I’ve written previously here on how and why to increase your number of subscribers. This week’s article for MediaPost is a different take on the topic – how your list size differs from your audience size. If someone is part of your list, you have their email address; but if someone is part of your audience, it is because you have their attention. The concept gets to the heart of the quantity vs. quality argument, both of which are important to a strong email program.

The Differences Between List Size and Audience Size
by Mike May
published on 7.24.11 in MediaPost’s Email Insider

Recently I was working on an article for my company’s blog, and caught myself substituting the word “audience” for “subscribers” on occasion. When I did, it was purely stylistic. If I had used subscribers in the previous sentence, I’d swap in audience the next time around, since synonyms allow you to preserve meaning without repetition.

A few days later I was comparing the email metrics from a small startup that is growing organically, to some of the larger lists of clients who have been around a long time. One B-to-B client has been relying on email as its principal communications channel for five or six years, and has about 100K subscribers. Its newsletters command a 20% open rate pretty regularly, and promotional emails are usually plus or minus 5%. They supplement email with social channels and a little direct mail, but rely pretty heavily on the inbox for most of their messaging. Social channels are a tiny fraction of the subscription list size – no more than 5% depending on the channel.

The startup, by comparison, launched a year ago and promoted its email list, Facebook fan page and Twitter account simultaneously from the outset. It has under 1,000 subscribers, but its social channels are almost exactly the same size as its subscription list. When it posts to its blog, the number of people who read it is almost the same exact number of people who subscribe to email, follow on Twitter of fan on Facebook. Its email open rates are typically 60%, with click-throughs commonly above 20%. For this company, “subscribers” and “audience” are in fact synonyms, but for the larger B-to-B company, its actual audience is far smaller than its subscriber list.

What accounts for the delta that some companies see between the people whose email addresses they have, and the people whose attention they have? Here are some thoughts based on, though not limited to, the two example clients I’ve mentioned:

Tenure: The longer an email program has been around, the older some of the subscription records are. Inevitably, a customer’s needs or in-market status change with time, so their attention wanes. A few weeks ago Loren McDonald wrote one of the best articles on inactive subscribers I’ve read so the best advice I can give in a paragraph’s space is for you to read what Loren recommends.

Personalityization: No, that’s not a typo for personalization. Some companies just communicate better, which makes it easier to hold onto the attention of their audience. Strong and compelling communication is not the effect of an engaging email program, but the cause of it. These same companies never stop talking directly with their customers – on the website, a blog, social channels, and wherever else they have contact.

Empathy: At its best, email is not mere broadcasting – it is communication. That is not to say that email needs to be two-ways, but the more email is based on knowledge of what its subscribers want – instead of what the emailing company’s agenda du jour is – the better it holds the attention it has earned. The best example I can give of this is my wife, who rules the cocktail party in ways I simply cannot. She is engaging and inquisitive, and is more interested in learning about other people than she is about talking about herself. (I’m a total narcissist bore, with staggering conversational unsubscribe rates.) Empathy begets attention, and some email programs have it in abundance.

Tonnage: The startup clearly has the attention advantage, not because its newness makes it more interesting, but because its smaller scope naturally allows for tighter content targeting. Compare a blog about the Washington Redskins to ESPN, for example. If you’re a Redskins fan, you may follow both. But the narrow little blog has your rapt attention, which ESPN can only rival when it runs a story on your beloved ‘Skins. Fortunately for ESPN, they also have a fraction of the attention of every other fan of every other team in every other sport in the country. Like the B-to-B client above, each communication they issue only has to carry a small part of the organization’s workload.

The challenge for the startup will be to continue to earn its audience’s attention as its subscriber base grows, balanced against the pull to broaden its perspective in order to appeal to a wider audience. The B-to-B client, for its part, is looking towards niche content strategies and targeting to recapture some of the narrowness and intimacy central to attention. The grass isn’t necessarily greener on the other side. It’s just a different strain, which, when mixed, creates a verdant and drought-resistant hybrid.

