Evangelists Are What We Strive For - Use Them |
Every strategy or trick that we’ve talked about so far keeps bringing us back to the core concept of evangelism. From creating event pages to building networks of trust to commission based promotional schemes on rely on your ability to identify and create evangelists for you.
Evangelists are fans. Evangelists are people who love and promote your products for you. Evangelists are early adopters. Evangelists are the heartbeat of your online communities. Evangelists are the key to your success. AND LASTLY, evangelists are out there and easy to find – you just have to look in the right places.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
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Multiple Conversations |
Once you have your lists segmented into their appropriate categories, you will be able to have multiple conversations with different sets of people at the same time. Since these conversations will be based on emails, they will be direct and personal. Through these conversations you can direct different sets of people into different stages of your sales funnel, depending on your current level of relationship with them.
In a previous chapter, I outlined the different stages of an auto-responder email campaign that you can use to communicate with your lists. Sometimes, your message can be the same with slight alterations for different market segments or readers. Auto-responder systems allow the ease of setting up those variations into separate and individual email pipelines so that each email receiver gets something relevant to him/her rather than a general one-size-fits-all email.
The more customized the messages are, the more likely the response. If you have a good call to action against each email, a significant percentage of the readers will click through. Just remember to write in a tone which resembles actual real-life conversations. Keep your email conversations natural and friendly.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
Today’s tip! To succeed online you must start engaging prospects into a never ending conversation. To do this you need a world class email auto-responder system.
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Segmenting Your List |
When you are communicating to your lists, it’s important to send messages that are directly relevant to them. The more they feel that the email is “custom designed” for them, the more likely they will be to buy from you. Since this affects your conversion rates, it becomes important to divide your list into sub groups or chunks.
List segmenting is a crucial part of email marketing. You should try to tweak your messages to speak to specific chunks of your list directly in terms of what your products offer to those individuals. This is not as difficult as it sounds, all you have to do is to think about the basic categories that you can divide your list into and use your auto-responder system to build those groups into sub lists. You can segment them based on your businesses, your campaigns, your relationship levels with them, your specific niches, etc.
This will enable you to send targeted and focused messages to those groups who will benefit from the email message the best. You will also be able to target your current and potential customers accordingly. You could start with a lead generation opt-in form on your website that offers a giveaway, something of value in relation to the event you are promoting in return for a new visitors name and email address. The people on this list would receive a series of emails written with the sole purpose of leading them through your sales funnel. Our testing has shown that you get the best conversions by sending an e-mail every day for the first 10 days or so. After ten days you should offer subscribers another document or discount (something of value) that they need to opt-in for that represents a more concentrated focus on the event…
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Maintaining Continuity |
As promoters, we need to stop treating events like one-time businesses. In the past, people used to plan events a year ahead and forget about it the day after launch. Things don’t happen like that anymore - we’re living in an extremely fast-paced environment today with an entirely different set of expectations. The audiences expect well-thought plans. The audiences expect us to talk to them before and after launch. The audiences expect smashing events. The audiences expect follow-up activities - like album sales, best event photo contests, etc.
These follow-up activities can be called re-launches. The sole purpose of these re-launches is to maintain continuity in the story. Since events are like conversations, you wouldn’t want the conversations to just stop mid-way, do you? You need to keep them in your lists and plan your future events around these lists. Your client lists are golden, and they are the secret to maintaining continuity in your business.
Your event sales don’t have to end at the event. If the event was a success, you can have re-launches at up-selling rates to the same active list. Let’s assume that you are already in touch with your lists. Let’s also assume that your first initial launch was a raving success. All you have to do is offer some kind of a re-launch package to your existing lists, e.g. membership package, books, videos, event portfolio. Since these customers already look up to you to deliver quality stuff, they will be willing to buy these things which puts more money in the coffers at the same time as putting your name and events on their coffee tables and living room walls.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
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Going Twice |
When you re-open your doors to ticket sales with a small time window, your chances of selling quickly and at high rates becomes possible. You have to make sure that you time this perfectly, since you wouldn’t want to wait until the demand fades away. People who regretted missing the first opening won’t wait another day to buy the tickets. They will be amongst the first buyers in this second opening round.
These tactics can be played with variations depending on the type of your event. It’s not a one-size-fits-all strategy, so make sure you understand the dynamics of your event before deciding on which tactics to use to increase sales. One thing you can count on is that you have no chance of achieving this level of influence over your audience if you have not invested the time to engage them into your campaign conversation. If they are not listening you cannot influence the momentum because they can’t hear you. I cannot emphasize the importance of building out a quality network of prospects, leads, customers and evangelists who are all listening to you in order for any of this to work.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
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Going Once |
Once the conversations have started, instigating a buying frenzy isn’t difficult. When you’re sure that demand is still high and people are still talking about your event, close off the tickets temporarily. Closing off the doors to the customers in this way often creates waves in the crowds who didn’t get a chance to buy early tickets.
This wave is usually even bigger than the first wave, and is hence useful for increasing your pre-launch hype. People who purchased the tickets earlier have them on-hand, but their friends want to attend the event as well. If you’ve worked well on building excitement and perceived value up to this point, then closing the doors to ticket sales is going to increase your launch’s success.
