The Top 7 Causes for Attendance Problems
Attendance problems could have many causes. But most programs experience attendance problems for the same reasons. Here are the top seven reasons why programs have attendance problems, and what to do about each cause.
7. Not enough new courses or events.
Every program should be offering around 20 percent new offerings each year. On the other hand, you should not have more than 40 percent of your courses new each year.
6. Low retention rate
You are not keeping your past participants. From 30 percent to 50 percent (the higher the better) of your current participants should be past participants. Either you need to market to them more, or offer more new courses for them.
5. ’Wrong’ courses or events
You are not offering the right courses or events, the offerings your participants want. Survey past participants, look at your data, redesign your product mix to have more of the offerings that your audience wants.
4. Not emailing enough
People are afraid to email too much, but you should email at least four times prior to the session. As long as your unsubscribe and bounce rates are below 1 percent, you should email more.
3. Not targeting promotion enough
If you are a community program, you should be mailing brochures by carrier route, not zip code. Contact LERN so we can tell you which carrier routes you should be mailing to, and which carrier routes you are just wasting money on. If you promote over a wide geographic area, you also can target your promotion better. Ask LERN how to do it.
2. Hard to register online
More people are buying online, more people want to register with you online. If online registration is hard to find, hard to complete, or just not available, fix it ASAP.
1. Print brochure distribution severely cut back
If you have severely cut back your print brochure distribution (cut distribution by 50 percent or more), you need to distribute more brochures. If you have eliminated print brochure distribution, well, you just shut down 70 percent of the way programs generate registrations.
If you are a LERN member, Ask LERN. It’s a free service as part of your membership. No question is too tough. No question is too basic. No question is stupid. Just Ask LERN. Email info@lern.org or call us at (800) 678-5376.
