It’s said a marketer’s favorite word is “free”, and that makes a lot of sense. But when is free not such a good deal?
I used to run an event marketing agency and a large internal events team at a major corporation. At the agency, we created an internal technology platform to service our clients and our internal event management functions. We also tested several commercial systems to validate pricing and functionality to provide to our clients. Over time we white-labeled a few systems to provide specific product functionality to specific applications, like event apps and collaboration tools.
We sold this to our clients at a pretty reasonable price, but were frequently asked for a “free” registration/management system to support a specific event.
The appeal of free is obvious and there are many so-called free systems out there today (just google “free event registration software” and you’ll see a bunch of them). Let’s face it, event registration and ticketing is a burden to today’s hyper-busy conference planning executive and any system that can make it easier is good. And if it is free, even better.
I like free, and I liked giving our clients the best option, for their program, but is it really free? Is it the best solution for event professionals in the long run, or is an integrated platform a better option? Is it going to cost you time and efficiency? and if so, could it be worth increasing your investment for a solution that saves you time and allows you to scale?
The low entry barrier of the event registration technology space has led to hundreds of overnight experts in this space. Do you want to trust your event to someone who can write spiffy software or do you want a platform built by event industry experts?
Running the numbers I found a few some surprising findings. There is a clear breakpoint, depending on the different type of event and number of attendees. And yes, I know some conference execs view fees charged to attendees as “not costing the event anything" as the costs are passed on to the attendees, but we all know that isn’t good math, right?
Anyway, pull out your abacus and do the math. Or just call one of our sales leaders at Message Blocks and let them show you how you can get much more for about the same as free.