MARKETING YOUR EVENT

W I T H E M A I L

CommuniGator

Marketing Your Event With Email2

ContentsPart One

Introduction ......................................................................................................................3

Part Two

Moving from A to B .........................................................................................................3

Part Three

How many emails do you need? ................................................................................4

Part Four

Which emails should you send, when and to whom? .......................................5

Part Five

Content for follow up emails .......................................................................................6

Part Six

Content for reminder emails .......................................................................................6

Part Seven

Advanced setup ............................................................................................................ 77

Part Eight

Automating your email communications ..............................................................8

© CommuniGator Ltd 3

Part One

Introduction

In the build‐up to your event you’ll likely be promoting it across any and all channels and this is where email becomes a major part of your toolkit.

With the ability to communicate to large audiences quickly and easily it should be the cornerstone of your activity and not an afterthought.

This whitepaper will look at ways of structuring email campaigns and automating processes based on recipient behaviour so that you can create a flow inside your business that can be quickly replicated for any event.

Part Two

Moving from A to B

For the purposes of this paper we are taking point B as the date of the event and point A as a date 6 weeks prior to the event date.

This therefore gives us 6 weeks to communicate with an intended audience and encourage them to register for our event.

You can truncate this program or extend depending on the nature of your event and how much lead time you have available.

We will also be looking at 3 distinct user segments based on the behaviour exhibited by the recipients of your event campaign.

Didn’t Open <‐> Open Didn’t Click <‐> Booked

It is possible to segment further and this will be touched upon in the “Advanced Setup” section of this whitepaper.

Marketing Your Event With Email4

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6

Initial email (1)

Follow-up email (2)

Reminder (3)

Initial email (1)

Follow-up email (4)

Follow-up email (5)

Reminder (6)

Initial email (1)

Follow-up email (7)

Reminder (8)

KEY:

Didn’t open BookedOpened but didn’t book

Part Three

How many emails do you need?

Based on the above segmentation 9 emails will need to be created and used across the life of the event campaign. For the “Advanced Setup” this will increase to 14 different emails.

Why so many?

It’s important to note that this isn’t 9 different email designs but one design with different content that sits inside.You can get away with a single core design for your event campaign and then alter the content based on the targeted segment and relevant point in the campaign.

© CommuniGator Ltd 5

Part Four

Which emails should you send, when and to whom?

The reason we’ve segmented in to 3 groups is that there should be a natural progression from one to the other.

Everyone in your target audience starts in a group where nobody has booked and nobody has clicked. After 1 or more of the emails they will have hopefully moved in to a group where they’ve opened an email but haven’t yet booked at which point you change the content of your email accordingly. Likewise the final stage is moving them to have the status of “booked” where the message will change again.

The plan is split in to Week 1‐6 to make it easily digestible and so that it demonstrates how the different segments are built up over time.

Week 1:Initial email (1) to all target audience

Week 2:Follow-up email (2) to “opened but didn’t book”

Reminder email (3) to “booked”

Week 3:Intial email (1) with new subject line to “didn’t open”

Follow-up email (4) to “opened but didn’t book”

Week 4:Follow-up email (5) to “opened but didn’t book”

Reminder email (6) to “booked”

Week 5:Initial email (1) with new subject line to “didn’t open”

Follow-up email (7) to “opened but didn’t book”

Week 6:Reminder email (8) to “booked”

The 9th email is a confirmation email for those that complete the booking process. The “Master” email sent in week 1 (1) is re‐used several times with different subject lines in a bid to get the “didn’t open” segment to start engaging or at least opening the emails you are sending.

Marketing Your Event With Email6

Part Five

Content for follow-up emails

For those that start to engage and move in to the “open but didn’t click” segment the content of the follow‐up emails you send them should change in a bid to become more enticing and help them get over the finish line, or in this case, booked to attend the event.

Preview content from event presentations, details of keynote speakers, networking drinks and after parties are types of content that can work well in these situations.

It may be that when you plan your event you look to stagger the release of information so that you have content in reserve that can be used across all marketing channels including your email.

Part Six

Content for reminder emails

Although the Reminder emails should supply details of the event they are useful for including supplementary details that can request further use engagement.

Things like submitting dietary requirements, submitting questions to speakers before the event and nominations for awards are all things that can be combined with a Reminder email.

The job of the Reminder email is two‐fold; to ensure those that are “booked” remember they’ve got an event in the near future and to continue to build a relationship with attendees. That relationship and the knowledge of the content they’ve engaged with can help shape the conversations you have at the event.

© CommuniGator Ltd 7

Part Seven

Advanced setup

There is the option to further segment and add more emails in to the core campaign.

The “opened but didn’t book” segment can be split in to two;

- Opened but didn’t click

- Clicked but didn’t book

On the back of this you can further tailor your email messaging in a bid to get them engaging and booking for your event.

Weeks 2, 3, 4 and 5 would have additional emails in them to cater to this new segment.

Marketing Your Event With Email8

Part Eight

Automating your email communications

As discussed it’s important to send the right email to the right person when it comes to booking people onto your event.

Sending email confirmations and reminders to those that have booked, and invites to those that haven’t booked yet. However, with GatorEvents you can go a step further.

With automation you can not only send out all your emails pre-event but also send SMS campaigns to those that have booked as a reminder, you may even want to send your bookers the address of the event location an hour before it’s due to start. Or thank the attendees via text once it’s complete. This will help you build a strong relationship with your bookers, and make your event easily accessible to them.

Post event you can automate who received your ‘post-event’ emails too, tick in (using the register) those that attend and they’ll automatically receive the ‘thanks for coming to our event’ campaign which you’ve set up beforehand. This campaign may include any seminar slides, post-event survey, or some key take aways from the day. Entering them into a nurture campaign or to receive your weekly newsletter will help build your relationship with them and keep you at the forefront of their mind.

Automated campaigns are key to event organisation, they’ll not only make your event a success but also allow you to warm those leads!

Weeks 2, 3, 4 and 5 would have additional emails in them to cater to this new segment.

© CommuniGator Ltd 9

With the ability to communicate to large

audiences quickly and easily it should be the cornerstone

of your activity and not an afterthought.

Our products and services include:

MarketingAutomation I GatorMail I GatorLeads I GatorEvents I GatorDocs

GatorSurvey I GatorSocial I GatorData I CRM Integration I Managed Services

About CommuniGator

CommuniGator is one of the leading marketing automation software providers in the UK.Established in 2005, we’ve gone through a period of evolution as the marketing landscape has changed.

The core platform functionality caters to email marketing with automated welcome series, a HTML editor for designing your emails, templates, responsive design, dynamic groups based on behaviour, integration with the leading CRM platforms, an event management suite, robust reporting and so the list goes on.

On the marketing automation side we’re able to track prospect activity across the web pages they visit on your website and the email content they consume and take action against. This means you can build up a really detailed profile of who has done what.

To read all the juicy details of what the platform offers and how we can help your business jump on over to our website: www.communigator.co.uk

Give us a call: +44 (0)1483 411 911

This document and it’s contents are proprietary to CommuniGator or its licensors. No part of this document may be copied, reproduced or transmitted to any third party in any form without CommuniGator’s prior written consent.