When to warn of imminent closing date?

[Paul Frost]

This is following up the thread about a App that would warn of imminent closing dates and the amount of people that left it until the last few hours before entering the Scottish 6 Days.

As the manager of numerous orienteering websites I am always in a quandary about when to publish a reminder about an imminent closing date.
I'm not talking about notification Apps, or when the closing date should be, I'm talking about when a web page should be updated or published to alert people to the imminent closing date.

So I though I'd ask for some expert opinion...

[andypat]

I'd suggest any reminder should include info about EOD (if available or limited) and any surcharges for EOD late entries.

[AndyC]

I'll admit as organiser for CSC at Slaley this weekend I didn't get it quite right.
I reminded any captains with lower than expected entry with three days to go and my own club (we currently don't have a captain) with two days to go (someone else was supposed to do it for me but he's ill in a far country).
But I should really have reminded everyone at about 3 days.

[DJM]

If "App" implies smartphone or iPad, then what about those of us who have neither and would be happy with an email reminder?

Either way, couldn't the system be designed so that the subscriber could opt for the amount of warning they prefer? Thus those who want a week's notice could then have their week, whilst those happy with 24 hours could have this instead ...

[Sunlit Forres]

The closing date issue is an interesting one. For yesterday's event at Loch-na-Bo I set quite a late closing date (midnight Tuesday). As we had ordered plenty maps I decided to leave entries open until Friday evening. I had 25 more entries in that time (almost a quarter of the total entry) and most of those were from regular orienteers. The other interesting fact was that a lot of the very late entries were from individuals. I've given up expecting people to enter in time to allow a realistic estimate to be made of map requirements, and just accept that we need to accept some wastage and plan event pricing acordingly.

It made life easier on the day having to process far fewer EODs. Given the fact we tend to order maps based on previous attendances and 'seat of the pants' forecasts, any event for which I do entries will prbably remain open until as late as possible, tied in to whatever time I decide I'm going to do all the admin.

I suspect a closing date app would only be useful for events where the closing date is well ahead of the actual event (eg the 6 days). My vote would be a 3-day warning.

[Paul Frost]

I'm not talking about notification Apps, or when the closing date should be, I'm talking about when a web page should be updated or published to alert people to the imminent closing date.

Some clubs may have an email mailing list that they could use to warn members and it's the same question, when do you send it?

If it's too soon people ignore it thinking that they have loads of time yet, if it's too late people may not see it in time.

[andypat]

The closing date issue is an interesting one. For yesterday's event at Loch-na-Bo I set quite a late closing date (midnight Tuesday). As we had ordered plenty maps I decided to leave entries open until Friday evening. I had 25 more entries in that time (almost a quarter of the total entry) and most of those were from regular orienteers.

I guess its up to the organiser to determine what the issues and constraints are. If you have plenty time/capacity to deal with late entries its probably wirth leaving it late to entice a few more people to come.

I planned/organised a middle distance event at Coille Nathais last year and with concerns both about parking capacity and the impact on the small Clyde team of helpers for unpredictable EOD numbers I set the EOD price at around double the pre-entry. We still got a few EOD but they were well warned in advance about the price and I'm not aware of any complaints. For bigger events pre-entry should eb seen as the norm, but its up to rognaisers to disincentivise EOD by making it more than just £1 extra.

[andy]

all of the above?

[madmike]

all of the above?

just what I was going to write

[Paul Frost]

all of the above?

Do you mean that you should send out an email every day for the week prior to the closing date?
As that could be viewed as spamming and very annoying to all those people who do not plan to go to the event.

You can't really publish a new web page every day either, you could keep re-dating it so it stayed at the top of the page, but once you've done it once it looses it's impact on subsequent days. You could have a countdown clock but that is still relying on someone looking at it once and keeping looking at it.

The web page reminder works best for people that visit the site daily or use an RSS reader to keep track of new web content on their favourite sites.

An email would require you to be subscribed to a specific mailing list, which is quite likely and easy for your local clubs, but you might not want stuff from every club within 200 miles, unless of course it was on a nice area.

The event that triggered this line of thought was the Scottish Night Champs on the 23rd Feb, for which the closing date is the 17th Feb. I don't have any email mailing list of possible competitors and neither does anyone else, so I was just thinking of moving it up the Scottish Orienteering website page to attract attention. But if I do it today and a few other items get published it could be down the page again in a few days. There could very well be other events that benefit from being promoted (they can't all be at the top), so the time at the top could be limited, hence why I'm trying to work out when that Golden moment is.

[PG]

If one of the entry systems could offer an “I am interested in this event, please send me an email x days before closing date” facility, then I guess it would have a good edge over its competitors. Maybe x would need to be the fixed number that this poll is seeking?

[andy]

all of the above?

Do you mean that you should send out an email every day for the week prior to the closing date?

Not for everyone, no, but I'm so crap with remembering closing dates that it's a case of the more the merrier. I wouldn't want to get anything like this as an email, I'd prefer to have some sort of reminder on my phone.

Anyway, what I'm really getting at is that it'll be different in different cases. Make it configurable.

[usuallylast]

Anyone else still finding this closing dates issue a bit of a pain in the proverbial? I like to put reminders on our website, or twitter, for events our club members might be interested in entering. It can be very time consuming however ferreting out the relevant info from individual club websites - and occasionally it's not there at all. I'm not bothered about receiving emails particularly, but knowing there was somewhere to look at a simple list of fixtures with closing dates as well as event date would be nice. Or am I just not looking in the right place?

[Paul Frost]

How about something really revolutionary and cutting edge in technology...

When you see an event you want to go to, but you don't want to enter there and then for whatever reason, YOU put a note on YOUR calendar (paper or electronic), diary, fridge door etc. or use one of the multitude of notification, reminder, ToDo apps that we all have on our phones and computers. That way you don't have to rely on someone else reminding you (or not) and you can set the reminder period to whatever suits YOU.

This would also save all those people that have already entered being bombarded with emails, text messages, tweets etc. with repeated reminders they don't need.

The downside of this method is that YOU would be taking responsibility for YOUR own decisions and won't be able to blame someone else for forgetting to enter.

But otherwise, it looks like 3 days is about right.

[usuallylast]

How about something really revolutionary and cutting edge in technology...

You mean like pencil and paper?

I already use google calendar etc - you still have to ferret about for the info in the first place. I just think it's a shame Fabian and the like don't include it in the event list. I can only assume there must be a good reason not to.