Here's How To Boost Your RSVP To Attendance Ratio

The world we live in is becoming increasingly visual. We need something that's engaging and will connect with us on an emotional level.

Event marketers dream of the day when every single one of their RSVPs actually show up to an event. While chances of this actually happening are slim, there are proven tactics to improving your RSVP to attendee ratio.

In the newest Run of Show Weekly video, Splash's CEO Ben Hindman delves into a 3-step strategy and measurement methods to boost your attendee conversion rates.

Check it out below:

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Video Transcript:

On today's Run of Show, we're gonna talk about how to get people to not just sign up, but to actually show up to your events. Let's get started.

The RSVP to Attendee Ratio

Have you ever been so excited to attend an event that you put it in your calendar and counted down the days to when that event's gonna happen? Now, that's how we want our attendees to feel about all of our events. We want them to be giddy with excitement, just counting down the days to when they walk through those doors.

But how do you do that? How do you make sure that people who actually sign up, actually show up?

We call that the RSVP to attendee ratio. It's a really interesting indication of the health of your event program.

Today we're gonna walk through how to measure it, set benchmarks against it, and ways to improve your RSVP to attendee ratio.

Make Your Event Flow

Let's walk through a real life scenario. We're throwing a 100-person event. So, in order to fill the room with 100 people, I like to send out about 10 times the number of invitations, so that's inviting around 1,000 people.

Then, I like to try and get about 4 times the ratio of RSVPs to the capacity of the room. That comes to 400 people. In an event, you typically see what's called a flow, in and out of the venue throughout the event. You're really gonna try to get about 150 people or more to actually attend the event, so we're gonna look for about a 1.5x attendance rate.

The goal that we're gonna talk about today, is how to improve the percentage between RSVPs and attendees.

2. Combine areas of expertise

Even if you’re looking for a snapshot of an adorable dog, you definitely won’t be disappointed.

Using Reciprocity to Drive Attendance

To drive the attendance-RSVP ratio, one of the most powerful concepts that I've been using is based on human instinct, and human drive, called reciprocity.

I was first made aware of reciprocity from Robert Cialdini in his book, "Influence." If you haven't read it, it's a must-read for anyone who's in the sales game. It's a simple but powerful concept. I'm reading from his book here, "Reciprocity is the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit, so giving and taking are to be repaid in equivalent measure."

So, what does that mean?

For our event it means that if somebody, like your attendee, gives you their investment, they are going to be expecting something in return. Now, how do we get people to give us things, and how do we use reciprocity to drive attendance?

3-Step Reciprocity

I've developed a three-step process to use reciprocity to drive the RSVP to attendance ratio. The three steps are: (1) get that attendee to invest, (2) confirm that they've made a good decision, and (3) lock it in.

Step 1: Invest

Let's walk through step-by-step how we lock it in. Now, the first step is to get someone to actually invest in your event, to trigger the process of reciprocity. And the best way to get someone to invest is to charge for it.

Money's always an easy way to make someone feel invested. I threw an event a couple of weeks ago, and we charged $18, and we saw about a 95% attendance rate, which is insane. It was only 18 bucks, but people felt like it was enough that they didn't want to miss it.

Another way to get somebody to invest is to get them to apply. Now, this is a pretty interesting technique. It's quite clever, and we see it in a couple of different event types that want to feel more exclusive. They ask for people to submit an application to be accepted to attend the event. That's a great way for someone to invest their ego and put their ego on the line, making them feel like it's a more important event. I like that one a lot.

But another way to do it is to get someone to invest time and energy into attending your event. Anyone who's attended Burning Man knows this very well. It takes a lot to get to that event, and nobody misses it, because you've booked your flights and your RV far in advance. If you can get people to actually book a hotel room or to book a flight in advance, there's a high likelihood that they're actually gonna show up.

Step 2: Confirm, and Double-Confirm

You'll want to get your attendees to double-confirm. Just getting somebody to say and to give their word that they're going to attend is a way for them to invest in your event.

