Tag: event marketing

10 Things Mentally Strong Event Planners Don’t Do

Posted on by Eventsforce

Have you ever wondered what makes a good event planner?  Is it good time management or creativity?  Or maybe the ability to multi-task?   Why do some event planners accomplish their goals while others don’t? It may surprise you to know that talent and intelligence doesn’t play nearly as big a role as you might think.  In fact, research studies have found that intelligence only accounts for 30% of overall professional achievement – and that’s only at the extreme upper end.

What makes a bigger impact than talent and intelligence?  Mental strength.

But how do we define mental strength?  And what are the key traits of a mentally strong event planner?

10 Habits that Mentally Strong Event Planners Avoid:

In her book “13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do,” Amy Morin, a clinical social worker and writer, reveals that developing mental strength is a ‘three-pronged approach’ that allows you to have good control over your thoughts, behaviours and emotions. And that mental strength is often something that isn’t reflected in what you do – but more often in what you don’t do.

Read: 8 Steps to Wellbeing for Event Planners

Let’s take a look at the working habits that Morin associates with mental strength and find out what you shouldn’t be doing to become a mentally strong event planner:

1) Avoid Taking a Challenge – Mentally strong event planners deal well with change and enjoy embracing new challenges as they don’t like staying stagnant.  New technology?  Not a problem.  Changes in the organisational structure?  Not a big deal. An environment of change and uncertainty (which happens a lot with event planning) will energise them and usually bring out their best.

2) Fear Taking Calculated Risks – Cancel an event or move it to another date? A mentally strong event planner is willing to take calculated risks.  They can weigh the pros and cons of a situation in detail, and fully assess the potential downsides and even worst-case scenarios (ex. unexpected weather or travel disruptions) before taking necessary action.

Read: 10 Signs Event Planning is Burning You Out

3) Let Others Influence Their Emotions – Mentally strong event planners don’t let other people put them down or feel inferior about themselves. They know how to stand up for themselves and known when to draw the line when necessary. They feel in control of their actions and emotions – and they have the ability to manage the way they respond to people and situations.

4) Worry About Pleasing Everyone – Mentally strong event planners make a point of being fair and meeting the expectations of all the different people they deal with around their events. Equally, however, they are not afraid to speak up.  They understand that there will always be the possibility that a sponsor or an attendee may not be happy with something and they’ll deal with the situation, whenever possible, with grace.

5) Dread Working Alone – Big event planning projects are often done in teams because it is the most efficient, stress-free and collaborative way of working and getting the job done. Mentally strong event planners, however, enjoy and some even ‘treasure’ putting some time aside to work on their own. They use the time to reflect, plan and be more productive. They don’t rely on others to stay motivated and can work just as well on their own as they do within a team.

Read: 20 Reasons You Should be Planning Events as a Team

6) Create Dramas – Mentally strong event planners don’t make a huge fuss about things that they can’t control, like last minute agenda changes, speakers dropping out or delegates not showing up. In any of these kinds of situations, they know that what they can control is their own response and attitude. And they usually do this well. They are also known for helping defuse situations, not for creating them.

7) Waste Time on Self-Pity – Mentally strong event planners don’t spend time dwelling on past mistakes. They learn to take responsibility for their actions if things go wrong. They’re able to come out of situations with self-awareness and a good sense of understanding of lessons learned.  And when things get pretty bad, they deal with the situation as calmly as possible and respond with phrases like ‘ok – what can I do next’ or ‘well – let’s move on’.

8) Give Up After Failure – Mentally strong event planners are willing to try things again and again, as long as the learning experience from it can bring them closer to their end goal.  They see failure as a chance to improve.  Even the most successful CEOs have been willing to admit that their early efforts invariably brought many failures – so bear that in mind the next time your bright idea doesn’t turn out the way you expected it to.

9) Resent Others’ Success – Morin believes that resentment is like anger that remains hidden and bottled up.  Focusing on how much better your competitor’s events are compared to yours, for example, is not constructive and can distract you from your own goals.  Mentally strong event planners don’t become jealous and resentful when others succeed – though they will take notes in understanding what contributed to this success.  They are willing to work hard for their own chances, without relying on shortcuts.

10) Have Short-Term Vision – Mentally strong event planners know better than to expect immediate results. They apply their energy and time in measured doses and appreciate reaching milestones on the way. Ultimately, they have ‘staying power’ and understand that genuine changes take time.

Are there any other personality traits you think are an important part of being a mentally-strong event planner?  Let us know – we’d be happy to add them to the list!

Want to be a tech savvy event planner? Sign up to the weekly EventTech Talk newsletter here and get updates on all the latest technology trends, discussions and debates shaping the events industry today.

Sources:

https://jamesclear.com/mental-toughness

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2013/11/18/mentally-strong-people-the-13-things-they-avoid/#8b8a8f86d756

https://uk.businessinsider.com/mentally-strong-people-2015-11

https://uk.businessinsider.com/mentally-strong-people-2015-11/#8-they-dont-make-the-same-mistakes-over-and-over-8

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will GDPR Change the Rights of Your Attendees?

Posted on by Eventsforce

The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, has radically changed the way event planners collect and handle the personal information of people coming to their events. But compared to the past data protection regulations, what has actually changed when it comes to the rights of attendees?

eBook: The Event Planner’s Guide to GDPR Compliance

GDPR: Giving Individuals More Control

One of the big things about Europe’s new data protection law, which came into effect in May 2018, is that it focuses on the rights of individuals over organisations.  And it’s happening because current legislations no longer meet the privacy needs of the digitally connected world we live in today. The existing EU Data Protection Directive was first put in place in 1998 – long before the Internet, social media and cloud computing completely changed the way companies use data, and GDPR aims to address that.

