Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools for promoting your event and driving ticket sales. By building a list of interested and engaged individuals, you can reach them directly with event updates, ticket promotions, and other information. In this blog post, we'll explore the benefits of email marketing for event promotion, provide tips and best practices for using email marketing to promote your event, and discuss strategies for boosting attendance at your event.
One of the key benefits of email marketing for event promotion is the ability to reach a hyper-targeted and relevant audience. By their very nature, email lists are made up of people who have “opted-in” or self-selected to be on your list. They may be people who have an interest in what you’re doing or the industry or niche that you’re in, or they may be people who have attended one of your events in the past, making them a high-value, high-interest and high-intent group of people to market to.
An often overlooked but core benefit of building an engaged and relevant email list is that you own the data that you’re accumulating from your audience, and will always be able to use this information to contact them. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are third-party platforms that don’t give you access to the contact details of your followers beyond their profile in the app. While most businesses focus on building a large following on their social media platforms, if anything were to ever happen to that platform (and it’s not as far-fetched as you might think, hello Twitter) you could risk losing access to your hard-earned community. Prioritising building your subscriber list should be one of the key marketing activities for every event organizer and will safeguard you against unpredictable changes in the social networking landscape.
Another benefit of email marketing is the ability to measure and track the success of your campaigns. By using email marketing software, you can track metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates which can help you understand which of your messages or marketing approaches is working best, and allow you to make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns for maximum impact.
When using email marketing to promote your event, it's important to start by building a list of interested and engaged individuals. This means creating a sign-up form for your event website, promoting the sign-up form on social media and other channels, and offering incentives for signing up, such as early bird pricing or pre-sales, or exclusive access to event performers or speakers. You want to ensure you are able to collect your ticket purchaser opt-ins from your ticketing agency as well and have these people added to your subscriber list. We’ve put together a list of questions to ask your ticketing agency to help you make the most of your event marketing.
It's also important to create engaging and visually appealing emails that are aligned with the theme and message of your event. This means using high-quality images and graphics, and including a clear call-to-action that encourages recipients to purchase tickets or learn more about your event.
For your campaigns to have the most impact, it's important to segment your email list to ensure that you are sending relevant and targeted messages to your audience. Segmenting your email list allows you to target specific groups of people within your subscriber list with tailored messages. This can be done by using data such as past purchase history, location, or engagement with previous emails. For example, if you're hosting a music festival, you can segment your email list to send information about different genres of music to people who have shown interest in those genres in the past.
To foster a connection with your subscribers and capture attention, be sure to personalize your emails for your recipients. This can include using their name in the subject line and body of the email, using dynamic content, or sending birthday or anniversary greetings. Personalization can help to make your followers feel more connected to your event and the community, increase engagement and make your message more effective.
Avoid falling into the trap of only emailing your subscriber list when you have something to sell them. Your efforts in building your mailing list, and communicating with them authentically and with regularity, should be a year-round focus even if you’re only running one or a few events each year. Nobody likes to receive an email from someone they haven’t heard from in 12 months asking them for something. If the only time you’re emailing your subscribers is when you have a new event to promote and tickets to sell then you’re likely to see lackluster results. Focus on communicating with your subscribers regularly and sharing news and information that caters to their interests and the broader industry that you’re in, and fosters two-way communication and connection. Doing so will lead to better sales results when you do have tickets to sell.
To boost attendance at your event, you want to focus on creating a sense of excitement and anticipation. This can be done by sharing sneak peeks of the event, highlighting key performers or speakers, and offering exclusive access to behind-the-scenes moments. If tickets are selling fast or allocations are selling out, let your subscribers know so that they don’t miss out. But be careful with this, you never want to tell your subscribers that your event is “selling fast” if it is not.
Key to building excitement and anticipation for your event is to showcase the experience that your attendees will enjoy by attending. More than just the lineup or program you’ve curated, try to demonstrate through images, videos and testimonials or reviews what people can expect from attending your event. If you’ve got footage from past events, use this. You want to tap into the emotion behind your event, and create that illusive feeling of FOMO in your followers.
You can also use your email marketing to offer exclusive deals and promotions. This can include early bird pricing, group discounts, or other special promotions such as VIP packages or other special experiences you could offer to create a sense of exclusivity and make your event more desirable. By offering these deals and promotions, you can create a sense of urgency and encourage recipients to purchase tickets.
Finally, think about how you could extend your email marketing strategy beyond your own mailing list. Can you tap into the mailing lists of your ticketing agency or the venue you’re hosting your event at? Are there any other strategic partnerships you could foster to cross-promote your event to. By expanding your email marketing efforts you can tap into new audiences and drive ticket sales.
Email marketing continues to be one of the most powerful tools for promoting your event. Done right, it can create anticipation and excitement for your event, create a sense of urgency and encourage your audience to purchase tickets and create a high-value, high-interest and high-intent community of people keenly connected to you and your event.
If you need help getting your email marketing for your event up to scratch, head over to the Work With Us button and let’s see how we can help.
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