University students from Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh created a fun, socially distanced charity event–and delivered it virtually in the middle of a pandemic that kept us all away from in-person events.
Are you searching for an event registration system for your virtual events? In this success story, we highlight the Dating The Unknown to learn more about how they use Event Smart for event registrations to bring people together during a time when we have all been forced apart and asked to stay socially distanced.
What is a “Dating The Unknown” Event?
Dating the Unknown is a virtual event based on a dating show where one lucky single person gets to choose who to go on a date with. It is designed as a blind date process where the contestant chooses from three people depending on answers to given questions.
The event was streamed live and the audience was able to participate by answering live polls and asking questions during the event.
How Dating the Unknown used the hosted event registration platform Event Smart to promote their event and collect registration information and payments for their selected charity:
When asked about the features that attracted them to Event Smart for their event, they provided a list of 9 great reasons that helped them to create an event registration website to host their event:
Reason #1: Customizable registration forms that suited our event.
The ability to customize registration forms in order to collect important information is key for many organizations. For some it may mean collecting attendee information and personal preferences so that they can plan accordingly at each event. For others, it may include collecting an acknowledgement that your attendees have reviewed the required legal or policy information that is critical for your events.
Either way, with Event Smart’s customizable registration forms, event organizers can automate the collection of data making it even easier to manage these details and to ensure you collect that information that you need.
For this group, the ability to customize their form to include an acknowledgement of the Terms and Conditions Policy, was an important feature. Without that option, they would have to collect these acknowledgements from each attendee offline and that would consist of a lot of time spent managing that task.
To provide the attendees with the long form policy document for review, they simply created a separate web page within their site to provide that information. Then they added a required custom question asking each registrant to check a box to agree to the “Policy”, which they could review by clicking on the link.
Reason #2: The ability to select a theme that would reflect their brand.
Another reason they chose Event Smart is because they could select from a variety of free themes and that allowed them to easily match the brand they were promoting for their event.
Event Smart is easy to use and you don’t need advanced web skills to customize your site and make your registration website look and feel exactly the way you want. Customize the fonts in your theme with ease, apply a custom color palette and background pattern, header image or dive into CSS to make all the presentational changes you desire.
Reason #3: Event Smart allowed them to have a proper looking website with a blog so they could promote information about their cause and the event.
Since this group didn’t have a standalone website, they needed to be able to add more descriptive information about their event, and to add social media links and information about the charity they supported through this event.
Reason #4: Event smart does NOT charge percentage fees of the ticket sales, allowing them to donate more to charity.
The ticket revenue and no per-ticket fees means all their revenue went to their favorite cause. Otherwise, other people were going to make money on their fundraising efforts.
Other online event registration platforms charge you fees for every ticket you sell. See this article to understand more about how Event Smart can help you avoid hidden and costly event website fees: How to Avoid Eventbrite Fees
Reason #5: Event Smart helped them to spread the word about their charity.
They were able to help spread the word about their cause and where the ticket sales revenue would go by posting information about their selected charity.
Using Event Smart’s free blogging and custom posts feature they were able to add information about their cause and link to the organization’s web page.
Reason #6: In Event Smart the attendee data is very easy to access.
With Event Smart you can always access your attendee registration data by navigating to the registration records within the Event Smart dashboard, and if needed you can export the data at any time into a CSV file.
With just a few mouse clicks, all registration information can be exported to a Comma-separated Values (CSV). Once the data [CSV file] is downloaded it can be imported into any type of spreadsheet application such as Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets where the data can be further manipulated to suit your needs.
Reason #7: It’s easy to send emails through the website to our attendees.
Messaging and sending email is also a breeze because Event Smart sends automated email confirmations and other messaging for you.
Reason #8: The Event Smart customer support team was very helpful and supportive and always available when we needed help with something. Many customers agree that Event Smart’s customer support is top rated!
See what customers have to say about Event Smart’s customer support here: https://www.facebook.com/eventsmartdotcom/reviews/
Reason #9: It was very easy to create the website even without any computing knowledge.
Since Event Smart is built on WordPress, many users are already familiar with working with this popular CMS platform. And for those with no computing experience, it can be set up easily with the help of the Quick Start Guides and assistance from the customer support team.
It is easily scalable so you can make it as simple as a basic event page with a brief description and a single ticket option, to a full blown website that hosts multiple events, and tickets, and promotes other information about your brand through the blog posts and pages.
Learn more about how to set up a your own event website with Event Smart:
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