First-Time Attendee Programmes: How Associations Turn Newcomers into Regulars

At the 2025 World Education Congress of Meeting Professionals International (MPI), 45 per cent of attendees were there for the first time. The American Association for Respiratory Care (AARC) reported 35 per cent first-timers at its 2025 Congress. If your figures look anything like these, a third or more of your room has never been to your event. Their first experience can influence whether they register for the next edition.

Associations use several familiar ways to welcome newcomers. There is a ribbon on the badge, an orientation session on the first morning, perhaps a welcome lounge. These are good starts, but they mainly help first-timers find their way around. Help newcomers build contacts as well as find their way around, so they have people to reconnect with at the next event. This guide shows what a first-time attendee programme should include, how to pair newcomers with experienced attendees on clear criteria, and which numbers tell you whether it worked.

What is a first-time attendee programme?

A first-time attendee programme is the set of measures an association uses to welcome people attending its congress or annual meeting for the first time. It typically combines four elements: identifying first-timers at registration, orientation before and at the event, a place or moment to meet other newcomers, and introductions to experienced attendees, often through a buddy or guide.

It is not the same as onboarding new members, even though the two overlap. Many first-timers are not members yet: early career professionals, delegates sent by their employer, speakers from neighbouring fields, international guests. Equally, many new members never come to the congress in their first year. How to keep members active across the whole year, with mentoring pairs and regional formats, we cover in our guide to member engagement at association events. This article focuses on the congress and on the people who arrive at it for the first time.

That difference matters for the design. Design the programme for unfamiliarity with the event, regardless of whether the attendee is already a member.

Why first-timers decide next year’s attendance

The first-timer share is large across very different associations, so it is worth checking your own registration data before setting the welcome programme’s capacity.

For the conference manager, these figures have a direct consequence. If a third of the audience is new each year and many of them do not return, she is rebuilding a third of her audience every year. That creates an ongoing recruitment task. A programme that brings even a share of first-timers back makes next year’s registration target easier to reach.

Useful contacts are one reason attendees may return. In Freeman’s 2025 trends report “Unpacking XLNC”, 51 per cent of attendees said effective networking is reason enough to return to an event. The same report shows where it goes wrong for younger professionals aged 23 to 46. Forty per cent of them say networking feels awkward, 30 per cent struggle to start conversations, and nearly half want curated recommendations of whom to meet before the event. A first-timer who knows nobody faces that problem more sharply than anyone.

Membership data points the same way. In the 2024 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report by Marketing General Incorporated (MGI), 67 per cent of associations named networking as the most common reason members join. First-year members renewed at a median of 75 per cent, compared with 85 per cent across all members. And 20 per cent of associations named “joined only for the conference discount” as a top reason for not renewing. These membership findings are not measures of congress attendance, but they reinforce the value of helping newcomers find reasons to stay involved beyond a registration discount.

Use the first-timer marker to support introductions, then check whether those introductions actually happened.

The building blocks of a first-time attendee programme

The building blocks themselves are well known, and many associations already run several of them. The table shows what each one does and how much effort it needs.

Real programmes mix these elements. The Academy of Management (AOM) offers a new member and annual meeting orientation webinar, a member welcome room staffed by student ambassadors and volunteers, and a first-time attendee ribbon. The American Sociological Association (ASA) scheduled a first-time attendee welcome session at 8 a.m. on the Saturday of its 2025 annual meeting and a separate guide programme around it. At IMEX America, first-timers can join 30-minute tours of the show floor (BizBash, 2024).

Orientation helps newcomers understand the event. Welcome sessions, lounges and buddy programmes can also create contacts, provided someone helps start the conversations. If your welcome lounge needs a format to come alive, our list of networking event ideas includes themed lounges and topic tables that suit a first-timer corner.

Buddy matching: how to pair newcomers with regulars

A buddy programme gives each newcomer a named contact, so it needs a clear role and a workable matching process. Three decisions shape it: the model, the matching criteria and the buddy’s job.

Choose the model

Associations use three basic models, and the right one depends on how many volunteers you can recruit.

• One host for one or two newcomers. The European Accounting Association (EAA) runs its Annual Congress Host Programme this way. Hosts must have attended at least two congresses, and each is matched with one or two first-time attendees.
• One buddy for a small group. The International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization (ICPHSO) piloted a buddy programme at its 2025 symposium in which each buddy looked after three or four first-timers. ASA’s guides also lead small groups.
• Peer groups of three or four. For its 2025 annual meeting, the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies (AABB) introduced “Navigate and Network”, which matches attendees by email into groups of three to four before the meeting. First-timers and returning attendees opt in at registration.

The one-to-one model gives the deepest contact but needs the most volunteers. The group models scale better, and newcomers in a group also meet each other.

Match on criteria, not on the order of sign-ups

Many programmes still pair newcomers and buddies in the order applications arrive. That is simple, but it leaves the most important variable to chance: whether the two people have anything to talk about. The EAA shows the alternative. It tries to pair first-timers with hosts in similar teaching or research areas and even takes arrival times into account. Useful criteria include:

• Field or topic: the same specialism, research area or sector, so the buddy can introduce relevant people.
• Career stage: a senior regular for an early career newcomer, or a peer for someone senior who is new to this association.
• Language and region: shared language for international first-timers, and a buddy from the same country when local chapters matter.
• Arrival and schedule: both on site at the start, so the first meeting actually happens.
• Conflicts: no direct competitors in one pair, and no buddy from the newcomer’s own organisation.

