The Data Behind Designing an Event Page that Converts
Thursday 
August 
31
 at 
7:00pm
Clear your calendar - It's going down! You're invited to take part in the festivities. Come one, come all, bring a guest, and hang loose. This is going to be epic!

David Doe

Designer - Redshoe

David Doe

Designer - Redshoe


Product
Text goes here
X
Services
Text goes here
X
Blog
Text goes here
X
Resources
Text goes here
X
Customers
Text goes here
X
Support
Text goes here
X
About
Text goes here
X
Product
Services
Blog
Resources
Customers
Company
Login
Request Demo
Support
Request Demo
Text goes here
X
Try for Free
Text goes here
X
Sign In
Text goes here
X
← More Articles
Text goes here
X

Sign up

Get these in your inbox every week!

Written by Alex Zahradnik

@HannahLSwanson
Text goes here
X

The Data Behind Designing an Event Page That Converts

August 14, 2019

Whitepaper

The Data Behind Designing an Event Page that Converts
Try It Free
Text goes here
X
ivy zhao headshot

Written by Zach Napolitano

@funeral_z


7 Ways to Improve On-Site Communication With Your Team and Your Guests

July 31, 2018

Amy Barone, Sr. Director of Marketing Events & Engagement Programs at Tableau Software, shares her event marketing secrets in our A New Era in Event Marketing webinar with Harvard Business Review and AdAge. Below, she gives an inside look at how Tableau  grew and scaled a high-performance event program.


The events industry is evolving, and with that, marketers are saying hello to events that go beyond the “big show” (i.e., massive conferences with thousands of people) and instead looking at multi-city, repeatable programs they can run globally. 


While you can throw a large tentpole event — the one that involves year-long prep and half the annual budget — have you considered smaller, repeatable programs throughout the year that can have an immediate impact on your revenue targets?


Splash recently partnered with SiriusDecisions to host a conversation focused on going Beyond The Big Event with expert and Research Director, Demand Marketing Strategies, Cheri Keith of SiriusDecisions; veteran Senior Field and Partner Marketing Manager, Natalie Graham of Medallia (recent IPO); and Splash’s savvy Senior Director of Product Marketing, Sasha Pasulka. 


The trio covered the new era of events, defined repeatable event programs, and addressed the business impact of repeatable events, including topics: modern and effective event strategy and management, building field marketing programs, and event marketing at scale. This set the stage for event program owners and marketing leaders to consider how they will navigate going beyond the “‘big-event” mentality.

• Quick Start: Splash Host App for iOS
• Splash Host App for iOS

• Splash Host App for Android

person next to them?



Ten years later, our annual conference attracts nearly 20,000 customers and partners, our company has grown to 4,000 people, and we have a first-class marketing team with dedicated event professionals who are the best in the biz. Events have been a crucial part of our brand and help us better connect with our community, evangelize our customers, and ultimately grow our company.


Here’s how we did it:

Modern Event Strategy

No matter your business’s product or service offering, or if you are a large-scale enterprise or an up-and-coming fast-growth company, part of an organization’s growth strategy includes event marketing. As a marketer or event manager, you are the driver of your programs and responsible for deciding the type of event, cadence, goals, and of course budget — determining just how much are you willing to put on the line to get the results you need.


Let’s rewind to the first line of this blog post — we’re saying goodbye to the big-show mentality. I know what you’re thinking: Is Splash suggesting I should hit the pause button on hosting my large annual conference?! No, definitely not. We are, however, suggesting that implementing a strategy that allows teams to test ideas and move quickly to action can yield some truly amazing business learnings and results. And, we know repeatable field events are becoming a key tactic in marketing plans, as they help drive quantifiable outcomes; just ask the team at Index Exchange. These smaller, rinse ‘n repeat events are not only easier to pull off than a 1,000+ person conference, but significantly cheaper, and will likely prove a better ROI since they are higher, more curated touchpoints for your audience.


