Low Attendance - Part 1: Why comms could be tanking your event numbers
You’ve planned a great event. The logistics are solid, the speaker lineup is strong… but your registrations are flat, or your confirmed attendees just don’t show up.
Before you blame the date, the market, or the moon, take a look at your event communications. They're often the silent killer of attendance.
In this first part of our Low Attendance Series, we’ll take a look at how strategic comms can transform interest into action, and some of the mistakes that might be costing you bums on seats.
Comms are more than just sending an invitation
Too often, event comms are treated as a tick-box exercise:
1. Send an invite
2. Send a reminder
3. Cross fingers and hope for the best
But communications are not just a way to inform, they’re your tool to create interest, urgency, and get some commitment. And if they’re poorly timed, irrelevant, or forgettable? Your response rates will reflect that.
Fix 1: Lead with relevance
Your audience doesn’t care about your agenda (yet). They care about what they’ll get out of it.
Change:
❌ “Join us for a leadership summit”
✅ “See how FTSE 100 execs are future-proofing their teams”
This kind of shift makes your messaging feel personal, specific, and hard to ignore. They can see what they get out of it.
Fix 2: Use the right channels for the right audience
Not everyone responds to email. Nowadays, getting your email noticed and read is an achievement in its own right.
Consider printed, personalised invitations.
These feel premium, cut through digital noise, and are designed drive them offline to online—straight to your branded Mitingu registration site (sorry about the plug!) via QR code or a short/personalised URL.
Ideal for: C-suite dinners, private tastings, exclusive roundtables.For a younger, mobile-first crowd, SMS or WhatsApp reminders might receive a better response than an email they’ll possibly never read.
Use LinkedIn DMs or custom audiences to re-target past attendees. The messaging has to be original to avoid being seen as yet another LinkedIn spammy DM.
Fix 3: Plan a comms journey, not one-off hit and hope blasts
Effective events use a drip-style approach to warm up and lock in attendees:
Initial Invite - Grab their attention and hook them with something of value to them
Reminder 1 - Add a relevant and original teaser (VIP speaker reveal, topic highlight)
Reminder 2 - Use social proof (“1,200 have already signed up”), it has to be accurate or you’ll get found out!
Final Push - Urgency (“Last 10 spots available”). As above, make it real, or they’ll find you out in the day.
Updates - Share helpful info like how to get there, generate excitement and expectation by reminding them what to expect and what they will get out of it.
Coming Up Next in the Series
In Part 2, we’ll look at how the event subject or theme itself could be turning people off, and what to do when your topic isn’t “sexy” but still important.
Future posts will cover:
Part 3: Are you picking the wrong speakers?
Part 4: Venue psychology – why the where matters
Part 5: How timing impacts attendance (and how to pick the right date)