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Why We Use Event Brite for the Major Events
1) A regular Meetup event can take Paypal payments, BUT
a) Only one organizer can assign his or her PayPal account at a time.
b) Someone can RSVP “yes” and not pay for the dinner. In other words, PayPal is not required even if it’s listed as such.
2) Meetup has Amazon Payments system with required payments BUT
a) After 4 years on the PayPal system, I don’t think people will want to sign up for Amazon also.
b) It doesn’t have a “tiered” ticketing option. In other words, you can’t offer “Early Bird” tickets..
c) You can’t have a “Refund Policy” or other type of waiver as a “required” question to be answered.
Event Brite primarily uses PayPal, but “Pay By Check” can also be an option..
3) Neither Paypal or Amazon can take RSVP’s from other groups unless you ask people to sign up for the other Meetups. This results in future duplication of emails.
For example, an event gets posted on CDO and SDO. You are a member of CDO, but the main host is SDO. So, you become a member of SDO also to sign up for that event. Now you are member of CDO and SDO (not a bad thing necessarily, because these are both great groups..). The next time the event is cross-posted, you get 2 invites instead of 1.
In these events, Event Brite (which is totally different system than Meetup.com) is being used as the main site for the Major Events. Events get posted there and then get marketed on multiple Meetup sites (and other sites like “Facebook”). The Event Brite event becomes a single collector of the RSVP’s. There can be no duplicates using this method (which has been a problem with multi-meetup event postings.) This gives us a hard head count of people that we can use for planning.
Also, Event Brite has it’s own mailing list function. So, people can be invited directly from Event Brite as well as Meetup and other online sites. Many of you, if you have RSVP’d for one of these events before, will have gotten an invite directly from Event Brite. If that is the case, then RSVP’ing is even easier.
4) Meetup doesn’t require you to give your real names and the RSVP list is not downloadable. On Event Brite, you can download a list into Excel which I can sort by last name which makes it very easy for check in purposes. In using Event Brite, I can keep your names private from others while still having that information for event management purposes.
5) Other Advantages:
a) Mailing List function – You can collect and manage separate mailing lists easily.
b) Survey Questions – You can create survey questions to gather critical event information. They can be made “required” questions to be answered upon RSVP’ing.
How We Use Meetup With Event Brite
1) Event is created on Event Brite first.
2) Satellite events are created on Meetup sites and possibly other sites.
3) RSVP’s are CLOSED on the Meetup sites. This prevents you from RSVP’ing on Meetup and thinking that you RSVP’d for the event. In order for a solid head count to be made, the RSVP must be on Event Brite.
4) Links to the Event Brite posting are listed on the Meetup Event Postings.
So, to RSVP for these events,
a) Recognize that the Event is NOT REALLY CLOSED
b) Find the LINK to the Event Brite event posting within the Meetup posting.
c) Click on it and RSVP on Event Brite.
d) an RSVP confirmation email will be sent to you from Event Brite. You can use this as your “ticket” if you print it out. (although, we have your name on a list anyway.)
e) If you’re not sure you RSVP’d, use the “Contact” link in the upper right hand corner of the Event Brite posting to contact the organizer (usually me), and I will resend your ticket confirmation.
Who Else Uses Event Brite?
Some of the largest and most successful Meetup groups in the Chicago are use Event Brite such as:
1) Digital Photography Group
2) Wine Meetup
3) Chicagoland Moviefans
4) Chicago Irish Pub Music Meetup
5) Chicago Dining Out (of course)
They are probably more successful due to the use of Event Brite.