Whether or not you use Envoy Visitors at your front desk, it can be a great addition to events like meetups, small conferences, gatherings, and more. One of our customers, RealSelf, even uses Visitors as a lead scanner at trade shows.
In this article, we’ve gathered some best practices for using Visitors at events. Depending on the type of event, you can mix and match the tips you need to be most successful.
Pair additional iPads
You can pair unlimited iPads to any Envoy Visitors location. Having multiple iPads means that multiple attendees can sign in at the same time. No matter how many iPads you pair to a single location, all attendees’ information will be visible on that one location’s dashboard. It’s easy to view at a glance or export after the event.
Important notes:
The Standard and Premium plans allow for one Brother printer per location, no matter how many iPads are paired to that location. If multiple attendees sign-in at the same time, their badges will print in the order their entries were created.
The Enterprise plan supports multiple printers per location. With Enterprise, you can specify which iPad is associated with which printer. If you’re not on Enterprise and would like to use this feature, please contact us for instructions.
Create an “Event” visitor type
Available on Envoy Premium & Enterprise Plans
When you have multiple visitor types, you can customize the sign-in flow based on a guest’s Visitor type. Events are a great use-case for this feature.
Customize the sign-in flow
When creating an “Event” visitor type, you’ll want to think about the sign-in flow. Typically when you’re signing in large groups, you’ll want to create the quickest sign-in flow possible. Below we list a few recommendations on how to do so:
Sign-in fields: Are you able to remove a few sign-in fields? Typically for events, the fewer the better.
Legal documents: Is it possible to disable legal document signing for the “event” visitor type? It might be worth removing to keep sign-in moving quickly.If you do require that visitors sign a legal document, ensure it’s as short as possible so it takes less time to read.
Photo: Is it alright to disable visitor photos for this event?
Host: You can delete the Host field per visitor types if you don't want all your visitors to be listed with a host.
Hide and display “Event” visitor type
On your Visitors > Settings > Sign-in flow page, you can configure which visitor types appear on your iPad.
If only event visitors will be signing in during your event, you can simply change your settings right before the event—you can hide all other visitor types. This way, your guests will not see the visitor type screen at all. They’ll tap the “Tap to sign in” button and move straight to the sign-in fields screen.
Of course, you’ll need to change your visitor type settings back after your event.
But, if you’re having an event that happens during office hours, you’ll likely need to have all of your visitor types displayed on the iPad.
When displaying multiple visitor types, it’s best to be very specific with your visitor type names (like “Design meetup” instead of “event”) to ensure that each visitor knows which visitor type to select.
Use registration
As a reminder, the registration feature allows you to create invites for your expected visitors. It helps speed up sign-in since visitor details appear automatically after the visitor types their name.
Registration is only helpful for events when you know your attendees’ sign-in details in advance.
Create invites in bulk
Instead of filling out the invite form for each attendee, you can create multiple invites at once from your dashboard. Here’s how:
Go to Visitors > Invites.
Click “New invite.”
Select Group invite from the top navigation.
Select the correct location and visitor type.
Optional: Enter a Group name that you can use to reference these visitors in the logs.
Tip: Use the name of the event so that guests can easily spot the invite email.
You can either type in or paste the invite details in the grid below.
Optional: Check the Send invite email box if you want to send these people an email confirming their upcoming visit, and select whether the Group name should be included in the subject of the invite.
Click “Create invites.”
Use static QR codes
Generate a static QR code and link for visitors to easily access the sign-in process via their own devices, allowing more access points for your guests!
These can be printed out or displayed on web pages. Learn more.
Eventbrite integration
If you’re gathering attendee RSVPs via Eventbrite, you can use our Eventbrite integration to import attendee details directly into Visitors. Learn more about Eventbrite + Envoy.
Use the invite dashboard like a “clipboard”
If you’ve invited your event attendees using registration, you’ll want to consult the invite dashboard as visitors start arriving. Depending on your sign-in requirements, your visitors may not need to use the iPad at all! With registration, you can sign visitors in directly from the dashboard (Available on Premium & Enterprise plans).
This method is comparable to a “clipboard” you see at a lot of event registration tables: The attendee will tell the event manager their name, and they’ll be “checked off the list.” When you use this method with Visitors, you’ll actually turn their invite into their entry. Here’s how:
Go to Visitors > Invites.
To sign in one invited visitor, locate their invite.
Click the ellipsis (…) icon to the right of the invite information.
From the dropdown, select “Sign in.”
To sign in multiple invited visitors, select multiple invites by clicking the checkboxes to the left of the name.
Click “Sign in” at the top.
Tip: When you turn a visitor's invite into an entry, you do not have the chance to collect their signature on your legal document or capture their photo unless they completed the registration process. However, if you don't have a legal document or photos turned on for your event, this process can definitely save you time!
Follow up with attendees
No matter if event attendees were invited in advance or simply signed in on the iPad, you’ll have a full list of event attendees stored in Envoy. You can simply keep this list for your records, or you can choose to follow up with attendees in a variety of ways.
Dashboard and exports
Your event attendee's details will appear on your visitor log. You can view this data at any time by simply navigating back to the date and time of your event.
You can also export this data as a CSV file that contains each attendee’s sign-in details. Learn more about exporting visitor data.
MailChimp
Available on Envoy Premium & Enterprise Plans
Enable our MailChimp integration before your event is a great option if you’d like to keep your attendees on a mailing list. You can enable the MailChimp integration for specific visitor types (like “Events”) and even specify which list they are added to. Learn more.
Salesforce integration
Available on Envoy Premium & Enterprise Plans
If you plan to follow up with your event attendees as sales leads, you’ll want to enable our Salesforce integration before your event. When each attendee signs in, they’ll be added as a lead in your Salesforce account. As with the MailChimp integration, you can enable the Salesforce integration for specific visitor types, which helps keep clutter out of Salesforce. Learn more.
See who didn’t attend
If you invited your attendees using registration, you can use the invites dashboard to see which expected attendees actually arrived and which did not. This is helpful if you’d like to send a targeted follow-up message to those who did not attend.
Invited attendees who did arrive will have a yellow bar to the left of their invite. Attendees who did arrive will have a green (signed in) or grey (signed in and signed out) bar to the left of their invite.
A note about offline mode
Event spaces can be notorious for finicky guest Wi-Fi. If iPads become disconnected from Wi-Fi for any reason, visitors can still sign in. Their entry information will be stored locally on the iPad until it’s reconnected to Wi-Fi.
While offline, the visitor entries are stored on the iPad in a “queue.” When a network connection is reestablished, all queued entries will sync to your location in the order that they were created (oldest to newest).
Tip: When an iPad is offline, host notifications will not send, and invited visitor details will not appear upon sign-in. Badge printing may also be compromised.