Live events offer networking, new product and service discoveries, and a break from the traditional office setting - increasing productivity upon return.
Event promotion is about three things: content, community, and connections. Communicate that to target audiences, you'll have success in attendance, exhibiting company engagement, media exposure, and for the long-term, thought-leadership. Here are some of the components of event promotion that worked, resulting in continued growth in revenue via an average year-over-year10% increase in attendance and a 12% increase in exhibit booth reservations.
Event Promotion
Communicating An Experience
Email Campaigns & Digital Marketing
As part of a multi-channel and multi-media strategy, carefully crafted and targeted emails with a clean UI can increase recipient UI and engagement - it's all about conversions, so an intuitive and attractive piece is key.
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And that's after several subject lines are developed and tested, to ensure opens and enhance clicks.
Social Channels & Partner Promotion
Social is that shared space that can be shared. Understanding your target market's comfortable and most-utilized channel provides an easy opportunity to share content beyond your immediate target audiences by encouraging them to share with theirs.
Content such as events, educational activities, articles, and webinars can reach a whole world of people not in your immediate sphere of influence.
Campaign Video Elements
One of our best performing subject lines is: Thank You.
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That's it. People click on that more than any other missive, because it's not an "ask", and recognition of any contribution is always appreciated.
UI for this email appears to be an embedded video with the use of a play-button graphic overlay on the video thumbnail. Click it yourself and see what our target audiences experience.
PRO-TIP: This in-house production was made with freemium software, photos from the onsite photograher, and an iPhone.
Live Event Innovations
Building experiences at live events allows for a special kind of creativity. Our team collaborated with a host of partners to provide "sub-events" where attendees could interact with the space while learning, with classrooms designed by architects and supplied by manufacturers.
PRO-TIP: Another in-house production, this experience was promoted with an integrated marketing campaign via email, social channels, website content, a self-published magazine, article and was made possible by relationships with corporate partners.
Customized
Campaign Email
Finished Product:
Classrooms In Use
Exhibitor Focused Email
When exhibitors have great success on site, the best follow up is a simple approach. Let them know when that success is already carried over to the next year and give them the stats to prove it.
PRO-TIP: This in-house production was created using a combination of images included in an Adobe Creative Suite subscription and original photography taken on site, edited in AI and PS.
Post Email Deployment:
Introducing the Event
Emails drive target audiences to the website (you saw the landing page before you came here). It's important to have the basics about the event, as well as interesting "factoids" that lend credibility and showcase different elements of the event. The second item, "Need it for your campus?" is a landing page for customized email campaigns; once a visitor lands here, they can choose where they want to go next by identifying themselves on the list. Why not direct them to their pages instead of bringing them here? They can see other audience types, people they'll want to network with, before viewing their registration options.
Driving Thought-Leadership Through Integrated Communications Vehicles
Knowledge partnerships are about sharing expertise, putting knowledge and skills to work for future generations of attendees and membership, while media partnerships can help with heavy-lifting to promote the event to those groups, and most importantly, thought-leadership. These, along with other event components such as specialty spaces like the EDspaces Cafe, work in concert to elevate the experience for everyone. Special networks contribute resources and connections, providing augmented community learning and engaging at the event, as attendee/membership communities face critical issues in their work.
