Welcome to the event manager blog series. Previously, we gave you five tips for marketing your event on Facebook. After all, Facebook is the top social network for event marketers according to a study by eventfarm. That being said, when marketing an event on social media, Facebook can only take you so far. Therefore, it only makes sense to allocate resources into multiple channels in order to increase your event’s attendance. Sending event invitations or marketing your events with your email marketing suite can boost your registration and significantly boost your event marketing efforts. After all, according to a study by Bizzabo, 40% of event planners believe that email is the top event marketing channel. To add to that, 91% of users check their email at least one time a day, compared to about 50% of Facebook users. Without any doubt, email marketing can boost your event attendance. The only question is are you using email marketing effectively?
Event Email Marketing Benchmarks
In my experience, where many brands, businesses, charities, and non-profit organizations fall flat with their event email marketing is they tend to do the bare minimum when it comes to email marketing and their events. Simply creating the event and sending event registrations alone will not sell your event out. As a matter of fact, more than half of ticket sales and registrations won’t come until the final week before your event. In order to get the most out your event email marketing, you need to understand and pay attention to three metrics: The open rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribe rate. According to email campaign stats from MailChimp, event emails on average tend to see:
- 20.41% of recipients open their emails
- 2.19% of recipients will click on a link in the email
- 0.28% of recipients will unsubscribe from your event mailing list
With these metrics in mind, let’s go over 7 tips to maximize your event email marketing efficiency.
Make The Message Personal
Nobody likes receiving a generic email, or messages that don’t seem to address them in any particular way. The loss of personal touch is one of the unfortunate realities of mass email campaigns. That being said, as long as your email list is organized, you can take advantage of your email marketing suite’s personalization features. Adding the recipients’ name within the email or in the subject line is a great way to get their attention. Better yet, if you have any additional data such as the recipient’s company name, or their job title is another good way to maximize engagement.
Segment Your List
This one should be obvious however it can be easily overlooked by eager event managers. Before sending out your event emails, consider audience’s data. For example, if you are planning an event on a Wednesday at 5pm, would a Communications Manager be able to attend your event if they are 2.5 hours away? Other things to consider are their engagement, interest, and industry. Which people from your event list had come to one of your events before? Is their industry relevant to what your event is about? Once you break down your list into a few silos, start sending emails to those who are most likely to attend.
Use A Subject Line That Creates A Sense Of Urgency
There is no doubt that email subject lines that create a fear of missing out get the most opens. Using urgency words in the subject line will encourage your email subscribers to open your emails and register for your events. Using vivid action verbs or time-sensitive phrases are good ways to nudge your email recipients into action.
Offer Incentives
Somewhat related to the tip above, offering an incentive such as early bird registrations is another great way to boost your event sales right from the off. As someone who attends many events, I can tell you that limited early bird tickets have trained me to hurry and purchase tickets for events I really want to go to. It can also help you make better projections for your final event sales.
Keep Your Messages Short
It’s no secret that as far as the internet is concerned, people’s attention spans have dropped. A good email must, therefore, be short, sweet and simple. Include a clear call to action, preferably at the top of the email or better yet, use a Hero header. As far as the text is concerned, you may include some relevant information about your upcoming event and get creative with your style. Bullets make the email simple to scan, while using bold or italic text, or contrasting certain font colours from the rest of your design are great ways to guide your readers’ attention to this information. The key takeaway here is to avoid overwhelming your recipient with too much information about the event because ultimately it will lose its effect.
Resend Emails To Those Who Haven’t Opened It
As noted earlier, more than half of your event registrations will come in the week before your event. That’s why you should never shy away from sending a reminder (or two) to recipients who haven’t registered yet. Look at your email analytics and find out which members of your lists never opened your previous event emails. A friendly reminder might well be what makes them open your email and attend your event.
Make Your Emails Shareable
An often underused piece of real-estate of event email marketing campaigns is the footer area. Yet every part of any email represents an opportunity for you to engage with your recipient. After getting your core message and call-to-action across, use the footer area of the email to include social sharing links. Never pass on an opportunity for word-of-mouth marketing with an engaged recipient. Simply including a “forward this email” link in the footer area might even get them to bring a friend of theirs to your event.
Does Your Current Strategy Differ From Above?
There is no shortage of event email marketing cliche’s but above all, how you communicate with your recipients when marketing your event by email should add value, address pain points, provide clarity and above all leave them feeling positive about your organization. Whether your sales are below your expectation, or you are having trouble understanding your email marketing analytics, thankfully as far as email marketing is concerned, you don’t have to go at it alone. At House For Homeless Youth, we are committed to making your next event a success by leveraging our collective experience and wisdom from marketing events on Facebook and share it with you. The last thing you want to happen with your event is to fall short of its goals by falling short when it comes to taking full advantage of Facebook’s marketing capabilities. So, what are you waiting for? Leave us a comment, tell us your story, share your passion for helping at-risk youth, or get in touch by email and we would be happy to help you plan and host your next event.
