WHAT IS A GUEST?
While you may consider anyone attending your event a "guest", Eventsquid considers a guest an additional attendee that is invited by the primary registrant. The "primary" registrant is the initial registrant out of a group.
Additional registration slots can be awarded to that primary registrant based on parameters that you determine, such as:
- If registrant buys X, they receive Y additional registration slots
- Buying 10 tickets = 1 primary registrant ticket + 9 additional registrant tickets
The additional registrants that are awarded to the primary registrant are called Guests, but can be re-labeled to another term for fitting, such as:
- Additional Attendee
- Colleague
- Teammate
- and a few others that our system offers....
The term "guest" thereafter will refer to any and all of the above "contexts" and usages of guest registration (i.e. for additional exhibiting staff registrations or spouse registrations).
GUEST TYPES
The Eventsquid system offers two ways to handle guest registrations. Read below to learn more about each.
1) SIMPLE "PLUS X" METHOD - watch THIS video for a walkthrough of setting up Simple Guest Registration
You would use this method when:
- you only need limited information from guests (i.e. just their name and email)
- guests will participate in the same activities as their primary registrant (tag-along)
- you'd like to keep the guest registration process as simple as possible
Explanation of User Experience:
Primary registrant fills out their form and selects all desired options. At checkout, they are presented with a window that allows them to fill the additional registrant slots they earned through registration, based on the rules you set before launching the event.
At this point, the registrant may either checkout, fill out some of their slots, or fill out all of their unfilled slots.
Examples:
You are inviting your main registrant to sign up for going to see a baseball game and they are allowed to choose how many are in their party.
You are hosting a golf tournament and selling a golf foursome where you simply need the name of each foursome member.
You are hosting a seminar and the registrant is purchasing seats for the seminar.
Your expo hall is hosting exhibiting teams; you need to keep team registration extremely streamlined because most teams
- 1) don't know which staff is coming to man the booth on event day,
- 2) you need exhibitors to be able to easily log back in and add names when acquired and
- 3) it needs to be very easy for on-site event staff to add exhibitor team names to unfilled registration slots when needed.
2) FULL REGISTRATION METHOD - watch THIS video and read THIS article for a walkthrough of setting up Full Guest Registration.
You would use this method when:
- guest registrants should be treated the same as primary registrants
- you need full detail on guests of registrants (i.e. a full registration form of information)
- the guests of registrants can chose different registration items than the main registrant
Explanation of User Experience:
Primary registrant fills out their form and selects all desired options. At checkout, they are presented with an option to either "Add Guests" or "Checkout Now". Adding guests will send that user back to the beginning of the registration process.
From there, they can either invite their guests to register themselves (if you allowed this option in the Guest Setup tool, read below for additional guidance on this) or continue registering each earned guest one at a time. The guest registration experience will look identical to the primary registration experience, save for any modifications you made to the guest side of registration.
Examples:
You are holding a conference and conference attendees can bring guests. A typical day includes a general session in the morning and elective activities in the afternoon. The guest of the attendee can chose different (or same) activities as the attendee for the afternoon.
You are holding a simple event but you want to collect a full set of information (e.g., name, address, email, phone, membership status, etc) on all people attending the event.
When a registrant completes registration, they can either invite their guest (with an auto email) or register the guest themselves! In either case, they must complete the full registration form you created. You need to decide whether the primary registrant's payment covers the guest's charges (for they primary activity they are attending). If so, you will want the guest form to have a simple zero-dollar "guest registration" item to select when registering instead of the priced items offered to primary registrants.
GUEST TRIGGERING
In order to comprehend how the Guest Setup mechanism works, it's important to be clear on Triggering Privileges.
Guest slots are awarded to primary registrants based on rules that you set. These rules that you set are called "Triggering Privileges". They are built on registration items. They work like this:
- Item X is designated as a trigger by you (event host)
- Thus, if registrant picks item X, then Y guest slots are awarded
The relationship between X and Y is determined by a calculation. This calculation is driven by the type of registration item that is designated as a trigger:
- ATTENDEE REGISTRATION ITEM: these items are quantity-based; the number of guest slots awarded to the primary registrant is based on the quantity of that item chosen by the primary registrant
- ENHANCED REGISTRATION ITEM: these items are limited to a quantity of 1 per registrant; the number of guest slots awarded to the primary registrant is pre-determined in the Guest Setup tool
When an Attendee Registration item is designated as a trigger, the calculation determination will say "quantity chosen" in the Guest Setup tool, next to the item. When an Enhanced Registration item is designated as a trigger, a dropdown menu will be exposed allowing you to pre-determine the number of guest registration slots that the item should award the registrant.
Your event business rules will determine which items to use for guest triggers. Here are a couple examples:
- ENHANCED TRIGGER: buying the Platinum Sponsor item gives the registrant 5 additional slots
- ATTENDEE TRIGGER: the quantity of tickets purchased is equivalent to the number of total number of people attending]