I would love to see a "waitlist" option that will either automate an email invite if a registrant cancels or more spots open up; or, at the very least, allow our agency to maintain an online waitlist in the event with the option to invite individuals to the event. Is that option going to be explored or integrated in the future?
[Events 2.0] Waiting List option for registrants
Best reply by Chris S
Hi everyone,
Thank you for your continued feedback, and for being so candid about how critical waitlists are to your organizations! We completely understand that for nonprofits with strict venue capacities, every single empty seat represents a missed opportunity, and managing that manually is a massive headache.
While a native, fully automated Waitlist feature remains Acknowledged and a high priority for our Events product team, we want to provide some context on the development process and share two fantastic workarounds you can use today to make sure your seats stay full!
Building a simple list of names is easy, but building a true, automated event waitlist is highly complex. For paid events, if a spot opens up, the system must automatically email the first person on the list, place a temporary "hold" on that ticket for a specific amount of time (e.g., 24 hours), process their payment securely, and then automatically move to the next person if they don't buy it. Building this automated payment-and-hold infrastructure takes significant engineering time, which is why it was not included in the initial launch of Events 2.0.
Best Practice Workarounds to Capture Demand Today:
1. The "Landing Page" Method If you want to easily see who was interested in an event so you can market future events to them, use a Sign-up Landing Page!
Create a free Lead Generation Landing Page in Constant Contact and title it "Waitlist: [Your Event Name]".
Set this page to drop sign-ups into a specific email list (e.g., "Waitlist - Yoga Class").
In your actual Event Description, add a bold line: "Tickets Sold Out? [Click here to join our Waitlist!]" and hyperlink it to your Landing Page.
If someone cancels, you can quickly email the waitlist group a private registration link.
2. The "Ticket Type" Method As one of our community members cleverly suggested, you can use the ticket block itself as your waitlist!
Set your overall Event Capacity to a high number (e.g., 500).
Create your standard Admission Ticket and set its capacity to your actual venue limit (e.g., 48).
Create a second ticket named "Waitlist Registration" and make it Free.
When your 48 standard tickets sell out, latecomers can still "purchase" the free Waitlist ticket, allowing you to track their names directly inside your Event Reporting dashboard!
We are keeping this thread marked as Acknowledged and open so our development team can continue to track the massive demand for native waitlisting functionality. Thank you again for helping us improve!
Acknowledged
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