5 Must-Have Ways to Promote Your Virtual Events
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Written by Rebecca Miller


@RebeccaM262

@funeral_z
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5 Must-Have Ways to Promote Your Virtual Events

April 28, 2020

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5 Must-Have Ways to Promote Your Virtual Events
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Written by Zach Napolitano

@funeral_z


7 Ways to Improve On-Site Communication With Your Team and Your Guests

July 31, 2018

Amy Barone, Sr. Director of Marketing Events & Engagement Programs at Tableau Software, shares her event marketing secrets in our A New Era in Event Marketing webinar with Harvard Business Review and AdAge. Below, she gives an inside look at how Tableau  grew and scaled a high-performance event program.


It started with canceling large conferences where hundreds or thousands of people would gather in one place. Quickly after, small events with fewer attendees were canceled as well. Now, many of these would-be in-person events are transforming into virtual events.


If event marketers have learned anything since mid-March it’s that things move fast. Okay, okay — maybe we already knew that. But we can agree the last several weeks have certainly reinforced it, right?


While event marketers have scrambled to shift their usual programs into virtual events, many are laser-focused on searching for and mastering a virtual event solution. And yes, that’s critical for running a virtual event program, but there are other priorities that require just as much attention.


One of those is promoting your virtual events. Unfortunately, because of the speed we’re working at today, many event marketers are simply sending a link to the out-of-the-box registration form that comes with whatever virtual event platform they choose. 


If I was an emoji user, this is where you’d see the woman with the facepalm.


I know you have to move fast. But you and your events still deserve — and need — quality event promotions that drive registration and attendance. The keyword here is quality. It’s about more than just not using the basic virtual event platform registration link. It’s about creating beautiful, on-brand event promotional materials that can stand out in the currently overcrowded virtual events space.


I can feel the small bit of panic running through your head imagining how much work this could possibly mean. But guess what? It doesn’t have to mean a ton of extra work for you. If you’re scaling your event design with branded templates for your event pages, emails, and more, there’s no need to worry.


So with that, let’s dive into the five must-have ways to promote your virtual events.

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person next to them?



Ten years later, our annual conference attracts nearly 20,000 customers and partners, our company has grown to 4,000 people, and we have a first-class marketing team with dedicated event professionals who are the best in the biz. Events have been a crucial part of our brand and help us better connect with our community, evangelize our customers, and ultimately grow our company.


Here’s how we did it:

The Branded Event Page

Building an attention-grabbing, informative event page is one of the most important things you can do to successfully promote your virtual event. It’s the single place that houses all of your event details: event date and time, agenda or topic, speaker bios, required links, and more. 


Since it’s typically the go-to spot for your attendees to get event information, ensuring you build a branded event page will help set the theme and carry it through all of your other promotional touchpoints.

Today's virtual events space is overcrowded, so brands must stand out to boost event registration. One way to do this: build an eye-catching, on-brand event page that sets the stage for what attendees can expect. → Tweet This


The First Event Invitation

Your initial email invitation is an important one. It will likely be your audience’s very first impression of your event — and for some, their first impression of your brand. When you’re crafting this first invitation, think about what you want that first impression to be.


The other thing you must include in the first event invitation: the WIIFM factor. WIIFM, or What’s In It For Me, explains why your audience should attend the event. Is the topic particularly timely or impactful? Are you planning to divulge insider secrets that’ll help them do their jobs at 200% efficiency? Tell them what they’ll get out of it (but also be ready to deliver on that promise).

Pro Tip
Email recipients are 26% more likely to open the email if it has a personalized subject line. Whenever and wherever possible, personalize your email invitations. In addition to personalizing the subject line, I’d also recommend adding the first name tag to your opening line.

MediaMath event data strategy

Image: Penguin Random House

The Follow-Up Email

Image: Conference Matters

To drive even more registrations, send a second email invitation several days to a week later, depending on how much lead time you have overall. The key to making the follow-up invitation work effectively is email segmentation.


Don’t send the same version of this follow-up email to your entire marketing database. Segment your list into a few different ones and send them emails with messages tailored to their situation. For example, the subject line and message may be different for those who opened your first email invitation but didn’t register versus those who never even opened the first email invitation.