GDPR is also happening because of the exponential rate that data is being collected by organisations today – and the events industry is no exception here.  We use so many different data collection tools that help us gather and analyse information on our attendees – from registration systems and mobile apps to surveys, social media, lead capture tools etc.  We also deal with a lot of personal information (attendee names, contact details, employment information, gender, disabilities, dietary preferences).  And this is one of the key things GDPR wants to address: that organisations dealing with personal data are doing so in a transparent and secure way – and always in the individual’s best interests.

Did you know that a data breach is essentially what can get your events into a lot of trouble under GDPR? Find out what you should do to prevent your attendee data from getting lost, stolen or compromised by getting your copy of ‘The Event Planner’s Guide to Data Security in a Post-GDPR World‘.

GDPR Will Standardise Individual Rights Globally

If your events are based outside the EU, then you may feel GDPR isn’t relevant to you.  But if you’re collecting personal information on European citizens and residents through registration forms and apps, then it doesn’t matter where your events are or where your events team is based, GDPR compliance is going to apply to you.

In fact, experts are predicting that the regulation will eventually expand outside the EU as the subject of data privacy and security becomes more and more front of mind.  The UK government has already confirmed that it will adhere to GDPR after it completes its exit from Europe and there are similar regulations in Canada and Australia (though not the US).  People all over the world are going to start demanding more rights over their personal information and we expect GDPR standards to become the norm over the coming years.

Read: Infographic – Are Your Events Complying to GDPR?

How Will GDPR Change Your Attendees’ Rights?

GDPR will certainly change attitudes to individual rights – especially in events. It will change the mindset of event planners when it comes to deciding what data they should collect from attendees, how they use that data for things like marketing campaigns and what they need to do to keep that data safe. People aren’t fully aware of their rights yet, but they will be.  In fact, IBM’s GDPR lead in the UK, Steve Norledge, recently commented how the new regulation may prompt legal firms behind the PPI claims industry to shift their business model to the GDPR and start flooding Facebook and Twitter feeds with adverts like: ‘Do you want us to do a subject-access request for you?  If they can’t serve it, we’ll raise a class-action’.

And as awareness goes up, enquiries from individuals will go up too.  As will the lawsuits -especially for those organisations who suffer a data breach or can’t show what steps they’ve taken to comply to the new regulation.  It is therefore vital that event planners understand what changes GDPR will bring about – especially when it comes to the rights of people coming to their events.

Let’s take a look at what rights GDPR will bring to attendees when it comes to organisations collecting and processing their personal information:

Right #1:  Find Out Exactly How Their Data Is Being Used

One of the major changes with GDPR will be the conditions of consent that attendees need to give for you to store and use their personal information.  Using pre-ticked boxes and automatic opt-ins within registration forms, for example, will no longer be an option. Instead, consent will need to be unambiguous, using unticked opt-in boxes, separate from other terms and conditions. Attendees will also expect more clarification on how their information will be used. For example: When you’re asking attendees if you can include their details in a delegate list, then you will need to clearly state what personal information will be included in that list, the names of the third parties you will be sharing that data with (industry sectors will no longer be enough) and how these organisations will be using their information.

Read: Event Marketing Under GDPR – Consent Vs Legitimate Interest

Right #2: Access Their Personal Data for Free

GDPR will give attendees a lot more power to access the personal information you hold on them.  Under current regulations, a Subject Access Request (SAR) allows organisations to charge £10 to be given what’s held on them.  With GDPR, requests for personal information have to be met within 30 days and free-of-charge.

Would you like to stay up to date on all things event tech?  Sign up to the weekly EventTech Talk Newsletter here and get all the latest news, advice and tips on the technology trends shaping the events industry today.

Right #3: Request the Deletion of Their Data

GDPR will give attendees the power to get their personal data erased from your systems without delay – particularly if the information is no longer necessary for the purpose it was collected (ex. they only shared their information for that one event), if consent is withdrawn, there’s no legitimate interest or if it was unlawfully processed. Not only will they have the right to get you to delete their data, but to also stop sharing it with third parties that they had previously given consent to (ex. suppliers, hotels, venues etc), who will also be obliged to stop processing it too.

Right #4: Obtain and Reuse their Personal Data

Your attendees will now have the right to ask your organisation to give them back a copy of all the personal data they previously provided you at an event –  or send this information to another organisation, which may be a competitor.  They have the right to ask for this data in a commonly used and machine-readable format.

Right #5: Be Informed of a Data Breach within 72 Hours

If you lose or misplace your attendee’s personal information (think of printed delegate lists) or their data is compromised through theft or a cyberattack on your systems, then they have the right to be informed within 72 hours from the time the breach is first discovered.  This can be difficult to do as most breaches can happen and no one will know about it for a while. However, failure to inform them in this timeframe can result in substantial fines for your organisation or a class-action lawsuit which your attendees can also now resort to in the case of a data breach.

Read: Look after your attendee data…or face the music!

Conclusion

The EU GDPR clearly presents some new challenges for event planners, but it also brings some big opportunities too. By focusing on the rights of individuals over organisations, the new regulation will help events become a lot more creative in the way they engage with attendees. Those that can show they’re dealing with personal information in a transparent and secure way and have respect for the privacy of individuals will succeed in building new levels of trust. And this will be key in deciding which organisations people will choose to deal with in the future.

Get your FREE eBook: ‘The Event Planner’s Guide to GDPR Compliance’, and learn what impact Europe’s new data protection regulation will have on event marketing, data management and event technology – as well as what steps event planners need to take now to get ready for the May 2018 deadline.

If you’d like to learn more about Eventsforce and how we can help your events comply to GDPR requirements, please contact one of our team on +44 (0) 207 785 6997.

