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.

email marketing BLOG

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

How to reduce queues during festivals

HELLO

Festivals are becoming bigger and bigger every day; some good examples are Coachella, Tomorrowland, Mawazine etc., which are hosting hundreds of thousands of guests every festival. The festivals are getting upgraded while their popularity is increasing. Organizers are bringing only A-list artists, increasing the number of stages, and accommodating more attractions and partners; the overall experience is getting better and better every year.

Festivals are becoming bigger every year but they are also increasing their prices accordingly

Not only the festivals are getting bigger, additionally, they are becoming more expensive too. Guests spend between 50 to 500 euros to attend such kind of event and their expectations have increased exponentially. Most of the crowd which is attending festivals is composed of Millennials who consider that experiences are more important than things.

In this time, when people appreciate experiences more rather than valuables, it is important to do everything possible to fulfill this need and create a flawless and remarkable experience.

The most recurring issue that usually arises within festivals is queuing; nobody likes to waste their time waiting in line, however, it always happens.

The lines can’t be 100% avoided, though, there are a few practices that will reduce them considerably.

One of the most popular practices which is becoming rapidly adopted by most festivals is the NFC wristbands. Through the NFC wristbands, event planners are trying to offer a higher event experience making it more convenient, secure, and transparent.

Visitors can top-up money on their wristbands at any point of the event, and pay without queuing in lines – everything just with a simple tap while event organizers benefit of transparency and complete control with real-time reports over all sales.

The wristband is synced with a specific ticket category which allows the visitors to access all their designated areas more easily and if entitled receive perks such as T-shirts, free drinks, etc.

Additionally, with the help of the NFC chip, the wristband can be used to create a new level of interactions, such as: Treasure Hunts and challenges, rate favorite products or shows, save playlists, check geolocation etc.

Since 2015 the NFC integrated wristbands started to become popular within the events’ world. If back then guests were complaining about wristbands’ failures which left them unable to buy food or drinks, today they do work smoothly and are reducing considerably the queue.

No more queue for food and drinks, but how about the registration process. When attendees arrive at the event, they need to change their ticket into the NFC wristband. Unfortunately most of the attendees are complaining having to stay a few hours in line to get their wristbands; it is of course a big turn-off, when the pre-event excitement is killed by a huge waiting time.

Trying to be on-top of the situation, event planners are already finding solutions to combat this huge registration lines.

Event planners are always trying to find solutions to reduce queue

Big events(e.g., Coachella) are shipping the NFC wristband directly to guests, right after the ticket is purchased. Guests receive precise instructions which they need to follow in order to configure their wristbands from home. Also when arriving at the event’s premises, it is mandatory to have it already attached around their right wrist. In this way, guests can enter directly, without having to stay in line to do their registration. This practice turned out to be successful and diminished the lines considerably.

The NFC wristbands represent an important milestone in the process of reducing queues within festivals

What are the biggest benefits when using the NFC wristbands?

  • Visitors tend to spend 15-30%more
  • Speeds up purchases & reduces queues
  • Minimize cash handling
  • Captures all sales and audience insights
  • Control and transparency
  • More interaction within the event

It is interesting how in a short period of time so many uses have been found for the NFC chips. With the use of a simple chip, attendees can do almost everything with it. Their Social Media profile can be synchronized and all their data stored and access after the event. An NFC wristband is the only thing you need in order to attend a festival. No need to worry for your wallet, money or mobile phone, you only need to be worried of not having enough fun.

July 17, 2017 Event management, Event professionals, Events, Oveit Features 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

Event Marketing Through Stories: Instagram vs Snapchat

“It is clear to us that regular users’ Snapchat usage/engagement have gone down significantly since the release of Instagram Stories” writes Charlie Buffin

Event Marketing

For almost one year now, it’s been quite a war between Snapchat and Instagram – Why?

Well, on 2nd of August 2016 Instagram has launched the Instagram Stories, which are the identical copy of Snapchat Stories. For those of you who don’t know what Snapchat does, here is a brief intro; a Snap is a picture or video you send through the app to one or more of your friends. It will disappear after a maximum of 10 seconds and can only pe played twice. You have the option to add multiple photos and videos as well into the “My Story” feed which will disappear after 24 hours and can be viewed undefined times; visible to your friends only  if you have a private account or by everybody if you have a public account.

Instagram did not stop here, and one year later it hits again by copying Snapchat’s crowd-sourcing photos which allows users to send photos or videos from a specific location or event. Basically they can add photos from their personal story to nearby locations. Afterwards Instagram will curate the photos and the selected one that would show in the Explore tab as another story, let’s say New York (story). These stories created through crowdsourcing photos and videos can be searched after the location and hashtag. Learn more how to use crowd-sourcing photos for your next event.

Crowd-sourcing photos and Geofilters are two of the features that made Snapchat famous among all types of events

Crowdsourcing photos and Geofilters are two of the features that made Snapchat famous among all types of events; managing to create a high level of awareness within numerous events by collecting loads and loads of photos/ videos from all kind of participants at the events. It is an easy and friendly way to promote and bring awareness of your event . Learn more about how to promote your event through Snapchat.

It was quite a significant hit for Snapchat when Instagram launched its “stories ” because they suffered a substantially daily users decrease.

In only 25 weeks since launch, Instagram Stories reached 150 million daily users. That’s the same number of users that Snapchat’s whole app reportedly reached in June 2016, after seeing a significant growth from 110 million daily users in December 2015, Bloomberg reported.

