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How do you use email marketing for event promotion? Don’t make the mistake of thinking that email marketing is ineffective. Using email to reach potential event attendees is still one of the most effective ways to reach your audience.
Why?
Even though new technologies come out all the time, and Social Media and Social Marketing are all the rage, the fact remains that these are NEW technologies compared to the relatively ancient form of communication known as email. And it is still effective, if you do it right.
So, how do you do it right? You need to use an ESP (Email Service Provider) to get your email delivered, because these companies have special ‘white list’ approval by the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) like AOL, MSN, Yahoo, etc.
Without this ‘white listing’, a lot of email doesn’t get delivered or gets flagged as SPAM, so sending email from your own domain instead of using an ESP is going to reduce the percentage of email that gets into your recipients’ inbox.
Which ESP should you use? There are different tiers of providers, from very cheap to very expensive, and which one you choose depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
If you have an in-house email list of customers or people that have already ‘opted-in’ to receive email from you, then you can choose a low-priced provider. In my experience, Aweber is the best of the best on the low end. Even though you are emailing to your ‘in-house’ list, you still need to use an ESP because of the white listing issue. SPAM filters still work no matter where you got the email address from.
On the other hand, if you are renting a list to prospect from, you need to use an ESP that specializes in that. Alternatively, a lot of companies that rent out lists will email for you, but they are list providers, not ESPs, so you will still have a lot of undeliverable email unless they are experienced at getting email delivered like and ESP is.
I am not going to even mention sending email to unsolicited email accounts. This is SPAM, pure and simple, and should NEVER be done. Those offers you get for 100 million email addresses should be ignored. Either you use an in-house list, or you pay to rent a list (or pay to advertise to someone else’s list).
You now need to craft a message, whether plain text or HTML, and get it sent. You should have a process in place that sends a click on the link in your email message to a specific page to register for the event or to a sales page to convince the prospect they SHOULD register for the event.
If you are renting a list, you probably won’t be able to send your email message more than once unless you pay again, so you want to drive these people to a page on your site where they can opt-in to your own inhouse list for you to be able to contact them again without paying more than once.
Which method you choose depends on which type of list you are emailing to - existing ‘customers’ on your in-house list should be an easier ’sale’ than cold prospects from a rented list.
And it doesn’t stop with only one message. ESPs can deliver an automated sequence of emails, 1 per day, or any schedule you choose. This autoresponder sequence should be loaded up in advance so a series of emails goes out to promote your event.
Now, what your email contents should be, or what your marketing message should be is a whole other subject. But the central points are:
1) Use an ESP to get your email delivered
2) Don’t just send one email - load up an autoresponder sequence of messages (if possible). If you are renting a list, this may mean you only get one shot at sending an email, but you can have these people go to a page where they opt-in to your own internal ‘in-house’ list so you can reach them again on your own without needing to rent the name again.
3) Have a hyperlink in the email that goes to a page to sell the event or for people to register for the event.
For a low-cost, full-featured ESP that allows for unlimited email lists, unlimited email blasts, unlimited autoresponders, as well as great reports and advanced feature like Split-Testing, etc., you can’t go wrong with Aweber.
On the high end are companies like Silverpop. Most people won’t need to take things to this level unless you are trying to sell out an arena or other huge venue.
Of course there is much more to email marketing for event promotion than the above, but the above should get you started.
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