INSERT IMAGE HERE


In the latest study on event marketing, Harvard Business Review found that rapid revenue growth was fueled by event marketing — 52 percent to be exact. So maybe you’re nodding, perhaps even bought into the idea of the repeatable half- to full-day field event strategy — fantastic! Here’s how to bring your event programs to life, effectively and in a scalable way:

Define Your Event's Value Proposition

The first step to any event program is to take a deep breath and ask yourself, Why am I actually doing this?  Whether you’re an event marketer, demand gen marketer, or field marketer, it’s easy to lose focus of what you’re truly attempting to showcase for the company’s webinar, live event, or customer conference. Is your award ceremony an opportunity to showcase branding or a platform to give out your sustainable swag? What are you telling your sales team when they ask for follow-up materials? How many customers versus prospects are you inviting? Collaborate with your marketing team, ask your sales team questions, and put something on paper that will serve as a north star for the entire initiative.

For example, if you see in your analytics that one organization isn’t engaging with the initial email, it probably means they have a very strict firewall in place. So, now you know to follow-up personally or adjust your strategy for the next email.


This first email could come in the form of a teaser email to drum up buzz for your event, or even something a little more vague to get people interested (and curious).


Put the Right Tools in Place

Field marketers adjust their programs based on the needs of varying customer and prospect types. To do this, they need reliable tools to keep their brand, data, and communications consistent. 


If you or your field marketing team are leveraging one-off tools to showcase regional events, strategic scale and brand continuity is not feasible, and the value proposition you worked so hard to define will be overshadowed by the technical difficulties you encounter every step of the way. Your brand is your company’s identity, so why would you use tools that are not powerful or flexible enough to showcase it? From your landing page to email communication to name badges onsite, make sure your field marketing team has the proper tools in place to execute on-brand, seamless experiences every time.


INSERT IMAGE HERE

Here’s an example of a great looking event email:

Setting a Global Field Event Strategy into Action at Medallia


Don’t just take it from us. Having a field event or repeatable event strategy that is consistent, scalable, and globally friendly pays off beyond what you (or your boss) thought was possible. Natalie Graham, who joined us for the previously mentioned Beyond the Big Event conversation, explained it best:

Image: Penguin Random House

roadshow event experience

Image: Conference Matters

 

When Natalie started at Medallia in 2018, she was faced with one-off tools for field marketing programs. The Medallia brand was not always displayed properly, teams were working in silos, and if field event data existed, it was hard to track down. Natalie is responsible for scaling the global field marketing program and had all the right ideas in motion to make an impact on the business, but was missing the tools to do so. To set a registration page for an event and ensure email marketing was ready to rock quickly wasn’t a thing; there was a ticketing process in place that usually took days, if not weeks. It was the furthest thing from self-serve, and the marketing operations team was saddled with the stress of handling all technical aspects of a global field program (landing page, emails, list management, campaigns... the list goes on). This simply wasn’t scalable.

 

Enter Splash. Once the Medallia team was onboarded with Splash, they were able to streamline all field event programs and the weight was lifted from the ops team. What used to take over a week and involved multiple departments, now took a mere 24 hours; and Natalie was able to build out the whole event herself.

Splash helps the people behind the event programs deliver a beautiful, branded, digital experience, and allow hosts to measure event impact accurately. "It felt to us that so many parts of businesses have breakthrough technology that really enables scale. We hadn't seen that in events yet, so we built it." - Sasha Pasulka

 

Want to see how we built it? Check out every corner of Splash's event marketing platform here. 


Show your sales team the data and the ROI they get for taking those extra minutes to get people to register. Show them that their time investment is worth it.

Amy Barone, Senior Director of Marketing Events & Engagement Programs at Tableau


4. Take Care of Your Lists

Image: Google Books

When it comes down to it, the goal of any event is to grow and nurture the relationship between your guests and your brand — whether you’re promoting a product, building community, or looking to increase brand awareness.

You also need to think about who you’re sending your emails to. Make sure you’re only sending to your engaged recipients — a good rule of thumb is to send to those who have opened or clicked emails in the past few months.


And of course, don’t send emails to users who have unsubscribed or whose emails have bounced in the past. This also means you need to constantly maintain your lists, and update them with any unsubscribe or bounce information.

Post-event page made with Splash

This way, guests didn’t have to worry about memorizing each other’s names or drawing a blank when they turned to chat with the person next to them, and we also got to show off  our product in a natural way.

