We desire to offer a lower price for those who sign up early, and then have pricing increase as we get closer to the reunion (including at the door) to encourage folks to register (and pay) sooner rather than later.

That will give us confidence in covering the total cost of our event and also help encourage more people to go.

We have been preparing our reunion announcement using the Event planner tool, but it only seems to give one "price" option.

Is there a way we can forgo the one price option and have staggered pricing, something like the following:

"Please, for the optimum pricing (and to encourage others to go), purchase your tickets early:

* Before May 1, 2015, tickets are $55 per person

* Between May 1 and June 1, 2015, tickets are $65 per person

* After June 1, 2015 (including at the door), tickets are $80 per person"

Surely others must have desired to implement the same approach before??

January 2015, we posted March 1, 2015 deadline: $25 p/p price increase. That brought in a few payments. We have since reverted to our original price per person. Raising our price didn't seem fair to newer Registered members of our website. [Early in our planning process, our Committee contacted classmates and asked them to prepay. The prepay funds we received covered our venue Contract deadline payments.]
Hang in there - it will all work out

We just had a $5 increase I think a month before the event. We listed this on the page and just changed the price of the same "event" vs listing different prices.

This was primarily to get a good head count for our catered food event.

We had an early bird discount to encourage early registration. Being our first ever All School Reunion, we were getting the word out. We had to give the caterer a ball park count two months before so we made the price increase by $5 after that cut-off and then had a final deadline for registrations a month before, with no late sales.
Feedback we received indicated a $5 'discount' was not an incentive. People were waiting to see who was coming before they commit. We will likely follow the same format next time, only making the early bird tickets $10 cheaper. More people are on the website & our network has expanded massively.

As to how to make it work in the reunion planner, manually adjust the price the day of the price change. I would suggest doing this in the wee hours of the morning so no one feels cheated.

Elena, keep in mind that most business conference registrations are based on date deadlines and do not revert back to the original price because someone is a late comer. If our group was any indicator, they were late-comers through procrastination....some fearing the online process.

I have found out about professional conferences after the price increase and never thought I deserved a discount. Just the way it is.

Flipping the price back indicated you really didn't need the early registrations. You rewarded the procrastinators, in effect.

Right, the discount incentive depends on the cost of the "ticket". Ours was only $35, so $5 is a BIG increase.

Casual classmate feedback is just that. People that can afford it don't care that much about saving $5 or $10 either. We had our events well laid out at least 6 months in advance with detailed pages for each event - 2 were free with only the "food" charged.

Of course all this is not an exact science since it varies by geography and graduating year. Our committee comprises about 10 varied members, so from that many we got a pretty good idea of what would fly.

Thank you! Our class, historically, procrastinates! The only incentive for our Committee to receive payments, is to identify how many will definitely attend vs making a profit. Working in the private sector, I'm aware of early discount. The bigger problem is finding missing classmates. For 25 years, our Committee has planned 4 successful Class Reunions plus our upcoming 50th - we have developed a good relationship with our Alumni office and they too, do not have at least 100 current classmate addresses. We do have Sponsors: classmates who generously paid for a portion of our reunion expenses. But we need more classmates to join our website - once classmates join, the website "sells" our Reunion. We decided to do a 2nd mailing to 'good' addresses. This is for our 50 Year 3-day Reunion weekend. All Reunion expenses are currently covered by payments previously received. Our hope is to notify as many classmates as possible - our 50th will be held October 2015. Reunion organizers need thick skin! - those classmates who show up will attend regardless of the price. Most classmates received 3-years notice re: Main Event price. If anyone has successfully enticed their classmates 6 months out, please let me know! Thank you.

I feel your pain. For all of our past reunions, most people waited until the last 60 days (a couple even registered the day before). They mostly wanted to see who was coming. That is why we were so surprised when we offered discounted hotel rooms a year in advance of our 50th (April 2016). I don't know if it was because of the large discount on the rooms (nearly 50%) or the excitement generated from the website (as we only recently joined CC), but we sold out our allotment in 5 days and had to ask the hotel for additional rooms and those are nearly sold out too.

As for things to do, you mentioned that you just did a second mailing to the "good" addresses that have not joined. Marketing experts say you have to do at least three before people pay attention. I would also suggest that you join classmates and other reunion sites and post information about the reunion. We have found that our Facebook site has brought in about 10% of our classmates. We also have a special committee who does nothing but look for, call and write missing classmates. We have sent out two class-wide e-mails to our registered classmates asking them to go on their Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media accounts and post a personal message about our site. We also asked them to go through their personal address book and personally contact anyone they see who is still on our missing classmates list.

We were somewhat fearful that this would all appear to be "too pushy" and might turn some people off. Instead they have been so excited about the 50-year reunion, they thanked us for giving them something to do.

Hope some of this helps.

Art

Thank you, Art.
Direct contact with classmates, particularly by phone, has proven to be very effective.
Unlike you, we do not have a subcommittee to research & make phone calls. That is a huge regret for us! We've had slim success on Facebook. But I like your LinkedIn suggestion - thanks for mentioning.
Our reunion weekend is in Philadelphia PA. We have paid classmates flying in from UK, Hawaii, SoCal, SC and everywhere in between. You are so right about seeing Who Is Coming. One would think after 50 years that shouldn't matter but it certainly does matter. The procrastinators in our class live local. I've had classmates knock on my door the day of a Reunion with cash! Our hotel has been good to us - we sold out our room block four times. Philly in October is very popular on weekends. And our competition this year happens to be the Pope - his visit ends a few days prior to our 50th!
Someone reminded me for our big bash 25 years ago, I was pulling out my hair 6 weeks prior with 80 paid and we had 325 at the end. Classmates who join our website are very enthusiastic. We hope this 2nd mailing is successful, although procrastination for whatever reason, exists. Currently, with our numbers, we can have a fine reunion - it would be dandy though, if we could sell out.! My best to you for an amazing 50th..

Our 2nd mailing was mid-June. Thanks to this mailing, we received approximately $5,000 in payments. Our 50th is in a few weeks - 95% sold out. What we learned: direct mail works. Hope this is helpful to someone.