Speaker 1: 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. Have you ever been so excited to attend an event that you put it in your calendar and you count down the days to when that event's gonna happen? Like you just you just cannot wait to attend? That's how we want our attendees to feel about all of our events, right? 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, right? We call that the RSVP to attendee ratio and it's a really interesting indication of the health of your event program. Today we're gonna walk through how to measure it, we're gonna set some benchmarks against it, and most importantly we're gonna talk about how to improve your RSVP to attendee ratio. Let's walk through a real-life scenario that we're all throwing a hundred-person event. Okay, so in order to fill the room with a hundred people, typically I like to send out about ten times the number of invitations. So that'd be inviting around a thousand people. And then I like to try to get about four times the ratio of RSVPs to capacity in the room. So that'd be 400 people. And in an event you typically see people come on on what's called a flow. So in and out of the venue throughout the event. And so you're really gonna try to get actually about a hundred and fifty people or more to actually attend the event. So we're gonna look for about a 1.5x attendance rate. And the goal, the thing that we're gonna talk about today, is how to improve the percentage between RSVPs and attendees. To drive the attendance to RSVP ratio, one of the most powerful concepts that I've been using is based on a human instinct, a human drive called reciprocity. I was first made aware of reciprocity from Robert Cialdini in his book Influence. If you haven't read it, you must. It's a must-read for anyone who's in the sales game. And it's a simple but powerful concept. And 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 events specifically, it means that if somebody, like your attendee, gives you their investment, if they give you something, they are going to be expecting something in return. Okay, now how do we get people to give us things? And how do we use reciprocity to drive attendance? So I've developed a three-step process to use reciprocity to drive the RSVP to attendance ratio. And three steps are, get that attendee to invest. Number two is to confirm that they've made a good decision. And we're going to talk about the sequence of emails and correspondences that will do that. And last but not least is to lock it in. So let's walk through step-by-step how we do this. 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 is always an easy way to make someone feel invested. I threw an event a couple weeks ago and we charged $18 and we saw about a 95% attendance rate, which is insane. And 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 different event types that want to feel more exclusive. And 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, put their ego on the line and 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 have 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 going to show up. And last but not least, and this is simple but useful, getting somebody 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 trigger the process of investing in your event. But 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. And you know 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 LA. And as this event is coming close, the team has been emailing me with just really clever announcements about chefs and, you know, one about a new speaker that's coming and one about the details about the venue. And every single step of the way, making me feel more and more excited about the event that I've purchased a ticket to. And we've actually, our data shows that you have about five emails in this 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. So the last email is 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. But the important part is it comes from a person. And this email is to schedule a commitment with the attendee. And, you know, you typically want to use this on only your VIPs, but if you have a big enough team you can use this on everybody at the event. And the goal is to schedule a time, a specific location, and a person that that attendee is going to meet with. And the more specific you can get, like saying 9-15, right outside the venue, to the right of the door, and you're going to be meeting with a new CEO that I think you should really meet. If you can get specific like that, you're going to see people feel committed to attending your event. The reason for this, it's a lot easier to flake out on an event than it is to flake out on another person. If people schedule commitments, they typically try at least to show up. Okay, before we break, a couple other things to think about as you're planning and measuring and improving your RSVP to attendee ratio. Number one is keep really strong track of the RSVP drop-off rate. You know, we have a couple clients where 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. The number two thing is keep track of your emails. 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 high likelihood that they're actually not attending. Other secret on that one, keep track of if people are actually adding their calendar invitation to their calendar. That's pretty sneaky and a good one. And last but not least, people get people. If you can show that people are attending your event and they're telling other people and you can display that, that's the type of stuff that actually drives attendance. So you're going to want to get RSVPs as early and often as you can and then get those people to commit and tell their friends about it. We found that that is the number one way to drive RSVPs. Okay, before we break, quick recap of what we talked about. You want to use reciprocity to drive attendance and the way to do so is to get the attendee to invest. You want to confirm that they made a good decision with that five-step process and last but not least, you want to lock it in with a specific personal confirmation that they are going to meet someone on-site. Okay, that was a mouthful but I think we did it. Best of luck with your events. We're going to see you next time on the next Runner Show. Craving more event content? If so, subscribe below and you can check out more episodes of Runner Show Weekly.