In Part I of the blog post on creating content to increase participation at your company’s annual event, I outlined the important first step of analyzing data from the past year’s event to shape your marketing strategy. In this post, we’ll focus on creating a content plan based on that insight.
For new readers, we learned that data from our example event had revealed three distinct intervals of registrants:
1. Early registrants - our loyalist
2. Content/speakers motivated registrants
3. The opportunist
Armed with this data, we moved into the next phase of developing a well thought out digital strategy campaign.
Step 2: Create valuable, relevant content from the previous year’s event
Some companies produce post-event content. Fortunately my colleagues had done just that. We dug through the top 10 key takeaways blog post that had been published and expanded on each lesson learned. We also interviewed three speakers from the previous year and provided mini white papers and videos based on their panel participation. Create content based on the past year’s event. We shared the knowledge gathered during the conference and made sure it was attention-grabbing and compelling. This resulted in a series of emails, blogs, short videos and social media activities.
Step 3: Closely align with your web, event and social media teams so that everything is synchronized and impeccable in execution.
Early bird registrants are the planners and often your repeat and loyal attendees. Early bird registrants have a tendency to take care of their lodging, and travel right there and then. Hence it is key to line up our efforts with the web and event team ensuring that all details are ready and up to date. When hosting large events, you are usually dealing with at least three disparate marketing platforms:
1. Event registration vendor
2. Marketing automation platform
3. Separate website specific for the event. These systems should be tightly integrated with all the details and the user experience extensively tested out.
On the event website be sure to include the list for reasons for attending. To help your prospective attendees, you can draft an easy-to-share, Convince Your Boss letter to articulate the value of and benefit for signing up for the event. You will want to be sure that you provide this letter when you announce the date and location so that it is easy to find on your event registration page. Salesforce does a great job of that – you can find an example on this page here scroll down till you find a spot that says “CONVINCE YOUR BOSS”.
Step 4: Personalize the content of your email outreach based on the audience (title, level and vertical), and if they had previously registered or not.
We worked closely with the event team using the registration waves to motivate them to secure appealing speakers as soon as possible. Once the agreements were in place, we profiled the speakers one by one highlighting their contribution to the industry and relevancy on the overarching theme of the conference. Once the agenda was finalized, we sent out the complete agenda. You should be sure to modify and personalize the call to action for people who have already registered vs. those who have not yet taken action.
The opportunists, the last wave of registrants, are often motivated by their ability to network and to secure meetings while at the event and will closely watch the speaker line-up.
Step 5: Have frequent meetings
Have weekly 15-minute stand-up meetings to make sure everything is going according to plan. Increase the number or duration of the meetings based on your needs and as you get closer to the date. We made the meetings fun, yet action focused. These meetings not only kept us on track through the process but helped to build team cohesiveness as well.
To recap, take these steps to increase attendance at your annual event:
1. Analyze past events and glean as much data from them as possible
2. Create valuable, relevant content from the previous year’s event
3. Personalize the content of your emails outreach based on the audience (title, level and vertical), and if they had registered or not previously.
4. Closely align with your web, event, social media teams so that everything is synchronized and impeccable in execution.
5. Have brief frequent status meetings
This approach to event planning can be applied to large company events or it can be simplified to increase registration for smaller regional events or webinars.
Contact me at tiziana.barrow@mail.com to help you and your team increase event attendance and maximize budget.