Use email marketing to boost your event management business

39 years ago the first mass email was sent, and the results were amazing. Starting that moment email marketing caught everyone’s attention and even though what worked a few years ago doesn’t work anymore, email is still one of the most used channels for marketing. And this article is meant to show you how a strong email marketing strategy can support your event management business and why you should use this powerful marketing tool.

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One of the main reasons for which it’s so used is that it is easily measurable: a report from MillwardBrown Digital states that marketers find email marketing as the easiest marketing channel to measure ROI for. Another significant reason is that while social media channels have 100% ownership over your followers (and your reach can be affected by an unannounced algorithm change) emails give you absolute power; those people gave you their email addresses and you can reach them as long as the internet is still out here.

But besides these two reasons, email marketing has many more advantages than you should profit from:

Helps you save time and money

Email marketing is cost-effective itself, but it can also help you reduce costs with printed materials that you now use. Ok, maybe you have some old-fashion clients that still prefer to touch their birthday cards or the discount vouchers, but for the rest of them you can use emails and reduce the printing costs. You can also automate emails so you use your time for other activities that help your business.

Another way to monetize your email influence is by offering space for companies to brand your email template. It’s an unobtrusive way to promote your partners and it’s easy to see the results of your campaigns.

Increases brand awareness

It is crucial to keep your customers engaged, and also it is crucial maintaining a strong connection with your subscribers in order to make them buy. Studies reveal that prospects need more than 4 online interactions before buying a product (or service), so you see why is crucial to have rhythmic interactions with your (future) customers.

It’s easy to educate your clients

By constant communication, you can educate your customers so they will be able to use all the benefits that you offer.Maybe you plan your annual festival but, for the first time, you will use NFC technology for cashless payments. If you have the email addresses of your customers (if you used a smart tool to sell tickets, you have them) you can educate them on how to use NFC. You can put up a trigger-based set of emails so when someone buys a ticket automatically receives a “Thank you” email, followed by another email that offers indispensable information on how NFC works.Trigger-based emails (that are automatically sent based on different actions performed by customers) have the highest open rate, so make sure that you use them.

You can (and must) segment your subscribers

Segmentation is a very powerful marketing tool that we strongly recommend you to use. It helps you to ensure that every one of your subscribers receives relevant information (as mentioned before if you send a lot of irrelevant emails your subscribers will start to unfollow you). Assuming that you hold a conference twice a year follow up should be segmented separately for each event; let’s call them conference A conference B. It’s unprofessional to send a thank you email for attending conference A to someone who wasn’t there. If one event is focused on medicine and the other on marketing what is relevant for a segment of your audience is irrelevant for the other segment. So make sure that you provide useful emails for your two different groups of attendees.

Maybe you hold a music festival that groups different types of music; let’s say you have an indie rock stage, an electronic stage and one for reggae. Although your attendees want to enjoy the festival experience, each one will be more interested in one type of music. Use your registration form and ask them what stage they prefer and segment your guest into 3 categories based on their music preferences. Keep them up to date with relevant info from their field of interest.

Of course, for general info regarding access and on-site activities you can use only one newsletter.

Email marketing is easily measurable

As I said before, another reason for which email marketing is so used is that it offers you easy access to data. You can see who opened your email, which links are clicked, who forwarded your mail, which emails bounced, unsubscribers and much more. This is great because it offers you a lot of hints on how to adapt your message.

Nathan Hangen, the creator of Ignitiondeck, offers a great piece of advice: “If they’re leaving after a certain autoresponder email, then re-work it. If they’re leaving after marketing messages, then re-work the way you present offers. If they’re leaving early on in your funnel, then you need to fix your original call to action so that it’s in harmony with what you’re sending.”

As you see, email marketing is a great marketing tool if used wisely. But you must keep in mind that, on a daily basis, the average office worker receives about 92 emails, 16 of which are spam (link report radicati.com). No one wakes up hoping that their day will be full of unsolicited spam messages so the first important step when creating an email marketing campaign is to obtains permission to email your future customers. The second is to provide quality information, otherwise, you will become just another unread email.

p.s.make sure that your registration form contains an email field and do ask for permission to send informative emails.

July 25, 2017 Event management, event marketing, Event professionals No comments yet

Infographic – Why use cashless payments for your water park?