5. Build Up Sending Volume Over Time

One of the best ways to improve email deliverability is to build a solid reputation with email services by sending high-quality emails day after day.


For example, you shouldn’t just send an email to 500,000 people in one day (that’s a huge red flag to servers). Instead, build up to a large email send by breaking it up over several days, and increasing the volume with each send (in other words: sending to 100,000 people five days in a row isn't great either).

 

P.S. If you're a Splash customer and considering a large-volume email send, talk to your CSM about the best approach for your strategy.

6. IP Whitelisting

This is the most effective email deliverability tactic, but it’s also the most complex to achieve. Depending on your relationship with your guest list (e.g. VIPs or high-value accounts), you can request that their IT team have your company’s IP put on a “whitelist,” which would allow your promotions to bypass any company firewalls.

Even if your event doesn’t require a full seating chart with assigned seats, think about how you want the flow of your event to go, and how you can create natural opportunities for meaningful connections.

Image: designworkplan

•   A sense of privacy: a completely private and closed off room for dinner proved to be an extremely crucial element. At one of the venues, an open section in the room allowed noise to disrupt the flow of conversation — making it feel less private and less special of a night compared to dinners that were completely closed off to the public.

6. Create the best guest experience possible

At the end of the day, throwing events mean nothing if you’re not providing value to your customers.


At our conferences, we provide “Tableau Doctors” on-site that help customers or prospects with any questions about our product. Not only do these one-on-one appointments empower customers to engage with us in a meaningful way, they’ve also been the critical to driving event ROI.

Want to watch the whole webinar? Grab the recording here: Beyond the Big Event: Innovative Strategies for Marketing Event Programs at Scale

author

Hannah Swanson

Hannah is the Community & Customer Marketing Manager at Splash. Her goal is to empower Splash customers to showcase their expertise with the rest of the event marketing community. A former event marketer, Hannah understands the effort it takes to pull off a seamless event and understands how imperative the Splash software is to an event marketer's success. Hannah is a Rhode Island native/glorified beach bum, equestrian, and mother to the world's most perfect corgi, Wilbur.

Written by Zach Napolitano

@funeral_z


7 Ways to Improve On-Site Communication With Your Team and Your Guests

July 31, 2018

One of the (many) perks of working at Splash is being able to stay ahead of the data curve. We have the luxury of seeing what types of events some of the largest companies in the world are hosting and play a hands-on role in bringing those event programs to life. Having access to the backend of all of these scaled event programs our customers are running, the Splash Creative team has been able to gather copious amounts of data from the most successful events. This data provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse into what factors really matter when it comes to designing event pages that turn registrations into live attendance.


One of our goals at Splash is to make the event registration process as simple, memorable, and joyous as the event itself. The key to accomplishing that goal is creating aesthetically pleasing, easy-to-navigate event pages that make registering for an event easy. However, this is much easier said than done, so you’ll want to grab a few tips on what it takes to design event pages that convert.

Typeface Usage for Event Design

1. Create a Reusable Template with Branded Event Marketing Assets

The events with the highest attendance rates nearly all utilized sans-serif typefaces. Some of these were custom fonts for the brand, some were open-source web fonts, and a few were system fonts. Out of all the individual fonts used across these events, 87.9% were sans serifs while only 3.6% were serifs. Additionally, 2.5% were monospace, 3% were scripts, and 3% could only be considered display fonts, though these did not include simple condensed sans serif typefaces used for titling. Those listed as display fonts included typewriter fonts, experimental or avant-garde typefaces, or otherwise decorative types.


Based on these findings, clearly legible sans serif typefaces designed specifically for rendering online are most commonly associated with event sites, and should be considered.

Form Length for Event Design

kiosk mode check-in

Splash makes it stress-free for our team at headquarters to enable over 180 retail locations to propose and execute in-store events. With Splash, we know all store outreach for our events will be on brand and on message. The individual store managers and their district managers are also empowered to use their deep knowledge of local markets to create events that work best for their stores.