 

 

 

7 Effective Tips for Successful Event Email Marketing

Posted on by Eventsforce

Like it or not, email still remains as one the most effective marketing tools for events today. Unlike your website or event your event app, the event email is a very controlled experience where you, as the event planner, can decide everything from what it looks like, what time it shows up, the call to action and what kind of personalised content it should use.  And best of all, it’s effect is measurable. But with more than 20 percent of legitimate marketing emails never reaching a recipient’s inbox, what steps should event planners take to ensure the successful delivery of their email campaigns?

What is Spam Scoring?

As of March 2017, spam messages accounted for 57% of email traffic worldwide1 – and consequently, email providers are becoming more and more stringent on what content makes it into an inbox and what ends up in junk.

Mail servers and applications use different ways of ‘scoring’ emails – if the score is too high, then your event invite, for example, gets classified as spam and will not reach your attendee’s inbox.  What makes it complicated, however, is that each spam filter works a bit differently to the other and ‘passing’ scores can vary.  Your email invitation could pass through one attendee’s spam filter, but get flagged by another’s as junk. Spam filters can sometimes even synch up with each other to share what they’ve learned and this will also affect the variability of your spam score.

How to Avoid Your Event Emails Being Marked as Spam

The bad news is that there is no fool-proof formula in addressing the spam issue as filtering criteria is constantly growing and changing. There are, however, some basic steps you can take to help you reduce your email spam score:

1. Check Your Email Settings

Your attendees’ email servers are likely to reject your event emails when the address of your sending server doesn’t match the sender address on the email.  So you may be using your registration software’s mail server (eg. info@eventtech.com) to send out your email invitations but the ‘sender’ address on the email that appears in your attendee’s inbox is registrations@myevent.com.

To solve this problem, contact the person or organisation that manages your domain – in this case, myevent.com – and ask them to add ‘eventtech.com’ to the SPF record (Sender Policy Framework) for that domain. This tells your attendees’ servers that eventech.com is allowed to send emails on your behalf.

Read: Top Subject Lines for Your Event Email Campaigns

2. Do You Have a Good Sender Reputation?

The delivery rate of the email marketing campaigns you do around your events relies heavily on your sender reputation.  Internet Service Providers (ISPs) consider sender reputation as the most important factor in determining whether or not to block certain emails. It’s something you need to keep a constant eye on as it can fluctuate from one email campaign to another. Make sure you have a double opt-in strategy to ensure your attendee list is healthy and engaged, with clear unsubscribe links which will dramatically reduce any spam complaints.  There are websites than can help you measure and monitor your sender reputation, like Sender Score and SenderBase.

3. Avoid Buying or Renting Lists

As tempting as it is to grow the potential attendee list for your event, purchased lists are not best practice when it comes to sender reputation. More often than not, they are riddled with dead emails and spam traps, which can mislead mailbox providers that you break the rules by sending unsolicited emails.  Your emails will end up in junk folders or you may be branded as a spammer.

Sending to a list that hasn’t given you permission can also impact your ability to market your event, potentially damage your brand and even have legal implications, especially with the enforcement of GDPR next year.  Instead, allow your attendee list to grow organically. Give them the option to sign-up to your marketing list when they register for an event – this way, you can ensure that they get all email communications from your organisation for all your events.

Read: What Event Planners Need to Know About GDPR – Europe’s New Data Protection Law

4. Remember that Content is King

Spam filters look into your email content. An email containing only a clickable link that takes your attendee to the event registration page, for example, is likely to be marked as spam.  Whereas adding some descriptive text to your email will help to avoid this.  Make sure you have informative content about your event and try to limit the use of what these filters consider as risky words, such as ‘free’, ‘buy’, ‘order’, ‘purchase’ and ‘promo’.  Also, do not capitalise your ‘from’ address or subject line and generally avoid using capitalisation and exclamation marks in the body of your email message, as these will all have a negative impact on your spam score.

Balance your image-to-text ratio – Mail Chimp recommends a ratio of 80% text to 20% images. Emails with lots of images or large images and not much text will get a high spam score. Avoid linking to images that are held on another sever as you’re better off uploading pictures into the email itself.  If you are going to use links, make sure your images are hosted at credible services only as this will also have a negative impact on your spam score.

5. Check Your ‘From’ Details

Your attendees’ mail servers check more than your domain and content, with some putting particular attention to your ‘From’ address.  Try and avoid frequent changes to your ‘from’ address as this will impact your spam score.  When sending invitation emails for your events, ask your attendees to add your ‘From’ address to their address books. This way you can avoid all future email communications with that attendee from ending up in the spam folder.

Lastly, try and avoid using vague field names in your address, such as ‘noreply@myevents.com’. Instead, use clear, trustworthy names such as ‘registrations@myevents.com’ or ‘firstname.lastname@myevents.com’.  Stick to a limited number of these names and build a good reputation for these addresses by sending engaging emails and you will notice a difference.

6. Consider Whitelisting

It is possible to stop emails being rejected by your attendees’ servers by adding your mail server to a ‘whitelist’ on their servers.  This can help if you are targeting individuals from one particular organisation (internal employees) or those attendees using public mailbox providers, such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail.  The process, however, does require making changes to email servers that are normally outside your control.  It also stops working if the address of your sending server ever changes.

7. Test Your Email ‘Spamminess’

There are a number of free email spam checker tools that can help assess the ‘spamminess’ of your emails and get the most out of your event marketing campaigns.  Email Spam Test, for example, is a quick simple test that will analyse your email content, including subject line, HTML source and links, to determine whether most spam filers will block it.  Others like Mail Poet, are designed to test the “spamminess” of newsletters.  It checks content for specific words, while also comparing your email address to common blacklists.    Another one you can use is Blacklist Check – it allows you to compare IP addresses in your company to 100 common DNS-based email blacklists. If any of your company’s IP address have been blacklisted, messages sent from them will not be delivered to inboxes that are secured with most traditional email spam filters—and that might include your own organisation.

