Event Registration with Forms

In this special video series, JayCee (your virtual JourneyCARE guide) walks through a 4-step process to set up any event.

TRANSCRIPT:

In Journey Care, there are four pieces to setting up an event. This allows you a lot of flexibility in setting up different styles of events with different options. We'll cover each piece in detail, but just to give you a sense of where we are going, let's run through the four pieces real quick. First, we need to set up your products.

You'll have a product for each ticket type that someone could buy. You'll also want to create products for any optional add-ons. If it's a free event, you do not need this step. Second, we're going to need a registration form where someone can sign up and make a payment. If you're charging for your event, if you have member pricing, you will need two forms.

One will go on your public site. The other will go in your member area, so that login is required. Next, we will create the automation for what you'd like to have happen after a registration is submitted. One of the most magical things about Journey Care is that you can truly customize the post registration experience.

You do that through the workflow actions that you add. Finally, we're going to put the event with the right links on your website calendar. Once the links are on your site, you're ready for people to sign up. Once you've mastered those four steps, you can create nearly any kind of event registration configuration that your organization needs.

Now, let's go through each piece in detail.



TRANSCRIPT:

Anything that you wish to sell as part of your event registration process is considered a product. So you need a product for any ticket types, any optional items like guest dinners, event merchandise, or add-on experiences like local tours or receptions. Essentially, if it's something that they can purchase on the registration form, you need a product for it.

You'll create your products by going to payments in the left hand navigation. Then products across the top. Navigation. If you've never created a product before, here's how you do it. From the products page, click create product. You'll see that the blank product has a lot of options, but you really don't have to fill much out here.

Most of this can be left blank. The sections to pay attention to are the product name, and you might want to add a very brief description. Then as you scroll down to the bottom, you'll see where you put in the price information. If you need to limit the quantity, note that there is a checkbox to track inventory.

When you check that box, you'll be able to put in the limit on how many can be sold. More than likely, everything else on the screen can stay blank unless you have a special situation that requires more fine tuning. Once you have your products ready to go, you'll be all set to start creating your registration form.

I'll show you how to do that in the next step.

TRANSCRIPT:

Once you have your products created, the next thing you need to do is give people a way to buy. The most common way to do that in Journey Care is to create a form using a form. You can ask for all of the details you'd like. You may want their contact information, details about which activities they'll participate in, meal preferences or mobility restrictions.

All of these things are simply fields on a form. Alternatively, you may have a very simple signup form that really just collects name, email, and payment. The choice is yours. The important distinction here with Journey Care is that if you have some things that only members can purchase, like a member priced ticket, you will need two forms.

You'll have a public version and a member version, or you may have a form for each member type if they have different priced products. You'll control who can access each form by putting the form in a location which can only be accessed by the right people. So for example, your member registration form would go in your portal so that people have to log in to get to it.

Once you get all of the information put onto your form that you wish to collect, you'll need to add the products that you created in step one. To do this, use the sell products element. Drag it over to the bottom of your form. When you have it selected, a panel will open on the right where you will choose which products to display as you scroll down On this panel.

On the right side, you'll see a variety of options, like whether you want to allow coupon codes and layout preferences. Feel free to explore these option. Once you have your products ready to go, you'll be all set to start creating your registration form. I'll show you how to do that in the next step.

TRANSCRIPT:

After you have your registration form set up, you'll want to set what's going to happen after someone submits it. For this, you'll go into your Journey Care account and head to the automation section. If you already have a previous event automation, I think it's always easiest to start by duplicating that and then editing, but you can start from scratch if you need to do so.

We're going to do a few things in our workflow. We'll have a trigger at the top that tells the workflow when to run. We'll tell the workflow the date, time of the event so it knows when to perform certain things. We'll add emails for confirmation or reminders, and we'll add other actions like tags or notifications.

Every event, workflow really boils down to these same components, but you can put them together to create a post reregistration experience that is extremely flexible. Let's look first at the trigger. Your trigger at the top of this workflow is what kicks everything off. Your trigger could be filling out the form or it could be purchasing the specific ticket.

You'll notice for this example, I actually have two triggers at the top. That is because I have a member ticket and a non-member ticket, I want anyone who purchases either of those to drop into this workflow. But what if you want to have a different experience for different types of attendees? In that situation, you can choose to create different workflows.

To handle each attendee type, you get to decide one of the most magical things about Journey Care is how flexible it can be, and this is one of those places where the flexibility really shines. A good example of when you might want separate workflows is when the experiences need to be very different.

Perhaps you have a registration form for regular attendees and a registration form for sponsors. You may want your sponsors to get completely different messages, different tags, different reminders, et cetera. In that case, it just makes sense to use a completely different workflow. For today's example, we'll just assume that everyone who registers via either form is going to get the same post registration experience, so we'll have both triggers at the top of the same workflow.

Next, the first action for an event workflow should be event start date. When you click on the action, a panel opens up on the right side for you to set the details, choose the type specific date, time, and put in your event details. By doing this, we'll be able to tell the workflow to perform certain actions at timing that is based on that date and time.

It makes it possible to say things like, do this three days before, or Do this one day after. If you have a multi-day event, you'll wanna set this to be the date and time of the earliest activity associated with the event. Essentially, whenever things kick off on day one, after you set your date and time, I recommend putting a confirmation email in as your next action.

If you've duplicated this workflow from a previous one, instead of starting from scratch, you'll want to make sure that any emails you copied have the correct details for this specific event. Be sure to include a Zoom link or any other instructions that the attendee needs. After your confirmation email, you can add in any other actions that you want.

For example, you may want to add a tag specific to this event or send an internal notification to an event coordinator. Simply add an action for each of these things. Once you get through all of the things that you want to do, immediately after someone registers, you may want the workflow to wait until closer to the event to do other things.

You do this by adding a wait step that is tied to the event start time that you set at the top of this workflow. Instead of choosing, wait for X amount of time, choose wait for event appointment time, and then you can set the exact timing as before, exact time or after. For example, in this screenshot, we have the wait step holding until one day before the event, day and time after that wait step, add in.

Anything else that you'd like the workflow to do, so perhaps you are waiting until one day before the event and sending a reminder email. Then you could add another wait step and say, wait until two days after, and then send this email containing the event survey. In this way, the automation is extremely flexible, allowing you to design a truly unique experience for anyone who registers for your event.

Once you have your automation ready to go, you can go ahead and put the links to the registration forms on your calendar, in your member portal, or in emails. When people fill out the form, all the right things will now happen. There's a lot that can be put into workflows, which can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming, but just start with the essentials.

Get comfortable there, and add the fancier bits when you are ready. With this approach, your attendee experience can get increasingly personalized with each event you do.