Once they've invested, the next step is to confirm that they've made a good decision in this investment and to start to begin the next step of reciprocity. I'm a proud founder of an event called the Summit Series, and the Summit Series is a big conference for entrepreneurs. The next one's in L.A. And as this event is coming close, the team has been emailing me with clever announcements about chefs, speakers, details about the venue, every single step of the way making me feel more and more excited about the event that I've purchased a ticket to.

Step 3: Lock It In

Our data shows that you have about five emails in the sequence before people start to not become interested and you start to not see any effects on the RSVP to attendee ratio. But, you have those five emails to really drive home the concept of this being a great event that they need to attend.

The last email's really interesting. I call it the "lock it in email." It's a really important one, and it should always come from a personal email address, or a text message, or a phone call. The most important part is that it comes from a person. This email is to schedule a commitment with the attendee. You typically want to use this only on your VIPs, but if you have a big enough team, you can use this on everybody at the event.

How do you actually execute this lock in?

The goal is to schedule a time, a specific location, and a person that that attendee will meet with. Get specific, for example saying 9:15 right outside the venue to the right of the door, you'll meet with a new CEO that I think you should really meet. If you can get that specific, you're gonna see people feel committed to attending your event.

The reason for this is it's a lot easier to flake out on an event than it is to flake out on an actual person. If people schedule commitments, they typically try at least to show up.

Before we break, a couple other things to think about as you're planning, measuring, and improving your RSVP to attendee ratio.

1. Keep track of your RSVP drop-off rate.

We have a couple clients who every single time someone doesn't attend their event but says they will, they use that as a leading indicator to try to understand what went wrong. They follow up the very next day and find out why that person didn't attend. They don't take it personally, but they focus on it.

2. Keep track of your email open rates.

Emails are another great leading indicator to measure and to improve your RSVP to attendee ratio. If people aren't opening your emails, there's a likelihood that they're actually not attending. Another secret on that one, keep track of if people are actually adding the invitation to their calendar. That's pretty sneaky and a good one.

3. Show that people are attending your events.

Last but not least, people get people. If you can show that people are attending your event, and they're telling other people, you can display that. That's the type of stuff that actually drives attendance.

So, you're gonna want to show and get RSVPs early and often as you can. Then get those people to commit and tell their friends about it. We found that that is the number one way to drive RSVPs.

Invest, Confirm, Lock it In

You want to use reciprocity to drive attendance, and a way to do so is to get the attendee to invest. You wanna confirm that they made a good decision with that three-step process, and, last but not least, you want to lock it in with a specific, personal confirmation that they are gonna meet someone on site.

Best of luck with your events.

You want to use reciprocity to drive attendance, and a way to do so is to get the attendee to invest. You wanna confirm that they made a good decision with that three-step process, and, last but not least, you want to lock it in with a specific, personal confirmation that they are gonna meet someone on site.

Best of luck with your events.

Bring Out the Urgency

Urgency is one of the most powerful techniques that I've seen in terms of driving ticket sales. You can use urgency in things like "Early bird sales end soon," or you can say something like, "We're almost full," or "This is going to be a really important event for you to attend." Drive that point home with frequency and urgency, and make sure, in all your communications, to go through that checklist, G-I-V-E.

After you've outlined every single step in the process, your next step is to figure out who the major players are. This might be someone who's actually at your organization, or an agency, or even a freelancer. You're trying to figure out who's involved. I find that a really great framework for figuring this out and defining it in a very visible and transparent way is something called the RACI model. It's a great model that I see some of the top event planners that we work with use.

How RACI Works:

RACI stands for responsible, accountable, consulted and informed.

(1) Responsible is the person who ensures that the work gets done.
(2) Accountable is the person that actually executes the work. Who presses "play," clicks "go," presses "send."
(3) Consulted is the person who gives approval that this work has been completed.
(4) Informed is the person who's an FYI for that stage.

A quick example: during the promotional stage, the person who is responsible might be your demand gen person. This is somebody who has to make sure that the right people are invited and we get the right RSVPs. The person accountable is the person who actually presses "send." That might be your marketing ops person or a promoter that's involved in the event. Consulted, is a leader in the promotional stage or VP marketing or VP sales. This is somebody who needs to make sure the right guest list is being promoted.

