How to Automate Event Registration and Follow-Up (Complete Playbook)

You're organizing a tech meetup for 200 people. Registration opens in two weeks. Here's what you're about to spend your evenings doing:

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• Building a registration form
• Setting up payment collection
• Sending confirmation emails (manually, one by one, or mail merging in Gmail)
• Writing reminder emails the day before
• Printing a check-in list
• Checking people in on a clipboard or spreadsheet
• Sending a post-event survey a few days later
• Following up with attendees who expressed interest in your next event
• Chasing down no-shows to understand why they didn't come

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That's 15-20 hours of work across two weeks for a single event. And most of it is copy-paste busywork that doesn't require your brain — just your time.

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Here's how to automate every step.

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The Problem With Current Options

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Eventbrite works, but the pricing is brutal. Their fee structure: 3.7% + $1.79 per paid ticket, plus 2.9% payment processing. For a $50 event with 200 attendees, that's $1,318 in fees. For a $25 event, it's $779. For a free event, Eventbrite is free — but you get minimal automation and they own the attendee relationship.

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Google Forms is free and familiar. But it connects to nothing. No confirmation emails (unless you write a Google Apps Script). No payment collection. No reminders. No check-in system. You export to a spreadsheet and do everything else manually.

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Luma is popular for tech events but limited. No conditional logic, no payment flexibility, and you're locked into their event page design.

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What you actually need: a registration form that collects payment, triggers confirmation and reminder emails automatically, feeds into a check-in system, sends post-event surveys, and tracks the entire attendee lifecycle. Without per-ticket fees eating your revenue.

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The Full Event Automation Stack

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Here's the complete system, built in TinyCommand, using a 200-person tech meetup as the running example.

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Phase 1: Registration

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Build the registration form with TinyForms.

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The form fields:

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• Full name (required)
• Email (required)
• Company and job title (optional but valuable for networking)
• Ticket type (dropdown): Early Bird ($25), Regular ($40), VIP ($75)
• Dietary restrictions (dropdown: None, Vegetarian, Vegan, Gluten-Free, Other)
• T-shirt size (dropdown) — if you're giving away swag
• How did you hear about this event? (dropdown: Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Friend/Colleague, Newsletter, Other)
• Special requirements or questions (long text, optional)

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Conditional logic matters here. TinyForms has 40+ question types and supports conditional branching:

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• If ticket type is "VIP," show an additional field: "Would you like to attend the exclusive speaker dinner?" (Yes/No)
• If "How did you hear about this event?" is "Friend/Colleague," show: "Who referred you?" (text field — useful for tracking word-of-mouth)
• If dietary restriction is "Other," show a text field for details

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Payment collection: Connect Stripe directly to the form. Payment is collected at submission. No separate checkout page. No redirect. The attendee fills out the form, pays, and gets a confirmation — one flow.

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Early bird pricing: Set the Early Bird option to automatically disappear after a specific date using conditional logic on the ticket type field. Before April 1st, they see all three options. After April 1st, they see Regular and VIP only. No manual intervention.

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Group registrations: Add a "Number of attendees" field at the top. If they select more than 1, dynamically show additional name/email fields for each attendee. Apply a 10% group discount automatically when 5 or more tickets are purchased.

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Waitlist management: TinyForms lets you set a submission cap. Set it to 200. When registration 201 comes in, the form automatically switches to a waitlist version: "This event is sold out. Join the waitlist and we'll notify you if a spot opens up." The waitlist entries go to a separate table. When someone cancels, a workflow automatically emails the next waitlisted person.

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Phase 2: Confirmation and Pre-Event Communication

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The moment someone registers, a TinyWorkflow fires.

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Instant actions (triggered on form submission):

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1. Write the registration to a TinyTable (your attendee database).
2. Send a confirmation email via TinyEmails:

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Subject: "You're confirmed for [Event Name] — [Date]"

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Body includes:

• Their name and ticket type
• Event date, time, and location with a Google Maps link
• What to expect (agenda highlights)
• A unique QR code for check-in (generated by the workflow and embedded in the email)
• Calendar invite attachment (.ics file)
• "Add to Google Calendar" and "Add to Apple Calendar" links

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1. If they purchased VIP and said yes to the speaker dinner, send a second email with dinner details.
2. Add a row to your revenue tracking table with the payment amount and ticket type.

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Automated reminder sequence:

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• 7 days before: "Your event is one week away" email with logistics (parking, transit, what to bring)
• 1 day before: "See you tomorrow" email with final details, schedule, and speaker bios
• 2 hours before: SMS reminder (if you collected phone numbers) with the venue address

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Each reminder is a scheduled step in the TinyWorkflow. Set it up once. It runs for every attendee, every event.

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Phase 3: Check-In

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Day of the event. 200 people are arriving over 30 minutes. You're not using a clipboard.

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Set up check-in with TinyTables.

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Your attendee table has a "Checked In" checkbox column and a "Check-In Time" timestamp column. Open the table on a tablet at the registration desk.

