The conference is planned, and the venue is secured, but the “IT Department” still isn’t finished developing the “new” conference registration system. Ever since the CEO caught wind of how much Cvent cost, he’s been dead set on building an in-house conference registration system.
Don’t Re-invent the Registration Wheel
The glorious “new registration system” your IT Department is working on is supposed to replace Cvent, but they’ve been developing system since last year and it’s still no where near completion!
The development costs alone are getting to be sky-high, but your CEO still thinks that building an in-house conference registration system is going to be cheaper than Cvent.
In the long run an in-house solution might be less expensive than Cvent, but not by much if your CEO doesn’t hold back the “feature creep” in marketing. That’s not really your problem, though, you just need to get people registered right now.
Our sister company, Event Smart offers a completely free event booking & ticketing service. Check it out at http://eventsmart.com
We Know Conference Registration
Conference Registration Ticket Selector
One of the things we strive for as conference organizers is more IT department time, bigger budgets, and great event registration software.
We can’t help you with your IT department struggles, nor your budget needs, but we can help with your conference registration and ticketing. However, by leveraging the power of WordPress, the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (or CMS) in existence today, Event Espresso can help you with your conference registration and ticketing needs without having to spend a fortune on development.
Here’s how:
- Breakout sessions – With our unlimited datetimes feature, you can allow attendees to register for different “breakout” sessions at your conference.
- Custom registration forms – Collect any sort of attendee information with custom event registration forms and questions.
- Multiple ticket & pricing options – Easily create & sell different types of tickets, such as general admission and VIP tickets, raffle tickets, and multi-ticket packages.
- Showcase your events – Post the name and location of the event, add a description, and featured image.
- Integrated payment systems – Collect payments for registrations and tickets.
- Venue management – Create venues and reuse that venue information time and time again, so it’s easy to setup the next event.
- Automated email confirmations – Setup confirmation emails to be sent to the registrants, to act as a notification, and to reiterate the details.
- Member only prices – Use the WP User Integration add-on to allow members of the site/club to receive discounts on their tickets. This add-on let’s your customer’s view the past events they’ve registered for, as well as cancel registrations if needed.
- Staff profiles – Identify staff who are in charge of the event, in case the event registrants need to contact that person. Staff profiles are also reusable.
- Attendee & registration reports – Export a list of all the registrants for the event.
- Print at home tickets – Using the ticketing add-on, event organizers can issue tickets that can be scanned with a barcode scanner. This simplifies the check-in process on the day of the event.
- Register for multiple events at once – With the Multiple Event Registration add-on, event organizers can allow registration to many different [keyword] events at once.
Showcase Your Upcoming Conference
Conference Registration Event Details
Event Espresso also helps you showcase your events in several different ways that are sure to please your boss.
Event List Display Options
Event Espresso ships with a standard event list display, where the events are listed consecutively by date down the page.
In addition to that, we also have several premium options available when displaying events on your conference/convention website, such as:
Table Display of Conferences & Workshops
Displaying your conferences, conventions, and workshop events in a table view is great potential registrants to see what’s happening.
The Events Table Template add-on provides you with an easy to use system that allows you to change the look and feel of your conference event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging, and more.
Grid View of Conferences & Workshops
The Event Espresso Grid View template is great way to display pictures of your favorite conferences, workshops, or sessions in a grid like structure that link directly to each individual event.
What’s nice about the grid view template, is the grid dynamically conforms to the width of the page. For example, if your page width is somewhat small, then the grid view may only show two columns, whereas a larger page width will show 3 or 4 columns, automatically.
Calendar Display
The Events Calendar add-on for Event Espresso allows you to display your conference events in a way that your customers are familiar with.
The events calendar makes it easy for your customers to find conference events and workshops, and add your events to their own calendars, so they don’t forget!
Getting People Into the Conference
Print at Home Tickets & Onsite Check-in
Don’t waste time printing out excel sheets, verifying payments, and crossing off names as attendees show up at the gates. You’ll look like a big shot conference organizer with ticketing and scanning features available right from your conference website.
Scanning Tickets for Entry
With the Event Espresso Barcode Scanning add-on you can easily check-in attendees at any entry point. All you need is a laptop or tablet, wireless internet connection, and a simple barcode scanner.
Design Your Own Tickets
Create sweet looking tickets that can be printed at home using the Event Espresso Ticketing add-on.
Add as many, or as few details to the ticket as you need/want. Such as dietary needs, seating preferences, or anything you can think of.
Tickets can also be used any number of ways, as we’ll discuss below.
Using Tickets as Badges
Tickets used for entry can even double as badges, so attendees can easily identify each other. This is great for networking among attendees, sharing information stored in QR codes, and more.
After Conference Follow-up & Re-marketing
Mailing List Automation
Mailing lists are great way to follow-up with your conference attendees.
What conference registration software would be complete without after event follow-up and re-marketing features?
That’s why we’ve made it possible for Event Espresso to be integrated with a very popular mailing list manager, called Mailchimp.
If the Event Espresso Mailchimp add-on is installed on your website, whenever someone registers for one of your events, their contact information is automatically added into a specified mailing list, or group in Mailchimp. That way, when you’re ready to post your next event, you can email all of the people who’ve registered in the past about any upcoming conference and convention events.
Customer Relationship Management
The Event Espresso Infusionsoft add-on easily integrates with your Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account to seamlessly capture customer data, track registrations, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website. With Infusionsoft sales and marketing automation software, everything you need to get more customers, grow sales and save a whole lot of time is right at your fingertips. It’s your small business CRM, e-commerce, email and social marketing solution all in one place.
Whether you are a business who sells through a website, a retail/office location or a sales team, the fastest way to discover what Infusionsoft can do for your business is to watch a quick product demonstration video.
Event Espresso No Fee Ticketing Software Saves You Money
Imagine the look on the CEO face when you tell her there’s a ready made conference registration system, at a fraction of the cost of Cvent and Eventbrite.
You might just get that bump in pay a lot sooner when she finds out much money you are going to save them.
Best of all we do not charge you per-ticket fees – a hot button issue for many conference organizers and event managers! If you have not yet chosen an online ticket software for your next conference, know that our yearly subscription based pricing can potentially generate additional revenue for you.
Get Your Money Sooner
Unlike other conference registration and ticketing companies, who hold on to your ticket sales money until after the conference, Event Espresso allows you to choose the payment processor, so the money goes straight to you as soon as tickets are sold – just like a product sale. That gives you the money you need to cover bills, pay for venue rental, and even earn interest.
Contact Us
If your current conference registration system doesn’t provide the tools mentioned throughout this post, please contact us at your convenience, or post to the pre-sales forums and we’ll do our best to help explain how it can work for you.