Event promotion is none of these things: easy, stress free, glamorous. Sure it has its moments of glitz, especially when the event is in full swing and maybe you get chance to enjoy a drink with an influential or celebrity attendee, but before it gets to that there’s all the stress and pressure of getting the damned thing promoted and off the ground.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information you have to work through, analyse and organise which means crucial opportunities can be missed. There are plenty of online event management tools that will let you analyse and improve your promotional efforts. Here are five that no event professional can be without:
1. Google Analytics. This allows you to monitor all the traffic on your site, see where it’s come from and how visitors engage with your site. You can analyse the effects of your various marketing methods and see which is driving the most traffic to your site as well as conversion rates. The importance of Google Analytics cannot be overstated.
2. Hootsuite. These days one of the strongest tools for promotion is social media, but it can be difficult to pin down exactly how successful your efforts have been. Hootsuite is the social media equivalent of Google Analytics. You can see exactly how many likes and comments you get and also see the location and demographics of followers and fans. All of this allows you to more effectively target your marketing going forward.
3. Eventbrite. If you don’t want to host ticket sales on your event site consider using Eventbrite, which is the leading ticket selling platform. Eventbrite comes with a variety of integrated management tools that can let you send out personalised email invites and monitoring attendance etc.
4. Dotmailer. This is probably the best service for email marketing. Not only does it have the usual tools for email marketing but it also lets you do clever things like include dynamic content in the email, tailored for each individual recipient. Design is done in the drag and drop interface so you don’t need any HTML or coding skills to create a slick campaign.
5. Conferize. Our last pick is this promotion site. This is essentially a social networking platform for conference holders and attendees. Conferize lets users search for suitable conferences aligned to their interests, and also see what events others are interested in. From a marketing perspective this lets you target people who are more likely to be interested in your event.
There you go. Five great tools that will help you monitor and improve your online marketing and promotional efforts. By using them in combination you’ll make sure the people who will be interested in your event get to hear about it, which should mean a successful event for everyone.
These helpful tips have been sponsored by event management company Banks Sadler.