Elyssa Dimant, VP of Brand Marketing and PR, J.Crew


How many questions to ask on a preliminary event registration form can be a contentious topic. Our advice is to collect the bare minimum amount of information from the registration page to achieve the highest conversion rate. If there are additional pieces of information that are absolutely essential, send a follow-up email with a link to a standalone survey. It gives the guest the feeling that they are being specially taken care of, leads to more registrations, and even gives a slight sense of exclusivity. Out of the most successful events, 85% asked 10 or fewer questions, and 87% asked no conditional questions, providing an extremely straightforward registration flow for their guests.

                         Total Event Cost: $50,000

                         Total Ticket Revenue: $57,125
            [(57,125 - 50,000) ÷ 50,000] x 100 = 14.25% ROI

But Hannah, the event program I run doesn’t involve ticketed events. Can I still measure ROI?  Glad you asked! The answer is yes, but I call it something a little bit different: event influence.

Button Design for Event Design

The on-page button is probably the most important element on the event page if a form modal is being used. It needs to be absolutely unequivocal to invitees where and how to click to register for an event. 


The actual label text needs to be obvious and clear: Full phrases or sentences are better served as text above a button. For instance, “Be sure to register your spot today!” works better as a line of bold copy above a button than as the button itself. By far, the most common label length is just four characters, appearing in 36% of events, and in almost every case these four characters are “RSVP.” The average button label length for successful events is 10 characters, and the median length is six.


It is important that buttons stand out from their background so that they are easy to find when scanning a page. Hover states help with this, of course, so button colors change when the mouse passes over the button, but color contrast between the button and the background of the page also helps tremendously. Of the most successful events, 65% pass the stringent Web Content Accessibility Guidelines standards for text, which usually measures the difference between the thin stroke of text against its background, not the broad field of a large button against a page background. 


On mobile, it is important to ensure the surface area of the button is large enough to accommodate touch interactivity. 59% of top events expand the width of the RSVP button to 100% of the width of their containers (in every case, the width of the screen with just a small margin on the left and right edges). 29% use an automatic width, meaning the button is large enough to contain the label plus some expanded padding on the left and the right to increase its size (just not to the full width of its container, but almost). 

Visual Hierarchy for Event Design

New Contact Creation & Attribution

We love the event hub functionality in Splash. It allows us to easily add new in-store events to our national event calendar, which gives us a single URL we can link to across social media, our website, and in email footers. It’s an effective holistic reference for our store activations and is easy to manage internally as well.

Jill Hennessey-Brown, EVP/Head of Stores, J.Crew

Speaking of the little details, here are 51 of the tiniest things that can make the biggest difference at your next event.

One of the factors by which we quantified visual hierarchy was through the distinction between the size of page titles and body copy, creating dynamic page layouts with clearly differentiated sections and obvious, unequivocal importance of information. Type size contrast also contributes to clear page rhythm and well-defined content archetypes. 82% of successful pages used a type size contrast of more than 2:1, and 52% had headers more than triple the size of their body copy. 


Splash recommends larger titles and section headers, at least relative to body copy. In order to create accessible sites, it is recommended that body text should be at least 16 pixels (or 1 rem). By this measure, a good title size might be 3 or 4 rems. 


In terms of content order, while possibilities for content combinations are endless, 99% of top sites started with either a navigation or simple header content first, displaying the event title, date, and location. The other 1% launched a registration form on a welcome modal as guests arrived to the page.


In short, it is important to consider rhythm when creating event pages. Use type sizes and styles that are clearly differentiated between headers and copy and be sure to include as much of the important “what, when, where, and how” information in the cover block as possible.

Legibility for Event Design

Logistics 

- Venue
- Security
- Event insurance
 - Permits
- A/V: Staging, lighting, etc.
- Signage holders (easel stands)
- Videography/photography
- WiFi
- Shipping/freight (both to and from venue)
- Third-party staffing 


Atmosphere

- Furniture

- Decor

- Music (DJs, live music)

- Experiential elements

- On-site branding: cocktail napkins, menus, window clings, name badges, welcome signs, etc.


Catering

- Food

- Soft drinks

- Alcohol

- F&B service

- Misc. fees: taxes, service fees, gratuity, etc.

Branding & Promotion

- Event marketing technology

- Revenue capture (for ticketed events)

- Swag/giveaways

- Pre and post-event gifts

- Paid marketing promotion

- Printed materials


Speakers & Programming

- Speaker fees

- Travel and lodging

- Car service

- Meal stipend

- Thank you gifts/cards


Internal Team

- Travel and lodging

- Ground transportation

- Meals

- Branded gear (T-shirts, pins, etc.)

