by ClearEvent Support | Event Management
Deciding between tickets and registration is confusing. It’s hardly surprising because tickets and registration are similar in some ways and quite different in others.
In this first of a three part series of short articles, I’ll clarify the difference between tickets and registration. In Part 2, I’ll show you when to use tickets or registration. In Part 3, I’ll show you what to look for in an online ticket and/or registration system.
Let’s start with the basics for tickets and registration.
Tickets and Registration: Let’s break it down
An Online Ticket System allows you to:
- create and publish your tickets
- sell tickets online and accept payments
- collect information from ticket buyers
- send purchased tickets and a receipt to the buyer
- receive the revenue from ticket sales in your bank account
- provide you with key reports and status information about ticket sales.
An Online Registration System allows you to:
- create and publish your registration forms
- accept online registrations and payments
- collect information from registrants
- send registration confirmation and a receipt to the buyer
- receive the revenue from registrations in your bank account
- provide you with key reports and status information on your registrations.
They sound pretty similar, right?! No wonder it’s confusing!
Tickets and Registration: How to Decide?
Some event planners use tickets and others use registration for the same situations because of the similarities between tickets and registration. However, for most situations, you’ll need to determine which is the better approach.
There’s an important difference between tickets and registration that is the key to deciding when to use tickets and when to use registration.
It comes down to Personalization
Decide between tickets and registration by considering how personalized is the attendee experience? The more you provide a personalized experience for attendees, the more registration will be the better option for you.
We can break personalization into four key factors which make it really easy to tell whether to use tickets or registration.
1) Individual or Group Signup?
Will you be signing up individuals or groups or both? Tickets work well for individual and group sign ups while registration is better for individual sign ups.
2) Signup Approvals
When someone signs up for your event, will they automatically be approved, or is there a manual review or curation process to determine if the applicant may attend your event? Automatic sign up can be used for both tickets and registration, whereas manual and special approval options only apply to registration.
Thinking about this from the attendee perspective, it is very unusual to purchase tickets but not be approved to attend the event. Tickets are always an automatic approval. On the other hand, it is quite common that registrations must be manually approved by organizers before an attendee is permitted to attend the event.
3) Collecting Information
To personalize the experience for each attendee, organizers collect information from their attendees when they sign up. This information allows organizers to provide the personalized experiences for participants and attendees based on the information they provide to the event.
Collected information may include any of the following examples:
- Contact info
- Company info
- Background
- Experience
- Preferences
- Affiliations
- Interests
- Event-related selections
Registration works great for collecting information.
Many ticket systems only have limited ability to collect of information for each ticket holder. This is intentional because ticket buyers expect a fast purchase experience. The ticket buyer may not have, or may not be willing to enter, all the information you request about each ticket holder.
The more information you collect from your attendees, the more registration will be the better option for you by a wide margin. If you’re collecting limited or no information, tickets or registration could be used.
4) Attendee Participation
Events have many different types of attendees such as audience members, delegates, exhibitors, volunteers, performers, VIP’s and event staff. Think about the level of personalization for each of these participant types. It varies from no personalization to a very personalized experience for the attendee, depending on the type of attendee.
For example, audience members participate in the event in much the same way after entering the event.
When the level of personalization is low, use tickets.
On the other hand, each delegate can select their own combination of activities offered by the event. Each delegate’s participation is personalized to them. In this scenario, it’s not sufficient for delegates to all have the same entry ticket as each delegate selected and paid for a combination of event selections such as courses, tours and so on.
When personalization is high, use registration.
Tickets and Registration Table
To make it easy for you, these key aspects of personalization are organized in a helpful table below. For each type of attendee coming to your event, use the table to determine the overall degree of personalization and whether tickets or registration will be better.
The table helps you quickly clarify whether tickets or registration is better.
When most of the answers fall under ‘Tickets’, (i.e. on the low end of personalization) use tickets for that type of participant. Likewise, when most of your answers fall under ‘Registration’, (i.e. not on the low end of personalization) then use registration.
The table also helps you see when it’s not clear which to use, and why it’s not clear. For example, ticketed attendees can have personalized badges, registration may collect almost no information, ticketed attendees may have some personalized participation based on ticket type. If you have answers in both columns, go with the column with the most answers.
