Since I’m the type of person who wants to know everything there is to expect before actually doing something, I thought to share with you these key figures that can help your summit planning process. If businesses are all about knowing “your numbers”, here’s some event numbers that can help you switch gears and lay down a solid foundation to successful virtual summit!
Though a a little disclaimer, there are ALWAYS exceptions (and I’m all about that) but this post will be the patterns and trends that I noticed from my Ladies, Let’s Talk Money Virtual Series. Let's get started!
Your Sales Conversion Rate is between 2% to 10%
I thought it was quite interesting how the percentage range is similar to the sales of digital products anyway. This applies to All Access Pass and any other digital products that you choose to Upsell or Downsell in your event pipeline. While I know there are tons of my speakers' products being sold, this percentage doesn't apply to their stuff since I didn't ask for the data.
Here's why knowing the sales conversion rate can help:
You can decide how many audience members you need to sell your products and services, so that you can hit your sales figures. And if the initial calculation of your sales conversion doesn’t meet your profit goal, you can always adjust the pricing of your products, add higher priced items to sell, or increase the number of attendees.
Around 50% of Attendees who Registers will be a No Show
This is the percentage I see for my summit format which is free for a limited time and was pre-recorded instead of live, to cater to different time zones. It might be slightly different if you choose a different format and if the audience have to pay to attend.
My guess for the high no-show is because the event is free so there is no monetary investment that they could lose. The reason behind my theory is because I see the exact the same figure when I organised free in-person events. The number could be even lower when it happens to rain on that day or the event timing clashes with dinner or lunch times. For paid event, the number of no shows decrease dramatically and only 10% will decide to not show up at the last minute.
Knowing this figure can help you create the right marketing plan to achieve your audience target, and even having some buffer (because higher audience number = more leads = more sales!).
The number of attendees will drop each day
Don’t be surprised when you see the number of attendees dropping each day, and it’s pretty common for in-person events too! What happens is there’s a long build-up and anticipation so your audience are all pumped to attend the first day of your event.
On the 2nd day onwards though, there’s always a small number of people who choose to not continue to show up to your sessions. Daily reminder emails to registered attendees helps to make this figure smaller but if you see a small drop, don’t worry too much! This small drop is also common if you do any sort of ‘business challenge’ to nurture your audience (I saw the same thing happened in my "How to Create Your Profitable Virtual Summit 7 Days Challenge"). The longer it is, the more attendees will drop out of your event.
At this point you might be wondering if you should create a virtual summit with a shorter time frame? That leads me to the next figure.
The number of new attendees registering for your event will increase every single day of your summit
While your current group of attendees showing up at your event might decrease, there’s so many new ones that will continue to register! This is super great news because this means that you should definitely continue promoting your event when it goes live!
It’s actually the best time to do your marketing and gear up full speed because whoever signs-up at this time get to attend almost immediately, instead of waiting for weeks to attend.
In fact, from what I see in organising tons of public events, the person who registers 4 days ago will be more likely to attend than someone who registers 4 weeks ago. The earlier they register, the higher the chances of them forgetting to schedule it in their calendar and have plans clashing with the event dates. Especially in the internet world where there's so many things that are vying for their attention.
I especially love knowing that a fresh batch of attendees signing up for my event every day because I get to continue generating list and growing my list even after my event starts.
Cheerios,
Rashidah