The psychology of no-shows. And the dynamics we used to increase attendance rates.

Non-attendance doesn’t have to be an inevitable downside of running free events. Here’s a predictable way to optimise attendance that doesn’t rely on guesswork.

The speakers are preparing, caterers have arrived, the PA team just finished the sound-check.

You’re ready.

And then that fear kicks in...

What if nobody shows up?

Depending on the event, some industries report drop-out rates of 50% or more.

Ticket holders miss events for all kinds of reasons - people work late. People change their mind. Emergencies happen. And the easiest solution for them is to simply not show up.

They don’t think about the wasted pizzas or the disappointed keynote who is speaking to a half-filled auditorium. Or all the people who would have loved to be there but couldn’t get a ticket.

Non-attendance doesn’t have to be an inevitable downside of running free events.

But the existing solutions were superficial and unreliable.

Overbooking (by 120-150%) doesn’t work because, even when you use previous attendance data as an estimate, you’re still guessing. Airlines overbook because it’s easy for them to cover a hotel room and bump somebody onto the next flight. With a free event, there’s no next flight.

Besides, overbooking adds a new problem...

What if everybody shows up and there’s not enough room for everyone?

A reliable way to predict attendance

We knew there had to be a predictable way to optimise attendance that didn’t rely on guesswork.

After speaking with our clients and analysing attendance rates across free events, we had a strong sense of the depth and impact of non-attendance.

We had a hunch about the underlying cause. And that we could solve it with a combination of technology, behavioural psychology, and the right incentives.

By design, free events are accessible. Sometimes it’s more important to share ideas openly than to create revenue.

The problem is, free makes it too easy to reserve a ticket. There’s little commitment to attend and no obligation to cancel.

So we set about changing the dynamics and adding some friction to the booking process.

We used a financial incentive to reduce speculative reservations, together with a one-click option to make it easy for attendees to cancel and free up unused places for others.

The big idea

In his classic 1984 book Influence, psychology and marketing professor, Robert Cialdini describes the seven behaviours that underlie human motivations. We decided to tap into three of them…

Commitment and consistency, reciprocation, and scarcity.

The idea was to gamify the incentives. We would introduce a nominal deposit that would be placed on hold at the time of reservation and charged, only if the person didn’t show up to the event.

Scarcity

The size of the venue makes tickets inherently scarce. Communicating that scarcity at the time of reservation begs the question “do I really want to attend?”.

Commitment and consistency

Reserving a ticket itself isn’t sufficient to drive the commitment to attend. But being prompted to enter credit card details creates a small barrier to entry that does two things: it reduces speculative bookings from the mildly curious, and it creates a small commitment from those who are positive about attending.

Commitment creates consistency. The best way to encourage somebody to follow through is to complete a small action that establishes a small investment. Now they have skin in the game.

Reciprocation

Reciprocation, in this case, comes in the form of openness and a shared interest. Candidly communicating the non-attendance fee is courteous.

There’s a fourth piece of psychology in play here in the form of loss aversion.

Clear communication is key

To make the new deposit system effective, we had to communicate the concept clearly so that everybody understood how it would work and why we were doing it.

It wasn’t just about investing in the ticket purchase. Members had to buy into the idea of a non-attendance fee itself. They had to believe that it was a a fair solution to a real problem.

The technology

To make it all work, we had to build a seamless reservation and checkout system to power the non-attendance fees, something that just works and disappears into the background.

No More No shows

We’ve tested the non-attendance fee amongst our private test group and the qualitative feedback was immediately positive. There was a full house for the first event and there was critical buy-in from everybody around the non-attendance fee.

The non-attendance fee eliminated the guesswork of overbooking and reduced non-attendance, resulting in fewer disappointed members, and a community invested in one another.