Some may say the choice between tickets and registration comes down to the capabilities of your online tickets and registration system. Not true! Don’t use a ticket system for registration and vice versa. More on selecting a system in Part 3.
Show me some examples!
Let’s look at examples using tickets and/or registration. We’ll start with a simple example you may be familiar with, where tickets and registration both work. Then in Part 2 we’ll look at when it is better to use one over the other. Lastly, we’ll look at an example of using both tickets and registration for different purposes in the same event.
Example 1. When Tickets and Registration Both Work
When personalization is low, it is perfectly ok to use tickets or registration.
Consider the following example. Signing up attendees to attend a seminar. No additional information is collected from attendees. Attendees will sign up as individuals and possibly a few small groups. As an organizer, you just need to know who had paid and is coming. Attendees just want to know they are signed up and have proof of payment and admission.
Tickets or registration both work in this situation.
Why is this true? It’s because the degree of personalization is low. The following marked up table makes it clear.
Answers for each of the four factors fall under Tickets AND Registration. So, for this scenario, either approach could be used.
If both tickets and registration are an option, go with the method that is simpler for your attendees
The signup experience is somewhat similar when tickets or registration is used. However, even in this simple case, tickets will be simpler for your attendees, especially for people who are signing up for a group of people. (More about attendee experience in Part 2.) So, while both could be used, tickets is a better option based on the possible need to sign up small groups.
So, not all events are like the simple example above. And we don’t want to just memorize all the situations when registration is better than tickets and vice versa! Fortunately, by using our handy table, you don’t have to.
In Part 2 Tickets and Registration: When to use them? we’ll show examples of when to use tickets, when to use registration, and when to use both for different parts of the same event.
Interested in other topics?
As an event planner, knowing what options are available to you is key. Let us know the topics you’d like to hear about that could help your event planning success, at support@clearevent.com.
In the meantime, happy planning!
by ClearEvent Support | Event Management
What’s New In ClearEvent For April?
Last month the ClearEvent team shipped a number of great new features to help improve event manager productivity, as well as reduce friction for registrants in the event registration experience. A lot has been happening, so we thought we’d recap what we accomplished in April. All of these features are available today, so be sure to check them out!
Streamlined Registration Experience
We’ve improved the registration experience by removing the requirement for participants to sign in to a ClearEvent Account before they can complete a registration form. This approach means that there is less friction for registrants, no password needed, and registering for your event is event simpler & faster!
To take advantage of the new streamlined registration workflow, you’ll simply need to update any links to your registration forms to use the new registration form Share Link format.
Registration Form Permalinks
Registration form permalinks (permanent Share Links) can now be used to share registration forms links that will not change if/when your event is rolled over.
In the past, when your event was rolled over, event organizers were required to update any registration form links to point to the newly rolled over event registration forms. Now, the same registration form Share Link will still work, even after your event is rolled over.
Here’s an example of the new, simplified registration form Share Link:
https://app.clearevent.com/register?form=23456789-2345-2345-2345-234567890123
Manually Register Event Attendees
Event Organizers can now easily sign up on behalf of event guests. This is great if you have guests that are unable to register themselves, or if you already have event registrants that have been manually registered for your event through some other means. Event Organizers can simply open the desired registration form and then use the registrant’s email address & name to complete the registration form on their behalf. ClearEvent will automatically send the registrant an email confirmation when their registration is received by the system.
Learn More
Auto-Linking In Plain-Text Fields
Any web links pasted into common text fields (e.g. description, summary, etc.) will now be automatically converted into clickable hyperlinks. This includes event setup, forms, tickets, schedules, messages and products description setting fields. For example:
Learn More
Happy planning!
P.S. If you enjoy using ClearEvent, please tell a friend about us! 😀
by ClearEvent Support | Release Notes
What’s New
Form Field Links
Our new Form Field Links features lets you link any field on a registration form to any file hosted on a website. When you set the new Link and Link Test settings for a field, a clickable link will appear below the question on the form. Registrants can click this link to open it in a new browser tab.
