We have experience helping hundreds of thousands of event organizers use WordPress and an event manager plugin for event registrations and selling tickets.
After more than a decade of experience using event manager plugins, these are several of the underrated or overlooked features. If event managers like you will use these features correctly, it can save you time and money and deliver a better experience for your attendees.
1. Duplicate Event
The more events you host, the more time you will spend setting up events. The duplicate event feature allows you to create a new event that is based on the information and settings of an already existing event. All you have to do is change a few details of the new event and within minutes you can publish a new event.
The duplicate event feature helps you save time and money that you would otherwise have to spend creating a new event from scratch. Saving time and money should be near the top of every event planner’s list of successes.
2. Per-event Confirmation Emails
Some WordPress event manager plugins only allow you to configure default confirmation emails that are used for all events. But the more powerful feature is to use per-event confirmation emails.
Per-event confirmation emails allow you to configure the registration confirmations, payment confirmations, etc. so that all the information is customized to the event. This allows you to do neat things such as sell sponsorships or advertising in your confirmation emails. Or you can use the confirmation emails to promote similar events instead of all events.
Per-event confirmation emails are a way to make your event registration and ticket sales more focused and personalized and give the attendee a better experience.
3. Policy Acceptance Before Registration
We are required to accept terms and conditions for almost everything we do online. We even have to accept the terms to electronically accept and sign documents. When planning an event, it can be helpful to have your attendees agree to a policy, or terms and conditions before they are allowed to register for your event.
This policy to require that attendees agree to a policy before they are allowed to register for an event can help keep your legal liabilities in compliance. This can also save you time, money, administrative headache, and executive worry.
4. Embedding Event Calendar and Tickets On Third-Party Websites
Promoting your event on third-party websites such as Facebook, or partner websites can help increase your ticket sales. A good event manager plugin for WordPress should allow you to embed your ticket options and calendar onto another website. This will increase exposure to your events and can be a step toward starting an affiliate program.
5. Multiple Event Registration
If you host several events each year, or on an ongoing basis, you can get more attendees by allowing them to register for multiple events at the same time.
A WordPress event manager that can facilitate an event shopping cart experience can make it convenient for people to register for more than one event.
But the best event management plugins for WordPress also customize the checkout so that you can still collect the correct information from attendees during the ticket or registration checkout process. This means you can collect custom information from each attendee that might only apply to one event and not all events.
Allowing attendees to register for multiple events while also supporting your administrative requirements will help you generate more revenue and save time and money.
6. Attendee Importer
Perhaps you don’t need to have people individually register for your events. Instead, you may have a list of members of your organization or a list of attendees from a customer database, you can import those attendees into your event and issue tickets.
The attendee importing feature allows you to manage your attendee list anywhere, then when you are ready you can import the list of attendees into your WordPress event manager plugin. The ability to import attendees from anywhere gives you more flexibility and control over your attendee lists.
7. Multiple Payment Method Options
If your event attracts a sufficient number of attendees, you will receive requests from guests that they want to pay you a certain way. Some attendees will want to pay with a credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, Venmo, etc.
The best event manager plugins for WordPress allow you to configure several options based on your payment gateway features and business requirements.
Allowing attendees to pay in a way that is best for them will allow you to collect more revenue and attract more attendees.
8. Automatically Sending a Payment Reminder Email for an Abandoned Registration
No matter how awesome your event is, you will have people who begin to purchase tickets or register and they will abandon their cart. The best event manager plugins for WordPress will allow you to try and reclaim those abandoned carts and re-engage with leads.
You can offer discounts or promotions or give limited-time announcements to encourage people to finish and pay.
This one feature will surely help generate more revenue and help your event sell out.
9. Apply a Promotion Code After a Registration
Customer service for tickets or registrations can be hard, especially after someone pays. So, in the case that someone forgot to use a discount code during registration, or you want to provide a discount code, you can do that even after someone finishes their registration.
Applying a promotion code or discount after the registration or ticket purchase is complete will help you keep your audience happy while also saving you time and money on customer service.
10. Automatically Promote Attendees from a Waitlist When Space is Available
The beauty of WordPress event manager plugins is that many of the event management processes can be automated. The best event management plugins do as much for you as possible.
For example, when new space is available at the event, automatically promoting an attendee from a waiting list to pending payment status and requesting payment.
An event manager plugin that can help you manage your attendees without having to move your computer mouse is priceless.
The Best WordPress Event Manager Plugin and Services
For event organizers that host events on a regular basis, these are some of the most remarkable, as in underrated, features of a dedicated event manager plugin.
We recommend Event Espresso as the best WordPress event manager plugin and that link will even send you to their guide about how to use an event manager plugin. Event Espresso has been doing this for over a decade and they are great at training you to be successful with their event management plugin.
If you’re not using WordPress, the Event Espresso team can help you with their sister platform called, Event Smart? Event Smart will help you with your own online event registration website to sell tickets and accept registrations.
If you’re looking to make your events more successful, you should consider Event Espresso or Event Smart.
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