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I spend a lot of time reading the email marketing columns in MediaPost and other publications, in part to keep up with current trends, but also for inspiration for my own articles. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve tried to look at much of the email advice in the trades from the perspective of the clients I’ve been talking to. More often than not, I could almost channel their voices saying, “That’s good advice, but we’ll never be able to do it.” Much of what is written is aimed at a very small minority of email marketers. They’re the biggest companies, but hardly representative of email marketers overall. So that’s what my column in MediaPost is about this week – how the 99% of companies that are not titans of the email industry should read, interpret and even ignore the advice we industry folk often trot out in our columns.

Why and How to Ignore Email Marketing Advice
by Mike May
published on 6.28.11 in MediaPost’s Email Insider

There are no shortages of ways to improve an email program, and an equal abundance of articles, presentations and pitches on how to go about doing just that. It makes perfect sense to read, watch and hear them all if you’re a director of marketing overseeing an email group of three to five people, for whom a catalog of “best practices” reads like a daily to-do list. At some organizations, email is a mission-critical operation, and these companies have the resources, sophistication, culture and corporate directive to pursue email excellence whatever the cost.

Much of the available advice on email marketing is aimed squarely at these companies. There is sense in this, as they have the most resources and the largest email programs. If you are an email vendor or consultant, these are the companies you most want to impress. But when so many of the articles and presentations and pitches are aimed at this segment it creates the perception that theirs are average email marketing programs, in the middle of the bell curve.

They’re not — by a long shot. The marquee email clients — retailers, travel sites, financial services companies with millions of records in their database and highly sophisticated targeting, dynamic content and segmentation strategies — are the very top of the email food chain, well into the 99th percentile of email marketers in resources and expertise. Advice aimed at them may represent the pinnacle of email thought leadership, but falls on deaf ears at the vast majority of companies that rely on email but haven’t nearly the same resources. Even worse, advice designed to inspire and educate ends up discouraging marketers who can’t take advantage of it. Hear enough clients say, “That’s great advice, but we’ll never be able to do it,” and you come to realize that there’s nothing wrong with the clients, but plenty of room for improvement in the advice.

I can’t take back all the well-intentioned but ill-aimed advice I’ve given email marketers in the past. So today’s list of how-tos is not about improving your email program, but how to filter out some of the advice you can’t use, and zero in on the pieces you can:

1. All rules of eavesdropping apply. That’s what you’re doing when you read an article that is aimed at a much larger email marketing department than yours (or you); you’re eavesdropping. You’re listening into a conversation, instead of participating in it. And I know at times it almost sounds like a foreign language, where you can pick up a few words and follow the gist, but would be hard-pressed to translate. When you do find yourself listening to a conversation in a foreign language, it’s fun to test yourself and see how much you can glean. Do the same with some of the email advice you hear. Follow what you can and use the opportunity to test your comprehension. If you have time to study full-time later on, aim for fluency then.

2. Know what you’re looking for. When was the last time you saw an orange car? It’s hard to recall, right? Next time you’re on the road, look for one. I’m almost certain you’ll spy one. Why? Honing in on something specific makes it easier to ignore what is off-target and find what you seek. When you are reading an article or sitting in on a presentation, keep in mind the one or two ways you are most interested in improving your own email program. If solutions to these specific problems are in the content, you’ll find them. If they’re not there, move along. You are too busy to pay attention to all the advice you don’t have the resources to apply.

3. Take stock of what you have done, not what you haven’t. Success is measured by accomplishments, not ambition. Summiting Mt. Everest is no less a feat simply because you haven’t climbed K2 as well. More to the point, a vigorous two-hour hike is still good exercise even if you can’t point out Everest on a map (it’s in the Mahalangur Himal range in Nepal, but like much of what you read is not relevant to your specific email program, so feel free to ignore it). We industry folk often choose what to write or include in presentations based on two criteria: 1) that our audience has not yet implemented this particular piece of advice, and 2) that other columnists, presenters and analysts have not already given the same advice. If there is a 2b, it is that we don’t just want to be different; we want to be even more clever than the last person with advice. The cumulative impact of dozens of writers and presenters following these same rules is an impossibly long and unduplicated list of increasingly labyrinthine email marketing tactics jockeying for position on your to-do list.  When this happens, it makes more sense to ignore the list you haven’t done and be proud of what you have accomplished already.

