Something I find clients ask pretty regularly is, “Would you guys call into this list to help drive attendance to an event of ours?” We are always happy to do it because we are typically able to drive additional attendance to their events, on top of what they were able to drive from their own marketing efforts. The last two events we worked on were very last minute and we only had two weeks to call on the list of prospects – with that said, we were still able to drive 6 new prospects to each, so who knows how many additional attendees we could have sent if we started calling efforts earlier.
With all of this in mind, I came across the article, 5 Ways to Maximize Attendance at Your Next Event where Eric Mintz provides some great tips on how to maximize registration and increase attendance through email and social media marketing. He shared 5 ways to accomplish this: Save the date, send an email invitation, promote your event through social media, send follow-up reminders to non-registrants and registrants, and ask your attendees for a little promotional help. The article was focused around driving attendance through social media and email, and many great tips were given. I would add, though, that a key component to maximizing not only attendance but overall value for your organization is to supplement email and social media marketing efforts with outbound calling efforts, and here’s why:
- Email sometimes gives prospects an easy out to decline an invitation. A live conversation paired with an email invitation they had received the day prior or the day of is a perfect combination to drive them to your event. More details can be shared over the phone in the case they have questions, which they may not ask over email.
- When you are able to reach someone live about an upcoming event, you can not only determine if they will be attending or not, but you can also attempt to qualify them as a fit for your company’s product or service if they aren’t able to attend. This is intelligence that would probably not be discovered through email or social media. While the number one priority is to drive prospects to your event, you also want to take a close look at those who would benefit from learning more about your company, despite them not being able to attend the event.
- Live conversations can get you to the right person. What if an invitation is sent through email to a prospect and that person no longer works at the company or isn’t the most appropriate person? Only a live person would be able to navigate through an organization in order to get to the right contact.
Social media and email are excellent methods to use to drive attendance to events; though I do feel that in order to get the most overall value from the event, incorporating calling efforts is a must. Whether you have an inside sales team or outsourced teleprospecting team, live conversations can only benefit and drive overall ROI for the event. What methods will you use for your next event?
