Eventslisted.com - Autoresponder strategy

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This plan is in line with the list segmentation that I discussed yesterday. We need to lock down the launch story form every perspective and write each story into an auto responder email campaign that engages the audience of each list into a conversation about the story.

1 - Leads - We need to tell them about what’s coming. These are people who have already shown a level of interest in our application or services and are hence inclined towards listening to us. They have opted-in to know about the products by their own free choice and will.

Since we will be converting people from this list to become regular visitors of the blog, we’ll gradually want to get them interested in our way of thinking, domain knowledge and content. Either they’ll become more involved with our content or drop off from the list - that’s fine with us because we’ll be using this list as an entry level gateway for prospects who will actually find the application useful.

Through this email campaign, we’d want to increase their perceived value of the application by telling them about its features and use-cases and by showing them video screen-shots. Also, we’d let them know about the activities that are taking place around the product in our other social media campaigns, to make them want to be a part of the entire launch. Once they’re excited enough, we’d involve them in the development and production of these videos. We’d also ask them to fill out surveys on their opinions on which way to turn - this will help us gauge the interests of the market.

We’d also tell them about the opportunity to become part of our limited pre-launch list of alpha customers. If they’re hyped up about the product already, they’d want to be on that list.

2- Pre-launch customers - This list of people will be forming the final shape of the application with us and are thus crucial. Having said that, we need to get this list to feel as involved with the entire prelaunch alpha testing process, as possible. We’ll have them fill out a survey for every major decision and make them feel like they helped refine and build the application. Giving them this level of ownership and importance is important in keeping them actively engaged with us.

Their interest will be driven by the fact that they have early access to the application and are amongst the limited-hand-selected few. The idea is to always make them feel they are getting more from a membership than others, which they are.

3- Event Line - This is the list that has subscribed to receive daily content from the blogs directly into their inboxes. We’ll keep it simple with them. They want the content on the blogs and we’ll send it as it is.

The email content will be structured in snippets with links to the actual posts so that they can be directed to the blog if they’re interested in the topic. These people want to learn from what we have to say, so the relationship is fairly simple. Keep providing them good content and they will keep listening to you. These people are different from the other two lists, in that they know what they want.

4- Super promoters - These people are aware of the influence they can generate by choosing to support you. Since they know that they can make or break you with their support, we need to address them accordingly. They need special attention and recognition. Most of the times, they need visible validations and social proof before they can spread the word around about the application. The idea here would be to subtly keep mentioning all of the different elements of the launch or application itself that add credibility and interest to their plate.

Eventslisted.com - Segmenting Our lists

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We want to build credible lists of prospects and customers that we can work with. These lists are our community members, so we have to make sure we can build lasting relationships with them. There isn’t any point in having a list of 10,000 people if you know nothing about them and they know nothing about you. Quantity doesn’t matter half as much as relationship depth when it comes to the community members.

The auto responder systems will allow us to filter our lists by location and a host of other technically defined filters through IP address & other data collected by the Internet service providers automatically as people sign up. We’re filtering them out by location because the platform will provide location based event planning and promoting opportunities. What we want to do though is plan a natural filtering system that is in sync with our sales funnel to end up with a multi layered segmenting of our list from fickle leads to good customers who will spend money with us.

We will go into detail on how we work these lists into, out of and through each other for cross listing & filtering or segmenting purposes in later posts. For now, here are the main sub-lists that we have:

1. Events Listed Leads list - People who subscribe to our squeeze campaigns asking for early access to our application. These people will be directed to the online squeeze pages based on keyword searches and profile fits. We’d want to drive as much of the targeted market into those pages, and consequently into our leads list, as possible.

2. Event Line list - Through our auto messaging and email campaigns we want to be slowly but surely shifting as many people off from the leads list to our Event Line Blog subscriber list. These people want our content delivered to their inbox daily so are serious about us and will be on par with those who subscribe to our blogs into their feed readers.