If reading email marketing advice makes you feel discouraged, it’s not because you’re doing it wrong; it’s because we are.

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This month for my article in MediaPost’s Email Insider I write about some all new challenges facing email marketers. Actually they’re not exactly new but they don’t get the airplay that deliverability and engagement metrics do. Instead, I focus on some of the internal challenges that could hamper your email program – internal perception, budget cuts, and management issues. But don’t worry – if you made it through the SPAM crisis of 2005 and you’ve integrated into mobile devices without missing a step, you’ll tackle these in stride as well.

Skeptics, Scourges And Scallywags: Marginalizing Your Email Program’s Internal Challenges
by Mike May
published on 6.1.11 in MediaPost’s Email Insider

We all know email is hard. Deliverability challenges, narrowing windows of attention, increased clutter, multiple platforms and devices all conspire to drive even the most seasoned email marketers to MediaPost and other trade pubs to read advice on how to make a little bit easier. The truth is that even with increased expertise, email doesn’t get easier; you just get better results.

And all of those challenges are just the external ones – what is going on in and around your subscribers’ inboxes that makes it more difficult to connect with them. Email marketers face a litany of internal challenges as well, each of which can create obstacles as aggravating as deliverability hiccups and waning engagement metrics. Internal perception, budgeting and resource allocation, staffing and management all can have as significant an impact on your email program as the size of your house list or the results of your A/B testing.

You probably already have goals in place to measure the improvement of your email program against external metrics, whether it is to boost the readership of your primary newsletter or generate a greater percentage of transactions from email. Consider adding these internal goals as well, to make sure your email program has the support it needs to meet all its objectives:

1. Communicate email’s achievements. Your email program does a lot of good that goes largely unheralded. Because it is not as expensive as search, as visible as print or TV advertising, or as sexy as social, it doesn’t enjoy as much attention from the corner office. But consider a marketing campaign without the use of email — how much additional the budget for other channels would need to be, the fewer points of contact your brand would have with your customers, how attribution and metrics would trail off precipitously – and suddenly email’s true value to a communications program becomes clear. If your email program is taken for granted, it may be time for an internal PR campaign around it. To shore up perception among senior management, create a regular report touting some of email’s unsung metrics: total points of customer contact per month, number of new subscribers, percentage of transactions attributable to email. How do you share this report with senior management? With an email newsletter, naturally. (At the very least, you can study the analytics to see who is paying attention and engaged, in advance of the next budget request.)

2. Set realistic expectations. There is a danger in the perceptions of email leaning too far in the other direction as well. Just as slashing resources allocated to email can compromise your program’s performance, relying too heavily on email instead of an integrated pan-channel communications program can likewise hamstring your results. In some organizations, the budget for email is protected while other more expensive channels are subject to frequent and even radical trimming. But email can’t do everything by itself, and it’s the email marketer’s responsibility to manage expectations within the company. For example, I often hear marketers decide they’re going to send an email when they want to “reach everyone.” But “everyone” you want to reach is probably not already subscribed to your email list. And unless you consistently enjoy 100% open rates, you’re not even reaching everyone who is. When you communicate your email program’s achievements internally, be balanced in your approach and help set expectations. Your email program works better as part of an integrated communications strategy, when the burden is distributed across several channels.

3. Marginalize mavericks. Almost every organization has some email users who are a little cavalier with permission, and fast and loose with frequency guidelines. While going rogue can result in strong individual results, permission and frequency infractions can have long-term ramifications on the rest of the organization’s email program. Unexpected or too much email can result in higher unsubscribe rates, lower engagement metrics and even spam complaints — all of which can make it harder for any of your company’s messages to get through, even those sent by the marketers who stick to the straight and narrow. A little internal education on the deliverability big picture can go a long way toward reining in offenders. If that doesn’t work, consider implementing sender controls, restricting access to certain lists for some senders.

