Running Online Events That People Actually Attend

The first wave of online events proved something uncomfortable: it is easy to get people to register for something free and hard to get them to turn up. The gap between the two is where most of the work sits.

Before the event

**Make registration cost something small.** A question they have to answer, a short form, a calendar confirmation they must click. Zero friction produces zero commitment.

**Send fewer, better reminders.** One a week out, one the day before, one an hour before with the link in the first line. Not five.

**Test the platform with the actual speakers on the actual machines.** Most of the failures we have seen were a speaker discovering their microphone permissions ninety seconds before going live.

During the event

Online attention is short and the exits are one click away. Structure accordingly.

• Start on time, with something worth hearing in the first two minutes.
• Keep any single segment under twenty minutes.
• Give people something to do — a poll, a question, a chat prompt — within the first five minutes, so participating feels normal.
• Have a second person watching chat so the speaker does not have to.
• Record everything, and say at the start that you will send it.

After the event

This is the part most organisers skip, and it is where the value is. Send the recording within twenty-four hours, along with a short written summary and links to anything mentioned. Send it to the people who did not attend too — they registered because they were interested, and a well-timed recording often converts better than the live session did.

Then segment: attended and stayed, attended and left early, registered and did not attend. Those three groups deserve different follow-ups.

On tooling

Use the boring, reliable platform. The one with the best interface is worth nothing if a third of your audience cannot join from a corporate network. Check that it works on a phone, on a locked-down laptop, and without an app install.

Where it does pay to invest is in the surrounding pieces: a proper registration page on your own domain, a working reminder sequence, a place for the recording to live afterwards, and a comment or Q&A layer that lets the conversation continue after the stream ends.

The measure that matters

Not registrations. Not even attendance. The number worth reporting is how many real conversations the event started — replies, enquiries, meetings booked. Judge the format on that and you will run better events by the third one.