Similarly, the event topic might be broad enough to interest people working in different industries — but it could affect them in different ways. In certain cases, you might consider segmenting by industry and catering to those audiences with messaging unique to them.

MediaMath event data strategy

It’s one thing to blindly upload an attendee list from a large industry event and blast everyone (you know who you are), but it’s another to know exactly who visited your booth, who met with your sales team, attended your event — they’re the ones that are the most engaged with you and they’re the ones you should focus on the most.

Though brief, that simple interaction with with the chef took the night beyond just an excellent meal.

The Social Posts

Image: Google Books

When it comes down to it, the goal of any event is to grow and nurture the relationship between your guests and your brand — whether you’re promoting a product, building community, or looking to increase brand awareness.

Promoting your event on social media is practically a given these days. But how many times have you seen (or fallen victim to yourself) event promotions on social media that have populated incorrectly sized or pixelated event images?

If you thought, All too often, you’re not alone. 


Promoting your events on social media can draw in prospects or current customers who already follow you, their followers, and new prospects. But poorly designed or off-brand social share images can turn potential attendees off. To make your virtual event’s social media promotions effective, spend time creating social share image templates that are properly sized for each channel.


Bonus: Social share image templates can also be easily and quickly updated for all of your new events, so you never have to start from scratch.

The 1:1, Personal Reminder

Promoting your virtual event isn’t only about getting people to register. It’s just as important to ensure those who registered actually attend. That’s why sending a reminder email either the day of the event or the day before is so important.


To even further increase the chances your registrants will attend, create an intimate, personalized email experience. Use your event marketing platform’s personalization tags to include the recipient’s first name in the subject line and opening line. Send it from an actual person, and make sure that person’s name and email address are populated in the sender’s information field. And don’t forget to include the sender’s name in the email signoff, with an invitation to reply with any questions.

Yes, event marketers have been moving fast. If this quick shift to virtual events has taught us anything, it’s that filling your virtual event spaces with the right people is critical to keep your event marketing and demand generation machines moving. And that starts with eye-catching, on-brand event promotions that get people in the virtual door.

Scale your event design to start building beautiful, branded event pages, emails, and more that drive results.

MediaMath event data strategy

This is when having accurate event data readily available and synced between sales and marketing systems becomes crucial, so that executives, sales teams, and the marketing team are all on the same page. Event data is shared weekly or even every other day, so everyone has a clear understanding of things like RSVPs and check-ins, and can adjust their communications or follow-ups accordingly.

Post-event page made with Splash

This way, guests didn’t have to worry about memorizing each other’s names or drawing a blank when they turned to chat with the person next to them, and we also got to show off  our product in a natural way.

Takeaway #5: If you don’t know how events are performing, you can’t make them better

When the MediaMath team goes to determine the ROI of an event, they’re able to track and attribute opportunities and future deals to a prospect attending the event.

And from a budget perspective, they’re also able to look at data from all events over the course of a year and see which opportunities and deals are associated with people who attended. This helps them determine which events are working or what they should adjust, and where they should continue investing their marketing dollars.

Even if your event doesn’t require a full seating chart with assigned seats, think about how you want the flow of your event to go, and how you can create natural opportunities for meaningful connections.

Image: designworkplan

•   A sense of privacy: a completely private and closed off room for dinner proved to be an extremely crucial element. At one of the venues, an open section in the room allowed noise to disrupt the flow of conversation — making it feel less private and less special of a night compared to dinners that were completely closed off to the public.

6. Create the best guest experience possible

At the end of the day, throwing events mean nothing if you’re not providing value to your customers.


At our conferences, we provide “Tableau Doctors” on-site that help customers or prospects with any questions about our product. Not only do these one-on-one appointments empower customers to engage with us in a meaningful way, they’ve also been the critical to driving event ROI.

Want to dig deeper into MediaMath's event data strategy? Watch the full on-demand webinar (with a bonus Q&A!) here.

author

Rebecca Miller

As a Senior Manager of Marketing at Splash, Rebecca creates programs that help event marketers understand the importance of scale and how it translates to event goals and business results. A Chicago native, Rebecca recently traded the harsh winters for yearlong sun in the Arizona desert, where you can find her on running trails, in the pool, or at a patio cheering on the Chicago Bears.

Our latest event marketing guide has a galaxy of on-site tips and best practices. Start exploring The Universe of Events.

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