Here’s how to earn your CEU hour. Test Time Once you finish reading this CMP Series article, read the following material:
“Marketing and Promotion: Strategy and Collaboration for Success,” a chapter from Professional Meeting Management, Fifth Edition (PMM5), available at the CMP Series link below.
“Your Attendance-Marketing Silver Bullet,” a People & Processes column from the May 2011 issue of Convene, available at http://bit.ly/rp7tA9.
Then, to earn one hour of CEU credit, visitwww.pcma.org/convenecmp to answer questions about the information contained within this CMP Series article, the PMM5 chapter, and the previous Convene article.
The Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) is a registered trademark of the Convention Industry Council.
ablemarketing asset.You can have a hugemarketing budget andworld-class creative, “but if you don’t have the right peo- ple on your mailing list, it doesn’t matter,” Collinson said. “Your lists are themost important component of your cam- paign.” Keeping email lists cleaned up is hard, necessary work.
Unlike direct mail, which often is forwarded when a person leaves a company or changes positions, email goes nowhere —meaning, Collinson said, that you need to do more than delete the messages that bounce back. Someone—perhaps a summer intern?—must research the names on the list by calling companies and updating contact information. And while email has become a new pillar of marketing,
“it’s not the be-all and end-all,”Collinson said. “It’s not nec- essarily always easier and cheaper than directmail.” Indeed, email’s very ubiquity canmake directmailmore potent. “It’s unique and vibrant, and not as easy to dispose of as email,” Collinson said. “We believe we’re still tactile people; we like to touch and feel.” Some people have even begun adding faxes, once the workhorse of attendee marketing, back into themix, she said—because people receive so fewfaxes that they tend to stand out. An integrated approach to attendeemarketing can lever-
age the strengths of both digital and direct mail. “You can come at people fromall angles,”Collinson said, adding: “The nice thing about a printed brochure is that it reaches people who like to put together a folder to read on a plane, or who go home at night and go through the mail every day. And the nice thing about a digital brochure is that it can always be updated.And showorganizers can study the analytics and see what is getting looked at.”
Leverage Your Attendee List Influencers—people whose attendance inspires others to attend — also matter. “When you get invited to a party,” Collinson said, “what’s the first thing you ask? ‘Who else is coming?’” Lippman has seen the power that attendees exert on one
another’s attendance at ECEF, which he has convened in Washington, D.C., for a decade. The Google analytics for ECEF’swebsite, he said, showthat twice asmany people check
On_the_Web
How do you differentiate your marketing to past attendees and prospective ones? Jeff Hurt, director of education and engagement for Velvet Chainsaw Consulting, has some advice: http://bit.ly/gBrjVk.
the attendee registration list as check the speaker list. “That helpsmewithmy anxiety attacks,when, aweek or so before ECEF, when I look at the list and see that people are flying in fromSwitzerland,Germany, England, and Singapore, and I say, ‘Holy mackerel, what do I have to give to these peo- ple?’”Lippman said. “I just step back and realize that theNo. 1 thing they are there for is to talkwith and do businesswith each other. I add a certain amount of valuewith content, and, if I don’t get in their way, they will come back.”