4. Institutionalize restraint. There are probably two or three times per day I would like to send an email to our entire house list. That number is easily double for each of our salespeople. But I don’t, and they don’t. If we did, our email program would be crushed under its own volume. The lure to send just one more reminder message is great — for you, and for everyone else in your company who uses email. The great challenge of email is to balance what the business wants out of email today, with what the business needs from email in the future. To achieve this goal, institutionalize restraint by tracking how key metrics (deliverability, engagement metrics, unsubscribe rates) trend over three, six and 12 months, and share these with everyone who sends email at your company. Pay attention to subscriber frequency as well. Even though each person who sends email might be sending a message every week or two, there may be some subscribers who are everyone’s list, resulting in 4 or 5 times the email volume of your average subscriber. If that happens, putting frequency caps on subscribers is a quick fix. Supplement it with revised processes for how each marketer’s lists are created or — better yet — a preferences center.

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I write quite a bit here about event marketing, with most of it focused on how to reach prospects and encourage them to register for your conference, trade show or webinar. But there is a group of people who can be even more productive to your marketing efforts than your hottest list of prospects – the folks who have already registered for your event.

Here are a number of ways to take full advantage of your early registrants, to fill the room further, lift revenues and build buzz in advance of your event:

Team Pricing or Bring-A-Colleague: Chances are, there is more than one person at each prospect company who would be a suitable attendee for your event. And unless you have direct marketing skills that put Lester Wunderman to shame, you probably do not know who they all are. But the person from each company who has registered does know which colleagues are a good fit for your show. If you have a Team Pricing or Bring-A-Colleague offer, your pre-registrants are the perfect audience for it. Not only can they help your message fan out into their organization; they’re already highly engaged with the conference and are the most likely to spread the word.

Pre-Show Engagement and Activation: Tapping into the engagement of your pre-registrants doesn’t have to be limited to their influence over colleagues. Why not ask them to spread the word to their entire networks on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn? Each time one of your pre-registrants posts something about your show on their Facebook page or Twitter feed, they’re not just telling between 20 and 2000 people about it – by virtue of their own participation, they’re recommending your show. The best way to get them to do this – just ask. Use an email dedicated to this purpose. If they’re truly engaged, no incentives or gimmicks will be necessary. (You’re exhibitors are even more productive with this tactic – they typically have many more fans and followers and are eager to tell everyone what EXPO halls they’ll be in.)

Incremental Sponsorship Revenue: Your exhibitors are paying handsomely for the opportunity to be in front of your event audience. An “attendee update” newsletter delivered expressly to your pre-registrants is another piece of highly desirable media. For the 4-6 weeks preceding the event, create a micr0-newsletter for your attendees that goes out weekly, advising them of event logistics like hotel deadlines, agenda changes, networking opportunities – whatever information will enhance their experience at the event by saving them time or exposing them to the full breadth of what the show offers. Sponsors and exhibitors will likely find the newsletter an appealing supplemental sponsorship opportunity, as it helps optimize what they have already spent on the show by building some brand identity and interest before the event begins. An attendee update newsletter can also be a powerful value-add to close the high-level sponsorships, particularly if it provides exclusivity.

Get a Jump on Next Year’s Marketing: Sponsors are not the only audience that will benefit from an Attendee Update newsletter series. By prepping your audience for everything your show has to offer, you are helping to ensure that they take full advantage of the event and have the most rewarding experience possible. Certainly that serves the interests of this year’s event, and your programming and event operations staff will be duly grateful. But you’re also serving your own interest as the event marketer: people who love this year’s show are more likely to come back next year. That makes your job in 9 months a lot easier. Instead of communicating all that is new about next year’s event, you can simply remind people about last year’s event. This makes early registration earlier, which gives you an even larger pool of pre-registrants to market to the next time around. The virtuous cycle has begun.

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Last week I wrote about how to use QR codes for audience development in your event marketing programs. QR (Quick Response) codes are like barcodes in that they carry data and can be scanned. But they’re an improvement because the second dimension allows them to carry more data and – more importantly – many smartphones have the capacity to use the built-in camera as a scanner. Launch a QR scanning app in your phone, point it at a QR code and see what happens. Some QR codes carry a URL and automatically launch your phone’s browser and point it at a website. Others deliver a message to your phone’s screen. You can also use a QR code to send a text message to a pre-determined recipient. I’ll stop there because you’re a marketer and therefore probably no longer paying attention to what you’re reading, dreaming instead of all the ways you can use QR codes for your own purposes.

