How to get people to show up to your BID's next event

Whether you're a city centre manager, a BID manager or the person handling marketing for the BID, events are your responsibility: organising, planning and executing from start to finish. Take the one you're planning now. The venue is booked, the speaker is confirmed, and now comes the most important part. Getting people there.

The businesses in your BID area are already in the UrbanOS by City Connect every day, picking up news and flagging things that need sorting. Sharing an event there means promoting it where they already are. Done well, it fills the room. It also gives you a record of who took part, which is exactly what you need when your board asks what the levy is paying for.

Before event-day

As you start planning the promotion of your event, there are a few things you can do in City Connect to make sure it reaches the right businesses.

Write an event message. It appears on the City Connect home screen under Events, so members see it as soon as they open the app.
Decide whether you're charging. Even a small amount tends to lift attendance, because someone who has paid for a place is more likely to use it. For a paid event, select Paid as the event type and set your price. Stripe Checkout handles VAT and receipts automatically, and every registration shows whether it's been paid. Refunds are managed in Stripe.
Choose who it goes to. Send it to your whole BID area, a single street or scheme, or one specific group of businesses, and leave out anyone it doesn't apply to. A hospitality licensing briefing, for example, only needs to reach the bars and restaurants. Keeping invitations relevant is what keeps them worth opening.
Add a deadline or a capacity limit. A deadline gives you final numbers by a certain date. A capacity limit closes registration on its own once you're full, and if someone cancels their place it opens back up for the next person.
Add it to the calendar. Coming soon, so the businesses in your BID area can see exactly what's on and when in one place.

Before you start: paid events need a Stripe account connected to City Connect, and the minimum price is €2. Inside Stripe you can set your tax rules and add your logo and colours so the checkout looks like your brand. Contact your Account Manager to get set up.

Once it's published, everyone you've targeted gets a push notification and an email. From there, your members can:

Sign up in seconds, with their details already filled in.
Say they're not attending, a new feature that keeps your numbers accurate and spares a shop owner a reminder they don't need.
Register a colleague from the same business, or bring an external guest by adding a name and email.
Add it to their own calendar, from the invite that lands in their inbox.

During the event

It's event day. So how do you keep track of who's coming, and who's dropped out at the last minute?

The attendee list shows everyone who registered, along with any guests they've added. You can add columns like phone number when you need to reach someone directly.
Members can cancel their own registration without coming to you.
Paid registrations work differently. A member can't cancel one themselves, so they'll come to you, and you cancel the registration and handle the refund in Stripe.

Wrapping up an event

As the event draws to a close you'll want to know how it went, and before long a board member or someone at the municipality will ask you the same thing.

The Statistics tab under Manage Registrations shows you who attended, who told you they couldn't, and who never responded at all. Too many businesses saying they can't attend suggests the hour wasn't right. Too many no responses points at the communication instead, and it's worth looking at how the event was announced.

You can also go back to the people who came. Targeted messaging picks out that event's attendees specifically, so a follow-up message or a feedback survey reaches the businesses that were actually in the room. Send it while the event is still fresh and the answers will be worth something when you come to plan the next one.

Ready to fill the room at your next one?