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Two check-in options:

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Option A — QR code scan: Each attendee's confirmation email contains a unique QR code. Volunteer scans it with their phone. A TinyWorkflow receives the scan, looks up the attendee, marks them as checked in, and displays their name and ticket type on screen. Total check-in time per person: 3 seconds.

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Option B — Name search: Volunteer opens the TinyTable on a tablet, searches the attendee's name, taps the "Checked In" checkbox. Still fast, works as a fallback.

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As people check in, you can see the count in real time. Filter the table to "Checked In = false" to see who hasn't arrived yet. If you're waiting on someone important (a speaker, a sponsor), you'll know instantly.

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For VIP attendees: When a VIP checks in, a workflow sends a notification to your event coordinator: "VIP [Name] has arrived." The coordinator can greet them personally. Small touches. Big impression.

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Phase 4: Post-Event Survey

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The event ended two hours ago. Attendees are on their way home, still thinking about what they saw. This is the highest-response window for feedback.

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Send a post-event survey via TinyEmails, triggered by a TinyWorkflow.

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Timing: 2 hours after the event ends (scheduled in the workflow).

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The survey (another TinyForm):

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• Overall experience (1-5 star rating)
• Best session/talk (dropdown of your agenda items)
• What could be improved? (long text)
• Would you attend another event? (Yes / Maybe / No)
• What topics interest you for future events? (multi-select)
• Net Promoter Score: "How likely are you to recommend this event?" (0-10 scale)

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Only send the survey to people who actually checked in. Your workflow filters on "Checked In = true." No point surveying no-shows about an event they didn't attend.

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Survey responses flow into a TinyTable. Use AI columns to analyze sentiment on the open-text responses. Aggregate the star ratings automatically. Within 24 hours, you have a complete picture of how the event went — without reading 200 individual responses.

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Phase 5: Follow-Up and Nurture

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This is where most event organizers stop. The event is over, they're exhausted, and follow-up falls through the cracks. Automate it and it happens whether you're tired or not.

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For attendees (checked in = true):

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• Day 1 after event: "Thanks for coming" email with event photos, slide decks, and recording links
• Day 3: Share the aggregated survey results (people love seeing how their feedback fits the bigger picture)
• Day 7: "What's next" email announcing your upcoming events or community
• Day 14: Invite to join your community (Slack, Discord, newsletter)

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For no-shows (registered but didn't check in):

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• Day 1: "We missed you" email — no guilt, just sharing what happened (recording links, photos)
• Day 3: "Next event" email — give them another chance
• Offer priority registration for the next event

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For waitlisted people who never got in:

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• Day 1: "Sorry we couldn't fit you in this time" email
• Offer guaranteed early access to the next event
• Give them the recording links as a consolation

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For people who said "Yes" to attending future events in the survey:

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• Add them to a "Future Events" segment in your TinyTable
• When you announce the next event, they get notified first — before public registration opens

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Each of these is a separate path in your TinyWorkflow, branching based on attendee status. You build the logic once. Every future event uses the same system.

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Phase 6: Revenue and Analytics

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After the event, you need to know the numbers.

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Your TinyTables already have everything:

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• Total registrations: count of rows in the attendee table
• Revenue: sum of the payment column
• Attendance rate: checked-in count / registration count
• No-show rate: the inverse
• Revenue by ticket type: group by ticket type, sum payment
• Acquisition channels: group by "How did you hear about us?"
• Survey NPS: average of the 0-10 scores
• Waitlist conversion: how many waitlisted people actually got in and attended

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Build a dashboard view in TinyTables with these metrics. Screenshot it or share the link with your team, sponsors, or stakeholders.

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Cost Comparison

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For a 200-person, $40-average-ticket event ($8,000 gross revenue):

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On TinyCommand, your only per-transaction cost is Stripe's standard 2.9% + $0.30 processing fee ($262 on $8,000). No platform fees on top. No per-ticket surcharges.

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You keep $7,738 instead of $6,682 (Eventbrite). That's an extra $1,056 per event. Run 6 events a year and TinyCommand saves you $6,336 annually — while giving you better automation than any of the alternatives.

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The 30-Minute Setup

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You don't need to build this from scratch. Describe your event to TinyCommand's AI Builder:

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"I'm running a tech meetup for 200 people on May 15th. I need a registration form with early bird and regular pricing, payment through Stripe, confirmation emails with a QR code for check-in, reminder emails at 7 days and 1 day before, a check-in table, a post-event survey that only goes to attendees, and follow-up emails with event recordings."

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The AI Builder generates the forms, tables, workflows, and email templates. You review the copy, add your branding, upload your event details, and go live.

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Total setup time: 30 minutes for a system that would take 15-20 hours to run manually.

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Run it for one event. Then reuse it for every event after that. The system doesn't care if it's a 50-person workshop or a 500-person conference. The automation scales. You don't have to.

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