5 Ways to pull off holiday events like a pro using online forms

Hello fellow form builders,

This is the fifth post of the five-part series on "Getting ready for the holiday season with Zoho Forms." This series aims to help you make the best of your forms and grow your business this season.

Holiday events are suppose to be fun, and so is hosting them. So if you are overwhelmed and it seems like your event organizing is all over the place, then something has gone wrong. Yet, sweat not - we've got you!  

The entire event planning process can be made easy by automating the hard tasks, giving you more room to concentrate on what is important. Zoho Forms can be that time saver, to help you collect attendees' details, and nurture them along the way. This way your part will be to use all this information to arrange for the event. 

Deliver a form to gather exactly the details you need

Your attendees will prefer a form that's quick and easy to fill out, so use as few fields as you can. Figure out what information your administration team will need to set up the event, and avoid asking for information they don't need. In addition to necessities like names and contact information, consider what services or activities the event offers, and what individual information is needed to make that work.

When you need more details, try segmenting the form into multiple pages, where, each page focuses on different information. To understand this better take a look at the example that is shown below.  

Design forms that adapt to attendees' needs

If you have more than one event planned or you have different options to offer each attendee, you can avoid making multiple forms for each of them. Collect all the information you need in one form and customize the entry process. How it works: You can create registration forms that display questions contextually based on the attendee's answer. This will make your attendees feel like they are receiving a customized solution This means your attendees only need to fill out one form, as more fields are smoothly added only when they're needed. You don't need complex APIs or coding to make this possible for your forms—a simple set of logical configurations does the work! 

In the images shown below, the attendees are asked their choice of date or the choice of ticket based on the event they intend to attend. You can see the dates and ticket choices appear upon choosing Classic Christmas Carol and only ticket choices appear upon choosing Modern Christmas Carols (19th December), based on the event type.

Set up submission numbers as tickets or seats available

As you invite the attendees, ensure you aren't opening your invitation to more than you can accommodate. You can define the maximum attendance when you create the form, so you will only receive submissions within that limit. Thereafter, users trying to sign up will receive a custom messages such as "All tickets have been sold". Check out how to get this done for your forms,  here . 

Share forms depending on closed or open events 

Keep internal events secure by making the attendance forms available to only the organization's members. This allows your co-workers to receive your invitations through an email, when  shared . For a holiday party, a concert, or any occasion that invites public participation, share a link to the form that is accessible by everyone . To spread the word further, you can share the form using  social media . Otherwise,  embedding it in your existing event website can work wonders for encouraging maximum participation.   

Nurture attendees with warm emails

Received tons of RSVPs? Great! Now, you can express your gladness by  sending out friendly emails to all those who've registered with you. This can be a great way to let them know that their participation is anticipated. You can also use it as a platform to inform your attendees of any additional information you'd want them to know before attending the event. To give you an idea, I have created a personalized email for the users, shown in the image below.

Over to you! 

Event planning needn't be complicated. Try out a few of these ideas as you gear up for your holiday events, and let us know how it worked out in the comments below. We'd love to hear from you! 

Stay tuned! 

Prasana

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