Conclusion

Avoiding spam filters isn’t usually something event planners will worry about – yet it can have a huge impact on the success of your event’s email marketing campaign. So next time you’re sending out invitations by email, think back to some of the tips we talked about here.  Configure your account to the right settings, use relevant and engaging content and send to permission-based email lists.  Doing so will not only increase your open and click-through rates, but will also send positive signals to your attendees’ email providers to ensure all your future email campaigns end up in the right inbox.

Are there any other spamming tips you’d like to include in this list?  Let us know as we’d love to hear your views!

 Would you like to stay up to date on all things event tech?  Sign up to the weekly EventTech Talk Newsletter here and get all the latest news, advice and tips on the technology trends shaping the events industry today.

Sources:
1 Statista: Global email spam rate from 2014 to 2017

How to Make Sure Your Events Show Up on Google Search

Posted on by Eventsforce

What is SEO?

Google today acts as both the main gateway and gatekeeper to the Internet.  It controls more than seven out of every ten searches on the Internet.  It also stores and ranks the links of websites according to certain criteria –  and this is where SEO comes in.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) refers to how search engines determine which links are shown first to users. And if you want people to find your event when searching for events like yours, then investing time on your site’s SEO optimisation is definitely something you need to do. Some may argue that it’s an IT thing or a job for the SEO specialists.  However, if Google search is an important source of registrations for your events, then it’s far from ideal to just hand over SEO to IT and expect things to simply work out.

SEO Top Tips: How to Get Events Listed on Google

SEO with Google Search has changed so much the last few years, that many marketers aren’t sure what’s outdated, what’s important, what will make a difference and what is simply wasted effort. The reason for a lot of the changes to Google’s search algorithms is user experience.  If Google sends you to a website, they want to make sure you have a good experience on that page. They are after all a business and want to make their customers happy. From their point of view, they didn’t create the webpage but they are endorsing it. They need to make sure that people have a good experience on that page to keep people coming back to Google. Which isn’t so different in the way we run events.

Let’s take a look at how Google ranks pages and what planners need to do to ensure their event websites rank well in search results:

1. Content is King

It wasn’t long ago when marketers could use SEO tactics like link building, keywords, and title tags to make their websites do better on search rankings, regardless of content quality.  But that is no longer the case. Good, original and engaging content is key for SEO – and publishing content on a regular basis is even better. A good example of this is a blog. You can get your speakers to contribute with previews of their presentations.  Get them to ask attendees what questions they want addressed during their session or include their Twitter handles and invite people to engage with speakers directly in the run up to the event. Putting together original content that people want to share, link to and write about is simply put the easiest path to organic SEO.

2. Keyword Magic

Having a good understanding of the keywords that your attendees, sponsors and exhibitors are using to search for events like yours will help you come up with the right type of content, headlines and anchor text (more on that later) that will convince people to click on a link and check out your website.  So you’ve got to find the keywords that best describe your event. For example: if your next London event is about Europe’s new data protection legislation (GDPR), then your keywords will be: GDPR, data protection, EU data protection legislation. If you know that people are searching for ‘seminars on GDPR in London’ then these long-tail keywords should also be included in your content’s SEO strategy. To create solid keyword lists for your events, use free keyword tools like Ubersuggest and Google AdWords Keyword Planner.

A word of caution, however. Keywords are a great way of optimising your search rankings and having them appear regularly across your website and the content you publish online is definitely something you should do.  But you’ve got to make sure that your use of keywords is always relevant – too much of it risks your content being seen as spam. In fact, keyword ‘stuffing’ is 100% against Google’s guidelines and is likely going to get your website penalised.

3. Be Clever with Headlines

Boring headlines are not going to do you any favours. Neither are misleading racy headlines that bring in short-term traffic volume (especially on social media) because after the initial clicks fade away, Google will no longer see the point in driving traffic to your content. The goal of your headlines should always be to inform your reader, not the search engine.  There’s nothing worse than having a headline that’s awkwardly framed around one keyword or one that forcibly repeats a keyword phrase.

While creating strong headlines is a good ranking tactic, subheads you use on your web pages have a slightly different function.  Rather than saying pretty much what you said in the headline which is more focused on engaging your readers and telling them quickly what the page is about, subheads should focus on the keywords you want people to use to find your website.

4. Easy Site Navigation

Clean simplicity and no unnecessary clutter is what you should aim for. You want your event website pages to get to the point – especially on your home page. You want your visitors to understand the purpose of your event in seconds – you want them to feel satisfied with the information, not overwhelmed or underwhelmed and definitely not confused.

Read:  10 Easy Tips for Designing Great Event Websites

Make sure you also use strong call-to-actions at the to point readers to other relevant pages.  For example, your agenda page can have a CTA button that says ‘Meet the Speakers’, leading them to the speakers’ bio page.   By getting your site visitors spend more time on your website, you will help raise the authority of your site which will have a positive impact on your SEO ranking.

5. Use Text with Images and Videos

Google can’t see images on websites, so it’s good to give any images you use on your event website an alt text and relevant file name to ensure Google knows what the image is about. We would recommend focusing more on including the image information within the text over alt text as the latter is a small ranking factor. For example – an image providing an agenda for an event – should also be listed out in the content, to ensure Google can read it. Including transcripts for  your video content can also be very useful – the same goes for your infographics.

