On Tuesday 8^th April, London Victorian hosted a highly successful open-house meeting attended by 75 members and guests.

Headline Results

Total attendance:                        75
Guests attending:                        49
New members signed-up:        11
Marketing spend:                        £120
Videos produced:                        6
Views on LinkedIn:                    ~2,600

How did we do it?

Here are the key lessons learnt from this event that every Club can replicate, alongside ideas on how to do better still.

Make it a Paid Ticketed Event

London Victorians previously organised an open-house in March 2024 attended by around 35 people. While this was a successful event that led to some new members signing-up, one data point made me think; out of 41 people registered to attend only 10 had turned-up.

This time, we decided to charge anyone wishing to attend £5 to ensure buy-in and commitment from attendees. Another positive effect of this decision was to focus minds around creating a professional value-adding event which attendees would enjoy.

A Big Event Needs a Big Team

Our VP of Membership Nick Roberts spearheaded organizing this open-house meeting with support from myself and our VP of Public of Relations Sam Yates. Other members of the leadership team additionally help on more specific tasks like agenda management. We knew early on that more members would need to be involved as well, especially on the day to support delivering an amazing event.

With this in mind, meeting agenda was filled-in early on with excellent speakers, evaluators and a fabulous Toastmaster of the meeting to create a show on the day. Another team of member also looked at guest hospitality, signing-in, registering and mingling with guests in the evening.

In total almost 20 members played a part in making this event successful. It was truly driven by the whole Club.

Set Goals Upfront and Plan Accordingly

Initial discussions regarding the event’s format began 7 weeks before its scheduled date. Nick and myself agreed on all key parameters 6 weeks beforehand, with Nick emphasizing that value was a key proposition for attendees:

1. The event’s theme would be public speaking essentials and tips, aiming it at attendees looking to improve their skills in a professional yet friendly atmosphere.
2. A short interactive 15 min workshop ‘The 5Ws of Public Speaking’ kicked-off the event after intros from the President and Toastmaster.
3. The agenda then followed best-practice written when I was Club Growth Director, with audience-led interactive evaluations of the speakers facilitated by the Toastmaster amongst other things.
4. Space for ~20 Table Topics using question which attendees pre-answered beforehand while registering – ‘Tell us something unique, interesting or fun about you’ to be answered in one minute max. The Table Topics Master selected the most interesting answers for this segment and there were loads.
5. A Testimonial from a member sharing her journey to wrap-up the event and encourage people to join.
6. Networking over pizza after the event.

The goal was to attract ~80 people and fill all the seats in the meeting room. Paid marketing was part of the project plan, alongside creating a series of short 1min marketing videos to entice people.

For reference, the agenda of the event can be found on easy-Speak and the registration page on Eventbrite.

Do a Big Marketing Push

Like most Clubs, London Victorians mostly markets itself passively with a website, Facebook page, LinkedIn page and Google Business profile. On this occasion a more active use of all of these channels would be needed.

Content Creation – Nick, Sam and myself work together to create professional looking content to share across all marketing channels. Using the best photos at our disposal, we created an A4 poster, a square image for social media and 6 videos featuring our members encouraging people to attend. We used Canva to edit these materials and iPhones to shoot the videos in our venue.

Internal Promotion – Nick spoke about the event to Club members during every meeting in March and sent multiple WhatsApp messages in our group with the event poster included. Several members took on the challenge of inviting friends and colleagues to attend, and word of mouth likely brought in more registrations as well. Leveraging our membership also led to one of our members Josh agreeing to sponsor some tasty kombucha from his business to drink on the day too.

Eventbrite Marketing – Eventbrite promotes events to users according to their own interests, the possibility also exists to advertise directly on the platform to attract more views and registration. Our event page was continuously updated throughout the pre-event period to make it more attractive, eventually culminating in using features such as video headers and embedded agendas. We finally ran £30 of paid advertising ran on Eventbrite in March targeted at people living in London.

LinkedIn Posts – Nick took the lead in sharing posts about the event in his profile and the Club’s profile with members encouraged to reshare them. We additionally leveraged the videos we created into a campaign of 5 paid ads which was viewed ~2,600 times and brough in close to 100 visitors to our Eventbrite page. Not a bad spend of £60 and our Click-through-Rate of ~3,6% would be the envy of many marketeers.

Facebook Posts – We posted once or twice per week reminding people to attend the event, sharing images and the videos we created. A short-paid marketing campaign using an image also gathered ~8,000 impressions and led to a spike in traffic to our Eventbrite page.

