Event Marketing Articles and Event Promotion

The "Event Marketing System" . . .

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Keeping Your Event List Engaged

How often do you engage your list?  Engaging your list means sending some type of information to a group of target market subscribers. The materials could be anything from an email newsletter to using “snail mail” to keep in touch.  In other posts I’ve given out information for growing your list. In today’s post, I’m going to quickly look at some ways to deal with people unsubscribing from your list.

When you’re growing your list it’s really important to get your timing interval set for what works best for your target market. Over the years I’ve seen both sides of the engagement spectrum, from too much to too little. My clients engage their list anywhere from once a quarter to every week. Contrary to popular belief, too many people under engage their list.

Ask Two Questions . . .
My one recommendation for determining how many times to engage your list is to look at all your points of feedback and data. There are two recommendations I have for my clients. Ask yourself the following two questions as they apply to your list:

1. Are a number of people unsubscribing from your list?
   If you’re getting a high number of people unsubscribing from your list you might want to take a hard look at your tactics. A big factor in high unsubscribe rates is people feeling like they’re getting “sales pitched to death.” If you are sending high quality information you can probably send more often and not see as many people unsubscribe. There is one client I have with a list of almost 600 email subscribers. They’ve been sending regular emails out, now sending weekly, and two people have unsubscribed. I would argue that 2 people unsubscribing is a very low rate for sending emails over 5 months.
2. What type of feedback are your list subscribers sending you?
   Are people very positive with their responses to your emails?  If nobody is writing you back and you find people are still unsubscribing, you might not be connecting with your target market. Look for quality versus quantity on the feedback issue.  Don’t assume that because you’re not getting a deluge of positive emails that something is wrong. When my client with the 600 person email list ask for feedback from their list only 10 people responded. But all the responses were very positive. If you are getting primarily negative responses or people are expressing concern, it’s time to change how you engage your list. 

The Simplest Thing to Do
Send your list an email and ask them what they think of the information you are providing them.  Every time I ask people to write what they think the response has been extremely enlightening. If you’re having challenges with your list, you might find that you list subscribers can give you value feedback for improvements.

Maintaining your list might be more important than growing your list. It doesn’t matter how many people you get to subscribe if they don’t stay very long on your list.

Additional Resources:

• Start Building Your List Early
• Multiple Ways to Engage Your Event List
• The Second Worst Thing For Your List
• Building Anticipation For Your Event with Email Marketing

Connecting with Your Event Audience Online

When it comes to your event web site content it is imperative to be very conscientious that the information is overwhelmingly user focused.  I go well beyond “beating a dead horse” on this particular topic.  People always ask, why do you constantly bring this point up?  Not staying people focused is the single biggest liability to a business' or event's web presence. Most companies struggle online because they’re not connecting with their audience in a language that the audience understands.

“I want it done this way!”
In the past, I’ve had clients insist on updating their web site with information they believed to be very important.  The challenge is showing event organizers and business owners that the people aren’t interested in the particular information they want to share. Worst of all it cost event organizers and businesses their own time, effort, and money. At the very basic level you need to separate what you think is best form the audience and what they want. I'm not sure who's quote it is, but "Get yourself out of your ego and into the prospect's ego."

How to Avoid Costly Mistakes
You can avoid the costly mistake of not connecting with your audience in several ways.  Start with your data. What data (emails, follow up surveys, telephone calls, etc.) can you reference to better understand the people using your web site?  Are there any specific trends that give you insight into what information prospective attendees want? Do your web stats indicate something important?

Another way to get in the right frame of mind is to ask yourself, “If I was going to an event web site, what would be most important to me?” When it comes to event web site information what's important can change depending on the time frame. As an example, people are going to be much more interested in directions to your event as the event date approaches. The safest thing to do is ask your target market, “What do you want to know about the event and when do you want to know about it?”

Below I’ve included some articles that might prove helpful in getting in better touch with you audience.

• Are You Listening To Your Users?
• Are You Interacting with Your Target Market?
• Ask Your Patrons What They Want
• Create a Better Event with Patron Feedback

Using Mystery and Your Event Promotion

Have you ever used a little mystery or intrigue to promote your event? We humans tend to be a very curious bunch.  Once we’re teased with something of interest, it's usually followed by an insatiable itch to find out more.

The Sneak Peak
A great example of using mystery to tease something bigger is a movie trailer. What is a movie trailer? A movie trailer is a short two minute vignette to get people interested in going to see the full movie. Have you every thought of using the trailer idea to promote your event? With inexpensive video recording and free services like YouTube, it's never been easier to create your own videos.

