How to Deal with Event Cancellation
Many unforeseen circumstances can lead to the cancellation of an event. Some of them include poor planning, bad weather, government intervention, disease outbreak among others. In the wake of COVID -19, many events have been forced to cancel as mass gatherings are likely to increase the risk of infection.
As much as event cancellation takes a huge economic toll on your business, the safety and health of your attendees come first. If there is a potential threat to the attendee’s life, cancellation is advisable.
How do you go about postponing or cancelling an event? Here are some quick tips.
Communication. Get in touch with your attendees and let them know that the event got cancelled. Make sure that the message is consistent and transparent throughout the channels that you chose to communicate. This could be done on email, SMS, social media or website. In case the attendees need additional clarification, provide a means where they can reach you.
Refunds. If the event involved any payment method, make a point to refund the money back. When sending out communication, include information on how you plan to refund the payments. If there’s any ticketing platform running, disable it to stop the purchase of tickets.
Pause marketing campaigns. If you scheduled social media posts to promote your event, put a halt on them. It’s easy to forget these details amid a crisis. Imagine a scenario where you have announced event cancellation but marketing posts keeping cropping up on your social page. This will contradict the message you are trying to put across.
Contact service providers. Make sure that the service providers are in the know of your event cancellation. If you had paid a deposit, you can revise on the terms on a refund. It’s advisable as an event organizer to have a contract that will protect your business in such emergencies.
Reschedule. In the case that the event date is pushed to another date, keep all the involved parties aware. You can proceed with marketing campaigns and even offer incentives to drive attendance.
Tags
Event planning, event cancellation, event technology, coronavirus
