Operating online means that you don’t have face-to-face contact with your registrant until the day of the event but this lack of interaction does not mean lack of information, thanks to registration forms. You can use your event registration form to learn more about your registrant from educational qualifications to personal information. This information collected is handy not only as a means to communicate with the registrant pre event but also to build a relationship post event. By building a relationship with your registrants, you develop a ready database to leverage future events.

Information is knowledge and knowledge is power. The information a registration form can provide you with is dependent on how well you create it. If you have signed up with an online event solution provider, then a standard form probably comes with your account. The question is, is this form customizable? Why is a customizable registration form an important feature? Well, no two events are identical, a conference is vastly different from an exhibition and a concert is different from a marathon. The purpose of holding the event is different and the audience they appeal to is different. By using a standard registration form across all these event types, you will end up frustrating your potential delegates, exhibitors, attendees, runners, concertgoers etc. For example, if you are organizing a concert, you need a short registration form that doesn’t ask questions such as parent’s names and occupations. You can delete these unwanted and unnecessary fields, which are perfectly reasonable on a student admission form but are intrusive to the concertgoer.

For a registration form, a wonderful information collection device to be effective, you need to mould it and personalize it to meet your requirements. Here are the different benefits you gain by personalizing your registration form:

Irrelevant Fields: Lengthy registrations forms are the bane of registrants. A customizable form enables you to get rid of irrelevant generic fields and keep it concise. This will make your registrants happy

Branding Opportunity: A customizable form comes with a range of online tools that enables you to add your brand colors, logos etc. to the form and reinforce your brand presence in your registrant’s mind.

Multi-lingual communication: Not every person speaks English. Communicate and capture a larger audience by activating the multi-lingual feature available with a customizable registration form.

Agendas & Programs: When registering for an event, most registrant are extremely keen in knowing which speakers will be speaking. By personalizing your registration form, you can offer registrants the option of selecting seminar by ‘speakers’. This will increase registrant satisfaction as they can choose seminars they are interested in and are relevant to their business.

Observe Cultural & Regional Sensibilities: It is important to be aware of cultural sensitivities to avoid blunders and inadvertent use of offensive symbols. For example, In India, feet are considered to be unclean and pointing ones feet at another person is offensive while in Germany symbols are consider to be offensive. By being aware of your target audience cultural sensibilities, you can personalize your registration form and email response to respect the cultural and regional sensibilities of your prospective registrants.

In short, by personalizing your registration form, you collect information more effectively, keep your registration form concise and reduce the number of early exits due to what the registrant views as unreasonable long forms.