About Free to Live
Free To Live is one of many training programs offered through the Campus Crusade for Christ International, or “Cru” for short. They are a global community passionate about connecting people to their purpose through Jesus. Cru offers spiritual guidance, resources, and programs tailored for people from all cultures in every walk of life through many diverse outreaches.
One of the many training programs offered is developed by the Free To Live Training Team within Cru. The “Free to Live” team provides seminars to help people learn more about their own journey with Christ. Knowing that this team did not want to deal with the hassles that manual event registrations presented, they sought out a way that they could easily manage the event registration process and all of the requests to join the Free to Live seminars.
Some of the challenges that the team encountered when planning their training seminars included how to collect payments online, manage limited ticket quantities, and to find a solution that did not include the high commission fees charged by Eventbrite and many other event registration platforms.
Ed Murray, who was charged with setting up and managing the system talks about why they made a choice to use Event Smart:
“We had a tight budget. Eventbrite was recommended and has been used before in our organization, but it seemed expensive. Somewhere in my search online for event websites, Event Smart came up, and I checked it out. Event Smart seemed to offer what we needed either at no cost or at minimal monthly cost for the things we really needed like a PayPal credit card payment, bank transfer, etc.”
Because the team decided to go with Event Smart, which does not charge any commission fees or the high transaction fees like other event management platforms, they were able to save an estimated $385 in transaction charges. Though their event was a rather small and intimate gathering with total revenue on the very modest end, imagine how fees on each transaction can quickly accumulate as your events grow and the revenue rises.
Additionally, Ed had some concerns about being able to quickly set up the system and navigate a web registration system like Event Smart, which is based on the WordPress CMS platform.
“At 72 yrs of age, I had never done anything like this before, but I am computer literate, and the challenge of setting up a website sounded interesting. Plus there was no one in our small planning team who had any experience or knew anyone who could do this. Event Smart seemed fairly easy to set up, plus the staff proved very helpful and responsive when I had questions or needed help.”
About the Registration Requirements
The team knew they wanted to be able to offer a few different registration or ticket options for the seminar; which included providing an “Early Bird Deposit” and then a “Pay Off” amount that would trigger at a later date after the deposit ticket window expired. Lastly, they also wanted to allow for some late registrations to extend the registration window up to the week before the event and require accounts to be paid in full.
With Event Smart they were able to set up their various ticket options easily and at no extra cost as the Multiple Ticket Options feature includes the ability to set specific start and end dates for various ticket sales.
This graphic illustrates the three ticket options they offered to attendees:
After the attendee selects a ticket option, they are directed to the registration form where they are asked a few simple questions. Then they get directed to the payment page to complete the registration process using a credit card, debit card, or bank transfer to complete their payment.
Example of their Registration Form:
The registration forms allow them to collect a few personal details at the time of registration, such as attendee name, email, and address. However, they also send a questionnaire to their attendees to collect information to help them in their event planning such as special needs or wishes for lodging, meals, and etc. Although these items can also be added to their event registration form as custom questions, they chose to handle those questions by sending a separate questionnaire form to attendees after they complete their online registration.
When asked about what he was able to do now that may have been more difficult before concerning managing his event, Ed responded:
“It enabled me to do something I’ve never done before, set up an event for 80 tickets/people that was easy to navigate, and allow us to present the event well, but also to receive registrations easily, plus the features allowed me to see what was happening. I particularly appreciate the feature that even if people made a mistake and registered twice, their names came up on the list of registrants only once. I was also able to delete redundant names easily and/or adjust registrations as needed (cancel payment, adjust registration categories, add data, etc.)”
We also asked Ed what has surprised him most about managing online registrations with Event Smart:
“That it was relatively easy to set up, but most of all the quick and helpful personal support from Lorenzo and Garth. I also was surprised at the data I could look at fairly easily with spreadsheets, etc. That was helpful.”
In Event Smart it’s as simple as one mouse click to download a CSV file of all of your registration data. Once downloaded, it can be accessed in a spreadsheet program such as Excel or Google Sheets, to manipulate the data and produce financial and attendee reports.
How to set up a registration and ticketing website for your seminars or other events with Event Smart
If you’d like to get started and create your own event registration page, you can sign up for a free account here on Event Smart, or get in touch with us about your project through our contact page.
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