Most of our clients do some form of email marketing to promote their upcoming events.  Some create very sophisticated invitations in terms of graphics, fonts, colors and links, and some use very simple communications that look more like personalized letters.  Some email to the same list multiple times and others send just a single email.
So, which approach leads to higher registrations?

If you are like me, you get inundated with offers for free white papers that promise to tell you how to execute a successful email marketing campaign.  After reading a half dozen of these free white papers, here’s how I boil down the keys to email success:

• The quality of your list is the key determinant of success.  Your list should be email addresses for people who have requested that you send them invitations.  
• Content is the second most important element.  Write a strong subject line.  Make the content relevant to the reader.  Have a clear call to action.  Optimize the top 250×250 pixels with compelling information, so that the reader will scroll down “below the fold”. 
• For some people, you have to contact them multiple times to get a response.  Successful fundraisers know that for some donors, they need to send up to 4 reminder letters to secure the next year’s gift.  The same thing is true for event marketers.
• Measure the business result — how many people who received the invite then went on to register for the event.  Tracking just open and click-through rates doesn’t tell you how effective your email marketing is — it only tells you that someone read it.

What’s been your experience?  Have you got a winning formula for email marketing for your events? 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Meeting Technology, Incentive Trips, Corporate Meetings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.