July 25, 2017 Access management, Infographics, Oveit Features No comments yet

Events need sponsorship. Learn how to approach your future event partners

Money is not the most important thing in life. The same goes for the event management scene: all the money in the world won’t guarantee that you’ll offer your guests the best experience. On the other hand, we must admit that money is an important asset when organizing events (conferences, festivals or concerts, it counts less). Those who have experience on their side know that there are two important aspects when looking at your cash-flow: smart tools (that give you instant access to ticket revenue) and event partners (sponsors). Obviously, there’s also the money that you are investing, but that’s a separate thing. And today I want to share with you some tips on how to do a better job when seeking (and negotiating) event partners for your next event.

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There are different types of sponsorships, like cash sponsorship, media sponsorship, barter, and these ideas are useful for all; but initially, cash sponsorship stuck out.

*Disclaimer – I pinned down these ideas after a discussion with a friend of mine, a friend who’s job is to decide which events her company will partner with and why.

1. Start with market research

It’s not easy to get sponsors for your event (that’s if you don’t have them crowding at your doorsteps already). And I assume that you don’t want to waste precious time with companies that wouldn’t sponsorship your event (there are many reasons for which someone would partner with you, but there are also reasons for which it wouldn’t – and it’s not personal). It’s better to research which organizations sponsored which events and try to understand why. Look for:
-events similar to yours and the companies that offered sponsorship
-new companies that are trying to make themselves known (companies that offer small sponsorship to a large number of events)
-new companies that are trying to penetrate new (geographic or demographic) markets
-entities with the same set of values as yours (like Ted and Rolex for example, both treasuring time)

2. Your approach counts

Imagine these 2 different scenarios:
a. You receive an email from a stranger claiming that he organizes a conference that offers you the perfect chance to get brand recognition and leads. Although she/he has a nice proposal you find out this is the first edition of the event, meaning that the whole thing involves some level of risk.
b. Your friend calls you to invite you to a 3-way lunch: you two plus his/her former colleague that now owns an event planning business. And guess what: right now they are working on a conference that would offer you the perfect opportunity for fresh leads and brand recognition. Plus it’s their first edition so you can even negotiate a long-term partnership at a lower cost.
In which scenario do you think you would be more willing to sponsor the conference (assuming that there are no major differences between the two of them).
Fair or not, it’s also important how you get to present your offer. Before cold-calling, see if there are no common friends that can introduce you to that organization/person.

3. Get your numbers straight to attract event partners

If your event isn’t in its first edition you should be able to easily answer the popular questions about your attendees. Organizations willing to sponsor you are trying to get visible to certain categories of potential clients/stakeholders, so they will be interested to see some demographics. If you are using the right event registration software (that tracks check-in, cashless payments, interactions etc.) for your previous events you will have all data stored and ready to be used; If this is the first edition you should present your (very realistic) expectations, and also be ready to uphold them with solid arguments. Will you provide brand recognition and/or leads?

4.There are more layers of involvement

And I’m not referring to your gold, platinum, and adamantium sponsorship packages (which, to be honest, are kind of out-of-date). I’m talking about how a company may look at you: as a one-time deal (sponsor) or a long-time partnership. And this is why it’s crucial to do your homework before you go out and meet the ones that hold the financial resources. If you approach a company that has the same values as your event there are greater chances to get yourself with a new longtime partner.
P.S. the layer of involvement may depend on the department that you approach; people from PR & Communication are interested in a sponsorship that brings quick results, the CSR department is interested in a partnership that can consolidate the company’s position as an important social player (a long-term goal).

5. It’s not all about you

Dale Carnegie once said (and I quote): “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you”. When someone accepts to meet and discuss a sponsorship it means that they see potential in a future collaboration. Listen, see what motivates them and which are your common points of interest, and your chances of getting a new sponsor/partner will increase dramatically.

5bis. Listen. Listen. Listen

This part is connected with the one above but I kept them separated because I wanted to highlight something: it’s more than possible that your future-to-be event partners know better than you which are the needs that can be filled with your help (but you must see how). This is why I think that your sponsorship standard packages are out of date and you should always be willing to listen to what your possible partners have to say; maybe you offer a 25.000 $ event partnership package (that includes signage and media coverage) to someone willing to sponsor you with 50.000 $ if you implement their workshop into your event. Be open-minded, otherwise you will lose many great event partners along the road.

