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I have been wondering the same thing. I'd love to hear from anyone who has any research/data on this. As we become more and more of an "on demand" society, I wonder if the early registration minor ($100 or less)discounts are less important than the flexibility we have come to love. I have seen a couple of events that had steeper early registration discounts to the tune of $300-500. I wonder if that may be a bigger incentive?

I wouldn't call it real "data," but when I was at the National Association of Biology Teachers, we instituted an early-bird registration with a modest discount. In the several (5+) years we did it, we saw no appreciable change in the number of registrants to the annual conference.

What did occur, was that we received significantly more registrations well in advance of the conference. The conference was held in Oct/Nov with a cut-off one month before; the early-bird deadline was always May 31. For an average attendance of 1,200, in the days before the early-bird, registrations only trickled in until August, when things heated up. With the early-bird we could always count on 300 registrations by the end of May.

With no increase in attendance, the early-bird discount actually cost the association a small amount of money. What it did - and this was our rationale - was even out the cash flow during the year, which for that organization was more important than the extra income.

Of course that conference only had a registration fee of $150-200. The very deep discounts Meri Beth describes must come from conference fees that are just outside my realm of experience (or comprehension). Personally, if I'm paying I always try to hit the early-bird deadline. If my employer is paying (and I know this confession poses ethical dilemmas) I am more likely to let things slide until the next deadline.

From a marketing perspective, the early bird gives us two important advantages. First, it gives us the chance to do a big push well in advance of the pre-registration cut-off...with a built-in, urgent message. Second, it gives us a benchmark for registration that helps us re-evaluate the marketing plan, make sure the right people are registering in the right numbers, and take action if there is a problem. If the early bird is times correctly, there's plenty of time to make adjustments.

Early bird registration makes a big difference! (I registered early for the ASAE annual meeting to avoid the July 7 bump-up). When I was CEO of Chicago Area Runners Association, we increased the cost of late registration and experienced a huge increase in early signups. It decreased the amount of revenue collected but also eliminated excess expenses, since we had a better idea of how many people to plan for.

Early bird registration makes a big difference! (I registered early for the Annual Meeting to avoid the July 7 bump-up). When I was CEO of Chicago Area Runners Association, we increased the cost of late registration for our training programs and experienced a huge increase in early signups. It decreased the amount of revenue collected but also eliminated excess expenses, since we had a better idea of how many people to plan for.

One easy (and visual) way to tell if early bird makes a difference is create a bar chart of your past three-year registrations by number of weeks out from your event and tag the week that early-bird cut off occured--- then you will know the spike it creates. For us,it is a huge jump and well worth the incentives. I have learned not to move the date because all you do is loose money and earn a reputatiion that works against you.

You can also do some good data analysis of the pre and post early registrants against the regular attendees and the first timers etc. if you really want to get to know your meeting attendee behaviors.

I work for an organization of CFO's in public school systems and the early bird is a big deal. For a public employer, it is expected to minimize costs, especially when it is easy to control. But internally it helps us to not only measure attendance patterns but focus on our attrition penalty decisions as well. True, we do see some situations where the late fee is irrelvant and does not negate the need for flexbility to make a day before decision.