You spend hours, weeks, months plotting out your company event. You send out beautifully designed invites, reserve the best caterer in the area, and pull out all the stops for what you expect to be the most memorable company event of the year. You break open the doors and wait for the attendees to come pouring in.
But, instead of the massive turnout you envisioned, your guests slowly trickle in and barely fill the spacious hall you rented. The mouthwatering food selection remains mostly untouched. And there’s barely anyone listening to your session about capitalizing on the latest industry trends.
Ok, you might be thinking, “This will never happen to me,” and I’m hoping and praying that this is the case. But if you want your event to be successful and draw in the most attendees (and why wouldn’t you?), you need to do more than send out one invite or put up flyers. You need to develop effective event marketing strategies to get the word out and give people reasons to register and attend.
We’re sharing 4 event planning tips to help you hit all the right marketing touchpoints and engage your target audience and drive registration.
1) Plan with a purpose
Hold up. Stop everything. Before you write a single word or design a single flyer, you need to set goals for your event.
You should never plan an event without a clear purpose. Yes, everyone loves an excuse to get together, roll out the chocolate fondue fountain and show off your dance moves (you have to see my lawn mower). But what do you hope to achieve by hosting this event?
Do you want to improve brand awareness? Generate more leads? Delight existing customers? All of the above?
Setting realistic, measurable, and detailed goals helps you stay on track during event planning and gauge the success of the event. Your event goal could be to increase lead generation by X leads or improve revenue by X dollars or both. Know exactly who you’re targeting, your desired outcomes and how much you have to spend before planning anything. (A great way to plan out your event marketing budget and avoid overspending is to use these templates from HubSpot.)
Once you’ve defined your objectives, share them with your team to ensure everyone is working towards the same goal. Deepen your understanding of the audience and map out your strategy for reaching—or surpassing—this goal.
2) Leverage social media
Build up excitement before your event even starts by posting shareable, likeable content on the social media networks your prospects and customers frequent. Share the reasons why your company bash is an exciting, not-to-be-missed, once-in-a-lifetime (ok, maybe that’s taking it too far) event.
Will there be thought leaders and industry experts speaking? Will there be networking opportunities? Learning sessions? New product announcements? Let your followers know why your event is worth attending and how it will help them stay competitive and keep ahead of industry trends.
Be strategic in your social media publishing and scheduling. You could pin away to your heart’s content, but are your target customers actually on Pinterest?
Spend your time wisely. Post on the social media websites your audience cares about and at the times you see the best engagement. Are your followers flocking to Twitter on weekends? Do you see the most shares on Wednesday at 5 PM?
Dive into your data and find the best times and networks to post on. Social media tools and software like Hootsuite, HubSpot, Sprout Social and Tweriod analyze your data and give you the best times to publish.
At Stratus, we schedule and monitor all social media in HubSpot and mine the data for critical insights. We keep an eye out for any patterns and spikes in engagement, allowing us to improve social media effectiveness and extend our reach.
3) Keep up a steady stream of promotional emails
Email is an undeniably effective tool when it comes to event marketing. The 2013 Marketing Sherpa Benchmarking Report found that a whopping 72% of people prefer to receive promotional info through email.
Sending out a steady stream of emails generates buzz and excitement for your event. But how many emails should you be sending?
I wish I could say there was a magic number of emails that gets your invites opened, read and clicked. (If you’ve discovered this ever-elusive number, please get in touch by email, phone, carrier pigeon. Whatever works.) But how often you email your subscribers depends on your event, company and industry.
If you’re hosting a huge conference where you want to draw a larger audience, or you’re charging a steep registration fee, you’ll want to start promoting your event far in advance for the best attendance rate. Your email subscribers will need some convincing if they’ve never heard of your event, and if it costs them an exorbitant amount to register for the event.
If you’re planning a small shindig, aim to send your first email at least 5-6 weeks before your event. Whenever your event is, or whatever the size, stick to these best practices when sending out emails:
- Personalize your message. Consumers respond best to personalized emails that take their interests and pain points into account. Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by about 14% and conversions by 10%, according to a report from Aberdeen Group. Put yourself in their shoes when writing event emails or any marketing emails at all. What would they care about most? What do they need to know? Strip your emails of any marketing and sales jargon. Speak to their motivations and challenges and adopt a conversational writing style to engage your readers. Take it a step further, and use email marketing software (not to sound like a broken record, but we use HubSpot) to create segmented email lists by location, age, gender, buyer persona and so on.
- Keep up a regular send schedule. Don’t send one or two emails and call it quits. Send a constant flow of emails to keep your event top of mind. Try to send an email at least once a week, and increase the frequency and sense of urgency as your event date closes in.
- Don’t forget registrants. It’s a no-brainer to email non-registrants and entice them to register, but what about registrants? Keep your event top of mind by sending registrants reminder emails. Share even more reasons to attend and provide all essential event information. Build excitement by highlighting speakers and sessions, mentioning how many people are going, talking about interesting activities and opportunities, and more.
- Test, test and then test some more. Send emails at different times and days to see how well they perform. You can also A/B test your subject, headline, call-to-action or any variable. Repeat what works and scrap what doesn’t. Remember to only change one variable at a time, or you won’t know what change led to an increase or, hopefully not, decrease in engagement and lead generation.
4) Tie it all together with a hashtag
Hashtags are a great way to build awareness and visibility for your event, while also connecting registrants and getting them even more excited about attending. Think of a unique, memorable and branded hashtag to use in your social posts.
It could be as simple as the name of your event. Look to your audience for ideas and see what hashtags they already use when talking about your brand. Steer clear of any hashtags already being used by other brands and remember to keep your hashtag short.
Once you’ve created your hashtag, share it on the communication channels that make the most sense for the specific event. Promote your event hashtag on your event website, emails, print materials and more. The more people who use your hashtag, the better.
Event marketing can be stressful and overwhelming. We can help you market your event by creating all design materials, marketing emails, social media advertising and a flawlessly functional event website. Our team of experienced and skilled graphic designers, writers and developers can take the complexity out of event marketing and help you host your most successful event yet.
Let’s chat about your event marketing ideas, what you’re envisioning and how we can help you get there. Contact us today or give us a call at 610-692-6229.
