Inadvertently slaughtering a golden goose
A few weeks ago, I spoke with a Canadian event organizer about their number one marketing asset. That asset is the "goose that lays golden eggs." And everyone has one. Your golden goose comes in the form of your customer and prospect list.
When curated and appropriately cultivated, a permission-based marketing list will outperform all other forms of advertising or marketing.
In 10 years, the Canadian event organizer referenced above spent over 100,000 CAD building a permission-based database of over 40,000 people. Their database investment generated over 1,000,000 CAD of ticket sales. That's a 900% return on investment.
If you have anything that can consistently generate that level of ROI spanning 10 years, I'm all eyes!
As it pertains to the Canadian event organizer, they had given control of their "golden goose" to another organization as a result of a business partnership.
What was intended to be a good-faith partnership ended in a marketing disaster.
The event's new partner insisted on using their own marketing software for database marketing. Because of anti-spam laws, that required every one of the 40,000 imported customers to reaffirm their permission to be marketed to.
As a result, an expensive and well-cultivated marketing list of 40,000 was slashed to 400 people.
As of last year, the partnership has ended, and the Canadian organizer is left with a tiny marketing list. Will they be able to rebuild their list, yes! Unfortunately, it will take them years to get back to a high-quality list of 40,000 people.
This one is straightforward. Unless you're getting more money than you've ever imagined, never cede control of your golden goose to any other organization.
Here are some "golden goose" links to get you going:
- An Important Event Web Site Statistic for Promoters and Event Planners
- Shocking Event Web Site Stat - Most People Only Visit Once
- Automatically Generate Leads for Your Event Year Round
- Event Marketing: Start Building Your List Early
- Your Opt-in Offer and Using Specific Words
- Form Placement and Growing Your List