Tips on (financial advisor) Event Registration
No commentsBy Gregory Bridges
In working with more than 1000 clients, we’ve seen some really great ways to enhance event registration. And the best thing is that with the advent of online registration systems, much of these techniques can be automated and streamlined.
The result: a better experience for your registrants. In addition, these online registration systems eliminate many of the headaches you and your team face on a day-to-day basis.
These 10 little success secrets will:
* Attract more registrants
* Make events more valuable
* Result in more satisfied attendees
* Make your life as a meeting planner easier
1. Take the time up-front
You might be surprised how simple changes in your registration design can make everything much easier and more efficient for you and for your attendees - which makes everybody happy! Plus, preparation up-front will save you a lot of time and hassle in the end. Online registration systems are event registration tools to help you build your event quickly. But, all too often, building the event takes longer than anticipated because not enough time was spent designing the registration process.
Give yourself a week or more to create a great design for your online registration. That way you can percolate some really good ideas, bounce them off of others, and even get some assistance from your online registration system’s support team. Some support teams will help you scope everything out, brainstorm on ideas, and even help you build your registration pages.
2. Maximize registration time
Give yourself plenty of time to register and round up registrants. The more time you have to register people before an event, the more registrants you’ll have. We see so many events where registration starts a couple weeks before the event. By increasing the registration period, people perceive the event as being bigger, more important, and have a sense that it’s even more worthwhile for them.
This also enables you to have tiered pricing, such as early bird specials that motivate people to sign up even earlier. Some online registration systems will automatically turn different pricing tiers on and off based on dates that you set.
3. Make Signing Up Easy
Give your prospective attendees as many opportunities as possible to say “yes” to your event. How many times have you come across an event you’ve wanted to attend… only to have to sort through web pages to try to find the small “register here” text link hidden at the bottom of a page. This means lost registrants and revenue. It also means more staff time in directing people to where to go. Display the link prominently on your home page, in the navigation bar, certainly on every page that discusses the event, at the bottom of emails (in the signature), and include the URL on your printed materials.
4. Help them feel at home
With most online registration services, your attendees click from your site to your registration provider’s site. This has the potential to be confusing to your attendees and may make them uncomfortable sharing their contact and credit card information. You can avoid this by changing the border, headings, and font colors on the registration pages to match your site. Also, upload your logo into the custom header and/or footer pages. Now when people click to register, they feel all warm and fuzzy about your brand and colors being right there with them.
5. Welcome them in
A “welcome” message is such a nice touch that tells people exactly what event they are registering for and make them feel good. It’s a wonderful opportunity to remind your prospects of the value they’ll get out of attending your event. Be specific. Whether it’s a conference, incentive trip, training, or golf tournament, we all need reassurance on why we are investing our time and money. It is also a good place to explain a little bit about the online registration process (especially if there’s a lot to decide on or fill out)
For example:
Welcome to the Conference on Happy Golden Retrievers. We are so excited that you will be joining us in Lake Tahoe this August 20th-23rd.
Among the 300 happy goldens, all the cool dog tricks they’ll do, and all the fun we’ll have hanging out with each other, it ought to be dog-gone-fun! In the next four registration pages we will ask you some questions about you and your dog, your preferences for meals, your hotel preferences, and your preferred method of payment.
Please feel free to call or email if you have any questions or problems along the way. We want to make sure you are as happy as your golden.
6. Give access to detail
One reason people abandon their registration is because they want to learn more before buying. Having links from the registration pages to more detailed pages (either on the registration form or to your website) is very important. It enables the registrant to open secondary windows, get more information, and then come back to finish their registration. You may want to encourage people to call you while they are registering, so they can get answers right away and finish their registration right then and there.
7. Ask Deeper Questions
Ask your registrants more questions than their contact information, meal preferences, and credit card numbers. Learn more about them; their expectations for the event, their views and experience on topics related to the event, and their demographic data. Your registrants will feel the event will be more tailored to meet their needs. You can actually use the information to make the event more relevant.
Some example questions are:
* What would you like to get out of this event?
* How did you learn about the event?
* Why did you decide to attend?
* How many times have you been to this event?
* Have you recommended it to others? Why?
* What would you do to improve the event?
* Which part(s) of the event are you most looking forward to?
You could use this information to improve the event, promote it, track marketing efforts, gather aggregate data to share with all attendees, and pump up aspects that people are really looking forward to. Some online registration systems will enable you to add custom questions like these to your registration pages. They may also output the responses into a nice, neat format for you as well.
8. Fulfill their desire to buy
Give your registrants the opportunity to buy more than just an event registration. Your registrants are already in the buying mood. They may be itching to get something to help them before, during, or after your event. Do you have books, t-shirts, tapes, white papers, or autographed copies of books from the speakers at your event? Or if you are a charity, this might be a great opportunity to ask for a donation. With an online registration system, you can offer your registrants additional value (with very little additional effort) as they are going through the registration process.
