Why Events, and Event Data, Matter.

For longer than many of us can imagine campaign events and fundraisers have run in a very non-data rich environment. When I first started working on campaigns back in 1996, supporters attending campaign events were asked to fill out paper supporter cards which campaigns would toil over entering into their databases, sometimes never entering them at all.

As campaigns have matured and technology has allowed for greater efficiencies and functionalities, events, and data at events, have stayed in the slow lane of progress up until late. In 2012, the Romney campaign started to evolve this process by ticketing their 236 campaign rallies through the Eventbrite platform. Because of this, they were able to amass a data set of nearly every single person that not only registered in advance to come to the event, but also accounting for the people who actually showed up.

Today’s political campaign is about amassing the best data sets and leveraging the best-in-class technology platforms or apps in order to push the campaign into a technological overdrive. The latest iteration of that is Voter Gravity’s API integration into the Eventbrite platform. By connecting your Eventbrite account into your Voter Gravity account, you’ll create a seamless data pull for your event data into the Voter Gravity CRM. This includes the ability to pull in all of the event attendees, any financial data that goes along with fundraisers, and matching these records back to the voter file.  So how can you make sure you’re making the most out of each event?

Here are four of my favorite tips on how to maximize data collection and awareness around each one:

1. Make Each Attendee Count:

Each event can be setup with any type of data collection process.  From the basics of name and email address, to asking custom data collection points of event attendees for volunteer information.  Use this opportunity to know more about your attendees before the event even begins.

2. Track and Learn:

For every event, use the the opportunity to learn more about how people are finding out about your event by tracking email sends, promoted online ads, or even groups helping co-host or promote the event. You can add up to 90 custom tracking links per event.

3. Allow Your Attendees to Promote Your Event

We have a saying that “Events are more fun when your friends come.” Not only is that true, but it also means that the reach of your event exponentially grows if your event attendees are allowed to share your event via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, etc. By allowing your events to be shared, you turn on a broader audience reach than what you might be able to capture with your standard channels alone.

4. Be Smart, Onsite

By using our mobile tools for iOS, you can turn your on-site event experience, into a high speed data collection process.  Not only can you turn yours or your volunteer’s devices into a mobile scanning platform through Eventbrite Neon, but you can also use it to register people onsite or even sell merchandise or collect donations.

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Chad Barth is the Senior Political & Government Relations Manager for Eventbrite, where he helps campaigns, fundraising professionals and government agencies and departments manage and promote their events on Eventbrite’s platform.

Prior to joining Eventbrite, Chad worked for over 15 years on political campaigns. With a passion for technology that improves the collection and strategic use of supporter data, Chad helped the RNC develop some of the most advanced, non-commercially available databases, web platform and advanced VoIP technologies.

In Chad’s spare time he is also the founder of Concerts for a Cause a 501c3 organization that he started based on his annual Concert for Epilepsy, a fundraiser that, that its eight-year history, has raised more than $250,000 for epilepsy awareness and research.