Ticket sales are great, but it’s important not to miss out on the opportunity to get to know the people behind each purchase. By understanding more about your audience, you can start to target your marketing messages to attract new attendees. 

When someone completes the checkout process, a new part of your job begins. And that’s creating and managing an attendee list.

Not only is the attendee list an essential piece of admin for every event organiser, it can also reveal a lot about your audience. For example, what was it about your Instagram feed that inspired them, why did they keep reading your website and when did browsing your event page turn into buying a ticket? Answer these questions and you will be one step closer to understanding your audience.  

Who are the right attendees?

Put simply, the best people to come to your events are those who will get the most out of it. Start by identifying your target audience – what’s their average age, are they predominantly male or female, where do they live, what are their interests? You might answer these questions by checking out the profiles of your social media followers and researching who went to similar events. If you have already run an event, then you can analyse attendee data that’s been captured by your ticketing registration platform to get a better picture of who you want to attract. 

Having identified your audience, keep them front of mind throughout your marketing campaign and ask them what they want from an event by running social media polls, sending surveys to newsletter subscribers and inviting responses via a blog post. Then translate these findings into an event page that speaks directly to your attendees’ interests.

Remember, every member of your audience is a potential ticket-buyer so ensure your marketing plan revolves around moving them along the sales funnel. You want to raise awareness, build relationships and then convert followers into customers.

How to create an attendee list

As soon as you sell your first ticket, your attendee list begins to take shape. Now’s the time to start collecting information to get a better understanding of your audience and what attracted people to your event. Eventbrite enables you to customise many of the questions asked during the registration process and set them as optional or required.

From your event’s Manage page, just go to the Order Options > Order Form section to create questions that can be answered by ticking a box, selecting from a choice of multiple answers or filling in a text field. Use the Attendee Summary report to view and export the information you’ve collected so far. Go to your event’s Manage page, then look under Analyse and select Event Reports. 

Customise your report in the Attendee Summary section, where you can select the columns and associated information that you want to display using the Configure Columns function. You can also edit attendee information and details relating to each ticket purchase or registration. Under the Quick Action drop-down menu, you will also find the option to process a refund, cancel an order and delete an order. When you are happy with the attendee list you have created, simply save it and download as an Excel or CSV file. 

How Eventbrite helps you manage your attendee lists

At any point you can create a guest list by logging into your account, clicking your event and selecting Manage Attendees > Guest Lists. Click on Create List and give it a name before clicking Done. At this stage, you can add and delete guests without impacting ticket inventory or event capacity. 

The platform also features a range of promotional tools to help get the word out about your event. For example, you can optimise your event page for search and discovery. Put simply, your event page is made available to Eventbrite distribution partners, will appear alongside the results on the platform’s public event-search directory and be given an SEO-friendly URL to make it easy for people to find your event. The platform can also integrate with Facebook to connect with attendees and sell tickets through the social media site – reducing the number of clicks between browsing and purchasing. Event organisers can also create promotions with discount codes, public discounts and access codes, all aimed at growing their attendee lists. 

Using the Eventbrite Organiser app is another great way to manage your attendee list. Not only can you access real-time data that’s tracking your tickets sales, you can also see who is buying tickets – armed with these kinds of insights you can amend your marketing efforts as necessary!