9. Thank your registrants
With online registration, the system automatically sends out confirmation emails to the registrant. Use this opportunity to help your registrant feel really good about their decision to attend. Write a confirmation email that sincerely thanks them, gets them even more excited about their decision to attend, and gives them a subtle reminder to tell their friends and colleagues. You may even want to put a special offer in the confirmation that would help their friends get a deal on your event.
10. Add value before the event
Most online registration systems have options for automated reminder emails at time frames that you determine. Use this capability to increase your attendance, develop more rapport, and increase referrals.
The super charging trick is to give additional value in these emails… a tasting of a topic that will be covered at the event, an article from one of the speakers, an industry whitepaper, or hard-hitting controversial questions facing the industry.
Maybe just before the golf tournament, it’s a blurb from Tiger Woods on how to putt. Give something that would add value and color to your registrants’ lives… anything that would cause them to feel like the event organizers have obviously done their homework and, therefore, the event is going to be super valuable, too.
Bonus Tips:
After reading these 10 tips, you may be asking, “Is there anything else I should know?” We decided to throw in a few bonus tips to help further enhance the event and registration experience.
1. Recruit testers to break your registration
Fully test your registration pages before going live with them. It is much easier to spend the time up front than to have the hassles and embarrassment of a misaligned registration form.
Sometime you can just be too close to it and need another set of eyes to do an adequate job of testing. The more testing you do, the smoother everything will go. Rehearse the registration while it is still in testing mode with several people in your organization. Ask the tech support advisors of your online registration provider to test it for you. Their expertise in event setup will ensure you’re getting the most out of the application.
2. Bring back the people who abandon
Some systems are able to automatically email people who came to register and never finished. The email would ask if they had any questions or problems. This gives you an opportunity to be proactive in helping people complete their registrations, thereby increasing your registration numbers. On some systems, this may be a report that you can run yourself and then email to manually.
3. Talk to attendees after the event
Post-event follow up is so often overlooked. You can stand above the crowd by doing a post-event follow-up email and/or survey. Thank your attendees, ask them what they liked about the event, and what they thought could be done better. Some online registration systems can automate that process too. For example, set the system to automatically send out personalized emails with a survey link one week after the event is over.
Read about sun fungus and body fungus at the Types Of Fungus website.
Keeping Your Data Secure
By Gregory Bridges
Businesses around the world are being bombarded with sophisticated threats against their data and communications networks every day.
As enterprises invest heavily in fortifying their IT infrastructures and enforcing comprehensive and constantly upgraded security policies against malicious code attacks, another home-grown threat - the mobile workforce - is opening the floodgates to compromised enterprise data and corporate network contamination.
Though mobile working offers gains in commercial and operational value, enterprise security policies often stifle the effectiveness and productivity of mobile workforce devices.
Here we examine why best of breed softwares, in isolation, are not able to provide the mobile workforce and their laptops with the same high level security afforded to office based workers.
Two lines of defence in a protected corporate environment
Currently organisations anticipate, detect, and prevent threats from laptops attacks via a layered approach.
This is coupled with centralized, uncompromising IT policy which overrides an individual’s control over his/her own laptop.
As IT departments prioritise corporate IT governance, their primary method of effectively enforcing organizational security policies is by controlling all networking components.
When connecting to the Internet from within the corporate network, laptop users are protected by two lines of defence:
A comprehensive set of IT security appliances running secured and hardened Operating Systems, and security software including firewalls, Intrusion Prevention/Detection System, antivirus, antispyware, antispam, and content filtering, all of which are completely controlled by the respective corporate IT organization.
Personal firewall and antivirus software installed on the user’s laptop and controlled by the user.
In addition, when laptops are within the protective corporate environment, the organization’s IT department can exercise full and consistent control over (and visibility of) any device, which is a critical operational consideration. This means the IT team can:
consistently update respective laptops with data, policies, etc.
monitor the entire network effectively vis-?-vis the status of all network components.
Outside the safe zone
Once a laptop starts ‘roaming’ outside the enterprise governed network, the 2-line defence system no longer applies, as the laptop is essentially no longer protected by the corporate security appliances layer, and is exclusively dependent on the security software installed on the local operating system.
The roaming laptop is exposed to potential threats from nearby wireless and wireline devices (in hotels, business lounges, airports, WiFi at Internet Cafes, etc.).
These threats signify a danger far beyond the scope of the individual laptop, as intrusive code may proceed to use the laptop as a platform for breaching corporate security, once the laptop had returned to its base, and is connected to the network.
