E-Marketing Can Boost Attendance By John Chang, CEO of Santa Clara, California-based seeUthere Multi-tiered promotions are smart, effective and enhance a planner’s value to an organization. In light of recent world events and in the middle of economic uncertainty, it’s more important than ever for meeting professionals to demonstrate the value of their meetings and take control. Customer events such as sales seminars, product rollouts, training and user conferences should be positioned as an important part of any company’s sales and marketing plan. To manage these events successfully, you should consider the latest in event-marketing tools to attract previous and new attendees. Here are some techniques you can employ to build attendance. List development. After identifying top prospects, brainstorm ways to build your organization’s current contact list. To attract new sales leads, include names of people who have requested literature or visited your booth at trade shows. Determine if you should purchase outside lists of contacts that have bought products similar to your company’s. And begin marketing the event right away: Give Web site visitors the chance to sign up to receive event-related news, and promote your event in all direct mail literature by publishing the related URL. Communication methods. Identify the various methods available to reach the ideal audience. Consider the entire multimedia spectrum — e-mail, mail, the Web, phone and fax. This approach has been proven to generate the highest response rates. Consider testing your offer via multiple methods to find out which one is most effective. Also, the Web is an ideal forum for providing current event information — it’s always available and you can add an unlimited amount of content. Market tryouts. Test your marketing campaigns and track response rates to each trial separately to identify the most effective messages. For example, create three invitation e-mails and send them to a subset of your list. Then send the one that garners the highest response rate to the remainder of your list. On target. Make sure you target your audience with special offers or messages. If you have tracked the preferences and demographics of your customers or members, you can use this data to optimize marketing messages. For example, at your next conference, send an e-mail that highlights your marketing programming to contacts that have a marketing title. Registration forms. The registration form gives you the opportunity to collect demographics, personal profiles, buying-habit data and attendee preferences. Use this information to fine-tune your program, and consider offering new topics based on your attendees’ knowledge levels or subject interests. Viral marketing. An Internet buzz term, viral marketing allows customers to forward your message to colleagues. This can be an inexpensive and effective way to build your attendee list. Encourage referrals by including or offering a special discount. It’s more important than ever for meeting professionals to demonstrate the value of their meetings to build long-lasting relationships with their customers and employees, and e-marketing is an attractive option to consider.