3. Pre Launch list - These are people who we deem fit to be early adopters and are prepared to work with us in getting the application right - we’ll get them on-board as early customers. At this stage, they’ll be doing alpha testing of our application for us, so we’d want people who can actively get involved with us in making the app ready for launch. If everything goes well, they can potentially become our evangelists. This list is extremely valuable to making our entire launch campaign successful.

4. Customer list - When we launch, this list will include all customers who are using the system. These will be people we’ve converter from leads or prospects / visitors into actual users. Keeping this list updated with the latest about the application will be a priority. Our email campaigns with them will include conversation via which we can gain feedback and resolve any usability or technical issues that they face as early as possible.

5. Paid customers - This list will be all those customers who are using the system and selling tickets / merchandise online for us to be invoicing them our fees. This list is our first class customer base because they actually use the application for planning actual commercial events that earns them serious money from which they pay us a portion. How we make money is through these people. Serious users are good users to have, not only because they’ll send a revenue stream down our way, but also because they’ll do justice to the application by using it properly and others follow them.

6. Super promoters - Customers who have more than 5000 active fans within their network. These customers are our gateway to tons of traffic, and hence are one of the most important sub-lists. We’re expecting a considerable percentage of traffic to come in from WOM marketing - so the more people we can get onto this list the better it will be for our campaign. In the simplest terms, this list is royalty.

More about lists

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This is a followup post to never stop building lists.

I felt I hadn’t stressed enough on the importance of building lists in my previous post. I was thinking of writing detailed considerations and methods for building your community lists, but came across a great article that pretty much sums it up for us. You can read the Eugene’s full article here.

Give People a Reason to Sign Up
As soon as your web site goes live, try to get users to willingly volunteer their email. Just because there is a sign up usually isn’t a compelling enough reason for users to sign up. Users are very sensitive to giving their personal information away. Think from the perspective of delivering value. Do you have something unique that you could offer to entice sign ups? In the case of an event it might be an interview with a performer, advance ticket discounts, or highlights from the previous year’s event.

Treat your subscribers like gold and don’t try to sales pitch them too early. Ask yourself, would you be more likely to purchase tickets to an event after 5 or 6 interesting and trustworthy emails? Or send a sales pitch out every time you send an email. Start with building trust and credibility from the beginning. It is important to remember that most people who visit web sites for the first time, never return to the same site. Collecting the user’s email is a good way to reengage your users down the road. It turns a visitor to your website into a lead, someone who is prepared to listen to what you have to offer. The next step is to turn them into a customer.

Advance Sale Tickets
Consider offering early subscribers the best price on event tickets. A few years ago I attended an air show conference in Belgium. One of the presenters outlined the ticketing strategy they used for their event. Their advance sale tickets were discounted by almost 50%. A number of event organizers might think that the process is counter intuitive,”We’re going to lose too much money by discounting ticket prices that much.” Ironically the presenters methodology worked. Their event was paid for before a single person walked in the gate. In addition, the event broke records for attendance and revenue.

Remember the more people with paid tickets in hand when it comes time for “what should we do next weekend”, the more of their friends will paying full price.

The Best Event Marketing Investment

Helping your own targeted subscriber list to grow is the best single investment you can make in your ongoing event marketing. Even if you don’t have something to offer your consumer right now, think about the future. Lists can be used to target the people who have identified themselves as your target market. You can spend less on traditional advertising if you already have a qualified list of people interested in your event, product, or service. Use your subscriber list to your advantage.

Remember the cost of a gaining a new customer does not have to be spent time and again, a new customer is a one off cost. Your list building process should start by capturing a visitors lead information. You are asking them to invest time to listen to what you have to say in return for quality information or value. If after listening they determine what you had to say was worthy of the time they spent listening you are well positioned to convince them that by becoming your customer, they will be better off than if not. Once you earn the customer your focus should shift to ensuring they become a happy customer with a view to converting them into loyal, recurring customers over time.