Pre-Event Engagement Strategies: How to Warm Up Attendees Before Registration Opens 

Why Engagement Starts Before Registration 

Most event teams do their engagement work as soon as the registration form launches. By that point, demand creation loses importance. The best B2B and community-led events have a success track record since they start to warm their audience weeks or even months before registration opens. Pre-event engagement lays the foundation for perceptions, builds trust, and establishes familiarity with an event’s base themes long before the initial landing page launches.  

Once people know what the event stands for, why it matters, and how they might benefit, it morphs into a smooth transition from awareness to registration. This is why the process of pre-event engagement is not an optional promotional phase – it is a primary component of the event marketing funnel. It primes attendees to care about the event before they are asked to commit, making conversion easier and lowering the cost of acquisition. 

Section 1 – Building Curiosity and Awareness 

The initial phase of engaging your audience prior to the event is generating a reason for participants to feel anticipation about something they cannot yet register for. Curiosity is an innate factor that builds interest, particularly in competitive industries where audience attention and interests are fragmented.  

Here, teaser campaigns fit in particularly well. Short-form video, cryptic social posts, and countdowns based on hints give your audience enough information to know something is coming, albeit you do not give away the full picture. A great addition here is influencer seeding, where you allow key voices in your industry “discover” or comment on the idea of the event you are developing. This is a great way to build credibility and hit the social proof lever, before you roll anything out.   

Industry discussion threads work much the same way. Social platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit & niche space communities are your friends here. You can intentionally spark discussion around the major theme of your event. The discussion is centered the concept of the event, which nurtures curiosity around the larger idea, rather than an awareness effort to sell the event. When you service the first registration announcement, it feels like an extension of a conversation attendees are already interested in.   

By the time registrations begins, your attendees have already conceptualized the event as their event – relevant, timely, and important. 

Section 2 – Content That Educates Before It Sells 

A big reason that so many pre-event promotions fail to drive registrations is that the offered content simply feels too much like a promotion too soon. Today’s audience needs value first – primarily through education. When you introduce the supporting themes of your event with content that really allows audience members to reflect, solve a problem, or consider new ideas, you are developing trust that fosters later conversion.  

This could include thought leadership blogs that offer insights not in a direct reference to the event but related to the topic of your event. Webinars or short fireside chats with speakers also help to allow your audience warm up to the event’s knowledge ecosystem. Even polls or discussion prompts can draw attention to the area of concern your event will address.  

The objective is simple; you want the audience to experience and feel the intellectual and emotional space of your event. When registration opens, the event should feel like a clearly logical next step in the learning journey they have started with you. 

Section 3 – Early-Access Incentives and Community Perks 

Pre-event marketing communications also represent an opportunity to reward early interest. Gated pre-registration links can allow your most engaged followers to lock in a spot before the general public. These soft offers also can show early demand levels, as well as allowing a more accurate capacity, content, and marketing plan.  

Referral benefits (discount codes or early access to recordings of sessions) can convert your most excited early adopters into ambassadors. These micro-incentives can massively improve your organic reach without a large spend.  

Providing exclusives is another powerful motivator. First access to speaker announcements, agenda reveals, or site updates can get the audience more engaged with the event and feel they’re part of the event build-up. This sense of belonging will drive conversions when general registration opens. 

Section 4 – Using Data to Identify Likely Attendees 

Intelligent pre-event engagement is based on simply understanding your best likelihood of attendance. Understanding your past attendees through event data, on-site behaviour, CRM activity or participation patterns gives you the ability to learn and plan marketing outreach from this, as an example, you might reach out to individuals who downloaded a certain whitepaper, engaged with private information related to the speakers, or participants who opened engagement communications from the last previous event. The individuals you reach have a higher response rate, because you aligned your messaging to existing behaviours based in interest.   

The person-oriented outreach is key to ensure you are not sending generic teaser mass communications to all. Your messaging should be tailored to people who had curiosity or a need based on data. Data-rich engagement strategy reduces wasted trips to the event, strengthens engagement communications leading up to the event, and likely increases early conversion rates. 

Samaaro Spotlight – Nurture Journeys That Convert 

Pre-event engagement only works when it’s grounded in data, not guesswork. Samaaro gives teams the ability to identify likely attendees, understand past behaviour, and personalise outreach long before registration opens. 

Samaaro’s engagement engine lets marketers:

• Build behavioural segments based on last year’s dwell time, session preferences, asset downloads, or CRM lifecycle stage. 
• Trigger pre-event journeys when someone hits certain signals, opening content, revisiting landing pages, interacting with speakers, or responding to warm-up posts. 
• Send high-relevance content paths, not generic teasers: event themes, speaker-led insights, topic explainers, and interest-based micro-nurtures. 
• Issue controlled pre-registration access for top accounts, internal stakeholders, partners, or high-intent returnees. 
• Create automated re-engagement cycles for users who show interest but stall. 

Because everything ties back to CRM and previous event data, teams know exactly who is warming up, who needs a nudge, and who’s ready for early-access conversion. Instead of manually orchestrating touchpoints, Samaaro operationalises the entire nurture motion. 

Samaaro turns pre-event engagement into a measurable pipeline activity, giving teams the clarity to shape demand before the form even opens. 

Engagement Is a Continuous Cycle 

The top events start engaging with their audience well before the registration day itself. The best events are creating awareness, providing value, building trust, and finding out who is likely to attend months in advance. Engaging in pre-event tactics is simply healthier for the funnel and makes it easy to predict your turnout.  

Utilize Samaaro’s engagement automation tools to lay out more thoughtful and strategic pre-event journey plans.