MC Talks
The MemberClicks Blog

Silent auctions are a GREAT way to generate non-dues revenue for your association or chamber of commerce. But the success of a silent auction all depends on the interest and demand for the items you have available.

Now some items are pretty standard and always popular - wine and/or beer baskets, vacation packages, sports paraphernalia, etc. But what other items and offerings could you throw in there to not only switch things up, but really grab people’s attention? Here are three:

From webinars to conferences, educational events tend to draw a crowd. But whether that crowd leaves happy or not, well...a big part of that has to do with your event speakers. Did they deliver new, interesting, and/or helpful content? Did they cover what attendees were hoping they would?

Because so much of your event’s success depends on how well your speakers do, it’s worth taking some time to prep them effectively. In fact, here are three resources you may want to pass along:

Summer means many things:

Pool days.
Barbeques.
Fresh fruit.
And for many, annual conferences and meetings!

But it also means vacation season. So when your event is designed to engage your members and provide them with much of the value they’re paying annual dues for (and not to mention, generate non-dues revenue), but they won’t be in town to attend...what do you do?

Well unfortunately, if they’re not around to attend, they’re not around to attend. It’s impossible to cater to everyone’s schedule. That said, there are a few workarounds to still engage those members and generate a little bit of non-dues revenue. Take a look!  

So much of the event planning process comes before and during the actual event - and understandably so! But to keep the experience alive, it’s important to have a post-event engagement plan as well.

How will you follow up with attendees? What types of collateral will you create? Will you create any collateral?

To keep the excitement (and chatter) going following your organization’s event, check out these tactics:

Event season is here, and a big part of planning is promoting. It’s all about those registrations!

To drive interest AND actions (AKA members and prospects actually registering), check out these four promo tactics:

If your organization hosts educational conferences, how do you currently “divvy up” your educational sessions? Do you have tracks based on topics? Do you split them up by length (half-hour sessions, hour sessions, two-hour sessions, etc.)? Or do you not split them up and just have as many varying topics as you can?

There’s no one perfect approach (every industry and audience is different), but there is another approach you may want to consider: splitting your educational sessions by learning style.

Even though the failed Fyre Festival took place (or rather, didn’t) in 2017, it’s still very much the talk of the town. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that Netflix and Hulu recently released documentaries, exploring what really happened. (I mean, how does a heavily promoted event just NOT happen...with attendees being kept in the dark the whole time?)

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Fyre Festival, here’s what basically happened. (Note: This is a very summed-up version.) The Fyre Festival was marketed as a luxury music festival. It was supposed to take place in the Bahamas (nice, right?) and attendees were promised a VIP experience. We’re talking luxury villas, gourmet food, yacht packages - the whole nine yards.

Only...when attendees actually showed up, there was none of that. The “luxury villas” were actually leftover hurricane tents, and the “gourmet food” turned out to be cheese and bread. Seriously, that was it! (See pic below.)

In terms of disseminating information onsite at your organization’s conference, how are you currently doing it? Do you give people printed handouts and booklets when they check in at registration? Do you have a conference app where those materials are housed, but also have printed versions onsite? Do you rely exclusively on a conference app, cutting out printed materials altogether?

All organizations are different, and there’s no one perfect approach (because all attendees are different too!). But ideally, you want to have electronic versions of your conference materials in place, whether that’s in addition to printed materials or not.  

Now you may have some objections in mind, but allow us to address just a few of those…

Nowadays, it seems like everything is going digital - including events. More and more companies and organizations are hosting virtual events and more and more people seem to be attending those events. But does that mean your organization should move from a traditional in-person conference to a virtual one?

If you’ve been pondering the idea of hosting a virtual conference at your organization for a while now, 2019 may be the year to give it shot. But before doing so, we encourage you to ask yourself the following four questions:

If you market your organization’s events to prospects, in addition to members, good for you! It’s a great way to showcase your organization’s value and give prospects a taste of what membership is like.

But how do you get those prospects to take the next step and join? After all, that’s the main goal here. Read on for a few tips: