Managing an event is hard work. Planning, coordinating, promoting, locating a venue, handling logistics and measuring final success are just some of the moving parts that can make it stressful and exhausting. Inevitably, these events come around when you’re already buried with the rest of your job. If your short on time and energy and are faced with the difficult task of managing an event, I have a solution for you: marketing automation. These platforms house many features that allow one person to do the job of five, thus simplifying complex projects like putting on an event. Here’s how a marketing automation platform can be used to streamline event management, and make your life a whole lot easier.
Automate invitations, RSVPs, reminders, and thank you emails.
Most marketing automation platforms have email management tools that allow you to create compelling invitations, upload contact databases, and send personalized invites to any size contact list. Just write the email, upload the list, schedule the distribution and move on. You can just as easily automate reminder messages, confirmations and thank you notes. These follow up communications can play an important role in reducing one of event planners’ biggest headaches: no shows.
Manage data and use simple behavioral segmentation to plan initiatives.
Marketing automation platforms also allow you to keep all your contact information and data in one place. No more managing dozens of spreadsheets for different programs and campaigns. You can use the system to create emails, RSVP forms, surveys, follow up steps and more. All this information stays in the contact record, so that in the future you can review all the touches a contact has had with the company. You can then sort contacts based on their behavior and formulate new initiatives. For example, you can build a list of people who RSVP’d for an event but didn’t attend, and invite them to view a recording of the event that they can access at their convenience, giving them another shot at your content and message, and giving the event extra reach.
Leverage social automation to increase event reach.
Social media posting tools are integrated into most marketing automation platforms. You probably don’t have time to make multiple posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram in the weeks leading up to your event. A good marketing automation platform allows you to create and schedule social media posts across multiple channels to promote the event to your followers. Strategically scheduling posts allows you to reach existing and new audiences at all hours of the day to increase your event’s visibility. You can schedule the entire campaign in advance, giving you more time for other tasks.
Automatically track and measure ROI.
Measuring ROI is arguably the most valuable benefit of marketing automation platforms for event management (and for everything else!). ROI from an event can be difficult to calculate, but these platforms have tools that make it easy. Most systems automatically tag participants of a campaign, so that you can quickly see how many people from that campaign made purchases–whether the next day or the next year–or achieved any other goal of the event (requested a demo, asked for a quote, etc.).
By using a marketing automation platform to send emails, plan initiatives, post on social media, and track and measure ROI, managing an event will be much easier and your chances for success greatly increase.
Thanks for reading and feel free to reach out to me for questions or comments.
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