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How to Innovate Your Old Event Marketing Strategy

Event marketers across a wide range of industries have no shortage of likely attendees. A recent survey of prospective event attendees by HubSpot and Eventbrite found 84 percent of respondents felt that attending events was an important part of their jobs, and 79 percent attended events to increase their job knowledge.

Unfortunately, many event marketers have done little to enhance their signup strategies or to ensure that their events meet the stated objectives of attendees. That same Hubspot survey found that more than half of event organizers have been unsuccessful in increasing attendance numbers, in large part because they haven’t taken the time to learn what attendees really want to do and learn at their events.

Business Intelligence for More Successful Events

Emerging technologies, like event marketing platforms, are important tools event marketers can use to stage successful events, but marketers need to understand the principles upon which those platforms are based.

A successful event is, first and foremost, one that delivers what attendees want. A marketer must understand the specific needs and goals of the target audience and effectively market these clearly defined event objectives. It’s important to make the signup process easier and more effectively measure results for continual improvement.

Event Marketing Analytics

Effectively improving attendance numbers and delivering quality events necessitates a sound understanding of audience. That requires, at minimum, tracking traffic to your website and analyzing emails opened, click-through and share metrics. It also means utilizing analytics to segment your audience into multiple attendee personas to enable customized marketing and event sessions that appeal to the largest number of prospective attendees.

Optimizing Email Marketing

The days when event marketing meant a series of undifferentiated email blasts are long gone. Although email is still an effective marketing strategy, it must be done thoughtfully, beginning with a thorough understanding of audience. This will ensure that the emails you send are relevant to attendee objectives.

In addition, emails, like all other aspects of your marketing campaign, must be effectively branded, and subject lines should be smart and compelling to optimize open rates. Once prospects have registered, you should use email reminders to keep them engaged and minimize no-shows.

Leveraging Social Media

Odds are your prospective attendees are already actively networking on social media channels, but you can’t effectively leverage this online activity with generic posts that have little more than links to your signup page. Social media is all about getting your posts noticed and infusing them with relevant content. You can capture attention by sharing striking images and use the audience intelligence you’ve compiled to ensure that content is relevant. Include posts that relate to the nature of your event and demonstrate persuasively how attending that event will benefit attendees.

Making It Easy to Sign Up

The harder it is to register, the fewer attendees you’ll see. Web surfers, including prospects for your event, can be effectively engaged through branded mobile event apps for your event which are then linked to a customized, RSVP website to make the registration process easy, intuitive and engaging. Prospects will appreciate and be impressed by the professionalism these tools reflect. Finally, you can take advantage of the additional intelligence provided by your digital signups to further customize your event and improve customer service.

Conclusion

The science of event marketing has advanced substantially in recent years. Event marketers can effectively leverage new communications and analytics technologies to increase attendance numbers and ensure quality experiences for event attendees. Above all, event marketers must acquire a detailed understanding of what attendees want, find the means to address those needs and continually measure results to spur ongoing improvement.