How to track where your event registrations come from

Why it's worth doing

Without source data, every event teaches you only what the total was. With it, you can answer the questions that shape the next event: Which partner was worth the time? Did the poster do anything? Should the second speaker be invited back because of the audience they brought?

It also changes what you can do mid-campaign. If you read sources two weeks out, you still have time to act on them.

Step 1: list your ways in before you promote

Write down each place a person could find out about the event. Be specific: not "social" but "Priya's LinkedIn post", not "print" but "poster at the coworking space". Every line gets one link.

The attended column is the one people skip, and it's the most valuable. A way in that brings many registrants who never come is worth less than it looks.

Step 2: tag links consistently

UTM parameters are the standard for links: utm_source says where, utm_medium says what kind, and utm_campaign says which effort. Most event platforms and analytics tools can read them, and Airmeet and Demio both document how they store them against each registrant.

Tags only work if they're tidy. LinkedIn, linkedin and li show up as three different sources.

• Use lowercase, with hyphens instead of spaces.
• Decide your list of mediums once: email, social, partner, qr, paid, print.
• Use one campaign name per event.
• Keep the sheet above as the single source, and copy links from it.

Check one thing before you trust your tags: open a tagged link, register as a test, and look at the record. Some platforms pass tags to an embedded form and some drop them. Airmeet notes that its tracking on embedded forms depends on JavaScript, for example.

Step 3: give offline places their own QR code

A printed code can't be retagged, so give each placement its own code, with the source built into it. One poster design with five codes tells you which location worked. Our QR guide covers sizes and printing.

Step 4: plan for what tags can't see

UTM tags are fragile in the place events most often spread. As Premagic points out, they often get stripped when links are pasted into chats and emails, and a referred registration then shows up as "direct" or gets credited to the last ad that fired. Three common ways to lose the trail:

• Someone shares the clean URL from their browser with a colleague.
• Someone hears your event mentioned at a meetup, then searches for it.
• A speaker mentions it on a podcast.

Three things recover most of that:

1. A short link for each person. A short link has nothing to strip: the source is the address. Give one to each speaker, partner and registrant.
2. One optional question. "How did you hear about this?", in the person's own words. It's the only method that captures a conversation, and the answers are often the most interesting data you'll get. Don't make it required.
3. Treat "direct" as a signal. A rise in direct registrations right after a podcast or a talk usually isn't a coincidence.

Which attribution model should you use?

Keep it simple. Credit the way in used at the moment of registration, the "last touch". Zuddl records the last source too. It's imperfect, because someone may have seen three posts first. But multi-touch models need far more data than a single event produces, and last touch is easy to explain to a partner.

You can do this without following people around

Source tracking counts ways in. It answers "which poster worked", not "what did this person do". You don't need email open pixels, rewritten links or third-party cookies to find out what fills a room: a person chose to register, and the record says how they got there. Programmable Talk works this way on purpose, and it keeps no open or click tracking on its emails.

Doing this in Programmable Talk

Every way in, whether it's a page link, a QR code, a card, an invite, or an email address people register by writing to, carries its own code, and every registration says where it came from. UTM tags on links are kept too. The Promote tab shows registrations by way in, and the leaderboard shows who brought whom. The sheet above then fills in itself, and your CSV and webhook carry the source too. Your event stays on Luma, Zoom, Eventbrite or Meetup.