WhatsApp for events: registrations, reminders and attendee questions
Endelir takes event registrations inside a WhatsApp chat, sends the joining details, reminds every attendee before the day as an approved template, and asks for feedback after it. People register weeks in advance and then forget the event exists. Endelir takes the registration as a conversation on your business number, keeps every registrant in a group you can message, and sends the joining details, the reminder and the follow-up from the same number the person already wrote to.
Everyone registered. Rather fewer of them turned up
The registration form did its job. What happens next is the problem: a confirmation email lands in a promotions tab, a reminder goes out three days later and is not opened either, and on the morning of the event a few hundred people cannot find the link, the address or the time. The questions arrive anyway — on a personal number, on a form nobody is watching, and to whoever printed their name on the invitation.
Then something changes. The hall moves, the session slips by an hour, the speaker cancels. You have a spreadsheet of registrants, one afternoon, and no way to reach them that they will actually read. Afterwards the feedback form goes out and is ignored, so the next event is planned on the strength of what the organisers remember rather than what the attendees said.
Register, confirm, remind and follow up in one thread
Endelir connects your business number to the WhatsApp Business Platform and takes the registration in the chat itself. A flow asks for the name, the email, the ticket type, the city or whatever else you need, and writes each answer onto the contact record as a field rather than leaving it in the conversation. The registrant goes into a contact group for that event, which is the audience you send to later.
Everything after that goes to the group. The confirmation, the joining link, the reminder the day before, the change of hall at nine in the morning, and the one question you want to ask afterwards. Sends can be scheduled in your own timezone, replies come back into a shared inbox your team signs into, and an opt-out is recorded and honoured, so someone who asks to be left alone is left alone.
How it works
- 1 Registration starts where you advertise Someone taps the message button on an ad, scans a QR code on a poster or uses a link in your newsletter. If the chat began at a click-to-message ad, Endelir records the click id, the kind of source, which ad it was, the link it came from and the headline they tapped.
- 2 A flow asks for the details Name, email, organisation, ticket type, which session, dietary requirement — each answer written onto the contact record as a field, where it can be exported or read by the next person.
- 3 The registrant joins a group for that event The group is the audience for everything that follows. One person can be in the group for this month's workshop and not in the one for the conference in March.
- 4 The confirmation goes back in the same chat A confirmation message, and the pass or ticket file if your ticketing system produced one. Endelir sends the document; it does not generate the ticket or the number on it.
- 5 Reminders are scheduled, not remembered Pick the day and hour in your own timezone and the campaign waits in the queue until then. Outside the service window that message is a template Meta has approved in advance.
- 6 Changes reach everyone on the same number A new hall, a delayed start or a fresh joining link goes to the group as its own send, in the thread people already have open.
- 7 Afterwards you ask one question A flow asks how it was, saves the answer to the contact, and a poor score can be routed to a person rather than filed.
What this looks like in practice
A training company runs a free webinar every month and a paid two-day workshop twice a year. Registrations came through a web form into a spreadsheet. The confirmation and the joining link went by email, the reminder went by email, and on the morning of each session the same forty people wrote to the office asking where the link was.
Now the poster and the ad both open a chat. A flow asks the name, the email and which session, writes them to the contact and adds the person to that month's group. The joining link goes out in the chat straight away, a reminder is scheduled for the evening before and another for an hour ahead, and when a speaker moved to the afternoon slot the whole group was told in one send. The link questions still arrive, but a keyword reply answers the routine ones and the rest reach a person in the shared inbox. Afterwards one question goes to the group, and the answers sit on the contacts rather than in an unread form.
What happens when an attendee replies
Across events and webinars
What to know before you set it up
Business-initiated messaging on WhatsApp is permission-based. Replying to someone who wrote to you first needs no template — there is a service window in which your team answers freely. Starting a conversation, or picking one up after that window has closed, uses a message template Meta has approved in advance, and Endelir keeps track of which of the two you are in. A delegate list bought from an organiser or scraped from a badge scan is not something this software is built to send to: campaigns go to contacts whose consent is on record, and a send without it is refused rather than quietly attempted.
Keep the two kinds of message apart. "Your session starts at 10am in Hall 2" is a practical message to someone who registered. "Early-bird tickets for next year are open, save 20%" is promotion, it is a Marketing template, and it goes only to people who agreed to hear from you. Registering for one event is not a standing invitation to be sold the next one — ask for that permission at registration, where the person is already answering questions, and the audience for your next launch is one you can use properly.
