Outdoor Events & Advance Ticket Sales

Whenever I mention email marketing people tend to roll their eyes. More often than not the simple suggestion of email marketing garners the almost immediate response of, “I don’t want to SPAM people.” I believe that the rapid decline in email marketing effectiveness is directly linked to businesses inundating their prospects with sale pitch emails.  The essence of the email is "buy this, NOW!" Such practices become quiet annoying to the people receiving the email.  You can still use email to effectively market your event. People are still responsive to email marketing if it’s done the right way. Here is the blatantly obvious secret to effectively marketing your event via email; focus on delivering value with each email you send, not sales pitch.

Real World Example
Last year, I created a 15 piece email campaign for one of my event marketing clients. The emails were ridiculously simple, plain text with a few HTML links. The none of the 15 emails asked the recipient to buy anything until the very end of the campaign. Focus on building trust and credibility with your target market first. People were so excited for the event that they were sending emails complaining about not being able to buy tickets online weeks before the event. (The online ticketing system wasn’t setup yet.) You can also create the same kind of anticipation for your event. If you delay asking people to buy first, they're likely to buy in hordes later.

Get Them Excited About Your Event
Can you think of anything you can send your target market to get them excited about your event?  Make the recipient want to open each email they receive from you. Your subject lines isn't nearly as important as the from line. It helps to know the wants and desires of your target market. Concentrate on what your target market wants, not what you think they want.

Everyone loves to know a secret. You can arouse your target market's curiosity. Consider sharing special insider information about the event not available to the public. With all the technology out there the possibilities to share information in interesting ways is almost endless.

Value Translates Into Success
People still read emails that capture their attention. Always try to build trust, credibility and rapport with your prospect first. If you focus on delivering valuable content first you can do some pretty amazing things. Two of my clients achieved over a 30% conversion rate on their home grown email lists. I strongly believe their high response rates were a direct result of delivering value before asking for the sale.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• P.T. Barnum on Advertising
• Online Marketing Like P.T. Barnum (Part I)
• Online Marketing Like P.T. Barnum (Part II)
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• How to Get Them To Your Event
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience

• The Event Promotion System
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