You have something that they want. They can’t get it. They wonder whether they’ll ever be able to get it. You want them to regret not buying the tickets when they had a chance.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
Today’s tip! To succeed online you must start engaging prospects into a never ending conversation. To do this you need a world class email auto-responder system.
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Maintaining The Conversation |
With all of the different bookmarking, content sharing, collaborating and social networking websites sprouting up around us, we sometimes get lost about what to do next. Just jumping in the game randomly can’t help, so it’s best to resort to a game plan first. The whole cyclical launch strategies, mental triggers and social media strategies that I have talked about are to help you understand the road that you are treading better.
As an event marketer or manager you can choose to hire specialized skills or spend your own time to market your events using these social platforms. Someone from your team needs to be actively involved in the pre-launch process constantly. Simply having a presence in social sites is not enough as that will only get you so far. You need to be in the forefront of conversations and be involved with what’s going on around you. If you have a blog or an event page, make sure it is updated regularly and has the latest information about the event.
All of this activity shouldn’t undermine the quality of your content. You need to offer value to people in order to win their trusts in social networks. Value is offered by quick response times, quality and your availability to help others.
Social marketing efforts spread through word of mouth. That’s why some of the most remarkable web 2.0 campaigns spread virally to thousands of people in a matter of hours if not minutes. So get out there with a plan and actively engage your audiences.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
Today’s tip! To succeed online you must start engaging prospects into a never ending conversation. To do this you need a world class email auto-responder system.
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Online Ticketing And Payment Processing |
You can choose from different online ticketing and payment systems. Just to give an idea of what to look out for; the Events Listed platform is integrated with Google Checkout and Paypal for smooth online payment processing across the globe. Your events will be linked up with these and you can receive revenue from tickets or pay promoters through these systems using your console. It makes the intricate process of handling money transactions hassle-free and safe for you and for your promoters. We are sticking with these two giants of global payment processing for simplicity and security. If you have your own website you can arrange your own payment facility with your bank and integrate it to your ticketing system to accept all major credit cards online within your country.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
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Video And Electronic Invitations |
Most people watch movies based on the anticipation built by trailers. Hollywood has mastered the art of building hype and curiosity, even for movies that end up being a waste of time and money. The trailers hit on the right emotional triggers - they give out just enough information about the movie to make us want to see it - they hide the information that adds novelty for the movie-watching experience - they write the words and choose the tone for maximum impact. All in all, the sneak peeks actually help us make our go-no-go decisions.
Up until a few years ago, events were a stark contrast. You’d have posters, invitations, telephone calls and all, but no real “pull” factor. The pull is usually a play at the emotions using visuals, sound, music, tone, words and images. Today, with the help of certain tools you can actually create quick, short and powerful videos for your event invitations. They can make private event invitations more personal and public events more interesting. They can add that human to human connection that you want your audiences to feel. Go to eyjot.com to see how easy it is to send an email that pops open as a video when the recipients open it.
There’s no limit to the ideas that you can explore while preparing the video invitations. If you are planning a reunion party of some sort, you can have a musical collage and slide show of photos, video clips all streamed together into a wonderful video. If you are planning a new year’s party, you can put together the best moments of the year and add an emotionally rich narration to it. Some video making tools don’t even require a lot of technical expertise to put together a good piece.
If you don’t want to use videos, that’s your prerogative. You can use platforms that offer different invitation and ticket design tools for custom designing your invites and tickets. Your video or electronic invitations and tickets can have links to your RSVP process.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
Today’s tip! A novel way to rise above the noise is to send prospects or associates a video mail as an alternative to email.
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Commission Tracking |
If you have a website and you want to initiate a referrals program that pays commissions on ticket sales you are going to have to install some affiliate tracking software to integrate with your ticket inventory system. (This software will track sales and commissions for you to pay into each affiliates bank account or send them a check after the event.) With your own website you can also build a dedicated doorway page where you can integrate an opt-in field to place people’s names on your list to receive emails from your auto responder system. If you don’t have the resources, time or expertise to do that, you can integrate multiple free web 2.0 sites to get the same effect without the opt-in or automated email responder system. Either that; or you can build out your event pages using Events Listed and link it off your existing website. Choose whatever suits your business best. In any case, you should be able to track the commissions, tickets sold, revenue generated (preferably in real time). It makes your life easier by turning a complex promotional scheme into an easy to manage implementation.
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You can use your fan base drawn in from across other social networks to distribute your content for you to build a buzz around your event and if adopting the Events Listed application you can double up by then having your fan base distribute ticket invitations for you, throughout multiple networks up to 4 tiers beyond your own network for a commission. All you have to do is set your ticket price and apply a commission percentage. Let’s suppose you set the ticket price at $100 and commissions at 20% (Events Listed offers layered commissions that go 4 tiers deep to ensure a greater incentive for promoters to reach out to their networks). Once these numbers are setup, you can design your invites and click send. The invites automatically go off to your Events Listed contacts, who can forward the same electronic invitation to their network and your tickets start selling. Whenever someone buys a ticket you receive the full $100 amount into your account, which you can later use for paying commissions. Imagine how much the magnitude of this can grow exponentially - and how much you can empower your resellers with monetary benefits.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
Today’s tip! If you want to source the best JV partners in your niche, you need a software that sources those selling the most product’s in your niche!
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