Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

This will depend entirely on the price elasticity of demand for your particular event. If it is an event where the audience has no choice then demand will be very in-elastic - i.e. whatever you charge you'll get an audience. This is unlikely. However, it WILL be in-elastic insofar as reducing price will NOT increase demand until such point as you make a very large reduction., Likewise, unless INCREASING the price moves it over a major price point (e.g. $500) then it is unlikely to affect demand. For a convention the true cost to an individual is their time, expenses at the convention and travel.
We worked for a major convention company and found that anything up to a 20% price increase made no difference to attendance. From what you have said, I would imagine that a) you're under this and b) you are offering more value anyway (but beware of this component - many convention attendees this year are on tight budgets.
Your best option is to test price points within your "earlybird" marketing - with and without the reception ticket and see what difference you get in take-up. Make sure you are very careful NOT to include any other variables or you will invalidate the test!

Agreed with Tim that tests marketing on a small scale (eg with early bird registration) will give you the best idea for your specific conference.

If you'd like a benchmark from a related industry (Markprofs is kinda a virtual convention, right :-), Allen Weiss and I actually looked at how the subscriptions to this site changed when MarketingProfs started charging fees and how marketing communication helped ease that transition - this research is publicly available at:


Pauwels, Koen and Allen Weiss (2008), “Moving from Free to Fee: How Online Firms Market to Successfully Change the Business Model”, Journal of Marketing, 45(May), 14-31.