Event Marketing: How Software Automation Changes the Game
Once your nonprofit’s fantastic marketing strategy is in place, you can start considering automation software to make the process more effective and efficient.
A lot goes into planning a successful event. You need to plan out the activities that your attendees will participate in, consider the venue capacity and food quantities necessary, the goals you want to achieve, and more.
Maybe you’re building your event based off of another that inspired you. Or maybe you’re starting from scratch. No matter what the case, make sure you make the event your own.
The emergence of new technology has been incredibly helpful for the event planning process. In particular, software automation has helped organizations better market and manage their events.
Some of the ways software automation has helped change the game when it comes to planning an event include:
1. Triggering email series for event promotion.
2. Blasting out social media messages.
3. Segmenting groups for targeted marketing.
4. A/B testing to find better outreach strategies.
5. Collecting and storing registration information.
As a nonprofit, it’s important to understand how marketing automation will help you plan your next event and fit in with the rest of your organization’s strategy.
Let’s dive a little deeper into software automation and how your organization can use it to boost your event marketing!
1. Triggering email series for event promotion.
An effective email series is a great way to build brand recognition among potential event attendees. Plus, you can target specific audiences with email blasts containing information relevant to the reader.
When you have access to the proper software, triggering an email series looks like this:
- First, a potential event attendee downloads a resource, clicks through an email, or subscribes to your newsletter. Any action where you can collect contact data is enough. This acts as the trigger for your email series.
- Next, the potential attendee will receive an email because of the action they completed. This email (and future emails) are designed ahead of time by your organization staff and should help lead them to your event registration page.
- Finally, the email series has an automatic stopping point when the recipient completes the task you want them to. In this case, the stopping point occurs after the email recipient registers to attend your event.
The key to an effective email series is writing the emails in a way that encourages the recipient to open, read, and follow through with the email’s suggestions.
Make sure you follow your other marketing best practices when crafting your emails. For instance, be sure to make the best use of your images, create an eye-catching call-to-action, and use plenty of details in your descriptions.
2. Blasting out social media messages.
In addition to your email blasts, your organization should use other platforms to reach out to past supporters and customers. Social media channels are at least as important as email when it comes to marketing automation.
It can be difficult to interrupt your busy schedule 10 minutes every day to write and publish a social media post leading up to your event. Instead, marketing automation allows you to plan ahead and schedule posts for each day leading up to your event.
However, don’t forget to customize each marketing message based on where it will be posted. Consider the following platforms:
- Facebook. The average audience demographic on social media may be a slightly older crowd than on other platforms. You may see more Gen X, Baby Boomers, and older Millennials using this platform the most. Craft your message to this general audience.
- Instagram. Instagram specializes in posting images. Try posting pictures from last year’s event in addition to your ads for this year. Instagram is also owned by Facebook, so you can connect the two and share posts between them!
- Twitter. This is a great platform for witty comments and polls. You may survey your audience to get them engaged with event details before the event even starts. Make sure to also include a link to your registration page to encourage them to also attend.
The best marketing automation software solutions should help your organization publish on multiple social media platforms in addition to your email marketing strategy.
3. Segmenting groups for targeted messaging.
In your organization’s CRM, you can divide supporters and customers according to specific details and data you’ve collected about them in the past. Then, use this data to craft messages that will most appeal to that specific audience.
Your marketing automation tools will help you send messages to these specific audience members and entice them to get further involved and will help you maximize donations or registrations.7
Consider segmenting your audience by:
- Last year’s attendees. If your event is an annual occurrence, invite your attendees from last year to return. Remind them of all the fun they had at last year’s event and tell them about the new opportunities this year.
- Attendees from other events. Invite the attendees from your other events. Explain to them how this event is different, but just as (or more) enticing than the one they attended in the past.
- Social media leads. You’ve likely collected contact leads from social media platforms. Creating a new segment in your CRM with these leads will help you better reach out to them on various platforms and further increase their engagement.
- Long-term customers. If you have customers, supporters, donors, sponsors, or other involved parties who have been around for a while, you may want to craft a special message to them that differs from that sent to new leads.
- Volunteers. While you reach out to many leads in order to increase your registration rates, don’t forget that you’ll also need to recruit volunteers to help staff the event. Reach out to past volunteers to get started with this process.
When it comes to marketing strategies, one of the best places to start is your organization’s CRM. When you have the right segments created for outreach, you’ll be better equipped to market your event as effectively and efficiently as possible.
4. A/B testing to find better outreach strategies.
As your organization plans your upcoming event, it’s easy to get caught up in the short-game—how to make this event as successful as possible. However, don’t forget the importance of long-term planning as well.
Consider the big questions you may have about your organization’s general marketing strategies. What can you learn from this event to help your entire organizational strategy in the future?
Conducting A/B testing to discover new outreach strategies can help your organization better implement new marketing initiatives in the future.
Try testing out different aspects of your strategy such as:
- Email structure
- Registration page structure
- Newsletter explanations
- Other event marketing materials
Collect information and data about how each of your supporters and recipients responded to each strategy experiment. Then, save this important data in your CRM.
For example, nonprofits may test out two different donation pages in the time leading up to your event and measure success by which got more and larger donations. The data from each page should be saved as donor analytics in the CRM for future reference.
Automating the event outreach lists allows you to add a personal element to your messaging without crafting a new message for each and every person. The best software will allow you to choose the segment of supporters you want to reach, then auto-fill their names and other relevant information upon sending the message.
5. Collecting and storing registration information.
Your organization’s event registration forms are a great opportunity to collect new data to add to existing CRM profiles and to create new supporter profiles for those who are new to engaging with your organization.
However, you don’t want to create a complicated registration page with too many questions or loops to jump through in order to attend your event just to collect data. This may drive people away and reduce the number of attendees for your event.
Use a top registration system so that you can collect relevant information through ticketing without slowing down the process for attendees.
Look for features that improve efficiency such as:
- QR code scanning
- Face recognition scanning
- Attendee profile editing access
- Kiosk check-in
- Cashless payments
When you implement the available tech that will help your organization collect data while speeding up the registration and check-in processes, you’ll obtain more information about your attendees while providing them a better event experience.
Marketing automation has changed the game for event planning. You can now reach out to more people effectively and efficiently when you have access to the best tech.
Guest Author Bio: Gerard TontiGerard Tonti is the Senior Creative Developer at Salsa Labs, the premier fundraising software company for growth-focused nonprofits. Gerard’s marketing focus on content creation, conversion optimization, and modern marketing technology help him coach nonprofit development teams on digital fundraising best practices.