Funding is crucial and we all know that great event partners are hard to find, so you should always show interest in your partner’s goals. After the whole thing is over meet with them and review the event: see if they have accomplished their goals, if there were any problems or new ideas. Your interest will show that you are willing to put in the work that’s necessary when building a long time relation.

July 14, 2017 Event management, Event professionals No comments yet

5 events that gathered more people than expected

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“Be careful what you wish for”, states an old saying. That’s probably because we have a habit of not preparing for what we wish for, but this is just my opinion. After taking a good look at the event management scene I observed that #eventprofs tend to wish for some things more than others. Of course, every event is unique, but there are some frequent desires that you can’t overlook.

One of these wishes is to create a meaningful event that will enrich the lives of those taking part. Another desire is that people actually take part in the events, and it’s perfectly normal; you want people to enjoy something that involved commitment and hard work (this is why we wanted to help and published an article about how you can use Snapchat and Instagram to promote your event).

The question that inspired this piece is “are there ever too many people at an event?” (and I wasn’t considering political or religious events). Then I started documenting sports and entertainment events where the crowds exceeded expectations. There are many events that gathered enormous crowds and unfortunately not all of there are “happy-ending stories”. Today I want to share with you 5 of them that caught my attention (I really can’t tell why these ones and not others, and I hope you will find these cases as interesting as I did).

Be prepared. Attendance can exceed the expectations

1994, Rio de Janeiro. Officials from Rio wanted a big event that would help tourism re-flourish. Rod Stewart’s new year’s eve concert and the midnight fireworks gathered over 4.000.000 people on the famous Copacabana Beach (according to Guinness World Records; others say that there were about 3.500.000 people on the beach, but it’s hard to have an exact number in these circumstances). Just think that Croatia ( a Central European country) has a little over 4.000.000 citizens and you will truly understand the size of that crowd. I think it’s safe to say that the crowd exceeded the organizer’s expectations.

1988, East Berlin. It seems that only half of the nearly 300.000 people that gathered for Bruce Springsteen’s concert actually bought a ticket. Millions watched it on public television. Authorities understood that it was almost impossible to stop over a quarter of a million people that were storming the gates so everyone had the chance to see the live performance (ticket or no ticket). There’s a myth that every east-german between the ages of 18 and 45 saw the concert – live or on TV. What would you have done in a similar situation?

1950, Rio de Janeiro. 173,850 spectators paid to see Brazil against Uruguay in the World Cup’s Final, but rumors are that almost 210.000 people crammed into Maracana on that day of July. It was the first World Cup event after 1938 (the Second World War canceled the 1942 and 1946 editions). Everyone was so sure that Brazil will win that they even composed a new song…” Brasil Os Vencedores” (Brazil the Winner), ready to be played right after the final whistle. Brazil lost 2-1 that day and that great crowd was reduced to silence.  Alcides Ghiggia, the scorer of Uruguay’s winning goal, once said: “Only three people silenced Maracana: the Pope, Frank Sinatra and me”.

1979, Great Britain. The Knebworth Festival brought Led Zeppelin back in England after 4 years and also brought a large number of people to the venue situated near the village of Knebworth. There was a dispute about the number of attendees and the two involved parties came out with two different opinions: 104.000 (tickets sold) vs over 200.000 (attendees). This is how I found out that at a concert an acre accommodates about 3000 people (a useful information for someone involved in the event management business). Today an RFID wristband would count every single attendee while you take a nap.

2013, Russia. Rock on Volga festival gathered almost 700.000 in 2013 when the German band Rammstein was the main headliner. Known as one of the largest one-day festivals in the world, Rock on Volga stunned everyone by (almost) doubling its size from one year to another. A rise in attendance numbers was expected but the crowd gathered to see Rammstein was beyond anyone’s imagination (I noticed that Russians tend to enjoy rock concerts more than others, there are a few concerts that gathered really spectacular crowds).   

The world changes, and although technology makes it easier for us to manage big events, it’s becoming harder and harder to gather such large crowds (although not impossible). There is a little bit of romance in these stories, but there are also many security issues. Unfortunate history taught us that accidents may occur and that large crowds are hard to manage so if you are planning a big event, learn from the past, and prepare for the unexpected. Great crowds are a bliss, but you have to be ready to manage them.