6. Be Wary of Pop-Ups

Many event planners use pop-ups on their websites to promote early bird discounts or other offers that will entice people to register for an event.  The misuse of pop-ups however has led to a lot of controversy over whether marketers should use them or not. Google last year announced that they would begin to penalise websites that use ‘intrusive interstitials’ (bad pop-ups).  And intrusive is the key word here. Google doesn’t penalise all pop-ups, just the ones that get in the way of someone’s ability to access the content on the page when they’re searching on a mobile device. So pop-ups that users have to dismiss before being able to access the main content of the page will get you in trouble with Google. On the other hand, a pop-up that uses a reasonable amount of screen space and doesn’t disrupt the mobile user’s experience has no implications on SEO.

7. Use Attractive Anchor Text and Meta Description

We mentioned earlier anchor-text – the text used for links within a piece of content.  These can link across to other sites or internally across other areas of your site. Google uses these links to help discover new pages and spread organic traffic. The main rule for anchor text is to use text that is succinct and relevant to the target page.

The meta description is the brief description found under the meta title – that piece of text commonly used as a preview snippet that appears in Google’s search results, right under the title and URL of your event website.It presents a major opportunity to separate your event from others and convince searchers that your event is worth looking into. So make sure to include your keywords as part of the text and more importantly, make it appealing and use a strong call-to-action that will prompt people to click on the link and come to your site. The ideal length for a meta description is 70-156 characters, otherwise the text gets cut off.

8. Have Credible Backlinks

Backlinks are basically the sites that refer to your event website. Let’s say your event sponsor creates a link on their website to your event registration page.  That’s a backlink. Backlinks that come from high-authority websites or websites that experience a lot of traffic show Google that your website has value and authority which has a positive impact on your SEO.  Consider doing some guest blogs around your event on these high authority sites (ex. industry news sites/blogs) as this will increase your backlinks – just make sure you don’t do it at the expense of quality, because, again this will cancel out your SEO efforts.

Keep a close eye on your link profile, analytics and be on the lookout for misuse. If you think your event site is being harmed by low-quality links you do not control, you should put every effort in cleaning them up. You can also ask Google to not take them into account when assessing rankings for your site by disavowing them.

Conclusion

Having a good understanding of Google’s SEO criteria can help a lot with your event’s Google ranking. Just remember that more than anything else, SEO is about the user experience.  Your site visitor’s user experience. And that experience starts from the minute they type in their search query into Google. The better their experience, the better your SEO.

Do you want your event websites to make more of an impact? Eventsforce can help you create branded personalised multi-lingual event websites in minutes.  Find out more here or get in touch for a chat!

Sources:
Hubspot: 18 SEO Myths You Should Leave Behind in 2017
Contently: 7 Keys to Great SEO for Content Marketers

 

Why Post-Event Engagement Is a Big Deal – Part Two

Posted on by Eventsforce

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Engagement is an important topic in our industry today. And while many of us may have no problems in creating engaging events for our attendees, it’s another story when it comes to maintaining this level of engagement once the event is over.

Last week, we talked about why post-event engagement matters and how it can be achieved by focusing on education and networking (Why Post-Event Engagement is a Big Deal – Part One).  We looked at how events present a great opportunity to start new conversations – not only with attendees but the much wider community of like-minded people who want the same things.  Doing this successfully not only builds interest and excitement around your future events, it also creates a greater sense of loyalty around your brand and what it represents.

In this post, we will look at what steps you need to take when putting together a post-event engagement strategy, along with 8 creative ideas that can help keep your event’s buzz alive:

Post-Event Engagement Basics

Your post-event engagement strategy needs to focus on delivering value.  And value comes from determining what it is that your audiences want in the first place. If you’re not sure where to start, follow these 4 simple steps:

  • Set a Goal – What is your objective for developing a post-event engagement plan? Do you want your attendees to sign up to your next event?  Or do you want to widen your target audience? Do you want to position your organisation as a thought leader on a specific topic? Or do you want to drive more traffic to your website?  Know your goals before you begin planning and it will be a lot easier for you to determine the kind of content and activities you should focus on.
  • Identify Your Audience – To develop a successful post-event engagement plan, you need define a clear target audience. You can also profile your attendees to identify traits and characteristics of your wider audience – this includes your social media followers, people in your industry sector and anyone else who may have been interested in attending your event but didn’t.
  • Run an Engagement Audit – Find out how people engaged with your event from start to finish. Where did most of your registrations come from? Which pages on your website did they visit the most?  What sessions did they attend and how did they interact with your event app?  Did they like your keynote speaker and more importantly, did the event meet their expectations?  Having this information will help determine the kind of activities and topics you should be focusing on.

Sophisticated data capture tools – like the Eventsforce event management system – help event planners collect and analyse valuable information on their events and attendees. Get in touch here to find out more.

  • Put Together a Plan – Analyse the information you have collected, brainstorm ideas with your team, decide key topic areas and put together an action plan. Set aside resources (including budget and staff) with a primary focus on post- event engagement activities. Keep it simple but stick to your plan.  And don’t forget about metrics – track the performance and feedback on all the things you do and make sure they are in line with all your goals and objectives.

8 Creative Ideas to Boost Post-Event Engagement

For some practical ideas on how to increase post-event community engagement, have a look at the list below:

thank-you-362164_19201) More Than a Thank You Note – It’s common practice to send out out a big thank you to all the people who attended your event via email and social media. But take it a step further.  Include a summary of what was covered and some of the important issues that were raised at the event – you can put all the information in a colourful infographic highlighting stats or poll results as a reminder of what they learnt. Offer them a chance to join your post-event community on your event website by subscribing to a weekly/monthly newsletter. Remember, the first 24 hours after an event is the best time to get in touch with attendees and encourage them to take action – so don’t waste that opportunity.

