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As an event promoter, one of your biggest challenges is finding ways to cost-effectively increase registrations at your seminars, teleseminar and webinars. Merely increasing response rates isn’t enough – you have to do so profitably.

One of the easiest ways to increase registrations and event profits is to market strongly to past event attendees. People who are already familiar with the quality of your content, the style of your teaching, and the experience you deliver at your events are more likely to attend future seminars than someone who has never heard of you or who has never purchased anything from you.

As you market future events, include a few special promotions that are targeted specifically to past attendees. Acknowledge their past attendance, and remind them of the high-quality content you delivered.

Next, show them how your new seminar dovetails nicely with the previous event’s material. This positions your new seminar as a way to build on the foundation they created by attending your previous training. In essence, it helps them generate an even better return on their investment. For example, imagine that your first seminar taught people where to find high-quality sales leads. Point out that participating in your second course to learn five proven closing techniques will help them get even bigger results from their lead-generation efforts.

Another approach is to set up your events as a series – step one, step two, step three, and so on. This gives you a solid base of prospects for each event. It’s entirely possible to fill the bulk of seats at the remaining events in the series simply by contacting registrants from the first class. My very best response rate to date – 84 percent – came primarily from using this technique.

To encourage attendees to finish the entire series of events:

• Offer a discounted rate for pre-purchasing a pass to the entire seminar series. Allow people to sign up for each event one by one – this will appeal to those who don’t want to make too big of a commitment. But reward those who make a strong commitment to their personal growth by registering for the entire series. If desired, you can offer a payment plan to spread their investment over the length of the series.

• Develop a series that ties closely to educational and training goals that are shared across an industry. The best example of this strategy is certification preparation courses. Employees in certain industries are required or strongly encouraged to get certain certifications to move up the corporate ladder. Offering a number of courses that help them prepare for the certification exams is an easy way to encourage prospects to attend multiple seminars. The more courses they take, the better prepared they will be for the exams … and the more likely they are to get the promotion and higher salary they want.

• Use courtesy calls to scoop up extra registrations. Rather than doing hard-sell telemarketing (which most prospects don’t enjoy and many promoters dislike just as much), make courtesy calls. This is simply a friendly call to see if they want you to reserve a seat in the next course. Because of their participation in the previous course, you want to make sure that they get a seat in the next level if they want it. Not only is this an easy way to remind your best prospects that it is time to sign up, most past attendees appreciate the thoughtfulness.

Conventional sales wisdom tells us that it takes more work to get new customers than to make a second sale to an existing customer. The same applies when selling seminar seats. To make your job easier and maximize your profits, give past attendees more opportunities and reasons to continue training with your company.

It’s a fact of life in the seminar business that some people will sign up for your seminars, but then not show up. No-shows are significantly higher when offering free seminars.

The more conscientious registrants may feel a twinge of guilt when they decide to skip your seminar. But as a general rule, registrants don’t think twice about registering for free events and then deciding at the last minute to do something else with their time.

Unfortunately, you are the big loser when registrants don't show up. The no-shows don't stand to lose much at all.True, they'll be missing out on your valuable content. But when the couch and TV are calling at the end of a hard day, the promise of great ideas and valuable education is a faint whisper that is easily drowned out.

You, on the other hand, may be paying for extra meeting space that is now unnecessary. You may be paying to provide coffee or even a meal for people who are not there to consume the food and beverages. You are losing money, because fewer people are in the room to hear your educational seminar and the pitch for products or services you’re delivering at the end of your presentation.

You may even be paying a price in the form of increased doubt and skepticism among the people who did honor their commitment to show up. Having a significant number of empty seats at a seminar makes attendees doubt their decision to participate. It makes them wonder about your ability to fill a room, which then makes them question your qualifications.

One way to reduce your no-show rate is to inflict some “pain” in the form of a modest fee. People think twice about skipping events if they know they will pay a financial penalty. To see if a financial penalty will improve your seminar attendance, test the use of a no-show fee. You can institute a no-show penalty with your next event. Alternatively, split test your list. Tell half your registrants that there is a no-show penalty, and for the other half, proceed without a penalty. See what the attendance rate is for both lists to determine the effect that a penalty has on your registration and attendance rates.

Some seminar promoters charge a fee to register for their “free” event and explain that attendees will get their deposits back when they show up at the seminar. Others take credit card information to reserve a spot and explain that they’ll charge the no-show fee only if the attendee doesn't show up.

A no-show penalty probably will not completely eliminate the problem of no-shows. But if your no-show rate is too high for your comfort and is impacting your seminar profitability, it’s worth testing.

One reason that seminar attendance is low these days is that prospects have less money to spend on education. A second trend impacting the seminar industry is that prospects also have less time to invest in their growth and education.

As companies lay off staff in an effort to stay afloat, fewer employees are left to do more work. Taking time off of work to attend a seminar becomes difficult, if not downright unthinkable. Even if they agree that your seminar will help them, the backlog of work they would face upon their return to their office may seem like too big of a price to pay.

Having less time and money to spend on education, prospective attendees are shifting their investments away from seminars and instead participating in virtual training, such as teleseminars and webinars. These virtual “seminars” deliver training in bite-sized chunks at a price that is far less than what it costs to attend most seminars.

As you work to combat the time crunch your prospects are facing, ask yourself two questions:

1. What can you do to deliver your information more efficiently? Can you reformat your seminar so that it can be delivered in two days, rather than three?

2. How can you incorporate teleseminars or webinars into your product mix?

3. How can you position your event as essential to success and even survival? If prospects view your information as “must have” rather than “nice to have, but not essential,” they are more likely to find a way to participate in your training.