Endelir does not run the event. There is no seat count, no ticket numbering, no waiting list and no cut-off when a room fills — the flow collects a registration and your ticketing system decides whether it stands. It does not take payment either; the payment link is your own, and the confirmation goes out when your system tells Endelir through the API. Note also that once a number is connected to the WhatsApp Business Platform it can no longer be used in the ordinary WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business app on a handset, so many organisers take a fresh number for the event line. How many people can sign in, and how many contacts and messages each plan covers, is on the pricing page, and the software enforces it exactly — worth checking before an event that will register several thousand.
What to watch
- Registrations taken, and how many began at a click-to-message ad
- How many finished the registration questions rather than dropping out
- Where in those questions people stop answering
- Reminders sent, and how many were delivered rather than failed
- Replies to each reminder, and what people asked about
- Cancellations received before the day rather than discovered on it
- Feedback answers collected after the event
- How many registrants opted out, and after which message
Related
Questions people ask
Can people register for an event through WhatsApp?
Yes. A chat flow asks for what you need — name, email, organisation, ticket type, which session, any dietary requirement — and writes each answer onto the contact record as a field rather than leaving it buried in the conversation. The registrant is then added to a contact group for that event, which becomes the audience for the confirmation, the reminders and anything you need to tell everyone later. The questions are asked as ordinary chat steps, one after another, so nobody has to leave WhatsApp for a web form. What the flow does not do is decide whether the registration stands: there is no seat count and no cut-off when a session is full. If capacity matters, a flow step can send each registration to your own ticketing system as it is collected, and that system keeps the final say.
Can we send tickets, passes or joining links?
Yes. Documents, images and links are sent and received in the same conversation, so a PDF pass, a QR code image or a webinar link goes out on the number the person registered on, and they can find it again by scrolling up. Endelir sends the file; it does not create it. The ticket, the booking reference and the number printed on it come from your own ticketing system, and Endelir carries the result to the attendee. Someone who loses the link can ask in the same thread and have it sent again.
Can reminders be scheduled before the event?
Yes. A campaign to the group of registrants can be scheduled — the evening before, an hour ahead, or both — and the time you pick is the time in your own timezone. The campaign waits in the queue until then and each person gets their own private message; there is no group chat and no recipient sees another. A reminder sent outside the service window is a message template Meta has approved in advance, which is worth getting ready before the week of the event rather than during it. Reminders can also be built into the registration flow itself, which waits a set period and then sends. A wait survives a queue restart and fires once, so nobody is reminded twice.
Can we tell everyone if the venue, time or link changes?
Yes. The change goes to the event group as its own send, in the thread people already have open on their phone, rather than as an email that competes with everything else that arrived that morning. Replies come back into the shared inbox, so the questions that follow a change of hall reach a person instead of an unmonitored address. Endelir shows you what was delivered and what failed. What it cannot promise is that every message is read — that part belongs to Meta and to the attendee's phone.
Can we take payment for a ticket over WhatsApp?
Not directly. Endelir does not collect money from your attendees. What it does is carry your own payment link into the conversation — from whichever gateway you already use — and keep the thread open while the person pays. Endelir does not know the payment succeeded until your system says so, which it can do through the API, and the confirmation and the ticket then go out on the same number. If you are messaging about an unpaid registration after the service window has closed, that is a template, and it should read as a practical reminder about a booking rather than as a sales pitch.
Can we message past registrants about the next event?
Only the ones who agreed to hear from you. Registering for one event is not permission to be marketed the next one, and Endelir enforces that: an announcement for a future event is a Marketing template, and before each message leaves the software checks that the contact has not opted out and that consent is on record. A contact who fails that check is refused rather than sent to, and the campaign report shows it. The practical answer is to ask at registration, while the person is already answering questions, whether they would like to hear about future events. Do that for two or three events and you have an audience you can announce to properly, built from people who chose to be on it.
Who answers attendee questions on the day?
Your team, helped by the questions that answer themselves. Set a keyword reply for the things that arrive fifty times — the address, the parking, the start time, the dress code, the wifi — and those are answered in seconds without anyone typing. Everything else lands in the shared inbox, where each conversation can be assigned to a person so two staff do not reply to the same delegate with two different answers. If an automated flow is running on a conversation and someone takes over by hand, the automation stops on that conversation until it is released, so the attendee is not answered twice by two different things.
Keep attendees informed before, during and after the event
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