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Creating a new Zeffy event
For three years now, we have used Zeffy to process registrations to our Annual Conference. Each year, I make small tweaks to make the process more efficient. Below is a quick summary of my process. Some of your processes or priorities might be different but I hope reading this summary might help you. I’ll skip the obvious sections of Title, Date, Address, Description, Color, Banner, and Logo.
Tickets
If your event has a space limit, the “Total number of tickets” field is very helpful. If you need to limit tickets by type, that is also an option.
The group ticket option is a great addition. For instance, we will be selling tickets to our overseas conference in 2027 that includes housing. We plan to use the group ticket option so that couples can reserve a double occupancy room.
For our event, we have a few different types of tickets (and some of those tickets are available at different times. I have found it is best to create all the tickets at the beginning. The “early bird ticket” option is very helpful here, in a few ways. We offer an “early bird” price and one can simply set the date for that ticket to be hidden. I do the same thing for our “regular” tickets but hide them manually be making the “early bird” date before the current day. If big brother Zeffy is listening, I wonder if it would be more efficient to have the ability to simply “hide” tickets or have a date range for when each ticket is available. I always have stay up until Midnight on March 1st to manually activate the regular tickets even though the “early bird” tickets disappear automatically.
Questions
The custom questions are very flexible for event building. For instance, one can have questions that are asked per buyer (once) or per ticket (as many tickets as are purchased). This is helpful when we have churches who are purchasing Conference registrations for both of their musicians. HOWEVER, this is a problem for which I haven’t found a solution. In addition to selling full Conference registrations, we also offer a daily rate for those who can’t attend the entire time. I have to create a separate event for the daily registrations because if someone were to purchase Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, they would have to complete their information 3 times because the system thinks they are purchasing three different tickets.
Having a limit on the number of responses for a question has been super helpful this year. We are attending civil rights sites this summer and only have a limited number of spots for each location. The limit on each answer is extremely helpful in monitoring this.
I do wish there was a way to have conditional questions, but I don’t think there currently is. For instance, when we ask if our registrants have dietary restrictions. It would be nice if they chose “other” a conditional box popped up.
One recent addition I have addition to my forms is a required question that acknowledges that he buyer understands Zeffy’s business model and that they can change the defaulted contribution to Zeffy. I have found that they still don’t read it, but at least it shifts the responsibility a bit when the call and are confused about why there is an extra charge.
Other features
Recently, Zeffy added e-mail notifications when one adds in manual payments. I have found this ver helpful when my membership assistant is tracking registrations through e-mail confirmations rather than checking the back-end of Zeffy.
Another thing on my wish list would be to have installments for payments for events. Our 2027 Conference, because it is overseas, costs much more. We would love to have registrants purchase ticket but only pay a deposit for the trip, with other installments due at a future date.
It has all been trial and error but I hope these tips help!