Tips for Launching a Successful Events Campaign

An event campaign is designed to help companies promote webinars, lunch-and-learns, tradeshows, on-line or in-store sales and other events by setting up a drip campaign linked to a promotional offer or a signup page.  

Such events mostly have a start date, end date and time associated with it. For example, if there’s an end of season sale in your neighborhood, and you are a registered member at that store, you receive an SMS or email notification about the sale conditions, start and end date of the sale.

Sales teams can make the most of these campaigns because they give you a good idea of the people  who view your event—how they respond to your campaign, how many of them turn up, who stays back to talk to you and lastly how many of them you can be of further service to.

Usually only 20% of those who sign up will attend the live event [unless, of course, you are offering heavy discounts] Also, people respond at a higher rate to timed events as opposed to an on-demand event. The reason is that they get a  feeling of “value lost” if they don’t take advantage before the event expires

It is important to cross-promote an event in order to elicit a better response, i.e. you must promote it on multiple channels such as social media, your corporate website, professional networking sites, point of sale, etc.

The success of an event campaign depends on the value-adding quotient of the event. Remember 2 golden rules here:

1. The more relevant your communication/campaign, the better the response to the event.

2. The more useful the benefits, the better the response to the event.

While an event campaign will consist of multiple stages, it is important to analyze each campaign associated with the event and measure its effectiveness on an individual basis.

The stages of an event campaign

Typically an event campaign consists of 2 different campaigns, namely:

Pre-event campaign: This campaign focuses on bringing prospects to the event. This event could be online (such as a webinar, online sale or podcast) or could be held at a physical location (such as a tradeshow or retail store sale)

Post event campaign: As the name suggests, this campaign is undertaken to engage potential leads that arise from the event

Why do an event campaign?

While the immediate aim of an event campaign is to get people to attend the event in question, it also offers the following benefits

1. Generating qualified sales/marketing leads

It takes an average of 4.5 sales calls to close a sale , but only 3.5 sales calls to close a sale with a lead from an exhibition. Events generate quality leads and it’s easier to close sale if the prospect has attended an event.

2. Educating prospects to build brand and thought leadership  

One of the reasons why companies hold events is to educate prospects about how their product or service can resolve their pain points. Value adding events also build trust between a business and its prospects.

3. Channel and sales partner education

Companies that seek to keep their channel and sales partners up-to-date with their strategies may want to organize events like lunch-and-learns.

4. Increase revenue from existing customers: upsell and cross sell

Events can be a great way to reach out to existing customers in order to drive additional sales. For example, retailers may organize an online or in-store sale event and attract customers to the event by providing special discount coupons, etc.

Your work doesn't end with the event itself. In fact, it is extremely important to stay in touch with prospects and follow-up with them after the event. Though promotional campaigns are usually your first interaction with prospects, if you can connect to them this time, you are sure to create a long lasting relationship with them.