In the 2025 Membership Performance Benchmark Report by iMIS, data shows that events are one of the key drivers of recruiting new members. But it’s not that simple.
Hosting an event should be driven by purpose, whether it’s to drive memberships, provide learning and development or give networking opportunities. But once you’ve got your direction, there are many pitfalls to avoid.
Having engaging and inspirational speakers is crucial for conferences and exhibitions. But make sure hosts and speakers are relevant and represent the audience they are speaking to. There’s no point spending all that money on a speaker that your members can’t relate to.
It’s good to strike a balance between speakers who hold positions of authority but also people who can provide entertaining anecdotes and hold the audience’s attention. For example, a keynote speaker doesn’t have to be someone who works in the industry, but an Olympian or media personality who can inspire ideas or action.
You can hold a call for papers where members of your audience can apply to speak or you can directly invite speakers. Ideally, these speakers will also become advocates and promote their involvement at your event to their audience.
When promoting your event, you need to be visible on the channels most visited by your members.
Consider promotion across a variety of platforms including:
It’s preferable to have ways of tracking the source of your registration so you can adjust budgets and efforts to the channel that is providing the most registrations.
You've worked hard to put on this event, so you want to make sure your registrants show up.
Free events have a much lower conversion rate compared to paid events. You should create a plan for converting people who have registered. This can be automated into a workflow, so when someone registers, they receive a series of emails to help them plan their visit. These communications should remind people why they signed up for the event and the benefits they will receive by attending.
Post-event communication is just as important as pre-event marketing. Use surveys to gather feedback from the event and get quotes you can use as part of the next event’s marketing content.
If the event is a recurring one, it is also a good idea to have the following year’s date secured so people can add the date to their diary or register their interest.
Our attention spans are the shortest they’ve ever been. If you’ve made it this far down our blog you’re doing well! So keep things concise, brief and helpful.
Your website should provide all the key information about your event concisely. Your audience should be able to clearly see where and when the event is, who the event is for, what the event is about and why they should attend. The registration process itself should be as easy as possible. If your event is paid for, you want a seamless payment process to avoid drop-offs.
Find the compromise between gathering necessary data from registrants and making the process quick. In an ideal world, you would like to gather as much data as possible from the sign-up process, but this can put people off. Auto-fill properties for member data you already have is a great option to make it a fast process to sign up.
The flow of your event is important to consider. How will people navigate their way between sessions? How can you facilitate networking? If you have exhibitors or sponsors, you also need to factor in time for visitors to speak to them to keep them satisfied and support with revenue income from sponsorship.
Depending on the type of event you are hosting, it might be a good idea to provide different content streams so people can personalise their event experience. This might include categorising your agenda by themes or job function.
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This article was originally published on Zentso's blog and has been republished here with permission.