The big breakthrough facilitated by QR codes is their ability to bring offline people online, or to deliver digital content in an analog environment. A QR code at a bus stop might deliver GPS information on the bus you’re waiting for, or a code next to a stereo receiver in the electronics store might pull up press and consumer reviews of the product. Wherever you have people in a physical space to whom you’d like to deliver targeted content, QR codes can offer some innovative solutions.

People in a physical space to whom you’d like to deliver content? That sounds an awful lot like a conference or trade show, doesn’t it? Last time I wrote about how to use QR codes to bring people to your show. Here are some ways to continue using QR codes at the event itself to enhance the On-Site Experience.

QR Codes for On-Site Experience

Some event marketers might not have any direct responsibility for a show’s on-site experience, leaving game day in the hands of the operations and programming folks. But every event marketer benefits tremendously from when a show goes well. A remarkable, memorable and productive event is much easier to fill the following year. Even if your role ostensibly ends with the last registration reminder email, any energy you can lend into the quality of the event itself will pay off handsomely next year. So go ahead and be help your own cause for next year – take the QR code expertise you built in your audience development efforts and apply it on-site as well.

Speaker Bios: Adding every speaker’s bio to your program guide is time-consuming and expensive, and all the added copy leaves your agenda or program guide harder to read. Instead, why not use a QR code for each speaker to deliver a brief bio for the audience members who want more information about who is on stage? The code graphic also provides some visual variety on the page, breaking up big blocks of text. Scan the example at the right to read my conference bio.

Detailed Exhibitor Info: You know those signs with each exhibitor’s company name hanging above each booth? Add a QR code to them or on a card someplace else in the booth, to be used to deliver more information on the exhibitor or to direct booth visitors to a subscription page on the exhibitor’s site for lead generation.

Sweepstakes: Just because many of your attendees have smartphones that are QR code ready, does not necessarily mean that they are actually using them to scan QR codes. If you are integrating QR codes into your on-site experience, it is a good idea to provide some incentive for your audience to start using them, particularly if their phones require an app download to scan QR codes (iPhone and Blackberry both require an app). Sweepstakes are a great way to incentivize and educate on QR codes. Set up a giveaway of an iPad or another highly desirable prize for your audience where the means of entry is to scan a QR code that generates an email used to enter the drawing. Create a specific email address for the giveaway so you know that any message that hits its inbox is an entry. This way, all the attendees need to do is fire off the email generated by the QR code, and not enter any other information about themselves. Promote the sweeps early in the event and even by email before attendees arrive, giving them ample opportunity to download a QR scanning app if they need one. (You may need to allow an alternate means of entry, as entry by QR-generated email only limits participation to those attendees who have smartphones, which some states prohibit. Print out some forms to fill out and drop in a box for manual entry and keep them right next to the QR code for entry as well, and you’re fine. You just need to make sure you include the manual entries along with the QR code entries when drawing a winner.)

Ring Bell for Service: Despite the best intentions of exhibitors, not all booths are staffed 100% of the time at a conference. When this happens, exhibitors can use a QR code in the same way as a “Ring Bell for Service” sign. Create a code that automatically generates a TXT message that goes to the phone of the booth’s on-site contact. Booth visitors who have questions but find the booth empty can then simply scan the code which immediately buzzes the phone of the exhibitor. He or she can fire off a quick TXT in response and head back to the booth. The attendees’ on-site experience is improved because an empty booth doesn’t necessarily mean their questions go unanswered, and exhibitors are not left waiting around in a booth during times of little or no expo hall traffic.

A strong QR Code program at the event is pervasive and well-communicated. The more places QR codes exist at the show, the more likely people are to use them each time as the process of quickly scanning the code becomes integrated into the show experience. Communicating the program in advance to show attendees, exhibitors, speakers and any other stakeholders helps promote wider adoption and a more successful program.

If you have any questions on how to use QR codes at your next event, just:

Email me!

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Quick Response or QR Codes are second-generation barcodes. Whereas barcodes carry only one dimension worth of data (with the bars running vertically), QR codes carry data both vertically and horizontally. They are of interest in marketing because the data they contain is easily decoded with many different types of mobile phones using the phone’s camera. A QR decoder is included in the OS of Google’s Android and Nokia’s Symbian phones, and there are dozens of apps to turn an iPhone or Blackberry into a QR scanner as well.