2) Create a Valuable Resource Library – Give your attendees a reason to join your post-event community by creating a valuable resource library on your event website. Aside from event presentations, post new blogs, articles and ebooks using the content generated from your event. This can include presentation content, poll results or highlights from some of your most popular sessions. Use questions asked during these sessions to create new discussions.  Not only is it a good conversation starter for attendees, but it will also make those people in your wider community who weren’t able to make it to the event feel included in the conversation.

shutterstock_1801053863) Don’t Underestimate Video – People tend to show more interest in an email or website if it contains video. In fact, our brains process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. So, if you have video content, use it. Collate testimonials from different people talking about why the event was valuable to them, including comments from your speakers, sponsors and staff.  Focus on your attendee’s experiences and make it fun and personable.  You can also make it more interesting by producing informal blog-style videos, like a list of 10 things people learnt at the event.

Read: Why Video is a Big Deal for Marketing Your Events

 4) Stay Active on Social Networks – Continue to regularly post relevant news and content on all your social media networks – even posting just once or twice a week can make a difference in maintaining a sense of community amongst your audience. Focus on putting out content that people want to share with their own networks –  either because it makes them look good or connects with them emotionally.  Find a topic that’s engaging or one that a lot of people have an opinion on (President Trump, anyone?) and position your event’s brand as an influencer on that topic.    Follow hashtags that relate to your subject and proactively join conversations to grow your online community. And make sure you use a consistent tone of voice – don’t just give it to someone who can do Twitter and Facebook – make sure whoever is in charge understands your event’s comms strategy.

audio-1851517_12805) Do More with Your Speakers – According to the ‘Engaging Events’ report by EventManagerBlog.com, 53% of event professionals say that their attendees want greater interaction with speakers at their events. If your event had an amazing keynote speaker, then post a video link of their session and promote it through your different channels. Publish guest blog posts from your popular speakers and share their social media details with readers – giving people the chance to connect with them directly. You can also do follow-up ‘Twitter chats’, driving new discussions and giving audience members the opportunity to ask questions and engage with speakers in a more personal way.

6) Run Contests – Have an online competition on your event website and promote through email, newsletters and social media networks. You can tie it in with some research you’d like to do with your audience to generate new content for your website. Or you make it a bit more fun with a funny caption contest using an amusing photo taken at the event.  The winner can be the one who gets the most votes or ‘likes’.

personalisation-17) Personalise Content – Personalisation can take time but it’s worth every penny if you have the time to do it. Gather all the data you collected from your event – through registration forms, event apps, surveys and so on – to create detailed profiles on your attendees.  Go through the questions they asked during sessions – if you feel any went unanswered, then get back to them.  Were there any sessions that they signed up for but weren’t able to attend?  Then send them the video recording or presentations of that session. Or perhaps you know that a significant proportion of attendees spent 60% of their time visiting the same ten booths, then you have a good idea on what interests them and can push similar content after the event.

8) Host a Follow-Up Event – Networking is such a key component of why people attend events, yet it can be difficult for attendees to keep track of everyone they meet at an event.  You can encourage them to reconnect by hosting a follow-up event (live or virtual) with the objective of networking and getting to know each other a little more. Remember, people who attended the same event tend to have a common interest and facilitating a follow-up networking event can help them establish important new relationships.

Want to be a tech-savvy event planner? Sign up to the weekly EventTech Talk newsletter here and get updates on all the latest technology trends, discussions and debates shaping the events industry today

 

 

10 Easy Tips for Designing Great Event Websites

Posted on by Eventsforce

Untitled design (84)

Websites are still one of the most powerful marketing tools for events today. They provide people with information.  They educate.  They entertain.  Ultimately, they get people to sign up to your event.  But if your website has too much information, doesn’t look appealing and more importantly, doesn’t create a sense of excitement around your event, then chances are people are going to go elsewhere.

Thanks to recent advancements in technology, you no longer need to be an expert in web design to put together a great looking site for your event.  Most event management solutions these days offer web design tools that have an abundant choice of templates that make the whole process a whole lot easier.  But speed and convenience isn’t everything.   People make conclusions about an event very quickly through its website and it’s important to make a good impression from the start.

We had a chat with web designer, Dan Auty, who has worked on event websites for companies like Peugeot, BP and The Law Society, to discuss some of the latest trends in web design and look at some of the key things organisations need to think about when building websites for their events:

Untitled design (79)1) Get to the Point!

No one really looks at a web page for more than 10 seconds, so focus on your event’s key message.  Make sure that anyone coming to the landing page of your site can quickly scan it, understand what the event is about, find out when and where it’s happening and how they can register.  Stick to one paragraph and avoid long-winded introductions – chances are people are not going to read it, especially if they already have an idea about your event through the invitation link that led them to the site in the first place. Make sure that the date, location and your CTA button (ex. ‘Register Now’), are positioned above the fold and that they’re available on each page of your site.  If you make it difficult for visitors to find this information, they will leave.

2) Showcase Your Main Selling Points

Make sure your landing page has something that grabs the visitor’s attention. You can feature a well-known guest speaker or even testimonials from celebrities or high-profile attendees that came to your last event. If your venue is in an attractive location like Las Vegas or the Caribbean, then use large colourful location shots that get people excited about the experience they’ll have around the event.  Las Vegas at night is an attractive image to a lot of people, regardless of what the event is about.

Untitled design (83)3) Use Strong Visuals

Over the last few years, websites are putting a lot more emphasis on the use of visuals like images, graphics and videos. Think about the visual draw of your event that isn’t necessarily the subject matter. You can use pictures of your event location or venue – exterior and interior shots of fancy or well-known facilities usually work well.  Or you can use images of your guest speakers or the cocktail party you had at your last event.

