No matter what kind of event you’re planning this year, the only way you can justify your investment is by engaging attendees. And, of course, the only way to engage attendees is to actually have them at your event, which requires a pre-event campaign for promotion. This year, implementing suitable promotional campaigns before your field marketing events is more critical than ever before since, thanks to the boom of virtual and hybrid events, there are more choices out there for attendees.
— Drive virtual attendee registrations: For virtual events, you need to ask attendees to register beforehand, which means pre-event campaigns are critical. Luckily, promoting online registrations is an excellent opportunity to flex your team’s creative chops. There are tons of options out there, from fully-realized social media campaigns to email blasts to focused direct mail sends (for those VIP attendees). To optimize your virtual event registration numbers, one rule of thumb is to look back at your past campaigns to see which promotional channels were most successful. Use this data to inform your upcoming strategy for even more registrations.
— Schedule in-person meetings: Unless your team is hosting an entire conference or networking event, most in-person attendee engagement requires some type of booked meeting or scheduled time. Many event marketing teams manage this by working to schedule one-on-one in-person meetings during an event, either at a booth or at another meeting spot. To get as many meetings on the calendar as possible, your field marketing team should work hand-in-hand with sales reps to contact registrants, target high-profile attendees, and get meetings on the books early before everyone’s schedules are filled.
— Prompt attendees to submit their attendance preference: One new addition to the event marketing space over the last few years is the hybrid event – a combination of in-person and virtual programming that delivers a more customized attendee experience. To know what kind of event experience your attendees are looking for (and how you can better engage with them before your event), they need to let your team know how to attend your sessions. Once an attendee has RSVP’d ‘Yes,’ follow up consistently until they indicate whether they will be joining in-person or virtually. Then, once this distinction has been made, you can creatively engage them with more traditional campaigns to reflect their attendee profile.
How is your team managing your field marketing strategy this year? Just because attendees have more choices when it comes to the events they invest their time (or money) in doesn’t mean your field marketing efforts need to go to waste. You can learn more about how to optimize your pre-event campaign efforts here.
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