Have you ever been excited to try out a new restaurant, only for that excitement to be dampened when you see a long line at the hostess desk? Or, maybe you’re looking forward to a trip to the theme park, but the never-ending queues at each ride have a negative impact on your day.
Check-in pile-ups at your association’s conference or corporate event have a similar effect on attendees. However, there are measures you can take to curb wait times and keep attendees excited to learn and network.
Digital waivers allow attendees to tackle important tasks like document signing before stepping foot in your event venue. In this guide, we’ll explore the many benefits of using digital waivers in event management, including streamlining check-in, boosting lead retrieval, and more.
Streamlined check-in.
Registration and check-in can be a dreaded part of conferences and corporate events, both for the organizers and attendees. Overseeing all of the document signing that needs to be done at this stage can take significant time and manpower, and it can be frustrating for attendees.
Digital waivers help streamline check-in, save staff time, and provide a better experience because attendees can complete them in advance. Simply share links to the form or embed it on your website before the event. This also gives attendees the time and space to read the form and truly understand its terms. Additionally, you can add training materials, request additional documents, and include custom fields in the waiver, consolidating check-in tasks.
Once you’ve implemented digital waivers, brainstorm other ways to reduce congestion at check-in. For example, if you offer onsite badge printing, you’ll no longer have to sort through tangled piles of name badges—instead, just print them when the attendee checks in. This also makes it easier to track check-ins, saves time before and during the event, and reduces waste.
Enhanced volunteer management.
Large events need volunteers to function seamlessly. But managing volunteers on top of other event management tasks can be overwhelming, especially when it comes to legal and liability concerns. Here’s how digital waivers can take some of these worries off your shoulders:
- Provide a simple, streamlined volunteer liability waiver. These forms list possible risks associated with the volunteer role and ask volunteers to sign to release the organization from liability. Digital waivers allow you to collect these signatures without printing and collecting dozens of copies—plus, you can make updates, share them ahead of the event, and embed training videos.
- Vet applicants. Most volunteer roles have a set of requirements, whether that’s a minimum age requirement or a desired skill set. Set up custom flagged questions in your digital waiver that block volunteers from submitting the form if they don’t meet certain criteria for age, qualifications, availability, etc. Safeguards like these can prevent you and the prospective volunteer from wasting time.
- Accurately track engagement. When you have each volunteer sign a digital waiver, you can quickly see how many volunteers are on your team, which skills they hold, and what roles they select.
- Make volunteers aware of opportunities to increase impact. Volunteers may be unaware of opportunities to increase their impact, such as CSR initiatives. 360MatchPro explains that corporate volunteer programs like volunteer grants and volunteer time off (VTO) can incentivize people to volunteer more and bring additional funding to your organization. Consider adding a field asking volunteers if their employer offers these programs and explain how they can check their eligibility.
To further streamline your volunteer program, make sure to connect the waiver to the next task volunteers must complete. For example, automatically share a copy of the document for their records ink to your volunteer onboarding materials in the message.
More accurate and secure data collection.
Tracking various data points during your event helps you evaluate its success and make improvements that will enhance future events. For example, Results At Hand recommends measuring “return on experience” (ROE), which factors in several data points such as attendee feedback, engagement metrics, content quality, and more. Put together, these metrics offer a comprehensive understanding of attendees’ satisfaction with your event.
Using digital waivers can help ensure that your data is:
- High-Quality. Digital waivers can automatically check and validate entries to ensure they are filled out correctly by registrants. This standardizes data entry, enhancing accuracy. Additionally, there is no need to manually enter or copy data, eliminating possible human error.
- Secure. These waivers typically leverage security measures like encryption, two-factor authentication (2FA), role-based access controls, and secure storage solutions. This prevents leaks and protects sensitive data.
- Timely. Once a registrant submits the waiver, it is immediately stored in a secure database. From here, your team can access the data at any time, giving you much faster access to insights than traditional paper forms.
- Accessible. Because waivers are stored in a virtual database, you won’t need to waste time digging through a file cabinet. If you need to find a specific waiver, search for identifiers like the attendee or volunteer’s name, date the form was signed, or birth date. You can also export data into a CSV file to streamline analysis and reporting.
To reap these benefits, Smartwaiver’s guide to creating a waiver recommends choosing flexible software that allows you to either leverage templates or mold them to your needs. For example, you might add a custom field asking attendees to indicate how they found your event to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Improved follow-up communications.
To truly make the most of your event, you’ll need to retrieve and follow up with leads. Establishing new contacts, whether they are prospective members, clients, or peer organizations, is key to growing your impact and reach. Use digital waiver insights to level up your communications with ideas like:
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- Sharing personalized thank-you emails that greet the attendees by name, mention personal details, acknowledge the event they attended, and prompt them to take a tailored next action (such as signing up for your newsletter).
- Sending targeted content based on attendees’ interests. For instance, provide a link to a recording of one of the sessions at the conference or a blog post about a similar topic.
- Recommending future events that are similar to the one the attendee joined. They may have similar speakers, topics, or networking opportunities.
- Creating segments of attendees based on shared characteristics that you can leverage for future marketing efforts.
You can use the insights from your digital waivers for more than just follow-up and communications. For example, evaluate which events and sessions garner the most attendance to better understand your audience’s interests. Then, use your findings to choose your next event idea, speaker, or topic.
The benefits of using digital waivers go far beyond protecting your organization from liability. They can impact attendees’ impression of your organization before, during, and after the event, offering a more convenient and tailored experience. This will help you recruit more new members, deepen relationships with existing ones, provide invaluable insights, and foster sustainable growth.
Author Bio
Bradley Olson
Bradley Olson is the Marketing Manager at Smartwaiver, an industry-leading digital waiver provider trusted by thousands of organizations to deliver powerful, streamlined smart waivers.
Bradley supports efforts to bring waiver technology to the nonprofits, businesses, and schools that need it, protecting their reputations and livelihoods. With 15 years of marketing experience and over 25 years working for-profit and nonprofit businesses in a variety of different verticals, Bradley is uniquely qualified to educate others on digital waivers.