If you’ve never used one and you have a mobile phone that works as a QR scanner, try it now. (You may need to install an app, but if you have an iPhone or Blackberry you already know how to do that anyway – plenty of free ones are avaialable.) Activate the QR reader in your phone and simply point your phone’s camera at this code:

If everything is working, that code takes you straight to the homepage of Real Magnet’s site. You can also generate QR codes that deliver a short block of copy to the scanning device, automatically dial a phone number, or fire off a text message. Kaywa.com is a popular site for generating QR codes, though there are many others.

So that’s what QR codes do and how they do it. Let’s look now at why they’re useful for event marketing. There are two distinct applications – Audience Development and On-Site Experience. Today we will look at Audience Development. I’ll come back to QR Codes for On-Site Experience next time.

QR Codes for Audience Development

Some say Audience Development, others say Butts in Seats, but all of us in event marketing have the same job – to fill the room. QR codes are useful principally as a way of bridging printed media and online. (Hyperlinks already do an admirable job of moving someone from one part of the internet to another, so there’s little reason to distribute QR codes online.) Here are some ways to use QR codes to make your next show SRO:

Direct Mail: OK, I didn’t have to rack my brain to come up with this one. You already include a URL on your event brochures and postcards – why not add a QR code as well? The important point to remember is that the people following the link in your QR code are going to be on a mobile device, so sending them to the main event site – particularly if does not render differently for mobile browsers – will yield limited benefits. Instead, use your QR code to send people to an email signup form, preferably on a page designed expressly for mobile viewers. Getting prospects to register from your direct mail would be great, but a strong Plan B that at least captures the rest of the interest your direct mail generates is also recommended. QR codes can be that Plan B.

Printable Flyers to Ambassadors: Many shows have “regulars” – those people who show up year after year and act as the champions of the show within their respective organizations. You can identify them based on previous attendance records, and can also have a good idea of who your most engaged email users are through your recipient level tracking. Most conferences appeal to more than one person in a company, so a campaign that reaches the most engaged person within a company and then fans out through his or her department can be very effective. For the next show you want to mobilize your most loyal fans, try emailing a link to a downloadable and printable flyer designed with a QR code. Ask your ambassador to print out a copy to hang on his/her door, or to print out several copies to distribute throughout the department. (If you use fax marketing for your events, QR codes are a direct hit here as well.)

At your other events and meetings: Think of all the instances you have a real-world presence in advance of the bigger show you are marketing. At each of these, you are probably in the presence of prospective attendees, and they probably have their mobile phones with them. A postcard or even a business card designed with a QR code promoting the event is an ideal take-along. Put a stack in every staffer’s pocket before regional dinners, committee meetings, speaking engagements at other conferences or any other instance where you are tete-a-tete with prospective attendees.

Next time I’ll look at some of the ways you can use QR codes at the event itself, to improve the experience for attendees, and make marketing next year’s event even easier.

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Much of the posts on Event Marketing here have to do with how to email your prospects. Today’s post is more about what to email. For event marketing, refreshing the email content strategy can have a noticeable impact. Often event marketing email campaigns feel formulaic, with a predictable balance of messages promoting registration deadlines, speaker line-ups, agenda updates and other standard fare at events. Finding a new way to infuse some interest or even excitement into an event helps the whole campaign command more attention and lifts results. Sometimes you need to create some new ancillary event content to boost event buzz. In this case, we’ll look at a way of turning a piece of event logistics into a conversation cornerstone – the nametag.

A few years ago, a Real Magnet client in the social media technology industry hosted a client summit. The focus of the show was the same as their technology niche – widgets, those little applications that run on blogs, and which were the pre-cursor to Facebook and iPhone apps. On the event website, registrants could use a custom widget to design their own conference badge, complete with uploaded graphics, color palettes and typefaces of their choice, and many different layout options. The client then turned these designs into a slideshow which served as the pre-registered attendee list on the site. Instead of seeing a person’s name, company and title, other prospective attendees would know who was coming from the badges each person designed. Then these badges were printed out and actually worn at the event, to continue the conversation and the proof-of-concept of cross-channel widget marketing.

