How Magic Links work
When clicked, a Magic Link will automatically sign-up the attendee for a specific event if they already have a Hopin account affiliated with their email address. If a user does not have an existing Hopin account affiliated with their email address, the Magic Link creates a Hopin account for an attendee and, once clicked, registers the attendee for a specific event. No two Magic Links are the same; each is unique for every attendee at every event.
Here's a video walkthrough on how to send magic links to attendees.
How to use the Magic Link system
1. Organizer creates applicable ticket types in their Hopin event under Tickets on the event dashboard.
Note: An event must be published before you can register attendees with Magic Links. Use ticket types to manage which attendees can access/view select Stages, access/view select Sessions and meet select attendee groups in Networking.
2. Attendee gets their ticket on an external registration site (e.g.: Eventbrite).
3. Organizer brings registrants from the external registration site into Hopin manually or via Zapier.
Uploading registrants
- If you'd like to use Zapier, check out this guide.
- To upload registrants manually, follow the steps below.
1. Export your list of registrants from the external registration site.
2. Split your registrants into separate CSV files (one CSV file per Ticket Type).
3. Download the Magic Link Sample CSV file from Hopin to ensure you have the correct format for the CSV file.
4. Choose how you want attendees to receive their Magic Links from Hopin in the Manage Invitations tab.
Invite single, multiple or all registrants
Click the checkbox at the header of the invited user list to select all attendees that have been uploaded. Click the Send Invite button and every person uploaded will receive a unique email with a personal link to accept the invite and register for the event. You can also single-select registrants by clicking the checkbox next to the registrant to send invitations to specific registrants. Guests must click the link within the invite email to be automatically logged into their Hopin account and access the event directly after verification, more on this below.
Invitation Status for imported attendees will first display Not yet invited until an organizer selects Send Invite.
Once invites have been sent, the Invitation Status will be updated to Invited.
To re-send Magic Link Invite emails to an attendee, simply single-select an attendee by clicking their respective checkbox and click Send Invite. You can also bulk select multiple attendees or select all attendees once again and click Send Invite. You can re-send Magic Links to attendees who have yet accepted their Magic Link Invite as well as attendees who have already accepted their Magic Link Invite.
Note: Declined invites cannot be resent as users will have unsubscribed from all the event emails as well as declined to register.
What happens when the user clicks the Magic Link?
Once an attendee has accepted their Magic Link invite by clicking the button within the email, they will land on an email verification page and a verification email will be issued to the user. The verification link is active for 10 minutes. After it has expired, the user will be issued a new link whenever they click on the previous link in the original verification email. The Magic Link will act as an "access pass" into the event, it will bypass the need for attendees to log-in to Hopin by bringing them directly into their Hopin account and into the event.
Once an attendee has accepted the Magic Link invite and verified through the verification email, the Invitation Status will be updated to Registered.
To learn more on how the process looks like from an end user perspective please see our Knowledge Base guide here.
Note: Attendees will appear as registered only after verifying through the verification email. Also note that attendees can also decline an invite and they will appear as Declined.
Invite a single registrant
Click the Single Invite tab and input the registrant's details (i.e. Email, First Name, Last Name & Headline) and you will be able to send a Magic Link Invite email to a single registrant directly. You will have the option to send a test email first, and once you are satisfied with the email, you can send the invitation directly from this page.
Note: If you want to change the Magic Link Invites email template, this can be done via the event dashboard > Email > Customize Emails tab (available to select plans).
How to avoid errors when uploading CSV files
Before uploading your CSV file, we recommend using a program like VS Code, Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Mac, or any text editor on your computer to look for possible formatting errors before uploading it. This will help you find mistakes you will not easily find when viewed in tabular form.
Here is how the CSV file will look when viewed in an advanced spreadsheet editor like Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets, etc., please note the coma delimiters are not shown:
When opened in Notepad on Windows, or TextEdit on Mac the same CSV file looks like below, please note the coma delimiters are displayed making it easier to spot any formatting error:
- Always download the template (recommended) to ensure it's the most updated version of the CSV file with correct columns
- Ensure your CSV file has only one tab or "sheet"
- Do not have filters applied in your CSV file
- Upload a CSV, not XLS or XLSX
- Ensure your CSV is exported as comma-separated values, not semicolon-separated values
- Ensure your column headers are correct: Email, FirstName, LastName, Headline (case-sensitive)
- Please try to keep the nomenclature of the CSV file name as simple as possible and do not leave spaces in the name of the CSV file or have any unique symbols
- It is recommended to upload your file manually and select "Choose File" to find the correct CSV file.
- Be sure the text encoding for the CSV file is set as Unicode (UTF-8), if this is set to anything else you may experience issues displaying special characters.
Things to consider for Declined Magic Link invites as an organizer
Magic Link invites are very flexible to satisfy different user needs and scenarios, some further options to keep in mind as an organizer for Magic Link invitees who have declined their invites are described below.
- Organiser selects declined magic links from the list and sends invitation:
- Emails for declined invitations are not sent - Organiser sends single invite to a user who already had magic link invitation declined:
- User should not receive an email with an invitation
- User invitation status will still be displayed as declined - Organiser uploads CSV with users who already declined magic link invitation:
- Emails for declined invitations are not sent - Organiser cancels magic link invitation which was declined:
- Magic Link invitation is deleted
- Organiser can re-send a new invitation