Wiki → Ticketing Tips

The drop-off rate for free tech events is usually between 30% to 50%. This page provides some tips on how to most effectively manage ticketing for free tech events.

  • Overbooking: To account for drop-offs, an organizer may give out 20-30% more tickets than the venue can hold.

    Risky strategy

    The drop-off rate also depends on the nature of an event. For example, events with a well-established reputation may have a lower drop-off rate. This is a risky strategy, so be prepared to handle the unlikely case where everyone shows up. Otherwise, consider other strategies below.

  • Application forms: Instead of just giving out tickets in a first-come-first-serve basis, consider having an application form that asks people why they want to attend. Not only this can help you understand your audience better, but it can also help you pick the attendees who are more likely to show up.

  • Ticket challenges: Prepare a challenge that attendees must complete to get a ticket. This can be a simple programming challenge, a quiz, or a creative challenge. We commonly do this in our Stupid Hackathon events.

    Setting up a challenge

    Eventpop provides many ways to set up a challenge:

    • You can set a ticket to be hidden until a certain “access code” is entered.
    • You can set a ticket to be “unlockable”, meaning that the attendee must enter a valid discount code. (Discount codes can be made applicable to free tickets — just set the discount amount to any percentage.)
    • You can create bulk discounts, which will provide you with a list of autogenerated single-use discount codes that you can distribute to attendees who completed the challenge. This can be useful if you want to prevent attendees from sharing the discount code with others.

  • Provide a way to contact the organizers when they can’t attend: A few days before the event, you can let attendees know that if they can’t attend, they should let you know so you can give their ticket to someone else.

    Including a message in the ticket reminder

    In Eventpop, you can go to Marketing Tools → Communication and set up Tickets Email Message. This message will be included in the reminder email that ticket holders will receive one day before the event.

  • Direct invites: Reserve some tickets for people you or other organizers would like to see at the event. There may be some people who would be a great addition to the event, but wasn’t able to get a ticket in time. This is a good way to make sure that they get to attend.

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UPDATED 10 July 2024
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