July 10, 2017 Concerts, Events, Festivals No comments yet

Cashless payments dramatically improve water parks experience

As the northern hemisphere melts down under the mighty sun I had the greatest idea ever (not!): why don’t I write an article about cashless payments for water parks and how the industry adapts itself. Because what can be cooler (pun not intended) than documenting exotic water parks while you ride a crowded subway to work? But this article walked me around the world, helping me discover incredible destinations, epic constructions, and some interesting ways of using cashless payments within water parks #tech.

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I found up some interesting facts about water parks:

The Waterpark Capital of the world is…Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. But although Wisconsin is home to the biggest water park in the U.S.A. (Noah’s Ark Waterpark) and has more water parks per capita than any other place in the world, the state of Florida leads when talking about the number of attendees; the biggest four locations gathered over 7.2 million people in 2016.

The first indoor water park was built in Edmonton, Canada, in 1985 and was the biggest indoor waterpark until 2004.

The biggest indoor waterpark in the world is Tropical Islands, situated 60 km outside Berlin. The building was initially designed as an aircraft hangar and it’s one of the biggest self-supported halls in the world (the dome is 107 meters high)… It’s spectacular! Tropical Island Resort also opened an outdoor section which helped them bring in over 1.1 million attendees in 2016 (a spectacular 13% increase if compared to 2015).

Speaking of leaps forward, another European Waterpark holds the record for the biggest percentage increase: Siam Park, located in the Canary Islands, opened its gates for over 1 mil guests in 2016, a 15% increase if compared to 2015.

When speaking of the total number of guests the gold medal goes to Chimelong Water Park, from China, which had over 2.5 mil attendees last year; that’s about 600.000 more than South America’s most visited water park, Thermas dos Laranjais.

As I was saying…it’s hard to concentrate when things are melting down around you. Fortunately, there are plenty of places that can help us overcome the heat, and water parks and pools are there to help. But you know what is not helping? The need to carry cash and/or cards when we are in our bathing suits…

I’m an advocate of using NFC technology for water parks, a technology that can make the experience a better one for attendees. How? By linking the wristband to a customer account and crediting it (so there will be no need to carry cash around or periodically visiting the locker to grab some more). Also, the wristband can replace the key to the locker, helping attendees concentrate on the only thing that should be important while they are on site: having fun!

“Paper and coin currency in water parks will go the way of the dinosaur,” said Buddy Wilkes, from Shipwreck Island Waterpark, Florida. And I totally agree.

Let’s review the major benefits of cashless payments for water parks:

To business:

    • Reduced cash handling by employees (so cases of fraud or human error are out of the question)
    • Improves transaction speed (a report from American Express states that “contactless transactions are 63% faster than cash and 53% faster than using a traditional credit card”)
    • Order value increases by over 30% (customers have instant access to their money, eliminating the extra step of walking to the wallet will increase the number of purchases)
    • Information about guests
  • Ability to prioritize clients (that pay extra for different benefits)

To guests:

    • Possibility to receive preferred customer benefits (this is the kind of experience that is hard to forget)
    • Reduces the risk of losing the ticket (or the cash/personal card)
    • Eliminates the need for holding separated tickets for different areas on site (the wristband can store all the access information)
    • They can keep track of family members
  • No more need to wait in line

The idea of using a wristband for contactless payments isn’t new and the technology has been used for some years in the industry but this year we witnessed something great. Orlando Volcano Bay, opened in May 2017, took the technology one step further: their waterproof wristband, Tapu Tapu, announces you when it’s your time to use a ride; this smart wearable it’s not just for cashless payments, it also waits in a virtual line for you, so you can do something else until it’s your time to use the ride.

There is one more great benefit of using wristbands for contactless payments (and also to store access credentials and to unlock your locker) and I let it last on purpose; not because it is not important, but because I want it to be the idea that you’ll stick to: going paperless will make a big change to the environment. This totally slipped my mind, but the guys from Waterbom Bali helped me realize how important this benefit is to us all. It’s been over 7 years since they first started using waterproof wristbands for cashless payments and are happy about the improvements made: because they are aiming to be #1 water park in the world that cares about the environment. Maybe this is why people love them some much and voted them as the number 1 water park in Asia in the Tripadvisor TraveleresChoice ranking. You rock, guys!

P.s.  For more statistical data you can check out Statista, Wikipedia or http://www.teaconnect.org/images/files/TEA_235_103719_170601.pdf, that’s what I did :).

June 30, 2017 Access management, Oveit Features 2 comments