Attendees often come to events with a variety of objectives and aspirations. To effectively manage and optimize participant engagement, it becomes crucial to categorize and unite individuals with similar objectives. This is where participant types come into play.
What are participant types?
Participant types serve as a valuable tool for categorizing event participants and implementing specific rules to enhance event efficiency.
Imagine you're in charge of organizing a trade show. At a trade show, your participants can be divided into two categories: exhibitors and visitors. Given that these two groups come to the event with varying objectives and ambitions, it becomes essential to draw a clear distinction between them. Using participant types provides a great way to separate exhibitors from visitors, ultimately contributing to smooth event management.
Participant types in registration
During the event registration process, participants are encouraged to choose their participant type. This step comes immediately after participants register for the event, providing their email address and password. Each participant can select only one participant type.
Only the enabled participant types are visible during the registration process. If you want a participant type to be displayed on the registration form, it should be marked as visible in the registration settings. By ticking the "In registration" option while editing a participant type, you enable its visibility and ensure participants can choose it during registration.
You can also choose to mark a participant type as hidden. This makes sure that that participant type will not be visible in the registration form. However, you will need to personally invite participants with a hidden participant type to register for your event. Learn more about this topic in our article inviting hidden participant types.
What purpose do participant types serve?
Participant types play an important role in categorizing event attendees and implementing specific rules that enhance the event experience.
Booking Rules: Participant types allow organizers to define booking rules that determine which participant types can engage with one another. For instance, buyers can be restricted to booking meetings only with sellers, creating targeted networking opportunities.
Visibility Rules: With participant types, visibility rules can be established to control which participants are visible to others. For example, visitors may only have access to view exhibitors, ensuring a focused browsing experience of the participant list.
Registration Rules: Participant types enable organizers to define registration rules that determine which participant type can register for a session. This ensures that participants can only select specific sessions relevant to their participant type. For instance, students may not have access to select the Gala Dinner session but can register for the matchmaking session.
Examples of typical participant types
Participant types empower attendees to find suitable partners for meetings by providing an effective way to filter the participants on the event website.
Some common participant types are:
- Buyer and Seller,
- Investor and Start-Up,
- and Exhibitor and Visitor.
These categories allow participants to connect with like-minded individuals and facilitate meaningful interactions.
Once you have determined the participant types that align with your event's needs, it's time to create and set them up accordingly. After setting up the participant types, you can manually assign them to specific participants. However, should the need arise to remove a participant type, the process can be completed effortlessly with just a few clicks.
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