 Meeting
Trends Point to Online Registration
We read recently of
a study done by the Destination Marketing Association International on
trends in the meeting industry. Their research called out a number of
factors meeting planners need to be aware of,
including: - A volatile economic
environment
- The battle for attention
- Smart and
friendly websites
- An electronic culture
- Going
Green
With corporate budgets
tightening, meeting planners are thinking about how to best market their
event to get the attention of their prospective attendees. Strong
innovative branding for events, that is reflected in electronic
invitations, event websites, and search engine marketing are all part
of a marketing strategy designed to break through and catch the eye of
prospective attendees. Once you have captured their attention,
making registration easy and accessible is key. Increasingly,
attendees expect that they will be able to register for an event
electronically. Using online registration can increase your
registrations because you can convert their interest to a registration by
giving them a means to register as soon as they have decided to
attend. The Going Green trend is good for the environment certainly,
but increasingly it is a strategy for reducing the cost of producing an
event. Replace paper forms with online registration forms. Instead of
mailing registration credentials, email a barcoded receipt that can be
printed and presented at the door. Replace
post-conference surveys with electronic surveys. Replace hand-outs
with document downloads. Just think: iIf you have 200 attendees and you
give them each a 20-page conference program, that's 4000 pages. If you have
12 speakers at an event, and each one brings 75 copies of a 10-page
presentation -- that's 9000 pieces of paper. At $.10 per page, the
savings just from switching to document downloads would be
$1300. At MeetMax.com, we have the systems and tools
you need to effectively market your event, increase your registrations, and
reduce the overall cost of producing the event. The
MeetMax.com online registration system includes electronic event marketing
features like conference websites and electronic invitations, and speaker
support for uploading materials (and it includes tracking tools for you to
see who has or hasn't uploaded their materials). You can
generate barcoded receipts and post-event perception surveys. The
MeetMax Conference Kiosk system builds a document library, branded with
your corporate and conference identify, for your event that attendees can
access on-site to download those materials they want to take
home. With sophisticated features that go beyond simple registration
to streamline meeting and event planning, MeetMax makes it easy for your
meetings to go green. For more information on MeetMax.com and
how you can start using online registration, visit www.meetmax.com or contact Tamie
Ehinger, director of sales, at 518-691-0443. What Do You Think About Online
Registration? A Short Survey. We also read recently that
only 48% of event planners use online registration systems. We
wondered why that was and so we thought we'd ask! Please take our
short survey and let us know what you think about online registration --
we'll send out the results in our next newsletter. Click
here to take the survey. | 
MeetMax Registration
