Recently, I was interviewed by John Buchanan for an article he was writing for Association Conventions & Facilities. The article is titled: Integrated Event Marketing – Leveraging Technology to Connect and Engage.
Below is the beginning of the article and one of my quotes. You can read the entire article by clicking the link above.
For more than 60 years, associations have marketed their annual conventions and other major meetings based on a few simple facts, such as that they attracted a well-defined, industry-captive audience, provided important education and career-development content and fostered networking. Over the past decade, however, the Internet has eroded that traditional dominance when it comes to content. Technologies such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter have enabled networking on a scale never before imagined. As a result, the very definition of a well-defined, industry-captive audience has changed.
Meanwhile, social media has revolutionized the entire notion of how associations should market their events. The challenge is how to integrate traditional marketing practices with social media, to arrive at a strategy driven by new synergies. For example, Catherine Lincoln, CAE, senior manager, international/ humanitarian foundation, at the American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery (AAOHNS) in Alexandria, VA, uses print advertising in the association’s two monthly magazines, as well as its newsletters, to promote her annual meeting, which draws 9,000 attending physicians and other medical practitioners and experts from all over the world to a North American city each September.
In addition to the association’s publications, Lincoln also relies on a sophisticated, segmented email marketing program. But, she points out, the consistent success AAOHNS has with its annual conference and other major events is a result of compelling and widely acclaimed content, not a particularly well-applied marketing tool.
Association marketing experts are unanimous in their agreement with that essential point. However, says Michael Faye, president of Chicago based association marketing firm AssociaDirect, in today’s market, winning content is only half the battle. The other half is a truly integrated marketing campaign that leverages all available technologies and other key capabilities. By Faye’s current standard, an integrated event marketing plan should include a microsite tailored to the individual meeting; a PURL or “personalized URL” campaign that targets and exploits known characteristics of individual attendees; a segmented email campaign; and a text platform based on mobile phone technology.
With currently available technology, Faye says any association meeting planner can use a PURL platform. The process is fully automated and reasonably inexpensive. It allows association planners to create 15,000 or more personalized websites that are tied to a database of detailed information on the individual tastes and preferences of all prospective attendees.
By targeting content to individual constituencies, planners can increase their registration ratio and, in effect, create a sub-tier of attendees who otherwise would not have been enticed to come to the meeting. The next technological battleground, Faye says, will be mobile platforms that can connect and engage attendees 24/7, while still relying on PURL, email and texting tactics. Now, however, Faye and other observers see association meeting planners
who are falling farther and farther behind the curve, rather than aspiring to the cutting edge.
SEG Marketing
“It’s amazing to me in 2011 that anyone is still having the conversation about whether they should segment their membership and market to specific niche audiences so you can tailor messages to those specific audiences,” Faye says. “A lot of associations are still sending one big ‘preview mailer’ and the same registration packet for their conventions to all members.” That is an obsolete model, with the law of diminishing returns at play, Faye says. At the same time, says MaryAnne Bobrow, CAE, CMP, CMM, CHE, managing partner of independent association management company and meeting planning firm Bobrow & Associates in Citrus Heights, CA, some tried-and-true marketing tactics of recent years are under siege. “For example, with new technologies comes new levels of anti-spam prevention,” she says. “So, you have to start to wonder if your email broadcasts, which we have all relied so heavily on, will get categorized as known spammers. That’s an issue that some email broadcasters are struggling with right now.”
Push Versus Pull
As more and more people rush to opt out of the relentless onslaught of unsolicited daily communication, the concept of opting in for something is revolutionizing the practice of event marketing. Therein lies the unique appeal and power of social media. It is the very antithesis of traditional “broadcast” marketing. Instead of “pushing” information, it “pulls” a customer into a two-way conversation with clear benefits for both parties.
Despite its obvious appeal, however, social media also has created a backlash from meeting planners who are resistant or even afraid of it. “We are in a classic 80/20 situation, where I would say that 20 percent of the association members of the International Association of Exhibitions and Events (IAEE) have embraced social media and some of that 20 percent are doing it superbly,” says Joyce McKee, CEO of McKinney, TX-based association convention marketing consultancy Let’s Talk Trade Shows. McKee was also co-chair of the IAEE Social Media Task Force that last August released the white paper “How to Properly Use Social Media to Enhance and Promote Your Event.” (see page 20). “Then you have the other 80 percent, who are either dabbling in it or who are considering it and trying to figure out what to do with it,” she says.
To read the rest of the article, please click here.
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