If you organize a yearly conference you likely want a great turnout year after year. Unfortunately, retention rates aren’t always at an all-time high and will vary from year to year. Every year you work hard to acquire new customers and increase attendance rates and sometimes it’s just not enough. When next year’s conference comes around you have to start all over again. If you’re not including existing customers in your plan you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.

When your customer retention is low you will have to spend more money on marketing in order to bring in new attendees. Imagine it like a giant bucket you are trying to fill, but discovered it has a large leak that is causing you to lose 90% of the water. You’ll have to keep filling and filling, but your bucket never quite fills to the top.

Conference attendees know that each event is a unique experienced and they want be impressed. It’s important for them to walk away with something more than just some new connections. Increasing your attendee retention rate requires effort, planning, and tracking so that you can learn from your efforts.

In this article, we will go over some ways that you can increase your retention rates. These are simply suggestions and although they may help, it’s important that you review your entire event strategy if you find yourself unable to increase customer retention.

At the Conference

Collect Feedback

During your conference, it’s important that you gage the attendees’ experiences. By getting feedback directly from your target market, you will be able to gain better insight into how you can make their experiences better. Technology has made it easy for you to ask for feedback in real time. As your attendees to rate sessions or the overall conference on a mobile app. It will help you keep track of the results and you can use it to create a strategy for the following year.

If you had attendees sign in on their app or by scanning their badge, you can have them quickly give a rating with the push of a button.

Choose the Right Time to Announce Next Year’s Conference

During the peak of the conference your attendees will not only be engaged, they will be enthusiastic about your event and that is the perfect time to announce next year’s conference. If you wait until the end of your event you’ll probably be making an announcement to a room that is only half full. A great time for you to make that announcement would be before or after a main keynote speaker.

This is a great time to also provide a way for them to buy their tickets right then and there. This will help you increase sales and it allow them to secure tickets and not have to worry about purchasing them last minute the following year. Offer early bird discounts so that the attendees feel appreciated and are more inclined to make a purchase. Two other great ideas is to either offer free tickets in exchange for a certain number of ticket sales sold by referral or offer discounts for their friends and peers. This will drive attendees to invite others to the conference.  

Make Your Conference More Interactive

When keynote speakers give their speech there are apps that they can use along with your attendees to take surveys. These surveys will collect data that is then shared in real-time with the audience. This allows the audience to be a part of the conference and relate better to the content.

After the Conference

Send a Questionnaire

Port-event questionnaires are a great opportunity to get vital feedback and new suggestions from attendees. It will help you identify problems so that you can correct or avoid them. You can also ask them for suggestions on what they would like to see or change in the conference. This data can help you get new ideas and will help increase your attendee retention rate.

Reward Them

For the attendees who have already attended one of your conferences, it’s important to reward them. Happy attendees will often post on social media about your conference, by rewarding them you will be able to continue tapping into that form of promotion. You can give them discounts or give them special VIP treatment so that they know they are important.

Planning Next Year’s Conference

Offer Online Streaming Option

If a location is inconvenient for an attendee you can still allow them to enjoy your conference. By offering your conference through live-stream, you will be able to tap into a market that would you would otherwise not have been able to reach.

Remember the Existing Customers

When planning the conference, be sure to use the feedback and information you have collected from the previous year. Embrace the change suggested by the feedback and adapt a bit at a time until you are providing a more satisfying experience.

Do Not Focus Only on Acquiring New Attendees

Because of the previous conferences you have likely been able to develop a great contact database for your customers. Use that information to contact them and market to them over the phone, in the mail, or through email.

In Conclusion

Understanding why your retention rate is low is not difficult. You just have to accept feedback and learn from experience. Build your campaigns for both new and existing customers to ensure a greatest turnout and to increase the customer retention rate.