The End of Facebook Events! No More Guessing RSVP’s!

Don’t you just hate Facebook Events?

As a program planner for Hillel (The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life). I have always struggled with how much food to order for events. It is really easy to click “attending” on a Facebook event and forget all about it. Facebook notifications tend to be overwhelming as it is, the days of relying on that for accurate numbers for events are over.

At the beginning of the fall semester, a colleague in my office suggested I use EventBrite. EventBrite is an online Event Registration website and has been magical in the terms of accurate numbers. Rather then clicking one button to “attend” and event, attendees have to make the extra effort to register. As the event planner, you can ask the default questions of name, email and phone number or create your own questions as well.

The success of this site didn’t happen overnight. The first time we used EventBrite was for a Shabbat Dinner. The food is expensive and we would always have extra food. We decided to market on the flyer, Facebook and Twitter that those who RSVP’d on EventBrite by a certain date would receive a wrist band. You can easily export the guest list to excel and create a handy dandy sign in sheet. Those that received the wrist band were called up to get food from the buffet first. Those who didn’t have a wrist band were sadly sitting at their tables while their friends were in line. If we ran out of food, we ran out of food, but the days of guessing and over buying were over.

Options for Exporting Guest List

You can find this page under “Event Report” on the left hand side once you have created the event.

It didn’t take long for those who didn’t get food first to catch on. The next Shabbat Dinner, we had more accurate numbers. The culture had change!d! There was also a sense of urgency with EventBrite because we would post countdowns for how many tickets were left for the event, which EventBrite lets you do.

“There are only 22 tickets left for Shabbat Dinner this Friday. Get your ticket here! (link to event included in post)

I am also in control of our Facebook page, and when one of our students registered. I would post on their wall thanking them for RSVP’ing. Other students see those posts and have access to the registration link.

“Hi___________! Thanks for RSVP’ing for Shabbat Dinner! You have reserved one of 100 seats! Make sure your frieds RSVP at this link too! (Link would be included)

My favorite part of EventBrite is that it automatically sends an email reminder to all registrants, which you can specify how far in advance it sends. There are a lot of great features to EventBrite and to keep this post short, below are a few of my favorites, that I haven’t mentioned already.

Favorite EventBrite Features

1. EventBrite will populate a Facebook Event with the event description that you have already typed for the EventBrite Page. It will also put the link to the ticket registration page. I also put (Must RSVP on EventBrite) in the title of the event. It really makes it clear that the Facebook RSVP does not count as their confirmation.

2. EventBrite has the option to show how many tickets have been purchased and how many remain to potential registrants. That way they can see that tickets are almost gone and that they need to register.

3. You can add a ticket form to your website

4. You can create a custom URL for your event. ____________.eventbrite.com

There is a lot more Eventbrite has to offer, just explore and start creating events. Do you already use EventBrite or plan to start? Let us know in the comments!

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