You don’t need to go to that much trouble to make your event badges work harder. Here are 10 ways to add a new element to your attendee nametags, either by asking a specific question in the registration form or by doing a little sleuth work in your own database. Whichever route you go, you’ll have nametags that are enriched with conversation icebreakers, as well as something to write about in emails leading up to the event.

1. Hometown. Ask for this during registration and print it somewhere on each attendee’s badge. You can list hometown on your pre-registered attendee list on your site, and use email to direct your attendees there before the show to see if they know anyone from a past life.

2. Member Since. If you are a trade or professional association, membership is of course vital. Call out your members by tenure on their badges. It underscores the value of membership at the function (helping appeal to non-members). Tenure also helps qualify attendees for conversation and input: members who have been involved for 10 or more years will more naturally play a mentoring role to attendees whose “member since” date is very recent.

3. Nth Annual Meeting. For a show that is a big annual event that you’d like to be a fixture on attendees’ calendars year after year, including “Nth Annual Meeting” on the badge helps make that connection. Like “Member Since,” it helps recognize your inveterate and loyal attendees and positions them as guides or mentors for the newbies.

4. Class of ‘XX Annual Meeting. Another way of positioning your annual meeting as a must-attend event every year is to mark each badge with the year of the first annual meeting the attendee attended. I like “Annual Meeting Class of 2005″ because it implies a graduation into full membership. This is a point you can highlight in your email and event messaging as well: “The Annual Meeting is where the entire membership comes together each year. Graduate into the full membership experience – register today and join the Class of 2011.”

5. Past Speaker. Usually the speakers at this year’s events are recognizable by their badges, either with a ribbon or a different color stock. But the speaker’s from previous year’s events receive no ongoing recognition for the role they played in building the show’s history and reputation. They should. Annotating their badges with “Past Speaker, 2008″ subtly thanks them for their past contributions, and engages them in future shows more powerfully than $100 discounts ever could.

6. Answer to a Thematic Question. On your registration form, pose a question that ties into one of the conference themes and indicate to attendees that their responses will be displayed on the badge. For example, if your show is on Innovation within your industry you could ask, “How will you Innovate in ’11?” If the show is in Las Vegas you might ask, “What big bet will you place this year?” Open-ended questions like this invite creativity before the conference even begins, and helps condition attendees to play an active role.

7. Title that really describes your job. Badges commonly include titles, but a “Director, Operations” or “VP of Marketing” are different jobs at different companies. Ask attendees for the title that really describes what they do. Give examples like “Director of Excel Macros” or “Chief Twitter Officer” or “VP, Employee Happy Hour.” Reading how people describe their roles within the company kicks off conversations more quickly than a title someone else gave them.

8. Super Power. Another twist on title is to ask what super power each attendee has. This helps position the show as one that recognizes individual contribution to an organization, and empowers people to learn and grow their human capital. Some examples might be, “Compress complete thoughts into 140 characters” or “Able to type with thumbs at 50 WPM” or “Can Sell Snowshoes to a Rattlesnake”. Everyone is good at something – asking for Super Power lets them realize this in advance of your show.

9. Celebrity You Most Resemble. Here we move out of the professional networking realm and into social icebreakers, which are still important. With a tight economy and restricted travel budgets, it is less wise today to position events openly as social functions, for fear they will be interpreted as boondoggles and not approved. But subtly reminding prospects of the social aspects of your show can pique interest and add an important dimension to your messaging. (If you were wondering, I get “you look like Tom Cruise” all the time.)

10. Band You Wish Was Playing the Opening Reception. I don’t expect many shows to use this one, but I’d sure like to be at the one that does. People love talking about music. If it’s current music it makes us feel young, and if it’s the music we listened to in our youth, it at least recalls the good old days. Either way, people who love music feel alive and invigorated when they talk about it, and finding someone with similar tastes is like finding a kindred spirit. Sure I’d love to swap war stories with another email marketer at your big show. But if that email marketer is also a Devo fan, I’ll make plans to attend again next year and hang out with him again.

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