Off to a Great Start

We tracked two factors that contribute to legibility: line length and color contrast. The typographer Robert Bringhurst, author of The Elements of Typographic Style, suggests a line length of 66 characters as the perfect readable measure. This is because longer lines cause the eye to become lost when scanning back to the start of the column, and shorter columns result in a staccato reading rhythm. Other factors contribute, such as the space between lines, the size of the type, and even the typeface. The recommended range for web typography is between 45 and 95 characters, as user experience research suggests that reading speed and comprehension actually maximizes at 95 characters per line. To quantify this, we observed line lengths on a 1400-pixel desktop screen, which is relatively large. Only 4% of top Splash sites have a character count that falls below this range, and 27% fall above.   


In addition, we tracked trends regarding the color contrast of type. 79% of top sites pass the standard contrast recommendations as suggested by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, meaning that there was sufficient depth and tone difference between the background color and the color of the body copy. The remaining 21% of sites have moderately contrasting type, with only 1% falling below a ratio of 2:1. 


Splash recommends setting maximum widths on columns of text, and to consider columns of text or content, depending upon what types of content is needed for your event, and to use colors within your brand that provide the greatest contrast between background and font colors.

Email Design for Events

Successful events consistently leverage a few key tactics in email design, content, and cadence that are useful in producing effective event programs: email length, fonts, and the usage of a value reminder email.


The average character count of emails for top events is 1,115 characters: almost exactly the length of four tweets. As usual, shorter is more effective. The median length of all emails for the top events is only 638 characters.


Although Helvetica Neue is the default font in the Splash email tool, it is most closely associated with successful events. 79% use Helvetica Neue in some capacity, which is a stark contrast against the second most commonly-used font: Arial, which is only used on 4% of the top events. 12% use image-as-text, which is only recommended sparingly and only with alternative text provided to ensure that emails are accessible to wider audiences.


Value reminders are considered those emails which function to not only remind guests that they have an event coming up for which they are registered or to garner a few extra RSVPs from invitees who are as-yet undecided, but which offer some new information or offering to guests. 67% of top events leveraged a value reminder email, and some examples of this include emails that detail new giveaways or perks, activities, speakers, surprise guests, sessions, and more.


In addition to world-class service, the Splash Creative services team is armed with industry knowledge around best practices for web design. We have a lot more where this came from, so feel free to reach out if you’re ever curious about color theory as it pertains to event websites, or what types of fonts are most commonly used on events.


Special thanks to Aidan Zanders and Mon Liang, both creative designers at Splash, for research assistance. 

Ready to put this data to work and start designing event pages that convert? Check out how Splash can make it happen.

6. Leverage Metric Reporting Like You’ve Never Seen Before

The reason these surveys are valuable is that they provide immediate feedback—both qualitative and quantitative—and are condensed into reports for the team at HQ to review. Sure, they might get this in a quarterly or annual report, but the district managers and team at HQ may need access to this feedback immediately. With Splash, everyone with a license can access the reporting tools in Splash and review activity shortly after each event.

Splash has made event data much more accessible and meaningful. We’re able to use it more effectively to optimize the customer experience and understand intent, the same way we’re able to use email open and click data toward those goals.

Daryn Foster, Event Manager, J.Crew


8. Brands will begin to focus on power stores — even though that means closing others.

Image: Penguin Random House

4. Take Care of Your Lists

Image: Google Books

When it comes down to it, the goal of any event is to grow and nurture the relationship between your guests and your brand — whether you’re promoting a product, building community, or looking to increase brand awareness.

You also need to think about who you’re sending your emails to. Make sure you’re only sending to your engaged recipients — a good rule of thumb is to send to those who have opened or clicked emails in the past few months.


And of course, don’t send emails to users who have unsubscribed or whose emails have bounced in the past. This also means you need to constantly maintain your lists, and update them with any unsubscribe or bounce information.

Post-event page made with Splash

This way, guests didn’t have to worry about memorizing each other’s names or drawing a blank when they turned to chat with the person next to them, and we also got to show off  our product in a natural way.

