Tech Review: AddEvent

As a charity that runs regular events to help achieve our mission, it is important to us that the process of signing up and attending is as seamless as possible. To help, we have employed AddEvent to create “Add to Calendar” links on our event pages and in the emails we send after someone has signed up.

The aim is to cut out the need for attendees to manually add the event to their calendar, and to ultimately help them remember the event and be ready to come along on the day.

If your charity has lots of people sign up to its events, but far fewer actually attending, AddEvent could be the answer. This review by our Content Writer Laura Stanley describes our experience with AddEvent to help you decide.

In one word

Logical. The app is not the most all-singing all-dancing piece of technology, but it is an asset when it comes to events and attendee retention, to the point where not using it seems illogical.

Features

It’s really straightforward in terms of creating events and adding buttons to webpages and emails. When you’ve created the event, it shows you how to copy the buttons and where. AddEvent gives specific instructions on how to set it up, whether it’s destined for a landing page or an email. For a landing page, you copy and paste code into your content management system (CMS) –  in our case using the <> button – and it’s as simple as that.

You can customise the event description so that it contains important information pertaining to the event, such as links to join. This is helpful because confirmation emails can get lost in busy inboxes. By encouraging people who sign up to our events to add the event to their calendar, where they can access information easily, we improve their chance of attending and make the process simpler for them and us.

The learning curve

We have used AddEvent for around eight months. When creating events, we always ensure the “Add to Calendar” button is on all pages relating to the event (including upon completion of the sign-up form) and in confirmation emails.

I’d advise taking a little time for trial and error when using it on websites, just because every CMS is different, but it’s been relatively seamless in adding it to our event upload process. There may be additional features we have yet to use (such as importing calendars rather than recreating them manually in AddEvent), but so far, we have used it to decrease the drop-off rate for our events, particularly those that are free to attend.

Value for money

Fortunately, AddEvent has a non-profit/small business discount which makes the product better value for money and more worthwhile as a simple tool for increasing event attendance. We hold several events each year, including bi-monthly webinars, so the cost per event works out well for us.

Pros and cons of AddEvent

Pros

• Ease of use. Creating events is intuitive, much like using any email calendar
• Analytics. Seeing the numbers of people who have added your events to their calendar
• Impact on attendee retention and the ability to set calendar reminders at intervals before the event

Cons

• The process can feel time-consuming in terms of duplicating event creation for both our own CMS and AddEvent

Final score

9/10 - AddEvent has been really great as a tool for our events. It’s simple, effective, and great for sharing event information with our attendees and improving attendance. But without the non-profit discount, it may be too expensive for some, especially considering its singular purpose.

Laura is a content writer for Charity Digital. Writing primarily alongside our charity’s partners, she has created articles, podcasts, and webinars on everything from cyber security to climate action, recently producing Charity Digital’s report on climate change in the UK charity sector.