If you’re putting on an event there is a multitude of ways to market and promote it effectively. One great way to market an event is through email marketing. Although it’s a simple task from a technical perspective, thanks to the plethora of email marketing tools now available, if you execute it poorly it’s not going to help you one bit.
Here are five tips to help you market you event efficiently and intelligently. If you follow these five simple steps you’ll ensure that the contact list you’ve taken time to pull together doesn’t go to waste. Remember the best audience is a captive one!
1. Manage Your Contacts
Your contact database is the heart of your email marketing campaign, but having a huge list counts for little if you don’t manage it efficiently. Create a master database but make sure that each entry has plenty of supplemental data such as the person’s role, responsibilities and interests. The more information you have the more effectively you can target emails to people. And remember, keep it up to date otherwise you’ll get a hundred and one bounce backs from defunct email addresses.
2. Encourage Replies
Don’t think of email marketing as a mass bombardment that bludgeons the audience into submission. Instead think of it as a way to encourage conversation. We’ve all had marketing messages that beg us NOT TO REPLY TO THIS EMAIL, but remember the people most likely to respond to your efforts are those who’ve given you their direct email address. So send you emails from a real email address, and craft it to inspire a response from your contacts, which will increase their receptiveness to the event.
3. Beware The Spam Net
A good proportion of emails sent on direct email marketing campaigns end up in the spam folders of recipients, where they languish for a while before being automatically deleted. Not much chance of a response or engagement if that happens. Be careful with how you word your emails as ‘spammy’ words or phrases can send your email straight to email purgatory. Have a look at this article provided by Mailchimp.com which offers some great tips on how to avoid going straight to spam.
4. Make It Mobile Friendly
About 40 per cent of emails are opened on smart phones and tablets. It’s vital that emails are designed for screens both large and small. Most email marketing software has a responsive design in their template systems, so your email will be adapted according to the device it’s opened on but make sure this is the case before starting the campaign.
5. Follow Checklists To Eliminate Errors
Make sure that you follow a checklist that details the common human errors that scupper a marketing email, such as: incorrect links, bad spelling and grammar and that the mail merge is working. Send an email to a contact but with someone else’s name in the body text and watch your emails get deleted.
About the Author: This article was provided by event management company Banks Sadler.