Due to the pandemic bringing about numerous lockdowns, air travel cessation and travel budgets being frozen have brought the event marketing industry into new territory and left event marketers scratching their heads with one question: how to market their in-person and online events in spite of social distancing and shrinking budgets. Filling in-person and virtual events to capacity seems like a thing of the past. In this blog, we are going to share how you can use to using multi-channel lead generation to fill your events and build out recurring attendees through interesting email campaigns.

COVID-19: Social Distancing, Zoom Fatigue & Increased Competition

The pandemic has brought about major issues for the event marketing industry, including nearly grinding most full-capacity in-person events to a halt (and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight due to the challenges COVID has brought with it). Innovative ideas and radical marketing pivots are critically important to implement in order to jumpstart this industry. Multi-channel lead generation helps you break through the social distancing barrier and move your events virtually.

Event marketers were left scratching their heads. Here’s how they’ve responded:

Many are struggling immensely and have decided (out of an abundance of caution) to cancel all in-person events for the foreseeable future.
A few event planners have decided to launch virtual or hybrid events in hopes of waiting out the pandemic’s crushing effects
A rare few are still forging ahead with a combination of new multi-channel marketing strategies and continuing their in-person events while pivoting and launching many virtual and hybrid events

Are you making the most of your event marketing management efforts?

3 Major Challenges Event Marketers Face Due To COVID-19

Filling your events is possible with a change in tactics. Event marketing companies will know the challenges below well. How can you overcome the rising tide of the pandemic? By taking what works in one channel and enhancing it in as many others that are reasonable, and then fine-tuning your messaging and email marketing to ensure you fill your events to capacity. Multi-channel lead generation can help you overcome these challenges. FrescoData is experienced in taking physical events and turning them hybrid and virtual to enhance reach. Successful event marketing management involves taking challenges and turning them into opportunities. Find out how FrescoData can help you build powerful event campaigns by continuing to read on.

Social Distancing: 6 Feet Rules Cause Event Attendance To Plummet

Social distancing is society’s answer to maintaining some level of normalcy during the pandemic (while also protecting the public from the virus being spread around easily). Due to health concerns and being worried that they would contract the virus, event attendees choose to stay home and this has caused the industry to suffer a major blow. Event marketing companies aren’t exercising “outside the box” thinking, and that’s where FrescoData comes in. We help companies fill their events (online or offline) despite the challenges of social distancing and leverage multi-channel lead generation to ensure they are successful.

In case you’re not aware of what social distancing is, the Center For Disease Control (CDC) provides a helpful set of tips for those who are outside their home:

“Outside your home: Put 6 feet of distance between yourself and people who don’t live in your household.

Remember that some people without symptoms may be able to spread virus.
Stay at least 6 feet (about 2 arm lengths) from other people.
Keeping distance from others is especially important for people who are at higher risk of getting very sick.”

Contact our Event Marketing Executives to learn more about how FrescoData can help you fill your events to capacity.

Zoom Fatigue: Too Much Zoom Time Puts Users To Sleep

Have you been on more than five Zoom meetings this week? Ten? Twenty? Maybe you’re suffering from Zoom fatigue. Many organizations have switched to hybrid or virtual events (holding more than twenty Zoom calls a week). Multi-channel lead generation employs short, powerful, and relevant messaging that helps break through the fatigue of competitors’ ads. Event marketing management should include advice for event creators on how to incorporate plenty of breaks from Zoom and technology.

Here are a few tips put together to help your attendees avoid exhaustion and Zoom fatigue. Try to make sure you keep these tips posted both in your event attendance invitation emails and on your event pages (and don’t forget to break up your events):

Take frequent 10-minute breaks throughout your workday
Make sure you have time away from your screen before and after Zoom meetings
Stay hydrated and eat well-balanced foods during your workday
Bring a cup of yogurt or a granola bar to keep you focused and your belly satisfied during your meeting
Rest your eyes for a minute before and after your Zoom meetings

Remember, it’s okay (and probably a good idea) to switch to virtual events and meetings but be sure to keep your attendees’ health in mind when planning your next amazing event.

Insane Competition: No Way To Separate Events From The Background Noise

One of the last major issues event marketers are facing is intense competition from other event marketing companies copying the same watered-down strategy and promoting their events on one channel and literally saturating the channel with nothing but ads. Panic has been driving event marketing companies to make instant (and often misplaced) choices about where to place their ads and this may be a fatal mistake. The background noise of a thousand webinars filled with the same tried-and-poor language that prospective attendees just skip over and ignore is something your event marketing company needs to avoid. A multi-channel lead generation is a tool you can use to fill your physical events too.

Here are a few tips to change your message:

Try something unique
Send out your message through multiple channels (multi-channel lead generation)
Don’t forget to personalize your content (ads and email marketing drip campaigns)
Be sure to keep your content in line with your brand’s image (grammar, imagery, verbiage)

Contact our Event Marketing Executives to learn about multi-channel lead generation and how it can help you gain more conference or event attendees.

Multi-Channel Lead Generation: How To Fill Your Events To Capacity

Omnichannel Event Marketing: Channels You Can Use To Fill Your Events To Capacity

Multi-channel lead generation is best accomplished by using omnichannel event marketing due to its widespread reach and the fact that spamming one channel rarely works (if at all).

Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing with Geofencing is one of the most powerful tools in an event promoter’s toolbox. Geofencing draws virtual boundaries around geographic locations so that we may understand the signals going in/out of those areas. We use this for historical look-backs to analyze footfall and infer behaviors, in order to target those audiences. Our team uses this as an alternative to people data when targeting by household income, income levels and property values. We’re able to deliver messages to the right attendees at the right time.

Webinars: Build Fun Events That Attract Attendees

Virtual events are now standard (not the exception) so it is important to appreciate their value and truly take the time to understand what works and what doesn’t, Webinars need to be intriguing, useful, and definitely not boring. FrescoData is experienced with getting attendees for your events and building out powerful, measurable, and scalable event marketing campaigns using multi-channel lead generation. This means using channels in tandem such as email, Facebook, social and more. The key is ensuring that you are targeting where your user consumes information at the right time and keeping your messaging fresh.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a powerful tool for event marketers who are looking to break through the noise of competition and overcome the challenges that the pandemic has brought front and center. Email subscribers take action because the content is interesting, relevant, and useful to them. It could be a mix of colorful creatives, calls-to-action, and witty subject lines that drive them to visit your website or to read further. In this blog, we will cover some of the best practices and pitfalls you’ll want to avoid when building and developing an email list, setting up drip campaigns, and which permissions to include when adding users to your list.

Remember:

Keep your content light, engaging, and informative
Send a few well-timed and useful follow up messages in your event drip campaigns
Segment for success: be sure to segment your email marketing lists by demographics that will get you “in the door” with your prospective attendees and grab their attention

Contact our Event Marketing Executives to gain insights into omnichannel marketing techniques you can pivot to and improve your ROI and event attendee satisfaction.

Final Thoughts

Whether your event is an in-person or virtual conference, trade show, seminar, product launch, workshop, awards show or just an ad-hoc meeting, FrescoData’s unique omnichannel marketing strategy uses some of the most innovative and technologically advanced tools by layering behaviors, interests, past purchase history, and among 10,000+ other available attributes to find the best attendees to fill up your events. Be sure to integrate multi-channel lead generation into your event marketing companies’ tools.

Reach Your Target Audience With Semantic Audience Segmentation

Semantic Audiences is an intent-based segmentation technique that can ingest hundreds or thousands of “triggers” across any website. We start by selecting 5-7 most salient keywords relevant to our client in order to get a weighted keyword cloud.

Semantic Audiences is available in most international countries.

Our approach combines developing innovative creativity with carefully targeted email and social media campaigns to guarantee you the best rates of event attendance in the industry.

Manage Your Event Marketing

Effective digital event marketing is not a one-time activity. Strong brand loyalty and event attendance happen when measurable events and high quality become standard operating procedures. FrescoData provides a completely automated event management solution that integrates all your marketing efforts together to effectively:

Track and refine your marketing campaigns to improve ROI
Automate repetitive tasks and eliminate manual labor
Systemize lead generation
Provide a powerful CRM tool to your marketing team

How We Work with You to Build Successful Events

Making people aware of your events, getting them interested and excited, not to mention getting them to register and attend is a specialized art and demands perfection. Most internal marketing departments and even many full-service advertising agencies may lack the dedicated capabilities to develop and execute a customized marketing events strategy. Rely on FrescoData to achieve event success. Here’s how FrescoData collaborates with you to build an event marketing strategy that will surpass your organization’s goals:

Define event type

The type of event and what you are hoping to accomplish with the event define your marketing strategy. A large trade show or conference in a major city addresses a different audience, requires different resources and event marketing strategies than a local product launch party or workshop.

Set measurable objectives

What’s the objective of the event? To promote a product, announce a new division, share your thoughts with people who might be potential partners? We set objectives that are measurable.

Determine target audience

The event type and objectives determine the target audience. With a comprehensive database compiling carefully cultivated contact lists, the campaign maintains laser focus only on those who best fit the event. Cast too broad a net and you’re wasting time and money. Cast the net in the wrong body of water, and you don’t catch what you’re fishing for.

Set budget

Tell us your budget, and we’ll tell you exactly what we can —and can not—do to implement an effective event marketing campaign. Once your budget is set, we adhere to it and deliver results.

Integrate theme and content

We work with you to integrate your marketing campaign with the theme of the event. Incorporating the logos, color schemes, copy tone and overall voice of your brand creates a cohesive feel and develops connections with your target audience at the subconscious level – as in when they see your branding, they immediately think of your event.

Determine and schedule campaign elements

How many emails are you sending and in what sequence? What should the event website look like and when should it be launched? What advertising and social media platforms need to be utilized to promote and build awareness of the event? A carefully laid-out schedule of key marketing activities is designed to fit your budget and event objectives.

Implement

Any event marketing campaign is a daunting undertaking. This is why you have FrescoData Event Marketing. We will help you to coordinate your brand strategies and objectives into a successful campaign that will achieve meaningful results and generate actionable data.

Assess

Just because your event is over doesn’t mean your event campaign is over. The very next thing after your event is offered is to assess whether it met the objectives and achieved desired results. And from that data determine how to improve on the next event.