Our previous event registration platform went kapoot, and we didn’t like the platforms that integrate with ActiveCampaign, so we decided to see if we could just use ActiveCampaign directly.
Step 1: Create the Form
We created the form directly in ActiveCampaign. It’s a rather long form, so we actually created a page 1 and a page 2. You can’t directly create a two-page form, but ActiveCampaign lets you direct people anywhere after they fill out a form. So after they fill out Form/Page 1, you redirect them to Form/Page 2. This allowed us to gather all the information we needed relatively easily!
Step 2: Automate Tagging
After someone fills out page 2, they’re automatically tagged as registered for that event and receive a registration confirmation email. This tag allows us to easily remove registrants from future emails asking people to sign up (because they already did!) and create a segment for emails specifically for registrants. So, for example, they no longer get sign-up emails, but they do get emails telling them how to prepare, where to book their hotel, etc.
Step 3: Tagging for Exact Numbers
This is a free event, so a significant number of people will register and then do nothing else with it. For this reason, we always ask people to confirm with us once they’ve booked their travel and lodging. Once we receive this information, we tag them again has a confirmed registrant. By looking at the tag, we can see exactly how many people have double confirmed.
The tags also serve two other purposes:
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If someone notifies us that they are no longer attending the event (or they signed up for the wrong event), we can’t simply delete them from the form results without deleting their whole contact. Instead, we delete the tag from their account. Then, we look at the tag’s numbers to see exactly how many people have registered.
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This event is really only helpful for people every few years or so. Because of this, we don’t want to harass people over and over to attend and risk them unsubscribing. Instead, we have a segment that eliminates everyone who has attended one of these events in the last three years. Each year, we update the segment so that people are only getting the advertisements when they could conceivably be ready to attend again.
Conclusion
Is ActiveCampaign the best set-up for event registration? Probably not. I’m sure with more money, we could have found something that fits our needs. But as it is, this actually works pretty well, and it keeps everything tidy and connected to our communications!