an upcoming event where you would like to import a list of attendees?

If you have a small number of attendees, then you could manually import them into Event Espresso through your WordPress dashboard. However, if you are expecting hundreds of attendees, then importing one by one is a show stopper.

Bulk register attendees with the Event Espresso Importer

As an alternative to manual registrations, you can upload a list of attendees by importing a CSV file with the Event Espresso Importer extension. (more…)

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How Santa Cruz SPCA accepts online registrations for their youth volunteer program: PAWS

Promoting Animal Welfare with Students (PAWS)

Photo credit: Sydney Lindquist

Are you searching for an event registration system for your nonprofit organization? In this success story, we had a chat with the Santa Cruz SPCA to learn more about how they use Event Espresso for event registrations through their WordPress website for one of their programs: Promoting Animal Welfare with Students (PAWS).

Who is the Santa Cruz SPCA?

Since 1938, the non-profit organization Santa Cruz SPCA in sunny California has promoted the well-being of animals and people in their local community. They’ve done so through programs for advocacy, education, and adoption. One of their programs is Promoting Animal Welfare with Students or PAWS, which is an engaging volunteer program for young students. (more…)

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