Research shows (I wonder who does these) that the most commonly used event promotion channels are email marketing, word of mouth, event website, and registered mail invites (as if you need a research to tell you that). And there are six tools that can be used to carry out the promotion using these channels more effectively.

EVENT WEBSITE

Consider your website to be a year-round marketing tool that can be used as the central point for all your marketing activities. Here’s how you can use it to your maximum advantage:

• Put up pictures of your previous events to get your potential attendees an idea of what your events are all about.
• Upload videos of guest speakers along with their presentation slides.
• Start promoting your upcoming events well before their scheduled dates so that you have enough time to spread the word and create a buzz.

e-MARKETING

Never forget the GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) theory. Because, whatever efforts you put in will definitely reflect in the results you obtain.

When it comes to e-Marketing, you have to keep experimenting. Vary your content, your mail timings, subject lines etc. You have to constantly be aware of what your target audience needs, and deliver them that.

And as you experiment, keep collecting data and analyze it. Next, you put it to use and strategize according to your analysis. Your deductions aren’t supposed to be filed and buried in a marketing report.

CONTENT MARKETING

My personal favorite, this one.

Blogs and articles are like oxygen for your marketing campaign – breathe them. Everything important and relevant to your event should be put up as a blog. This encourages people to be involved with you consistently, and also helps you build your brand’s image.

Also, keep in mind the 10:1 principle which states that for every 10 pieces of content that you put up, only 1 leads to effective promotion. Keep experimenting with your content, too, but event updates should never be off the table.

WEBINARS

Webinars going hand-in-hand with today’s generation would be an understatement; they practically hug each other as they walk. What could be better than getting all relevant information delivered to you live while you’re enjoying the comforts of your house?

Conduct webinars that either build up to your upcoming event or are based on previous themes or topics. You can even conduct interviews with your past speakers who have served as great influences to promote your event.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook is definitely used by everyone, but that need not imply that your target audience will also be just as active there. Try to find networks where your potential attendees are most likely to be found online, and share all content relevant to your event there. Also, when you’ve teamed up with speakers and sponsors, develop your relationships with them in arenas where their fans are also present.

PARTNERSHIPS

When you have good speakers on your list, ask for their assistance in building content pertaining to your theme to put up on social media, your website, and blogs. You could also interview them and share their videos on your networks. The key is to use them as marketing assets, but treat them as your team members.

The post Six Tools To Fix Your Event Marketing appeared first on Yapsody.

Number One: The Subject Predicament

When you have a lot of content in your emails, it is very difficult to come up with a crisp subject line because either you end up using jargon, or you just make it too long. Ideally, a crisp subject line should convey the content in less than eight words (it is NOT my favorite number #coincidence). Yapsody, for example, has a Translation Program that offers free access to premium features to users who help translate the online ticket store in their local language. While sending out emails about the same, “Relate, Translate, Rebate” would be a better option than “Get Involved In Our Translation Program And Get Free Premium Features”.

Number Two: Open Sesame!

Your opening paragraph should have three main points –

1. Address them personally. There’s no better way to impress someone.
2. Tell them about the event; just don’t throw it at their face. Show your excitement. For example, Seeing you at Tick-event this Friday, 21 August, 2015 would be so much fun!
3. Don’t forget to mention the date so that they instantly add it to their calendars.

Number Three: The Rest

It’s an email, not a blog post. Make it short and crisp and get to the point at once instead of beating around the bush. Convey all important details of the event in a concise manner when it comes to the body of the email.

Number Four: How To Get There

Give details about the location and the venue. Include as many landmarks as you can and make sure you also provide a map. Now, map implies both of these things:

1. Floor plan of the venue
2. Google Map (with directions to the location)

Also, inform them about the public transport available, set up a Google doc for people who would want to share rides, and let them know about the parking scenes.

Number Five: What Is It ALL About

Of course, emails have to be concise. But, interested audience would still want to know about the entire agenda. So, include a link to your complete agenda in your email.

Number Six: WaaiiiFaaiii!!

Sue me if I’m the only person who gets excited when it comes to (free) WiFi. Sometimes, it’s even better than (free) food. Tell your attendees that the WiFi is going to be speedy and strong and that you’ve worked hard for it. Though, you’d want to mention that they could still use their data connections in case of issues.

Number Seven: #Hashtags

Ask them to use the event’s hashtag if they post any update/picture/video on any of the social media platforms. Hashtags are a great way to link attendees to your event personally and get their followers in your basket, too.

