5 Strategies for Using Email Campaigns to Promote Your Next Event

Have you ever registered for a webinar, conference or seminar and yet continued to receive emails inviting you to register? As a professional marketer, you must be wondering, ‘Why am I getting another email for an even that I already registered for?

The good news is that most companies can avoid this scenario by using marketing platforms to keep all of their email analytics and campaigns under control.

The not-so-good news is that many companies still don’t know how to effectively use these platforms, which can lead to multiple emails being sent out to the same contacts, without any use of segmentation.

So how do you diminish your chances of annoying your contacts? Here are 5 tips.  

1. Exclude Registered Contacts from Future Emails 

Marketers often use external marketing tools such GoToWebinar for online events, or Eventbrite for offline meetups. These tools are extremely helpful, but if you’re using them, you need to make sure they offer a proper integration with your marketing platform. Therefore, to ensure your registered contacts do not receive an email inviting them to register again, follow these steps:

1. Export the list of registered contacts from GoToWebinar or Eventbrite.

1. For all following emails for this event campaign, select the list you wish to send the emails to - but be sure to also “exclude” the new list “Registered Contacts for [Event Name]” 

2. Create at Least 2 Email Workflows

Speaking of which, now that you’ve excluded registered contacts from receiving further emails to register for your event you - don’t exactly want to forget about them completely. That’s why it’s important to create another nurture email workflow that either tries to upsell them with additional offers or simply reminds them of the upcoming event. (Within reasonable time intervals of course.) No need for daily emails for an event that’s 3 months away. Once every 3 weeks with the final 2 emails sent the week before and the day before should be sufficient.

3. Create Post - Event emails with unique content

One of the mistakes that some marketers make is not following up with contacts after the event – which is a great opportunity to capture more qualified leads. Did you host a webinar? Send the presentation or a link to the recording after. Did you attend a conference? Create a guide or white paper summarizing the main takeaways from the speakers or exhibitors. All of this can be hosted on a dedicated landing page to capture more leads.

4. Define the Next Steps

So the event is over, and these leads are now part of your funnel. What’s next? Do they sit in your contact list only to be forgotten? I hope not! Every event should have a defined goal which, in most cases, is to qualify leads as being sales ready. Your next move depends on the nature of your event – and how sales qualified these leads are. Here are a few potential next steps:

Encourage your sales reps to contact the event attendees Put atendees through another email nurture cycle to qualify them further Segment the lists further to determine their lifecycle stages

Whatever strategy you choose, be sure that these contacts are not left sitting in your database never to be touched again.

5. Test, Test and Test Again

Last but not least, check your email campaigns a few times before launching them and continue to check that each function is working as it should. Time sucker? Yes it is. But it will prevent people from unsubscribing from your emails - or worse, sending you one of those emails reminding you that they already registered!

Leave us a comment below and tell us what email marketing techniques worked for you when planning an event campaign? We love to hear good ideas from fellow marketers!