Event Reminder Communications Planning & Criteria

Overview

Most organizations that use Gnosis to manage an event calendar and registrations for those events, implement reminder communications to remind guests of their upcoming registration.  These reminders typically go out 7 days, 2 days, 1 day, or the same day as the event and can be sent via email, text message, or both.

This article presents the questions you will need to answer to set up a plan for, and the criteria for each reminder message.

A Reminder Message Plan

We recommend that you keep the number of reminders needed down to as few as possible.  The number of reminder messages that you need will be driven by the following needs (where applicable):

• Message instructions/buttons/content
• Whether attendees are pre-registered or not (i.e.: group participants may not register in advance)
• Amount of time before the program starts
• Type of attendance expected (i.e.: In-Person only, or In-Person with a zoom fallback option)

To create a complete set of reminders for each scenario that you need, we recommend you use the following matrix of needs. To complete this matrix, either fill in the communications item ID's that you currently have, or if you intend to create new items, use an acronym to represent each type of new communications item you wish to create and then also add a legend for your acronyms (Note: There is no need to consider text messages and emails separately in this step, this is just for "messages" - the same recipient groups can be used for both email and text-message communications):

PLEASE NOTE: A copy of this matrix as an Excel sheet is available for download here.

Reminder Communications - Planning Matrix
Reminder Audiences	- Support Groups -			- Non-Support Groups -
	Hybrid	In-Person Only	Zoom Only	Hybrid	In-Person Only	Zoom Only
All Registered Persons
Group Members (Reg'n not req'd)
Group Members (Reg'n req'd)
In-Person Registrations
Zoom Registrations

Legend of New Communication Types:

Acronym	Communications Item Name

Criteria for Communications Recipient Groups

Each recipient group used in the groups defined above must consider the following criteria.  These criteria may be derived from the communications item's position in the matrix and name tables above:

• Recipient Group/Comms Item Name:
• How many days before the event should it be sent?
• Should it go to events set up as 1.) Hybrid, 2.) In-Person Only, or 3.) Zoom Only?
• Is it for 1.) Support Group events, 2.) Non-Support Group Events, or 3.) Both?
• If for support group events, is it going to 1.) registered group members, 2.) unregistered group members, or 3.) All group members?
• If it is going only to registered persons, is it going to those 1.) Registered for In-Person, 2.) Registered for Zoom, 3.) Both?

In addition to the above criteria, a check for Event Cancelled = False will be needed.

Implementing The Plan

To implement the plan, you may proceed with any combination of the following:

• Use existing defined recipient groups/comms items
• Create your own groups using the list of criteria above
• Request assistance from Support to build these groups for you.

See also:

• Setting Up Auto Event 2-Day Reminder Email
• Hybrid Event Management for Group Members
• Components of Common Communication Items
• Event Registration and Attendance Training Follow-ups