Past Guests & Newsletter – The event was promoted to all of our past members and guests via our newsletter, which led to a few familiar faces coming back to the Club and enabled us to reconnect with some old members as well.

Business Networks – Nick took the initiative to reach out to the Victoria Business Improvement District and other similar networks in the area. Through grit and a few phone calls with the right people, he was able to get our event added to one of their websites and a promotional newsletter going to businesses in this part of London.

The effectiveness of these campaigns helped fill on the room on the day and the week beforehand as well which saw a record 17 guests attending.

Make it a Show on the Day

Executing this event properly was crucial and all meeting functionaries alongside the hospitality team were brief beforehand regarding their task. Our Toastmaster for this meeting Lucy also took care in ensuring that all contingencies were planned for so that nothing was left to chance.

In the end everything went smoothly and QR codes were spread around the room encouraging attendees to join the Club. Pizzas arrived on time and everyone had something to eat.

How did we do?

Out of 59 guests who registered to attend, 49 turned-up, vindicating the Club’s decision to charge for attendance. What’s more we now have a whooping 10 new members who signed-up after attending the event, no doubt prompted by a special offer to waive the £30 joining fee to attendees. Ticket charges covered all marketing costs, and some of the pizza. So, by all accounts this was an amazingly successful event made possible by a great team!

I personally learnt or relearnt a lot from helping its organisation and I know the same is true for Nick and Sam.

The Club will likely organize another open-house next spring in 2026, and here is what we will aim to do even better next time:

1. Plan ahead even more – In hindsight locking everything 8 or even 10 weeks in advance would have enabled us to have a solid few weeks to shoot more marketing videos and create more content.
2. Read the fine-print regarding videos – Our marketing videos were successful but could have had far more power, if we had been able to use them on Facebook. For some reasons Facebook rejected them for advertising purposes, and we lacked the time to research this further and make any claim. YouTube also only accepted our videos as shorts once the background music was removed, despite it being copyright free.
3. Have a bigger team – We needed a 4^th person in the organising team, especially to support with marketing and there was a time in late March were we all found ourselves stretched doing everything. Another team member could have helped with getting more content out.

By Florian Bay DTM – Past District 91 Director

 

Celebrating 29 years of community, growth, and connection 

This year, City of London Toastmasters marked a special chapter in its journey—our 29th anniversary! Held on 19th November, the evening was filled with reflection, laughter, and heartfelt stories as we celebrated nearly three decades of empowering speakers and nurturing leaders.

The celebration brought together members past and present. A highlight of the evening was a panel discussion with our past presidents, thoughtfully moderated by our club president, Apoorva Agarwal. Their stories reminded us of the deep roots and strong values that have shaped our club’s journey. We were honoured by the presence of some distinguished guests: Regional Advisor Lilian, District Leaders Seema Menon and Debbie Williams.  

Learning and Growing Together 

This year wasn’t just about celebration—it was also about growth. We hosted three impactful workshops: 

• A fantastic Humorous Speech Workshop with Ola Aralepo, a two-time District Humorous Speech Champion, where members explored the art of adding laughter and levity to their speeches. 

• A high-energy Table Topics Workshop with Luca Graziani, where members learned how to respond quickly and confidently in impromptu settings.  

• An Evaluation Masterclass by Lynne Cantor Gayer, DTM, that helped members sharpen their listening and feedback skills. 

Encouraging Excellence 

Our club also held two speech contests 

1. Humorous Speech & Table Topics Contest 

1. International Speech & Evaluation Contest  

allowing members to challenge themselves, gain confidence, and step into the spotlight. 

Speakathons That Sparked Growth 

This year, our club hosted two Speakathons — special evenings designed to provide members an opportunity to accelerate in their pathways. These high-energy sessions were filled with back-to-back prepared speeches, offering both budding and experienced speakers a platform to take big steps in their Toastmasters journey. 

The room buzzed with enthusiasm as members delivered speeches ranging from ice breakers to Level 5 presentations, each one met with encouragement, constructive feedback, and warm applause. It was a celebration of courage, commitment, and continuous learning. 

Speakathon 1 Photo 

Speakathon 2 photo 

Ending the Year on a High 

We’re closing the year with pride, as many members began their public speaking journey with their Icebreaker speeches, while others completed levels and even entire Pathways, marking personal milestones in their communication and leadership journey 

At City of London Toastmasters, we’re more than just a club. We’re a community built on encouragement, shared goals, and a love for learning. Here’s to a fantastic year gone by—and many more years of growth, laughter, and inspiration to come!