Securing Attendance

You’ve scheduled a session, created your content and practised the delivery. But what if people don’t turn up? 

Don’t leave it to chance – people forget, and reminders don’t always pop up. Here are some tips to maximise your audience numbers: 

Invite, remind, and remind again 

We probably don’t realise it, but when we’re in the office we get tons of visual and personal reminders about what we should be doing, when. At home though, it’s pretty easy to get lost in a task and forget to join meetings. And guess what, those calendar reminders don’t always work.  

If you’re hosting a session, send out a reminder email a few days before and then again one hour before it starts. You can either send them out manually, or even better, set them to go automatically.  Either way, it’s simple to do and we couldn’t believe the difference it made to our attendance numbers. 

Make a compelling invite 

There are plenty of utterly boring topics in business that just have to be covered. A well-thought-out invite can make even the dullest session sound exciting.  

Remember to focus on what matters to your learners – demonstrate what they’ll get from the session and how it’ll help them do their job better, faster or more easily.  

Keep it short 

You know that sinking feeling you get when you’re invited to a three-hour session that could be covered in one. And with no planned breaks, you know walking away from your computer means you’ll miss something, or worse still be asked a question. 

If you don’t like it, why would anyone else? Ideally try to limit sessions to less than 30 minutes, or if you really need to, maximum an hour. For anything longer, consider breaking your content into three or four smaller sessions. Your colleagues will thank you, and you’ll get the perfect opportunity to recap and consolidate learning. Win win.