5. Build Up Sending Volume Over Time

One of the best ways to improve email deliverability is to build a solid reputation with email services by sending high-quality emails day after day.


For example, you shouldn’t just send an email to 500,000 people in one day (that’s a huge red flag to servers). Instead, build up to a large email send by breaking it up over several days, and increasing the volume with each send (in other words: sending to 100,000 people five days in a row isn't great either).

 

P.S. If you're a Splash customer and considering a large-volume email send, talk to your CSM about the best approach for your strategy.

6. IP Whitelisting

This is the most effective email deliverability tactic, but it’s also the most complex to achieve. Depending on your relationship with your guest list (e.g. VIPs or high-value accounts), you can request that their IT team have your company’s IP put on a “whitelist,” which would allow your promotions to bypass any company firewalls.

Even if your event doesn’t require a full seating chart with assigned seats, think about how you want the flow of your event to go, and how you can create natural opportunities for meaningful connections.

Image: designworkplan

•   A sense of privacy: a completely private and closed off room for dinner proved to be an extremely crucial element. At one of the venues, an open section in the room allowed noise to disrupt the flow of conversation — making it feel less private and less special of a night compared to dinners that were completely closed off to the public.

6. Create the best guest experience possible

At the end of the day, throwing events mean nothing if you’re not providing value to your customers.


At our conferences, we provide “Tableau Doctors” on-site that help customers or prospects with any questions about our product. Not only do these one-on-one appointments empower customers to engage with us in a meaningful way, they’ve also been the critical to driving event ROI.

author

Alex Zahradnik

Alex Zahradnik is an interdisciplinary designer and community organizer, currently working as Senior Designer at Splash, collaborating with others at the Design Activist Institute, and consulting with brands to help them become more future-friendly. 

 

Our latest event marketing guide has a galaxy of on-site tips and best practices. Start exploring The Universe of Events.

Show Me
Text goes here
X

It's finally here: get the full HBR report on the Event Marketing Evolution

Download It Now
Text goes here
X

Make sure your event emails get into the inboxes of the right people. 

We Can Help
Text goes here
X

Make your next roadshow unforgettable with our event software.

 

Request a Free Demo
Text goes here
X

Ready to measure event ROI? We make it easier.

Talk to us!
Text goes here
X

Want more reading material? Dig into our HBR report on the state of event marketing (benchmarks, budgets, and metrics all included!).

Read it Now
Text goes here
X

It's finally here: get the full HBR report on the Event Marketing Evolution

Download It Now
Text goes here
X

Home

For Marketing
Text goes here
X
For Sales
Text goes here
X
For Recruiting
Text goes here
X
For Ticketing
Text goes here
X

Product

What's New
Text goes here
X
Virtual
Text goes here
X
Overview
Text goes here
X
What's New
Text goes here
X
Virtual
Text goes here
X
Design
Text goes here
X
Marketing
Text goes here
X
Workflow
Text goes here
X
On-Site
Text goes here
X
Integrations
Text goes here
X
Analytics
Text goes here
X
Compliance
Text goes here
X

Services

Overview
Text goes here
X
Onboarding
Text goes here
X
Customer Success
Text goes here
X
Design Network
Text goes here
X

Resources

Blog
Text goes here
X
Resources
Text goes here
X
Release Log
Text goes here
X
Education
Text goes here
X
Webinars
Text goes here
X
Run of Show
Text goes here
X
Hall of Fame
Text goes here
X
Playbooks
Text goes here
X
Webinars
Text goes here
X
Splash Studios
Text goes here
X

Company

About Us
Text goes here
X
Customers
Text goes here
X
Team
Text goes here
X
Offices
Text goes here
X
Events
Text goes here
X
Careers
Text goes here
X
Press
Text goes here
X

Copyright © 2020 Splash

Try It Free
Text goes here
X
Talk to Sales
Text goes here
X
Pricing
Text goes here
X
Terms
Text goes here
X
Privacy
Text goes here
X
Security
Text goes here
X
Subscribe
Text goes here
X
CONTACT THE ORGANIZER
Google   Outlook   iCal   Yahoo

Get Started

Add to my Calendar
  • Google  Outlook  iCal  Yahoo