Number Eight: I’ll Be There For You…

… ‘cause you’re there for me, too!

Let them know you’re always there to help them out. Provide your customer support’s details (email, contact number, live chat) to give them a sense of reliability from your end.

The post Ways To Give Your Attendees The Perfect Event Experience appeared first on Yapsody.

Here’s how to promote an event successfully.

1.    Score Before More

If you haven’t reached your goal in terms of number of attendees, you tend to go “This is Sparrrttaaaa” and send out email invitations to each and every person on your contact list (sometimes, you even ask your friends to send those out to everyone on their contact list) which is a big, BIG mistake. Instead of inviting hundreds of people who are probably just attending to save lunch preparations back at home, you should focus on the more loyal ones. Use cool promotional event ideas and take time to send out personal invitations to them as the smallest token of thanks you can give them.

2.    Involve Event Participants

This is how marketing works – you tell ten people, each one of those ten people tell ten other people, and so on. The more stages you have, the more you tend to reach out. In the case of event marketing,  If you involve people from your organizing committee and keynote speakers in your event promotion strategies, you can increase your reach by a huge factor. And to pep them up, give your people incentives to promote the event. Here’s one of many event promotion examples – you can offer them a certain commission, or free hampers against the number of registrations they get.

3.    So-much-cial Media Promotion is Just Never Enough!

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and even MySpace – here’s how to promote an event on every social media platform that you have an account on. Swap your profile picture with your event poster on those accounts because these notifications tend to come up in the News Feeds more often than the usual promotional posts. Be active on these channels so that people don’t lose touch with your event. You don’t have to keep calling for action the whole time or you might sound desperate to your audience, instead try to engage them by putting up infographics, comics, pictures, videos, photos of keynotes, their bios, fun facts, behind-the-scenes, bloopers etc. related to your upcoming event. That’s how you promote your event successfully.

4.    Send Out Emails to Subscribers

Though point one tells you otherwise, give us a chance to explain – once you’re done sending personalized invites to your loyal attendees, you have to start sending out newsletters to the ones who are alleged subscribers. Your initial newsletter should contain the basic details of your event and a call-to-action. In subsequent newsletters, slash down the number of available tickets to arouse a sense of urgency amongst the receivers, so that they register their ticket online in a state of haste. Also, you have to make sure your emails don’t find their way to the spam folders. Here’s how –

• Instead of sending all the emails in one big batch, try to get your server to send one email at a time.
• Filter out the “bad” email accounts from your mailing list. These “bad” ones are those that have remained inactive for a long time and repeatedly sending them emails might increase your spam score.
• Make sure you provide an Unsubscribe link so that if people don’t wish to receive any more newsletters, they’ll unsubscribe instead of marking you as spam.
• Talk your followers into including your email address in their contacts to decrease your chances of getting into spam.

Now that you’ve learned how to dodge being spammed, compose newsletters that are to-the-point and answer most of the “wh-” questions. Make it colorful, but not to an extent where it loses professionalism. Also, it has been found that Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays (sometime around noon) witness the highest inbox opening rates, so send in your emails during these windows.

5.    Be Active on Discussion Forums

Contrary to popular belief, discussion forums are not just for fangirls and geeks. One of the cool event promotion ideas is to target a forum related to your event as part of your event marketing and start a thread about it, but be careful to not have a high sales pitch because it won’t be received warmly on discussion forums. Let it just be a friendly notification to make them aware of the existence of such an event, and if someone is genuinely interested, give specific responses. You can also get in touch with bloggers and provide them with good quality content in return for including a link to your event page and a call-to-action.

6.    Press Releases

They are basically open newsletters to attract the media. And here’s how undertake event promotion strategies like this –

• Even though it doesn’t seem like that, introduction paragraphs are supposed to contain all the necessary information you need to convey to your readers since rarely do people read the rest, anyway.
• Have loads of statistics, but make sure your press release doesn’t end up looking like a mathematics textbook.
• Include your contact details.
• Do NOT have a lot of technical jibber-jabber. Your press release is going to be validated by a media guy, and if he can’t understand it in the first place, he wouldn’t have a reason to believe that it’s good enough.

Yes, these might look like a lot for last-minute preps on how to promote an event, and I won’t lie to you, they ARE a lot. But, if you find yourself Googling how to sell last minute event tickets, we think you should start acting on them right away!

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