As an event marketer, you’re always on the lookout for different ways to promote your event, encourage prospective attendees to register, or sell event tickets. One of the best ways to market your event is undoubtedly through email marketing.
Email marketing is an incredibly effective marketing channel for promoting events. And the good news is that you can integrate your Event Smart website with one of the most popular email marketing platforms, MailChimp.
In this article, we’ll show you how you can get started with MailChimp to grow your events and cover some email marketing strategies to help you increase event registrations. Before we begin, let’s quickly take a look at how your event can benefit from email marketing with MailChimp.
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is an incredibly effective digital marketing strategy. In the context of events, you can use email marketing to get the word out about your upcoming event and share event details with your prospective attendees.
Email marketing circumvents the need to invest in traditional marketing (such as print media and other pricey advertising options ) by offering the same outreach value at a fraction of the cost. In addition to this, automated email marketing tools make it easy for event organizers to track key metrics.
Introducing MailChimp
MailChimp is an email marketing tool that lets users create unique email marketing campaigns, automate emails, and integrate with third-party tools. Specifically, it makes it easy for event marketers to create and manage their email templates, schedule emails, manage email contacts, and track key email marketing metrics.
It’s great for building and managing email marketing campaigns for event. The tool is free to use for up to 2,000 subscribers and for sending up to 12,000 emails per month.
What Can You Do With MailChimp?
Let’s take a closer look at what you can do with MailChimp in the context of event marketing:
- Design custom email newsletters using a built-in editor.
- Integrate third-party digital marketing tools such as Shopify and WooCommerce.
- Automate email marketing by scheduling emails ahead of time.
- Send surveys to gather feedback.
In addition to this, you also get detailed reports on how your event marketing campaign is performing and you can test different campaigns for different target audience based on their preferences.
How to Leverage MailChimp to Grow Your Events
One of the neat things about Event Smart’s MailChimp integration is that once you have everything set up, your event website will automatically send attendee contact information to MailChimp for you. So, instead of managing an email subscriber list and manually entering attendee data into MailChimp, you can automate the process simply by using the MailChimp integration for Event Smart.
Here’s how it works: you log into your Event Smart dashboard and sync your event attendee contacts to MailChimp lists. Your attendees’ information will automatically be transferred to MailChimp where an attendees emailing list will be created for you.
There are several different ways you can use this attendees emailing list to connect with your event’s attendees.
For instance, before the event, you might consider reaching out to them to share important event details such as your event venue, speaker lineup, hotel bookings, and information about recommended transportation.
After the event, you can send attendees a quick email through MailChimp thanking them for attending your event and, perhaps, offering them an exclusive discount to your next event. Some event organizers and companies send their attendees photos and videos taken at the event or ask them to fill out a quick survey.
In addition to this, you can use the MailChimp integration in tandem with your Event Smart website to:
- Add an attendee to a group within an existing emailing list.
- Transfer custom registration information from your attendees to MailChimp.
Be sure to check out this helpful article on 17 Ways to Engage Attendees Before, During, and After Your Event for more ideas on how to connect with attendees and generate attendee engagement through emails.
6 Email Marketing Strategies for Driving Event Registrations
After connecting MailChimp with Event Smart, you’ll be able to transfer attendee information directly to a mailing list in MailChimp. In this section, we’ll take a look at some email marketing strategies that you can execute to increase event registrations.
#1: Announce Your Event
Let the world know all about your upcoming event!
You need a bold voice to get the word out about your upcoming event. Your announcement will be the first time potential attendees become aware of the event so it needs to be impactful.
Break the news to them in an exciting way so that the prospective attendees look forward to the event. Creating hype when announcing your event will increase the positive response you receive and help you increase event registrations.
#2: Leverage Testimonials
You shouldn’t overstate how good your event is going to be. Instead, let others do it for you.
Testimonials from past attendees or people looking forward to attending your event again are a great way to convince prospective attendees to register for your event. Encourage people to leave feedback and don’t shy away from asking for testimonials. Doing so will not only help you build a reputation by maintaining a level of transparency but it also serves as valuable, unbiased information from a third- party source.
#3: Showcase Your Speaker Lineup
Your speakers are the main course, so to speak, of your event since they deliver most of the content at your event. Showcasing your speakers can be incredibly effective if they are well known in the industry or are addressing trending topics.
Many people may jump on board your event simply based on the speaker lineup. For this reason, it’s always a great idea to showcase your speaker lineup in your event’s email marketing campaigns.
#4: Offer Early Bird Discounts
Having a special price for a limited amount of time can provide a nudge in the right direction when it comes to driving event registrations. Here’s why:
First, it creates a sense of urgency due to the time sensitive nature of the discount. Interested attendees would not want to miss out on that so it helps get them on board sooner. Second, it adds an element of exclusivity for the early adopters – making it a more enticing purchase.
#5: Give Prospective Attendees a Feel of What They Can Expect
What makes your event worth attending? And how do you convey that short of actually getting potential attendees to come to the event?
You can start by capitalizing on your event’s unique points well before the event actually takes place. Depending on your event’s specialty, you can create unique content that highlights those points and send them to your subscribers in email marketing campaigns so they can a see a glimpse of what your event has to offer.
Whether your event revolves around creative engaging ideas, or in-depth and educational information, you can highlight it by creating the right content whether it’s a blog post, infographic, case study, or white paper.
#6: Send a Message From Your Company’s Leaders
We’ve all had that moment as consumers of any other business – be it a restaurant, a store, or resort, when the chef, manager, or owner shows up and personally inquires about our experience.
It’s great for building a strong relationship with your email subscribers and potential attendees. You can recreate a similar experience by having the CEO or some other higher up address your subscribers in an email personally.
Conclusion
By using MailChimp with your Event Smart website, you can set up effective email marketing campaigns and execute email marketing strategies to increase event registrations and boost sales.
Once you’ve set everything up, you’ll be able to keep all of your event attendees in the loop by sending them information about upcoming events and personalized invites to register for future events. You’ll also be able to improve future events by asking attendees in your mailing list to take an event survey and leave feedback.
Are you leveraging email marketing channels to promote your event? Let us know by commenting below!
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