Reinvigorate Your Class Reunion: a Three-step Planning Process
Planning a class reunion can be a rewarding experience, allowing old friends to reconnect and create new memories. But asking people to carve out time to reconnect with old classmates – who they may already be keeping tabs with on social media – may be a tough sell.
So, we’ve put together a few tips for class reunion organizers looking for ways to entice old classmates to reunite, reconnect, and celebrate the years gone by. Check them out below and get started planning your next reunion on Ticketbud today.
Step One: Pre-Plan Your Class Reunion
Form a Planning Committee: Create a committee of enthusiastic classmates. Distributing tasks among a group will make the planning process more manageable and bring in new, diverse ideas.
Set a Budget:. Determine how much to spend on the venue, food, entertainment, and other essentials. Read our budgeting guide here.
Choose a Venue: Select a venue that is convenient for most attendees and fits the event’s theme and size. Consider hotels, community centers, or even school premises if possible. Outdoor venues like parks can offer a relaxed atmosphere and plenty of space for activities. The venue availability will give you some date options.
Set a Date: Choose a date well in advance to give everyone ample time to make arrangements.
Step Two: Partner with Ticketbud for Seamless Event Management
Ticketbud streamlines the planning and ticketing process for class reunions – from sending out invites and selling tickets to specific activities, to collecting attendee information and managing referrals.
Get started by creating your free event page at ticketbud.com. Then, take advantage of these all-inclusive ticketing features:
- Easy Ticketing: Set-up ticket sales quickly and manage different ticket types (single tickets, partner tickets, drink tickets, and more).
- Add Collaborators: Allow others on your reunion planning committee to access your event’s dashboard so you can divide and conquer ticketing, promotional, and reporting tasks.
- Collect donations: If you want to encourage alumni to support a fundraising effort, you can also collect optional donations at the same time attendees purchase tickets.
- Communications and Promotion Tools: Utilize built-in marketing and communications tools to spread the word via email and social media. Upload your class roster to email save the dates and event reminders directly from your Ticketbud site.
- Real-Time Data: Access sales data and attendee information in real-time to track ticket sales and promotions.
- Secure Transactions: Ensure safe and secure payment processing for peace of mind.
- Easily Access Funds: Get early access to ticket funds to promote your event, pay vendors, and cover costs. You are in control of your funds with flexible payout options (daily, weekly, monthly) via secure payment providers.
- Customer Support: Get assistance from a dedicated support team to address any issues or questions.
Step Three: Celebrate Memories and Make New Ones
Class reunions serve to keep classmates connected in the present and celebrate the past. So, consider incorporating both elements into your class reunion planning and promotions.
Before the event:
- Create a Facebook Group: Invite all of your old classmates. Keep the group open for members to invite friends to ensure no one is left off the guest list.
- Create an Event Page on Facebook and LinkedIn: Spread the word with your connections on social media so people can easily track down event details.
- Post Throwback Content: Share photos, videos, newspaper clippings, etc from your times together in school and ask members and followers to do the same. Display these memories at the event.
- Create a Survey: Ask guests what they’re up to now or create superlatives for people to vote on ahead of the event for trivia and ceremonial fun.
During the Event:
- Cater in Class Favs: Seek out food options that remind you of yesteryears. Was there a restaurant where everyone would go to celebrate a big game win, or a lunchtime favorite? Try to keep food restrictions and preferences in mind.
- Host a Bar: Everyone is now a legal drinking age, so pop a top and have a little fun.
- Hire a DJ or Create a Playlist: Curate a list of popular songs from your days in school. Hosting a karaoke or time-period theme night may amplify the fun.
- Hire a Photographer: Get group shots and consider recreating school photos. Pair the photos with old school headshots for a fun attendee souvenir.
- Host a Photobooth: Encourage attendees to take group photos with fun props.
- Offer Family Fun: Consider ways you can include your classmates growing families in the fun. For example, host a park day or movie night that is family friendly, or offer resources and recommendations for how children can spend their time during adult-only events.
After the Event:
- Share Highlights on Social Media: Keep people engaged post-event by sharing photos and encouraging people to tag themselves.
- Create a Momento: Put together all the photos from the event to create a printed and digital booklet from the event.
- Thank Attendees: Email attendees a heartfelt thank you after the event and encourage them to stay connected with the class via social media. Ask if anyone would like to help organize the next one.
Get Started
Careful planning and creative touches can turn a class reunion into an unforgettable event. By following these steps and partnering with a reliable ticketing service like Ticketbud, you can ensure a smooth and successful reunion that classmates will cherish for years to come.
