Are You Doing Everything You Can to Get Full Attendance in Your Programs?

DSA has been presenting in-house workshops on various aspects of instructional design for many years. We started to notice that some clients had full workshops with eager learners and a waiting list, while others struggled to barely make the minimums. We’re thinking: if you’re going to the trouble to set up a program or event, fly in people and a presenter, why not get as many people to attend as you can? So, working with Jane Sink, VP of Marketing at DSA we created a marketing package for each of our programs, and started sending it out to the in-company client to modify and send out to prospective learners, department heads, other divisions, even colleagues at other companies. We created the words, the client figures out to whom and where to send the information.

If you are working with a supplier ask them to help you put a promotional package together. If it is your own program, create a package for others to use.

The package includes: Biographical sketch of presenter, benefits-laden description of the program, a marketing plan with suggestions for keeping the people registered, a sample email announcement to send out, and a sample phone script to use when talking to others about the workshop.

We’ll never forget the first time this package was used. instead of a minimum (10 people) workshop, the client had 25 people signed up, and a waiting list. There was so much interest generated, another workshop was scheduled immediately with this client. Wow! Powerful!

Take a look at the way one of our recent clients took our sample email message, and modified it to paint a compelling picture for the attendees:

Although training is one of the common elements that binds us together, we all have different expertise, perceptions, and approaches for designing, developing, delivering, and assessing training. The purpose of the workshop is to bring us to a more common ground on how we design training programs and classes. Hopefully, taking away the same experience, the products and services we provide in our respective areas will spring from the same design and method and help foster more collaboration between teams, offices, and product areas.

Now isn’t that message more appealing and inviting than: Come to Required Workshop Monday Tuesday and Wednesday: Starts at 8am!

Create a marketing package that creates a compelling need, is easy to modify, and is effortless for others to pass along.

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Our thanks to C. Fitz Ward, Sr. Training & Development Manager, SunGard HTE Inc. for sharing this with us.