Event management can be an exercise in juggling and multi-tasking. Between booking venues and wrangling speakers, it can be easy to place your event communications on a back burner. After all, you’ve got a great invite template, so you can just fill in the details and blast it out, right? It’s important to get your digital event marketing plan in place before you do so. Take a look at our 4 tips for communication success, and download the sample event marketing plan to follow as you whip up your own.
Pick your niche.
Short of cute puppy videos, it’s difficult to be universally appealing. Consider what your event will offer attendees, and to whom this will be of most use. You need to be timely and relevant to your target audience, so use segmentation to grab the right invitees. (Suite users – head to the Mail House and use Target Query to segment your lists.) It’s okay to have more than one target audience – for example, you might want to invite both students and CEOs, or international and local delegates. Just keep in mind that these different audiences might require different styles of communication.
Find a balance.
Now that you have a target audience, give some thought to how the members of this group would like to be treated. Keep your tone and language choices appropriate, and think about the frequency of your communications. Over-communicating with your audience may irritate and alienate them, but don’t swing too far in the other direction and under-sell. Find a happy medium and stick to it.
Nurture.
Now that you’ve got people’s interest, keep it! Don’t let your registrants forget about you after they hit ‘confirm’. Thank them for signing up and keep them posted with any additional event information they may need. Remind non-respondents that they’re still able to secure a seat. Thank all your attendees after the event, and let those who couldn’t make it know that you were sorry to miss them.
Track the analytics.
Define some measurable goals, and track the stats. Keep an eye on the opens and clicks that your invites garner. Watch the registration numbers climb, and mark attendance on the day to calculate your actual attendance rate. (Pro tip: ditch the laptop or the hard copy list and mark attendance with the Swift Events app!) Use the insights you gain from these analytics to inform future event planning.
It can be helpful to use an event marketing planning document as you approach each new event. To point you in the right direction, I’ve whipped up a basic plan template, as well as a sample for a fictional event. You can download those here and here. Use these as a starting point and adjust them to suit your planning needs.
Have you implemented an Event Marketing plan into your campaign? Here at Swift Digital, we can help you create the perfect event management campaign packed with the right features to make it a success! To find out how your business can get the best out of Swift Digital’s platform, contact our Sales Team today on 02 9929 7001.