Remember to take time with your event planning committee to choose a date, location and budget that make sense. Then, keep your team organized by leveraging Ticketbud’s features to take the stress out of ticketing, registration and logistics. This will keep your focus on planning a class reunion that is one for the ages.
At Ticketbud, you have the opportunity to use sub-domain’s to customize your event ticketing page. Awesome right? Absolutely, but only if you make sure to use it. Customizing your sub-domain does a lot of things:
Having too many ticket options sounds great in theory. You offer people a lot of options so that no matter what they’re looking for, they have it right? Makes everyone happy!
Wrong.
The more ticket types you have the more difficult it is for your customer. Now, instead of deciding if they want General Admission or VIP they have to decide between multiple things and can lead to customers getting frustrated and leaving. Don’t let this happen to you.
If you have more than 5 different ticket types, look at what types of options you’re offering. Do you need to offer a 3-person group ticket, a family of 4 ticket and a family of 5 ticket? See what you can combine and what you can get rid of. Your customers will thank you.
Your Facebook page already has fans and followers, so why wouldn’t you make it so much easier for them to purchase tickets there? Our Facebook widget allows customers to purchase right there from your Facebook page or a button that will take them to your event ticketing page. Either way it makes it so much easier to convert that we think it is one of the most important things you include.
In fact, events that used the Facebook widget to sell tickets had a 14% increase in sales before the event. Earlier ticket sales means earlier money in the bank. We even made an awesome how-to guide, just click 
You would think having a title is a no brainer but you’d be surprised how many people seem to jump past it and straight into the meat and potatoes of the event page. We don’t blame you, putting the images and tickets together is super fun but a title is necessary.
How necessary? Events with no title sell 28% fewer tickets than their titled counterparts. When an event comes up in search, the first thing displayed is the title, without that, no one knows what your event is about at first glance. Having a title also indexes your event better in Google search (all about that SEO) which, again, makes it rank higher in search results, ensuring more of your customers will come across it when they're looking for tickets. So make sure your title is descriptive but also engaging! "What Is The Death Star About" let's everyone know exactly what our event will be about and also makes it seem open and appealing to a general audience who may not know what the Death Star is.
Also it looks good.
Having a map with location up on your event page may seem unnecessary but here me out. Let’s say you have someone that wants to go to the event you’re having at the Mos Eisley Cantina but they’re based in Coruscant and aren’t sure what part of the back rim Mos Eisley is in. Well, having a map below allows your customers to see where your event is, how to get there and all without having to leave the ticketing page. It makes things easier for them and better for you.
Be sure to add your event location in under your title and Ticketbud will automatically use Google Maps to drop a pin in the location for you! Super easy. Also, if your having an event in a well known venue (like Mos Eisley Cantina) you're able to add venue name in under the location as well.
The description box is the place to go nuts with information. The more information, the better (mostly) and will give the customer everything they need without leaving to find it somewhere else. The obvious things like Where and When and What are obvious but other things to include:
If a picture is worth a thousand words then consider these your event pitch.
We know people are visual; we all respond more viscerally to an image than just to words so why wouldn’t you use this with your event? Remember back when I said that you have to be heard in a crowded ocean of events and stand out? This is one of the best ways of doing so. A well placed banner can inform an opinion on your event. It can change the look from "this is a small band of uninformed and unskilled resisters" to a legitimate organization dispelling important information and leading an organized rebellion.
Payout set-up is important to make sure that at the end of the day, you get paid. If you’re in the US, we recommend using WePay as it allows for daily payouts and getting your money faster is always better. If you’re outside the US, your best payment processor option right now is through Stripe, though we do accept multiple forms of payment processors.
Make sure that your monetary denomination is the same as the country the bank processing the payments is located in, not necessarily where you are or the event is located. That means, if I’m running an event on the farthest moon of Endor, but I’m based on Yavin 4 along with my bank, then my bank needs to be in Yavinese notes.
Also, keep in mind that all banks and processors have their own rules and regulations regarding out of country transactions.
Ticketbud is based in the best city in the galaxy (as far as we’re concerned), Austin, so the timezone on your event page is automatically set to Central U.S. but we understand that you may be anywhere. Make sure you’ve adjusted the time zones for where the event will be. Not necessarily where you are so that all tickets and information display correctly.
And that’s it! That’s all you need to get started with your event page in making it successful. Pretty soon, you’ll be selling tickets right and left!
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