Filling a conference without buying a list

Registrations are not attendance

The number reported to the board is registrations. The number that determines whether the event worked is people in the room.

The gap between them is where bought lists do their damage. A purchased list can produce impressive registration figures and a 40% show rate, and the difference is catering you paid for, seats that are empty on camera, and sponsors who counted the room.

Optimise for attendance and the registration number takes care of itself.

What moves attendance, in order

1. Last year's attendees. By a wide margin the strongest source. They know what they are getting, they have a budget line, and their show rate is high. If you do nothing else, mail them first and mail them properly.

2. Speakers' own networks. A speaker inviting their contacts converts far better than the same invitation from the organiser, because it carries a personal relationship. Give every speaker a short, pre-written invitation and a link that tracks to them. Most will use it if you make it a five-minute task.

3. Sponsors' customer lists. Sponsors want their customers there. They have the relationship and the permission. Give them a co-branded invitation and a tracked link.

4. Partner associations. Industry bodies with a membership that overlaps your audience. A single mail to the right association can outperform months of paid acquisition.

5. Content that reaches the audience anyway. An article that ranks for a question your audience asks brings people who have a reason to care. Slower, compounding, and the only source on this list that keeps working after the campaign stops.

6. Paid. Last, and worth doing only once the above are exhausted, because it is the only one where you pay for every impression and the show rate is lowest.

What a bought list actually costs

The list price is the small part. The real costs are the domain reputation damage from mailing people who did not ask, the unsubscribes from recipients who were already on your good list, and the registration numbers that make you cater for people who never intended to come.

Under the DPDP Act, mailing a purchased list also puts you in a position that is difficult to defend, because you cannot evidence a purpose the recipient agreed to.

The reminder sequence matters more than the invitation

Most no-shows are not decisions. They are people who registered eight weeks out and then had a diary conflict they never resolved.

What lifts show rate:

• //A reminder at one week with the practical detail — venue, timing, what to bring
• //A reminder at one day with the travel detail, sent in the morning
• //A calendar invitation attached to the confirmation, at registration
• //A named contact to tell if they cannot make it, which sounds counterintuitive and consistently improves both accuracy and goodwill

None of that is sophisticated. It is the part that gets deprioritised because the campaign feels finished once registrations are in.

Measure show rate by source

Tag every registration with where it came from and report attendance by source rather than registrations by source.

The first time you do this it will change where you spend next year's budget, usually by revealing that a channel everyone was proud of produced registrations who never arrived.