Relying solely on the best of breed software on the laptop is flawed due to:
Operating System Inherent Vulnerabilities - by definition, security software running on Windows is subject to inherent Windows vulnerabilities, effectively exposing personal firewall and antivirus applications to malicious content attacks.
Unknown Threats - the security software can only defend against known threats. By the time these threats are added to the knowledge base, it may be too late.
Immediate Damage - malicious content executes directly on the platform to be protected, rather than on a security appliance designed to filter the content and serve as a buffer.
Managing Security Level - making sure all the computers have installed the latest security updates and enforcing a unified security policy can be very difficult. When the computers themselves are at the frontline, these security weaknesses can be disastrous to the entire network. In other words, it’s “all or nothing”, either the entire network is secured or nothing is secured.
Consequently, many organizations adopt tough security policies prohibiting most wireless networking options (significantly limiting user productivity and remote computing freedom), or imposing strict, costly and difficult to enforce cleansing procedures for laptops that return from the “field”.
Best of breed software made mobile
A growing number of CSOs have decided to place computers behind a robust security gateway, usually a dedicated security appliance, to counteract the current weaknesses in laptop security.
Unlike PCs, these appliances are equipped with hardened operating systems that do not have security holes, “back-doors”, or unsecured layers. They are designed with a single purpose, to provide security.
The fact that these security appliances are hardware-based and not software-based provides the following advantages:
Cannot be uninstalled - security attacks often start by targeting the security software, and trying to uninstall it or to stop its activity.
Software-based security solutions, as any software program includes an uninstall option that can be targeted.
In contrast, appliance-based security cannot be uninstalled as it is hard coded into the hardware.
Non-writable memory - hardware-based solutions manage the memory in a restricted and controlled manner. Security appliances can prohibit access to its memory, providing greater protection against attacks on the security mechanism.
The use of hardware allows the combination of a comprehensive set of security solutions in a single device.
Hardware also allows the combination of best-of-breed enterprise-class solutions with proprietary developments working on both the lower and higher levels (e.g. packet and network level, application level etc.).
In addition, the well known tension between users and IT managers over their computing freedom can be overcome via hardware.
On one hand, users want to have complete freedom when using their computers, while on the other hand, IT managers try to enforce security policies (e.g. banning the use of P2P software).
By using a security appliance, IT managers solve the conflict between the user’s desire for computing freedom and the IT manager’s desire to control and enforce security policies.
With software, policy is part of the laptop or computer, whereas through an appliance security policy can be enforced outside the laptop and the user has complete freedom inside the safe computing environment.
In conclusion, to provide corporate level security for laptops operating outside the safe office environment, CSOs should consider layered security architecture on a hardware appliance.
A dedicated appliance can hold all of the best of breed security softwares, and is able to re-introduce the two lines of defense enjoyed by office based PCs.
By introducing a security gateway, should security be breached, the damage stops at the gateway.
Read about fish fungus and goldfish fungus at the Types Of Fungus website.
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How Can a Commercial Mortgage Broker Help You in Getting a Loan?
By Jessica Thomson
Commercial mortgages are different from home loans as they require a immovable property or collateral assure repayment. A borrower is not an individual rather a company is in-charge. Financial services have evolved quite extensively and one needs a professional guidance to strike the right deal. Commercial mortgage brokers become a very helpful tool to grant you massive savings. You can get many beneficial factors such as low interest rates and alluring rental production. Thus the requirement of a well skilled broker is increasing day by day. Here are few advantages which you can avail by hiring a mortgage.
Time preservation is the main reason why a lot of people hire brokers. All the search work and market survey is done by these brokers. They provide you with best lender and lending programs available. They do all the home work and present you with the best deal in the market.
They work as an intermediary link between the lending company and the borrower. They avail special discount offers from the mortgage companies which makes it a profitable deal for the borrower.
A broker acknowledges all the facts about the process involved in acquiring a loan. They are well versed with it from head to toe which makes it easy for us to assign everything to him. He is responsible for the preparation of all the required documents and legal actions which makes it an easy and hassle free transaction for us.
If you are not well acquainted with terms like rates, interest and time period or have confusion about the investment you are about to make then a broker can help you in getting the right deal.
They can be very useful as they guide you in problems like how much money you need? What type of loans do they require? By looking on all these aspects they look in their database and offers available to acquaint with the right deal.
A broker can be a very useful asset but you should hire a person who has experience. Look out for someone who has been in this business for a couple of years and is fully acknowledged with all the loan procedures and offers. A broker is someone who can solve all your queries, and not leave you all the more confused. They can be a very useful asset to your company and help you restore your peace of mind.
For more insights and further information about commercial loans and bridging loans visit our site www.watts-commercial.co.uk
Sunday, June 13th, 2010 at 9:25 am and is filed under finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