Write these rules down before you match anyone. The board can see why someone got a particular buddy, and the rules still work when the programme grows from 40 pairs to 400.

Give buddies a small, clear job

ICPHSO states it plainly: “This is not a mentor program.” A buddy is a guide for one event, not a career adviser for a year. That framing makes it easier to recruit volunteers and easier to deliver. A good buddy brief fits on one page and covers three touchpoints.

1. An email two weeks before, with two sessions worth attending and a meeting point.
2. A 20 to 30 minute meet-up at the start of the event, in a public place, as ASA asks of its guides.
3. One introduction to someone else and a short check-in at the end.

Picture a young engineer at her first congress of 2,000 people. She has an email from her buddy, a meeting point by the registration desk at 8:30 and a note that he will introduce her to two people working on similar projects. By the first coffee break she knows three names. Those introductions give her a practical starting point for the rest of the congress.

Keep the expected contact manageable and explain where the buddy’s responsibility ends.

Converve’s rule-based meeting matrix can pair first-timers with experienced attendees according to profile criteria you define, such as field, career stage or language, and schedule the first meeting in the attendee’s agenda. Every match follows the rules you set, so you can explain any pairing to your board. See how associations use it on our associations solution page.

A timeline from registration to follow-up

Matching only works if it starts early enough for the first email to arrive before the event. This sequence fits most annual congresses.

The first step decides how well the others work. Collect first-time status and the information needed for matching at registration, so you can prepare invitations and pairings without a separate round of data collection. Which questions to ask, and how to keep the form short, we explain in our guide to registration questions for matchmaking.

How to measure whether the programme works

The timeline ends with a survey, but the real result only shows a year later. Closing-day feedback helps improve the immediate experience; registration data from the next edition shows who returned. Four numbers are more useful:

• First-timer return rate: the share of this year’s first-timers who register for the next edition. This is the main result. Compare first-timers who had a buddy with those who did not.
• Contact rate: the share of first-timers who had at least one planned meeting or buddy contact during the event.
• Member conversion: among first-timers who were not members, the share who join within twelve months.
• Named contacts: the answer to one survey question, “How many people did you meet whom you will contact again?”

The return rate needs nothing more than the same person ID across two editions. Compare the groups carefully, however. Motivated newcomers sign up for buddy programmes more often, so a higher return rate among them does not prove that the buddy caused it. It does show whether the programme reaches the people you want to keep. Ready-made questions for the follow-up survey are in our collection of post-event survey questions.

Give the board a clear comparison, while explaining the limits of what it shows. For example: “Of last year’s first-timers with a buddy, X per cent came back, against Y per cent without one.” How first-timer progression fits into the wider reporting of an association’s event calendar, we show in our guide to association event management.

Help newcomers leave with people to contact

Plan orientation and introductions together. Newcomers need to understand the event and have opportunities to meet people they may want to contact afterwards. A manageable buddy role and clear matching criteria make that support easier to deliver.

For the conference manager, that means three decisions before the next congress: add a first-timer flag and two matching questions to registration, write down the matching rules, and track how many first-timers return. If you want to schedule those first conversations on clear rules rather than by hand, talk to Converve about your next congress.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a first-time attendee programme?

A first-time attendee programme is a set of measures that helps people attending an association congress or annual meeting for the first time. It usually combines a first-timer flag at registration, orientation before and at the event, a welcome session or lounge, and introductions to experienced attendees through a buddy or guide.

How many attendees at an association congress are first-timers?

It varies, but a third or more is common. In 2025, 45 per cent of attendees at the MPI World Education Congress were first-timers (MPI via Northstar Meetings Group), as were 35 per cent at the AARC Congress (AARC post-show report). At the AAS 2025 conference, 1,181 of 3,298 in-person registrations were first-time attendees.

How do you match buddies with first-time attendees?

Match on written criteria rather than in the order of sign-ups: field or topic, career stage, language and region, arrival time, and no direct competitors in one pair. The European Accounting Association, for example, pairs first-timers with hosts in similar teaching or research areas and considers arrival times.

How many first-timers should one buddy look after?

Between one and four. The EAA matches each host with one or two first-time attendees, while ICPHSO’s 2025 pilot gave each buddy three or four first-timers. Smaller ratios give deeper contact; larger groups need fewer volunteers and let newcomers meet each other.

Is a buddy programme the same as a mentoring programme?

No. A buddy guides a first-timer through one event with a few fixed touchpoints, such as an email before, a meet-up at the start and an introduction to someone else. Mentoring runs over months and covers career questions. Keeping the buddy role small makes it easier to recruit volunteers.

How do you know whether a first-time attendee programme works?

Track the share of first-timers who register for the next edition, and compare those who had a buddy with those who did not. Add the share of first-timers with at least one planned conversation, member conversion within twelve months, and how many contacts they plan to stay in touch with.