Discover how using an event funnel can position you to drive new leads and attendees
When it comes to marketing your events, your email database is your most valuable asset. It is the number one driver of ticket sales and, 40% of marketers said email marketing is the single-most effective channel to promote an event.
A robust email database improves awareness and engagement and better drives prospects through your event funnel.
By viewing your potential attendees through the lens of the funnel, you can easily address your audience at each stage of their progression towards purchasing a ticket or RSVPing to your free event. From an anonymous person to someone brand-aware, to a customer or attendee, to an advocate; you can address them in the right context and provide the information they need to move down your funnel.
As you learn more about your audience with promotions, you can then better identify and see them through your customer journey using email.
How Promotions Identify Hot Leads and Potential Attendees
Build awareness and find prospects to enter your funnel with promotions like ticket sweepstakes, quizzes and photo contests. By utilizing lead-generation questions in your promotions, you can collect valuable data on prospective attendees like location, age, and gender, as well as interest-based information. That data helps identify potential attendees, which you then use to move them to the next stage of your funnel.
How Email Turns Your Audience Into Attendees
Based on the data you gather from your promotions efforts, you’ll be able to identify and retain the prospects most interested in your event. You shouldn’t send emails to your database at large – you need to segment your database into different interest groups. This way you can engage them more frequently without worrying about opt-outs or ruining your sender reputation.
Once you have a dedicated event list, keep them engaged and moving through your funnel by emailing them throughout the customer journey. Here are just a few emails you should consider sending around each event:
- Early bird offer
- Speaker/guest announcement
- Post-event survey
- Need more event email ideas? Check out our must-send event email list.
Once you have a list of those who attended your event, you then target them with specific messaging to move them through your funnel for your next event. As you continue to build your database year-round with promotions (have you tried a multi-month campaign yet?), you will build an engaged database and be able to provide the right information in the right context.
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Julie is the Senior Customer Success Manager at Second Street and a former client in local media. Her best advice for driving the most success with your revenue and audience engagement strategy is to include promotions in every business initiative.