After months of weak sales, attendees who waited until the last minute finally start registering for your event. Don’t you wish there was a way to drive sales earlier in your on-sale?

With other ticket types like early bird registrations, you can. If you’ve only offered general admission registrations, you’re missing out on one of the most compelling drivers of sales: fear of missing out (FOMO).

Here’s how to use early bird registrations to attract more attendees — and how to maintain momentum once these tickets are sold out.

Accelerate sales and attendance with early bird registrations

If you’ve never experimented with early bird registrations before, you’ve been missing out on an effective way to sell more registrations. They incentivise attendees to register early by offering an exclusive discount to these “early bird” purchasers.

You can set a certain time period for your early bird (say, the first week of sales), or limit the number available for purchase (say, the first 50 registrations). By rewarding attendees who buy before a deadline with a discount, you can motivate them to commit sooner.

How early bird registrations create FOMO:  The words “sold out” are like gold for sales. Once people see that your early bird registrations are snatched up, they’ll rush to signup before other tickets are gone. Ultimately, that means you’ll sell more registrations and increase your profit.

Once your early bird registration sells out

An early bird discount isn’t the only registration type worth trying out in your on-sale. In fact, once it’s sold out there are lots of creative registration strategies used by savvy event creators to maintain momentum during their on-sale.

Here are two more that are worth testing out with your events.

VIP registrations

According to our US research, a third of VIP attendees say the lack of a VIP package influences whether they’d attend an event. And 45% of VIP buyers are willing to spend 50% more than the cost of a regular priced registration to upgrade.

Premium registration tiers can help you attract new attendees who are also big spenders — and make more money from your current audience. You just need to make sure the experience they pay for is worth the extra cost — you can’t afford to disappoint their high expectations.

How a VIP registration creates FOMO: Offering a VIP experience increases your attendees’ perceived value of their experience — even if they purchased a regular priced registration. This is because less expensive registrations look like a better deal to cost-conscious attendees. 

Coded discounts

Targeted discounts give specific groups of attendees the option to purchase their registration at a reduced price with a special promotional code. These registration types work best when offered to those who can help your event reach a broader audience — like social media influencers or event sponsors.

This registration type also allows you to offer exclusive discounts to groups and organisations that purchase registrations in bulk — like companies and universities.

How a coded discount creates FOMO: Coded discounts are only good for a certain period of time, which means the pressure is on for attendees to act by a certain date. Just like early birds or VIP tiers, coded discounts help create urgency that helps you drive registrations earlier in your event on-sale.

How to manage your different registration types with ease

If you’re worried that multiple registration types will add more complexity to your event planning process, you shouldn’t. Registration solutions like Eventbrite make setting up different tiers of registration and discounts easy.

To create your own early bird registrations and more, set up your next event today.