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Five tips to increase the number of attendees at your event

Anthony Miller, Director of Strategy for Active Network Events shares five top tips to boost the attendance at your event. (As featured in the February newsletter).

By using these guidelines you will enhance the communication with your audience, which will assist you in delivering more relevant content and therefore increasing the value you add as an event marketing professional.  We would love you to tell us what you think and share your own tips with us, to do this please use the Eventia linked-in forum (click here) and tweet us on: @activeeventsguy and @eventia – enjoy the read! 

1. Social Media - Drive consistent, ongoing awareness for your community 

Leverage the power of the communities that already exist in the social media space to build momentum for your own delegate community and your event. Start to engage your audience online through different channels such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin and let them tell you what they want to hear and how. 

Use Twitter to keep the conversation going, research shows that retweeting the same item 2-3 times at different times of the day doesn’t dilute the response. Tie all of your tweets to a relevant highlight of your event, but not always an overt call for registration. Use LinkedIn to target groups based on professional associations – typically this does not deliver the same volume of conversation and interactivity as Twitter though. Use Facebook as one of the key ways to extend your brand – use this primarily as a means to acquaint relevant audiences with your brand and your event. 

2. Email Marketing – Target your audience with tailored messages 

Use your database and send highly targeted emails to your contacts. Email marketing tools give you the ability to target for specific audiences and it allows you to drive traffic to your website or social networks. Invite your audience to register for your event or to join your online community, use automated features to send reminders and registration confirmations to keep the delegates informed at every stage of the event life cycle.  Do not inundate people with noise. Target, personalise and always add value! 

3. Website – Provide your audience with a year-round event destination 

Make sure your web site is optimized so that it can be found easily on search engine results and place the registration button on the central part of the home page. Remember that your web site is the best marketing tool you have, use it properly. Think of it as an information hub. All social media messages and emails will include links which direct to your web site, therefore it needs to be populated with content regularly to maintain the interest in your visitors. Blogging is another element that can be added to your web site to help engage with the online community as it is a two-way communication channel, which allows you to announce news and start discussions. Today, thanks to easy-to-use content management systems it is possible to publish and edit content on a regular basis without the help of IT experts.

4. Mobile and Tablet apps – Take the engagement to the next level

Deliver your event information directly to any smartphone or any Internet enabled device through web-based or native applications. Event apps are not only a way to plan and administer the personal journey with programme agendas, interactive site maps and session schedules, they are the natural extension of the online engagement started in social media websites. Our mobile and tablet apps give delegates the opportunity to build personal profiles, join communities, send direct messages to other attendees and connect to Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Furthermore, delegates can give their feedback in real time through online surveys and audience polling which will be automatically stored and ready to use for insightful reports. 

5. Virtual events – Attract new prospects and sustain the conversation

Add a virtual element to your live event so that less committed audiences can still participate and consume the content in a digital format from their desks/home. With the latest technology innovations, virtual experiences are becoming more and more satisfying but by no means will they replace the live event. To the contrary, they should make the live event richer and convert virtual attendees to onsite attendees.

Virtual events like webinars and podcasts should be used after an event takes place to meet specific needs and requests from the audience. Produce tailored content after reviewing your delegates’ feedback and deliver it through virtual platforms, it will help you to sustain the conversation with your online community and get maximum value and reach from your content. Remember to store all the content on your website and make it available to your audience at any time.

In the next newsletter, we will further develop the concept of audience acquisition through an innovative engagement marketing strategy.

To chat further about this feel free to contact our online marketing expert on:
Filippo Ciampini
[email protected]
+44 (0) 207 313 5740