More Marketing Isn’t the Answer November 6, 2017 by Dave Lutz A strategic look at your marketing spend, as well as what you spend on your attendee experience, can be telling. According to Convene’s most recent Meetings Market Survey, on average 6 percent of a meeting’s direct expenses fall in the marketing/promotion category. After studying 100 or so meetings’ profit and loss (P&L) statements in great … [Read more…] Filed Under: Attendance Marketing, Business Model Tagged With: , attendee experience, benchmarks, conference marketing, conference marketing spend
Why Your Conference Should be Target-Audience Obsessed July 10, 2017 by Dave Lutz In order to design relevant education and networking experiences at our conferences, we need to be focused to the point of obsession with our target audience. Over the past 18 months, we’ve carefully scrubbed and analyzed the attendance of 20 major conferences. These projects had an aggregate attendance of 110,000-plus participants with registration revenue in … [Read more…] Filed Under: Attendance Marketing, Business Model Tagged With: , conference best practices, conference planning, meeting design, target audience
Ninja Moves for Improved Conference Session Marketing September 8, 2016 by Dave Lutz Better session copy helps put butts in seats! As conference education trumps the exhibit hall experience at many association meetings, or creeps into your trade show experience to create a solutions-driven, holistic experience for your attendees, upping your game with session titles, descriptions, and learning objectives has become more important than ever. In 2013, we … [Read more…] Filed Under: Attendance Marketing Tagged With: , Attendance Acquisition, attendance marketing, conference best practices, content marketing, Education, Education & Adult Learning, meeting planning best practices, Session Marketing
Your Trade Show Attendees: What Do They Really, Really Want? June 28, 2016 by Betsy Bair This is the first in a series of posts on the findings of reports published by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) based on research recently conducted on attendee retention strategies. It’s likely that the Brexit vote last week is on my mind and that’s why the Spice Girls’ tune, “Wannabe,” popped into my … [Read more…] Filed Under: Attendance Marketing, Sponsorship & Exhibits Tagged With: , attendance analysis, attendance marketing, attendees, behavioral data, conference best practices, engagement, Trade show marketing
Using FOMO to Convert Conference Fence Sitters August 6, 2015 by Wendy Holliday Why do people camp outside Best Buy before Black Friday sales? What about those constantly checking their Facebook news feed? It is the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) The Word of Mouth Marketing Association defines FOMO: “At its root, FOMO is a sort of social anxiety that occurs when one is concerned with missing a … [Read more…] Filed Under: Attendance Marketing Tagged With: , attendance marketing, conference best practices
Beguile Potential Conference Attendees June 11, 2015 by Dave Lutz Want to spike your conference registration? Try an emotional call to action. It captivates fence sitters and potential first timers. The only reason anyone does anything is to change the way they feel, says Tony Robbins. With the right emotional call to action, you can help potential attendees begin to experience those feelings right now. … [Read more…] Filed Under: Attendance Marketing Tagged With: , Attendance Acquisition, attendance marketing, emotional connection, marketing, neuromarketing, neuroscience
Four Ways To Attract NextGen Conference Participants May 21, 2015 by Dave Lutz Attracting the next generation of participants is an urgent priority for most professional conference organizers. Too often we think that means injecting conference botox to give our event a more youthful, trendy hip vibe. Yet it is much more than giving our conference a face-lift. The Conference Demographic Bell Curve Recently, I was involved in … [Read more…] Filed Under: Attendance Marketing, Business Model Tagged With: , attracting millennials, conference best practices, conferences, generations, Millennial, next-generation conferences
Use Social Proof to Increase Conference Registrations March 25, 2015 by Wendy Holliday Most of us don’t read emails from people we don’t recognize. We may skim the contents, but most of the time we just do the quick delete. Unless there’s something that makes us look twice. So imagine you’re catching up on email, you see one from an unknown conference trying to convince you to purchase. … [Read more…] Filed Under: Attendance Marketing Tagged With: , Attendance Acquisition, conference marketing
Conference Attendance Growth Realized Through Group Plans March 20, 2015 by Dave Lutz Most of the time, we don’t have a good handle on who is truly attending our conference. Seriously, we don’t. But there is a way to glean insight just by using emails provided at registration. Mining Registration Data for Insights One way to mine attendance data is to scrub and normalize company names based on … [Read more…] Filed Under: Attendance Marketing, Business Model Tagged With: , attendance analysis, conference best practices, meeting best practices
Enabling Influence Trumps Spraying and Praying March 11, 2015 by Wendy Holliday List buys and promotional email blasts rarely convince and convert the attendees you want for your conference or trade show. Today, you need to earn the privilege to be seen in a professional’s email inbox. Attendance acquisition has shifted forever from push to pull marketing. While you want to be in it for the long-run…earning … [Read more…] Filed Under: Attendance Marketing Tagged With: , Affiliate Marketing, Attendance Acquisition, attendance marketing, marketing, Partner Marketing