Here are a few things you can do with the new Form Field Links feature:
- Allow your food vendors to download a Health Permit Application PDF file that needs to be filled-in and submitted when they register.
- Link to a detailed waiver that volunteer registrants need to sign.
- Link to another website with more information than will fit on your form.
- Link to a Refund Policy or Terms & Conditions page on your main website.
Todo Categories
You can now assign custom categories to your Todo items. Use both the fixed Areas and customizable Categories fields to help you organize long lists of Todos.
Quickly find all Todos from a specific category by typing the category name in the Search Todos field.
Quick Delete
All Delete buttons now enable you to quick-delete the selected item by pressing & holding the SHIFT key on your keyboard and then clicking the Delete button. This combination of actions will suppress the regular delete confirmation prompt and will immediately delete the selected item.
This is a great feature when you need to delete a lot of data. However, please remember that with great power, comes great responsibility! So do be careful with this new feature.
Other Improvements & Fixes
- Enhanced the visual appearance of the Event Manager App > Form Designer to make it more obvious which custom form fields have configuration errors.
- Enhanced the registration forms to make required fields more obvious to registrants.
- Fixed an intermittent load failure that prevented the Event Manager App and some registration forms to not loading reliably and require some users to click their browser’s Refresh button.
by ClearEvent Support | Event Management
Organized events are a great opportunity to make new connections. This is a key objective for attendees. Including opportunities to network on the agenda contributes to the overall success of your event. Participants will remember your event as educational, fun and most importantly provided value to them with connections that live on beyond the event itself. Look for ways to build in specific networking activities during your event to help your attendees get the most out of your event.
“Attendees taking a random walk in a crowded space may not meet the folks that could be most helpful to them, not to mention getting stuck talking to the wrong people.”
Traditional networking usually involves some kind of social dinner/drinks activity at the beginning or end of the event. Attendees taking a random walk in a crowded space may not meet the folks that could be most helpful to them, not to mention getting stuck talking to the wrong people! No one wants to appear rude in a fun, social setting. Some attendees may not feel comfortable with it. Some may feel frenzied and overwhelmed. Or, attendees may simply not want to spend all their time networking at a social function. So when is enough?
“attendees may not feel comfortable networking, sometimes feeling frenzied and overwhelmed”
Other styles of networking involve team activities or other group gamifications. However, these scenarios limit attendees to only their immediate team for the entire activity. This reduces access to other key people with whom an attendee may want to connect.
“beyond traditional options is the use of speed networking”
A new alternative beyond traditional options is speed networking. With similarities to a speed dating format, speed networking allows attendees to meet a lot of people in a very short time period. This can be especially helpful if the event has a full agenda with limited time available for making connections. This approach is an additional opportunity beyond the dinner/drink social style activities.
Speed networking is a structured process with facilitators. The “speed” element brings in a fun and efficient aspect to the event. Networkers have a few minutes to connect one-on-one. Then it’s on to the next person. This format has the added benefit that if you’re not connecting well with someone, or you discover they are not the right person to connect with, it’s very easy to move to the next conversation. Each round is only a few minutes long. There is no need to appear rude to move onto a new conversation. It’s fast and efficient. After the session, attendees can expand the connections from the speed networking session during the rest of the event. This is a good reason to include speed networking early in your agenda.
“Technology can further enhance the success of any speed networking activity”
Technology can further enhance the success of any speed networking activity. One example is a company that goes by the same name, Speed Networking. They offer a full-service speed networking solution which includes matching software that minimizes situations like getting stuck talking to the wrong folks. They also measure trackable results and an ROI analysis so you can ensure you’re adding tangible value to your events. Then, to ensure attendees take full advantage of the session, the event planner should remind attendees in advance to bring business cards and have an elevator pitch ready to go regarding who they are and what they’re interested in.
Ensuring your event generates great connections is easy. Build opportunities into your agenda to network, especially in the early stages. Help your attendees by providing fast and efficient methods to network such as speed networking. Leverage technology to make it effective and provide you the feedback you need to keep improving your events!
As an event planner, knowing what options are available to you is key. If you would like to hear about other topics that could help your event planning success, please let us know at support@clearevent.com.
In the meantime, happy planning!
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