Another report on TechCrunch found that both Snapchat views and posting of stories counts decreased by 15-40 percent after Instagram Stories launched.

Influencers seek for Instagram’s reach

Mike Albanese the CEO of social talent media company Galore’s says “Influencers that were late to build an audience on Snapchat pretty much abandoned the platform because it was so much easier for them to reach more people through their existing audience on Instagram Stories.”

Influencers have also noticed that the engagement rates are 3-5x higher on Instagram than on Snapchat. No matter how faithful you are to Snapchat, you’ve got to do what’s best for your business.

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Snapchat is fighting back Instagram

In order to fight Instagram, Snapchat launched Custom Stories in May 2017. Custom Stories  is similar to the normal story posting, the only difference is that it allows users to create their own events within their chosen friends. So for example, if you are organizing a birthday party, you can create a story named “`Birthday Party” and invite only the friends you would like to post in that story. Through Custom Stories, Snapchat is trying to focus more on offering a qualitative and tailored content to their users.

Creating the Customs Stories seems to be the logical step after creating  a tool that creates on-demand geofilters on the web, in February 2017, which allows users to create custom stickers for different occasions and events. And as competition with Instagram intensifies, it might represent an important milestone in the process of roping in new users.

Both Snapchat and Instagram are trying to bring people together through their stories. Even if it is about user’s lifestyle, a private event, a concert or a championship they help people spread the word and their experiences.

What makes the difference between the two, especially when using Instagram and Snapchat Stories to market an event?

Instagram

  • Has over 600 Million Users monthly with most of its users over 24 years old  (Read more)
  • Instagram’s users spend 15 minutes per day on the app
  • A big part of the activity users spend their time mostly browsing

Snapchat

  • Has 16 Million users daily with 60% of it’s users under the age of 24
  • Users spend twice as Instagram’s users on the app, approximately 30 min per day
  • 60% of user create content (Business Insider)

It only depends on what are your goals, who is your target and what kind of event are you are trying to market in order to decide if Instagram or Snapchat is more suitable for your event.

Having so many users, Instagram’s best use is to bring awareness and gain new potential attendees. But if you want to create an after event marketing, you can make sure that Snapchat is the right tool for you; Leaving all the content to be created by the community, with the wonderful slew of tools that Snapchat has to offer.

We are curious and looking forward to see how this battle is going to end. If Snapchat will raise back by increasing the number of daily users; if Instagram will manage to surpass Snapchat in it’s quality and number of features or why not  live happily ever after by figuring a middle way to survive on the “stories market” by bringing different added value for their users. All in all, social media platforms can help a lot event professionals in terms of marketing and creating awareness. However, finding the right event registration software is also a very important step to deliver a high-quality event.

June 29, 2017 Business events, Concerts, Event management, event marketing, Events, Festivals 3 comments

How do you prepare for a cashless event?

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Last week was a full one for us here at Oveit; on Wednesday we visited the lovely city of Riga to participate at We are Museums event WAM 2017 – Tech loves Culture, where we met many museums professionals eager to use #tech to offer their customers a better experience; Thursday and Friday were reserved for ICEEfest, Interactive Central & Eastern Europe, one of the biggest  tech-related events in Central & Eastern Europe. At ICEEfest we were in charge with the registration process and also implemented the cashless payment system, offering attendees the possibility to pay using their wristbands. Everything went as smooth as it can so we thought that would be nice to share some insights that can help you to implement this cashless payment method for your next event.

Here are some hints for a better workflow:

Use the right tool, so you don’t have to use 2 of 3 different software products for one event (our friends used Oveit to sell tickets, check in attendees, print badges and set up the cashless payment system). We used our software “as a hole” and made it really easy to associate the NFC wristbands to an attendee and credit his/her account.

Test your hardware. For this event, we used 24 laptops, 10 NFC readers, and 6 thermal printers. It all worked well but you can be sure that we didn’t wait for the first guests to arrive before we (individually) tested every piece of hardware that we were going to use for the big event. We checked and double checked so when the guests started to arrive we knew that everything is in place and any malfunction that may occur can be easily fixed.

Make sure you have enough power supplies and a strong internet connection (it is strongly recommended to use a private network for your apps, different from the one used by your guests).

You will need to host 2 different training sessions for people operating the software: one with the cashiers (that will credit your attendees’ accounts) and one with the vendors. It’s incredibly easy to use the NFC cashless payment system (at least ours is) but you must make sure that everyone knows how to use it (don’t assume that they don’t need to test it first).

Have a crew on site that knows how to use the software and can be of help if needed. If you have access credentials for each selling point it would be best if the “guys on sight” have the ability to reset them (they are there as a backup, to fix any problem that may occur). If someone has trouble remembering how to log in (or what’s the correct password) – they will have someone to ask for help. You use NFC to improve the general experience so make sure that you have someone on site for this sort of problems.

Conclusions

Using cashless payments was a bliss; there were attendees from all over the world at ICEEfest, so you understand why using cash would’ve been a problem. First, not everyone had the time to stop by an ATM and withdraw cash; second, the queues would’ve been huge with hundreds of people trying to figure out which bills to use. This system allowed everyone to use their credit/debit card to top-up their accounts and a simple tap for pay at all the 8 stores available on site. The result?

A payment system that was very easy to use and no more queueing.

 

If you still have doubts about the NFC technology and how it can help you offer a better experience for your attendees I encourage you to read this article, where you will find (almost) all the right reasons :).

June 21, 2017 Business events, Events, Oveit Features No comments yet