Marvel Marketing Minute – This Marketing Operations Strategy Saves You from Overbooking Events

Given the following scenario…

The marketing operations team has built an exclusive executive event program in Marketo, and the stakeholders have met their goal of 50 registrations earlier than expected. As the teams celebrate, they later find out that there have been a flood of registrations a few days before the event. The event venue can only hold a maximum of 50 people, and the number of registrants is currently at 75. Unfortunately, the marketing operations team will need to send a rejection email to the extra registrants.

How could the marketers have avoided this situation?

The marketers failed to close registration when the stakeholders met their goal. This situation could have been avoided if they simply had an execution plan that could kick in as soon as the registration limits were reached.  

There are times when the event strategy is so focused on the number of attendees that the plan to close registration is overlooked. To ensure that this doesn’t happen to your event programs in Marketo, follow these steps:

1. Change the form

Either hide or remove the form from the registration landing page, but please note that hiding the form doesn’t remove it from the HTML.

2. Change the register button(s)

1. 1. Gray out the CTA button(s)
   2. Disable any links on the CTA button(s)
   3. Replace the CTA text with “Registration Closed”

3. Update the copy on the registration landing page

A couple of quick updates can make all the difference. For example:

1. 1. Suggested text: Registration closed.
   2. Suggested text: Thank you for your interest. Registration for {{my.event_title}} is now closed.

Tip: If you’ve got an option to put people on a waiting list, be sure to provide clear instructions on how to sign up.

4. Update the copy on the thank you landing page

A good example is: Thank you for your interest. Registration for {{my.event_title}} is now closed.

5. Adjust the trigger campaigns

When appropriate, deactivate “Invite” and “Registration” trigger campaign(s) in Marketo.

Bonus:

Depending on how restricted your event is, you may also want to consider removing any event information such as the time, location, and map modules so that unexpected attendees cannot show up at your venue.

To successfully launch any event, it’s important to assess and evaluate all the stages of event marketing: pre-event planning, production and execution, post-event evaluations and metrics. It’s easy to overlook things, but having a detailed plan for closing registration can save your marketing team lots of extra time and effort.