Pre-Flight Checklist for Event Week

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It’s Monday morning, your event is scheduled for next weekend and yes we know there is a lot to do (we’ve all been there), in fact there is more than a lot to do... But you’re an event organiser, you know that it is all about method and process, and frankly you've got this - so let's go!!

With this in mind, we remind you that it is vital that you stop and think about the most important thing about your event, your data, this is everything that you need to know about registrants and the info about them that allows you to run your event with order, fluidity and fairness.

This is also where the Register Now system comes into its own with functionality and features that take some major pain points out of dealing with race numbers, eTickets, reports and more.

So without further ado here is your pre-flight checklist for event week and if you think any of these things are going to cause you more pain than usual please get in touch with us sooner rather than later!

  1. Race Numbers - have you and your timing provider already discussed and planned a specific range? You may be allocating them automatically or planning a bulk allocation, if so you will need to get onto this so that you can send out your eTickets prior to event day

  2. eTickets - makes for much easier on the day registration and check in particularly if you have included merchandise, for more tips on smooth on-the-day rego click here!

  3. Pre-event briefing details for participants, do you have a pre-event email with on the day instructions and important event details to be distributed? While Register Now does have a built in bulk email function for event participants, it is very basic and doesn’t provide stats of who’s received it, click through rates or any of that cool stuff, so if you are after something a bit more robust and analytical than this then you’ll need to look at a dedicated email marketing platform (of which there are many out there). You can also talk to our email marketing guru who can set you up with our white label version of Campaign Monitor.

  4. Incomplete teams? If you have allowed for incomplete teams (payment for teams where all team members have not been added yet) then you are probably looking down the barrel of a bunch of incomplete teams - what to do? The best thing now is to get in touch with these teams and work out whether they will finalise their team before event rego closing or if they need to be moved into an individual category. Either way, you need to plan for this and know how to extract the data and what it actually means for your event

  5. Which brings us to reports! For a high level description of the reports function in Register Now jump over here, we also unpack reports in our most recent blog post but obviously the vital details that you’re going to need from reports are: participant details, emergency contacts and medical conditions, included items, optional items and registration add-ons, so if you haven’t explored how you extract this data yet than best to get onto it and contact us with any additional questions because it can be slightly overwhelming if you’re not that excel savvy!

  6. Timing provider? It’s highly unlikely that you would be a week out from your event without having already discussed what data is required with your timing provider, but it is still important to consider do they have access to what they need? We can offer some API link ups with some of our timing providers which means you can leave your online regos open for longer, however we will need to grant your supplier access so best to get this conversation happening earlier in the piece than later!

  7. Kiosk feature for late entries, great for on the day last minute registrations, you’ll need to supply the rego devices (tablet / laptop etc), but we can set up a kiosk style rego flow with reduced personal details and simplified waiver. Definitely one to consider a week out as our support team will require a few days notice to make this happen!

Disclaimer: we are aware that this checklist may not apply to all events and there may be additional elements that we have not mentioned that apply to your specific event. BUT the biggest tip here that we can give you is to allow yourself time!! Don’t make the mistake of thinking just because you’ve got an event registration provider that you won’t need to manage some of these elements yourself. As much as our event support team are “here to help” we do not offer 24/7 support services.

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