I do this with all of my major conferences that I run through Cvent. We open event registration about three months prior to session registration. The biggest thing is to manage attendees' expectations from the start - let them know when they register roughly when the sessions will open for registration, plan marketing emails/announcements around session registration opening, send regular reminders to attendees to register for their sessions (especially if sessions start to fill up).
As far as the actual set up of the event - it's very easy to drop the session registration widget into the registration process after you've opened event registration. Just publish your site to open event registration, and then once you start setting up session registration save but don't publish your site until it's all ready. I also go back into the registration confirmation and modification confirmation emails when I open session registration and make sure that the Registration Information widget is included in those emails and that the session information is turned on in the widget. Same with the confirmation page.
If you use Attendee Hub, you can also use the registration site for event registration and then the Attendee Hub for session registration later. There's an interesting thread in the Community about this method here - Attendee Website Pros & Cons | Open Forum.
Hope this helps!
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Jess Olcott
Training Program Coordinator
ETC, Inc.
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Original Message:
Sent: 12-17-2025 16:04
From: Adrienne Harkess
Subject: Opening registration before all optional session details finalized
Does anyone have experience opening event registration before you have all of your optional session details are finalized? Can you go back in later to add the optional sessions and request that registrants go back to fill out their preferences? Does this lose people who don't go back to indicate which session they will attend? Other feedback? Is this something to avoid?
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Adrienne Harkess
Senior Manager, Community Education & Conference Planning
Prevent Cancer FoundationUnited States
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