Question

Topic: Strategy

Data Capture & Incentives At Local Events - Help!

Posted by andyshot15 on 4/13/2017 at 1:29 PM ET 250 Points
Hello! I'm hosting a series of events (different locations and themes) in San Diego. I'd like to capture contact information, ideally name, email, phone number and address. I have compiled a prize pool such as tickets and VIP experiences that I think will be pretty attractive to my audience. Almost all of my events are free and open to all ages, fyi.

The concept I have in mind seems pretty simple, but execution is another story. Does anyone have advice or experience on how to do the following?

-Have people pre-register / provide their contact info for a chance to win the prizes.
-Allow people to "Check In" at the events for additional chances to win.

Ideally, it is very simple for people to "Check In." Anyone have any thoughts? Thanks in advance!
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  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 4/13/2017 at 1:50 PM Member
    I am assuming you are capturing this contact info for some sort of future (probably marketing) use.

    Having prizes and being open to all ages can help get the total number of contacts you capture increased, but this may not get you people that you necessarily want for your purposes. For example, you said it is open to all ages, yet it is quite likely your future marketing program would not want to reach children. So along with capturing their info, you will want to also have some way to qualify these individuals so you know who is with following up with for future use and who should be ignored.

    So depending on your future use, having some sort of simple pre-qualifying questions (often things like age, income range, home ownership, etc., but varies depending on what your use of the contact data) could be useful.

    On the functionality of how to capture, that depends on your local market. Here in techy-savvy Silicon valley, a site called eventbrite is used for lots of registrations, and is an easy way to capture the data in advance. But in less tech centered areas, or for more broad market things (like say a street fare), it would be ungainly.

    If you were willing to provide size of event, type of location of event, type of person you want to get into your contacts, etc., we might be able to provide more specific info.
  • Posted by andyshot15 on 4/13/2017 at 2:31 PM Author
    I'm familiar with Eventbrite, but wondering if it may be too labor intensive for this. You're right that I'm targeting an older demographic than kids, and ideally I'd be able to segment by age, but it's not absolutely necessary and I'd rather focus on making registration/check in as easy as possible. In this case, I'm really going for quantity of data as long as I'm confident I can get quality by ensuring location-based "Check Ins" which will tell me where people have been in order to support our efforts.

    The events will range in size and event type. They are all over San Diego. Some will be a couple hundred people, others will be 1,000-1,500. Some of the events will be produced and hosted by my organization, whereas others we will simply be setting up a booth at. I think I have enough incentives for people to want to check in, but I don't want to lose them if I'm asking for too much information or have a clunky registration process. For example, I worry that asking for Eventbrite registration for a free event would be annoyingly difficult for people... but that said I don't have first hand experience using Eventbrite so I could be wrong.

    Thanks for your thoughts!
  • Posted by cookmarketing@gmail. on 4/13/2017 at 9:27 PM Accepted
    If you're using a website or smartphone as a means of contact, information for event, register<>qualify on line (via 2-4 questions) and have them check in with their smartphones - kinda like a mobile QR icon, scan boom all their info pops out for a badge?
  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 4/14/2017 at 12:44 PM Accepted
    The simple format of what you ask is to have people drop a business card or fill in a blank card and drop in a bowl. For the awards, you just pick cards out of the bowl.

    Keep in mind, with events from a few hundred to 1500 people, data entry will be a significant investment. Many of these automated systems have the advantage of handling that as part of the registration. If they fill in paper forms, you or someone at your firm will have to do it (or pay to have it done).

    Having them do it on a computer is one way to get around the data entry issues. One option would be to use some sort of registration program where they could pre-register (and you have a list of pre-registered folks to check off of). For those that didn't, have a couple of tablets on site where they could register online. Likely with the events where you are just a booth at someone else's event, you would just do on site registrations.
  • Posted by Shelley Ryan on 5/5/2017 at 5:02 PM Moderator
    Hi Everyone,

    I am closing this question since there hasn't been much recent activity.

    Thanks for participating!

    Shelley
    MarketingProfs
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