True or false:
“The purpose of email messages promoting a conference or event is to compel people to register for the event.”
I think that 90% of the time, that’s actually false. Instead, I would posit that the following variations are more often true:
Variation #1: ”The purpose of email messages programs promoting a conference or event is to compel people to register for the event.”
Variation #2: “The purpose of email messages promoting a conference or event is to compel people to register for learn more about the event.”
The principal reason email is so popular with marketers is that it’s a channel we own outright. We can decide when to use it, how often, and for what purposes. We can send short messages, long missives, downloadable coupons, or cat pictures if we like. We’re governed by the rules of the market, but we accept these and have learned to operate within them.
Some products can be introduced, pitched and sold all at once, through a single email message. Sadly for event marketers, your conference isn’t one of them. Your webinar might be, especially if it’s free and runs for an hour and attendees can sit at their desks and listen in while they eat lunch. But conferences are more complex sales, requiring attendees to leave the office (and very often the state), commit several hours to several days of their time, and invest hundreds or thousands of dollars. For the vast majority of your attendees, “Introducing our new conference – Register Today!” doesn’t cut it.
For better results from your event marketing emails, consider the variations suggested above, and try these tips:
Get with the Program. Instead of thinking about how to use each email to spur instant registrations, take a long view of the marketing leading up to the event and create a program of several messages designed to work together. The larger your event or further out you announce it, the more messages you can use.
Do you play chess? If you play chess, or any strategic game, you know that the secret to success is not the move you’re making, but the move in the future you’re working towards setting up. Your event marketing program should work the same way. Checkmate is the registration you’re after, but it’s rarely achieved as soon as the game begins.
Sell the next email, not your event. Early in the program, your principal objective should be to capture the attention of your prospects. Expect that most won’t register right away, so don’t try to sell them on the conference yet. Instead, sell them on the next message. Your best case scenario is that each message will bring them closer to registering, but this can only be achieved if they anticipate and open the next one. Here are a couple of examples:
- Try numbering them: “This is message 2 of 8 in the ABC Conference Series”
- Close with a post script that lets them know what the next message will be about: “Next week: an interview with our keynote speaker on what she’ll tell you in her presentation (and what she thinks you have to figure out on your own!)”
Tell a story. Each of the emails in your program should provide a new perspective on the event. If you reprise an email that you think covers something particularly important, you’re telling the people who are reading your emails that there’s no reason to look at the next one – they’ve seen it all before. So if you’ve already sent one touting your fabulous keynote lineup, find something else to talk about next time. Dig deeper into individual sessions, the list of attending companies, travel discounts and reduced room blocks. Your attendees decide to come for different reasons – make sure each reason is covered within your email program. Taken in total, your program should provide a complete and compelling story about your event, giving your prospects the reason(s) they need to attend.
One chapter at a time. In many cases, events need to be marketed before they’re a finished product. Agendas can remain in flux until very close to the show, and speaker lists are often fluid right up until the house lights go down. That’s okay – you can work around that. Remember that early on, you’re not trying to close the deal, so you don’t need to have the complete value proposition all lined up. All you need to do is have enough of what’s interesting – one thing – to get them to open the next email. This allows you to start marketing your events earlier, building to a crescendo as the event nears.
I hope you appreciate that I managed to avoid the whole “marketing is like dating” analogy. Until now, anyway. It’s clichéd, but it’s true – particularly in event marketing. Court your prospect over time, thinking always about the next time you’ll meet, not the big day you have circled on your calendar.