What you want to avoid is pictures of people speaking at podiums or attendees sitting in dingy seminar rooms.  Also, try to avoid using generic stock photos of people having meetings in boardrooms etc. –  instead, use real images from your previous events. And if you can’t find the right photo, try using illustrations in your visual mix.  You can easily say a lot through a well-designed graphic.

4) Video is a Big Deal

Video content marketing has been gaining a lot of momentum over the last few years. In fact, a recent industry poll from Eventsforce revealed that 84% of event planners are using video as part of their marketing efforts to promote their events. Videos gives attendees the opportunity to learn more about your event and they do a good job of conveying the personality of your organisation. They also are a lot more engaging than text –  Forrester Research claims that a minute of video can be equivalent to 1.8 million words!

 Videos that automatically play in the background can add a lot to a page but try and limit the ones that play with sound as it can be off-putting for some visitors.  There are many other ways of using videos on your event website – from save-the-date-videos and highlights from your last event to video testimonials, interviews with keynote speakers and informal blog-style videos that can feature tours of your venue. Have a look at this article here for more ideas on using video on your event websites.

Untitled design (81)5) Don’t Forget About Fonts

Many event websites use a particular font or typography that follow the organiser’s corporate guidelines but there are also many out there that choose their own. If you have that choice, then make sure you have think about  it carefully as the typography you decide on can indicate subtle hints about the personality of your event or organisation. Is it a fun event or a serious one?  Is it educational or inspirational?

Web designers used to be limited to certain font types to ensure that it would be supported by common browsers and devices, but this is no longer the case.  There is a large selection of fonts you can choose from – though if you’re stuck, ‘Arial’ is still a popular one as it look good on all types of screens.  You can also look at Google’s range of fonts here, which are all free to use.

6) Colour Schemes

Research from QuickSprout shows that 90% of all product assessments have to do with color. In fact, colour is 85% of the reason you purchase a specific product. So, it’s a no-brainer for any website that colour affects conversions. But colour can be a tricky thing – you have to use it in the right way, at the right time with the right audience.

Again, you may be constrained by your organisation’s branding guidelines but as a general rule, stick to dark coloured text on light backgrounds.  It looks good, gets better engagement and helps in conversions. It also has the added advantage for those site visitors with visual impairments. Sites with low contrast are difficult on the eye for most people but can be especially difficult for people with low vision – bad combinations include blue links on black backgrounds or red text on green.  There is no hard and fast rule as to how much contrast is enough, but it usually isn’t too hard to figure out when certain colour combinations don’t contrast well together.

Untitled design (80)7) Make Site Navigation Easy

Think about the user journey and try and make the path from one page to the next as smooth as possible. Avoid using a lot of drop down menus as they tend to look messy and can take up valuable space on your site.  A lot of people will be looking at your site through mobile devices, so you need to think about how it’s going to look and work on different screens.  Recent research by Tech Crunch, for example, shows that there is a new trend in using top bar menus for mobile instead of the traditional hamburger menu layouts.

Learn from your past events. Have a look at how visitors previously engaged with your event websites using Google Analytics  – it can show you the exact journey visitors took throughout the site, as well as give you some valuable insight on popular pages, conversion rates and the point at which people were abandoning their registrations for your event. It’s also worth testing the navigation of your site by someone who hasn’t been involved in building it to get an objective view on content, functionality and how easy it is to use.

8) Registration Needs to be Simple

The overall look and feel of your registration pages may depend on the kind of registration software you are using for your events. As a general rule, however, try and make your forms as clean and simple as possible. Don’t have too many boxes and don’t ask unnecessary questions. For example, don’t ask  attendees for their mailing addresses if you’re not going to end up using that information. Don’t forget, the more clicks it takes to close a sale, the more excuse your attendees have to walk away.

9) Make it Mobile Responsive

Most event websites today are mobile responsive and if they’re not, they should be. As well as giving your attendees a consistent user experience regardless of what device they view your site on, a responsive web design also helps with SEO.  Google favours mobile-optimised sites and as a result, ranks these sites higher in search results.  In fact, Google now penalises those sites that are not responsive – so all the valuable SEO your site currently has could all go to waste if it’s not viewable on a mobile device.

If your site is mobile responsive,  then it’s easy to have two different websites for your desktop and mobile devices. The layout of your screen (including text and images) can change automatically based on the detected screen size of the user’s device. So if the browser detects a screen smaller than 480 pixels, for example, it will show the Smartphone layout of your site, which doesn’t include the Twitter feed you have on the desktop version. Having the flexibility to drop things in and out depending on the screen size ensures that people are getting the right kind of information as quickly as possible, regardless of the devices they use.

Untitled design (13)10) Have Multilingual Support

Multilingual websites are actually one of the most cost-effective ways of marketing your events. They help attract new attendees, build closer relationships and give your events an international outlook. We’ve seen a number of conferences doing this over the last couple of years for – it helps them stay ahead of the competition.  It also helps with SEO.

It doesn’t need to be a complicated process either. Most event management or registration software these days offer a multilingual module, which allows important pages on your event website including those for registration and agendas to be displayed in several popular world languages of your choice.  For more information on the topic, have a quick read of this article here.

Want your event website to make an impact? Eventsforce can help you create branded mobile-responsive event websites in minutes using its simple content editing interface.  Find out more by getting in touch here.

Why Is Google Analytics So Important for Event Marketing?

Posted on by Eventsforce

untitled-design-67If you haven’t used Google Analytics around your events before, it can be quite daunting.  With so many features and the availability of all the different types of data it looks into, it’s hard to know where to look to find the metrics that matter.  Without knowing which sections to pay attention to, you could spend days digging through the platform and still walk away with your head spinning.  At the same time, without analyzing the traffic around your event website, it’s hard to assess the impact of your marketing activities.