Probably informed for the promotional stage is your CEO or a salesperson who just needs to know that we're sending out invitations, or your client's RSVP. That's how you RACI. And your job is to RACI each of these different segments. This process is something that we call roleing [SP] up, R-O-L-E, roleing up. I found that identifying who is involved and what they need to do at early, early stages in the process, is paramount to having a great event. You really want to understand the players and what they're supposed to do, and to communicate that early and often.

Rolling Out: Timelines and Deadlines

The next step in this process is called rolling out -- that's identifying when. We know who and we know what they need to do, but when do they need to do it?

As you can see, this rolling out process looks a lot like a Gantt chart. We've layered on top of themselves all of these different stages. You want the promotional phase and the creative phase to overlap because we're going to learn a lot in the very early stages of our promotions. We're going to know how we might need to tweak things, and you need that creative team involved in the process. You do want to create deadlines. Make sure that everything has a clear beginning and a clear end, otherwise, I found things just don't get done.

The Final Step: Pulling It All Together

1. Get everyone involved early

I can't tell you how often I see people overlook getting the entire team, or at least as many people who fall under the responsible category as possible involved in the process early and often. If you can, get everyone in the room during the ideation stage. If not the ideation stage, make sure they're in the creative stage. I love the old adage, "If they plan the fight, they won't fight the plan." So you wanna get them involved.

2. Use data

Use data. I like to use data at different stages of the process. You can use data and measurement as an energizing tool, as your energizing bunny. The best way to feed this bunny is with carrots. But, you might also use the stick. What I meant to say is you can use a dashboard to show people how many RSVPs somebody is driving and get them really excited, or you can show them where you're not hitting, what's not working for you as a way to get people onboard and focused on their goal. I do find that using data at every single stage helps you sprint this marathon that is an event.

3. Communicate a lot

Last but not least, you want to communicate. Communicate a lot. I always would say to my event planning team, "Our entire job, not just part of our job, our entire job is communication, both with our attendees externally and with our team internally." Setting up a communication cadence early in the process, makes this whole machine work.

That's our role up and roll out process that we've found work great for us. Have any extra tips we missed? Let us know how you run your events in the comments!

Here’s an example of how to build a pass-along story from events that I hosted a couple of months ago for some of our top clients. Our clients are some of the top event marketers in the world and we brought them all together in a cool venue here in New York.

I went with my team in advance to think about what emotion we wanted them to feel. The emotion that we came to after a lot of debate was them to feel love, and appreciation for their job and for themselves and for the craft that they do.

That's where we started, but how do we get them to feel love? We threw out a lot of ideas for storylines that they would take away. One of the most important things that we could focus on was the format of the event and how their experience would play out throughout the day.

Fast forward 'till after the event. I wanted to test this pass-along story and see how effective we were. I called up a lot of the different attendees and asked them, what was the story that you told when you got home? More than that, who did you tell it to? Retell me that story.

The stories, more often than not, weren't really about the content that they learned or a certain data point that they heard. Instead they started talking about what had happened. They spoke about somebody that they met at a cocktail hour or a piece of swag that they're really excited about. Or even a musical interlude that had happened right before a speaker such as the violinist and how amazing she was. That's what they focused on.

What was even better was that interwoven into each of those stories was the emotion, and they were using interesting adjectives. Over and over again, we started to hear words like excitement and appreciation and inclusion. It was those adjectives that we wrote down because that was our goal, and our focus.

Remember, it's not about how you communicate your content and what you say. Instead, it's really about what people are really going to remember inside of these stories and how they feel.

❤️ Special thanks to our Tech lead, Guillermo de la Puente, for his hard work on this project.

How do you effectively communicate the value of your events to your audience? Promote your event with the G-I-V-E Checklist.

author

Ben Hindman

Ben Hindman is co-founder and CEO of Splash, the country's fastest-growing event marketing platform that helps businesses and brands more effectively market through their events. An event planner turned tech entrepreneur, events are in Ben’s DNA. Prior to starting Splash, Ben was the Director of Events at Thrillist, where he produced large-scale events from concerts to mystery fly-aways.

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