Delivering the Goods
One caveat of mystery is not letting your audience down. If you’re building up a promotion using mystery make sure that you deliver something big. You want your audience to say, “Wow, that’s amazing!” You never want them underwhelmed by the experience. How many times have you seen something built up so big that it can’t possibility meet someone’s expectations? It's like seeing a great movie trailer and then being let down by the feature length version of the film. If you're going to tease, make sure you deliver the goods!

Below, I’ve included a video presentation by J.J. Abrams, the creator of Lost and number of Hollywood movies.  In the video, J.J. talks about Mystery Boxes and how they get integrated into various stories.  Take a few minutes and watch the video. It might give you an idea that can be integrated into you next event or promotion.

The Magic Box

Additional Resources:

• Magic Marketing Sales Technique

Event Marketing Idea: Blocking Your Tickets

There is one really simple strategy you can use to drive the “right” amount of advance sale tickets.  Why the “right” amount of advance sale tickets? Because many event organizers are hesitant to offer ticket discounts. They worry that they’re going to lose too much money.  “What if everyone buys the tickets at 50% off?” There is a very easy way to mitigate the possibility of giving up too much and still drive advance ticket sales.

Ticket Blocking
If you’re offering discounted tickets to your event, especially deeply discounted tickets, limiting the amount of tickets sold can be used to your advantage.  I refer to the process as discount ticket blocking. By ticket blocking you only offer a certain amount of tickets at a discounted price.  Just by limiting the number of discounted tickets you give additional incentive for people to buy early.  It’s important to find the right combination of blocking and price to drive ticket prices.  Each event is going to have a unique combination. Doing a little intuitive math should give you a decent idea of how much and how many tickets to discount.

Offer Huge Ticket Discounts
Did you ever think of offering a 50% discount on your event ticket price? A few months ago I meet Kevin Walsh from Wingman Events.  Kevin provides consulting services for the air show industry.  He came up with a great ticket and blocking schedule that helped sell a significant portion of tickets of advance sale tickets to an air show. Did he give up profit margin? Absolutely! He discounted some event tickets by over 50%. But would you give up significant margin if you could pay for your entire event before a single person walked in the gate? Remember there are only a certain amount of people who will buy early.

Ticket blocking is a simple way to make sure you don’t lose when discounting ticket prices and still drive advance sale tickets.  Make sure you give it some consideration for your next event.

Additional Resources:

• Online Ticket Sales
• Leveraging Advance Event Sale Tickets
• Counter Intuitive Event Results

Ask Your Patrons What They Want

When is the last time you asked your target market for feedback or input on your event? It is very easy to assume you know the needs and desires of your target market.  The dilemma of assuming what a target market's needs and desires are, plagues the business world daily. It's the classic "I know what they want!" Businesses then proceed to spend a ton of money and time developing the perfect product or service that nobody needs or cares about.  Unfortunately the same dilemma carries over into the event world. Event organizers build events that don’t match up with the expectations or desires of their target market. If you can meet your target market’s needs and desires you’re much more likely to be successful with your event.  Put simply, would you rather go to an event that interests you or an event that holds no interest for you? One of the easiest ways to meet your target market's wants and desires is by asking them simple questions.

A Real Life Feedback Example
The example that follows isn't directly from the event marketing world, but the same idea could be applied to almost any event.

A few days ago a friend of mine conducted a very interesting feedback experiment. My friend’s company sells unique t-shirts.  On a whim he decided to post a short two minute video to his web site.  The purpose of the video was to request questions from his target market relating to his business and products.  After the video was posted online, he emailed all the people on his email list. The response to the video was tremendous.  Hundreds of people viewed the video and then submitted a bunch of great questions and comments.  My friend is now going to use the feedback to help him develop products that are very focused on the customer. It also help him drive home the biggest sales month he's ever had in his business.

Stick with Simple
You don’t have to do something as elaborate as a video post to engage your target market.  Email is a super efficient and inexpensive way to collect feedback. Send an email and ask a few very simple questions that help you better understand your target market’s wants and desires.  It could be as straightforward as “What do you want to see at the event?” You’ll be amazed at what you can learn when you ask questions. Ideas you might never have thought of manifest themselves with great audience feedback. Another great thing about asking for feedback on your event is that it builds a tremendous amount of trust and credibility with your target market.   

After Your Event
After you event is over think about sending a follow up survey. Find out what attendees liked and disliked. You could use the data you collect for planning future events.

If you want a super successful event ask your target market what they want and then do your best to deliver it to them.  It all starts with a question. If you can focus primarily your target market's needs, you'll have a much easier time reaching your event goals, guaranteed!

Additional Resources:

• Multiple Ways to Engage Your List
• Learn from the Past before Spending on the Future
• Are You Interacting with Your Target Market?