Understanding how people are interacting with your site is important. Without this understanding, you won’t know the potential problems your event’s online presence is facing.  You also won’t be able to make any meaningful changes. However, if you use it in the right way, Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can tell you whether your marketing efforts are actually translating into results.

Here are some of the most useful insights event planners can get from Google Analytics:

  • Detailed demographics on who is visiting your event website
  • Where your visitors and registrations are coming for
  • The journey people take through your event website
  • Which content, sessions or speakers featured on your site are the most/least popular
  • Conversion rates (eg. registrations, purchases or downloads)
  • The point at which people are abandoning their registrations or award entries

Having this kind of information on hand is incredibly valuable.  And the good news is that it isn’t hard to set up. When you first create an account, Google Analytics will provide you with a website tracking code, which you’ll need to install on your website.    Some event management and registration systems like Eventsforce have built-in support for Google Analytics.  So even if your event website is hosted by your event tech provider, they should be able to add the correct Google Analytics code to each page on your event website in order for you to track all visitor activities on your site.

untitled-design-30Understanding Basic Google Analytics Terminology

Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful tool for event planners. And it’s free. But before we go into the features that matter the most for event planners, it makes sense to understand some of main terminologies that Google uses:

Users: New and returning visitors who have visited your website at least once in your selected date range.

Session: A session (previously known as a visit) on your site is when the Google Analytics tracking code is triggered on a user’s entrance to the site. Everything they then do on your site is tracked within that visit, until they leave or the session expires (after 30 minutes of inactivity).

Unique Page Views: A ‘page view’ is the number of times a page has been viewed but ‘unique page views’ is the number of visitors to a page, rather than the number of visits to that page (as one user may use the same page multiple times in one session).

Dimensions: Descriptive characteristics including things like browser type, exit pages and session durations.

Metrics: Individual stats for a specific dimension, such as the average session duration or pages/visit (number of pages each visitor is looking at your site).

Bounce Rate: Percentage of no-interaction visits, where someone left your website without performing an action or navigating to a new page. Often the bounce rate will be for single page sessions, however this is not always the case.

Session Duration: The time spent by all users actively engaging with your site.

There are many more terms to learn, but knowing these key ones will help because they will come up over and over again.

abstract-sub-managerUnderstanding the Metrics That Matter for Event Planning

Google Analytics has a number of features that contain sub-sections which can provide a whole load of data around your event websites. But you don’t need to use everything on offer. There are four sections that matter most to event planners – and when used together, they can help make some important decisions on which marketing activities are most useful in driving traffic to your event website:

Acquisition – This section will show you where your visitors and registrations are coming from.  If you click on the ‘All Traffic’ tab and click on ‘Channels’, you’ll be able to see exactly how people arrived at your site – whether it was through an advert, a search engine, social media site, a referral or a piece of content that you contributed to another site.  You can also identify the number of people that came to your site through your email campaigns.

Looking at all this data will help you identify which of the ‘channels’ are the largest drivers of traffic to your event website.   Google makes it easier by listing the channels in the order of their driving power.

Audience – This is the section that gives you information about the visitors to your event website. It has lots of subsections that give you information about the gender, age and location of your website visitors. You can find out if they’re new visitors or returning ones.  You can even uncover data on their interests, as well as the browsers and mobile devices they used to access your site.

Understanding where your visitors are coming from is helpful when want to capture their attention when they land on your website.  For example, if you know that 40% of your visitors are from South America, you could deliver a more personalised experience by having a Spanish-version of your event website – have a look here at the benefits of using multilingual websites for your events.  Or you could run your online ad campaigns in those countries that you see are frequently visiting your site.

Behavior – This section helps event planners understand how people are interacting with your website.  The ‘Behavior Flow’ tab, shows you the user journey for your website visitors – from the page they enter your website to the pages they visit and the page they exit your site from (hopefully it should be your ‘thank you for registering’ page). It not only tells you how many people are going ahead and registering for your event, but also how many are abandoning it at a certain stage.

In ‘Site Content’, you can identify the visitors you get for each of your website pages.  This is important as you’ll be able to see which pages on your website are the most and least popular – so you’ll be able to determine things like which streams or speaker bios people are interested in the most or vice-versa.  The other useful feature in this section is ‘Landing Pages’, which shows you which pages people are landing on when they get to your site.  This is important when you’re trying to measure the effectiveness of your social media and promotional activities.

Conversions – A conversion is the completion of an activity on your website, such as a registration, purchase or download. One of Google Analytic’s best features is the Goal Funnel within the Conversions section, with which you can set up a string of URLs that your event attendees click through to ‘convert’. This kind of information can help event planner adjust their content or strategy and make the registration experience a whole lot easier.

A useful user conversion for event planners is triggering a goal on a ‘Thank You’ or ‘Registration Confirmation’ page. By setting up funnel points on the ‘Register Now’ button, upon completion of the personal details page, and upon completion of the payment transaction, you can see exactly where users leave the funnel. This is displayed in Analytics with the ‘Funnel Drop-Offs’ metric – you can use this data to refine your forms and find out where users are leaving the site (allowing you to judge if you need to simplify your forms or provide different payment options).

Conclusion

Google Analytics can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. Set up an account if you haven’t got one already, and have a go at trying out the different features we looked at above. You can also have a look at the Google Analytics’ Solutions Gallery which is particularly useful for anyone new to analytics. It helps you import readily-made reports into your Analytics account that can help you quickly build some powerful dashboards.  You can also use the reports as a guide to help you better understand the different things Google Analytics can do for you and your events.

Sources:
-Koozai: Understanding basic Google Analytics terminology
-Forbes: 15 Google Analytics tricks to maximise your marketing campaign
-Search Engine Land: 7 Essential Google Analytics reports every marketer must know
-Kissmetrics: How to use Google Analytics to help shape your marketing strategy