How to successfully market your next event

1. Define event goals

In order to properly prepare for an event, you need to know exactly what target markets you want your event to reach. For example, how many attendees are you hoping to attract or what is the desired fundraising target? Having clearly defined goals will enable you to stay on track and motivate your organisation to push hard to achieve these goals and host a successful event.

2. Elect an events committee

If your organisation doesn’t have designated event roles then it is a good idea to elect an events committee that consists of stakeholders and organisation members from different teams. An events committee provides a formalised structure for people across the organisation to work together on identified outcomes. Committee members need to have an understanding of the goals and defined responsibilities.

3. Send invites early

Sending invitations is often left until the very end of event co-ordination. To get the best outcomes give ample notice to desired event attendees. This allows time to follow up if you don’t receive an immediate response.

4. Ensure email invitations stand out

Sending invitations via email is becoming increasingly popular as it saves time and money. If your organisation chooses this method, make sure your message stands out from other emails by providing the essential event information – such as the date, time, venue and purpose – in the subject line and repeating key information in the body of the email.

Avoid sending attachments in your email invitation as recipients are unlikely to open them. However, if you do wish to include an attachment, make sure you mention key points in the body of the email to ensure those who don’t open the attachment don’t miss important information. Attachments should be sent PDF format as this ensures that the content will be readable on most devices.

Use email merges so that each email is automatically personalised with the name of the recipient. Email merges save considerable time and increase the likelihood of your message being read by the recipient because the email they receive doesn’t look like a mass email. Email merges should be used in preference to sending a mass email by using the CC or BCC fields as emails sent this way can get caught in spam filters.

5. Involve the media

Media releases are a great way to raise awareness of an event and generate pre-event publicity. To ensure your message is successfully received by your target market, it is important to send releases to the right media outlets. In order to determine which media outlet would be best suited to your event, think about the demographic of your target market (age, gender, income, etc.) and pitch your media releases to the types of media outlets frequented by your demographic. It is a good idea to follow up your media release with a call to ensure it has been received, and to encourage the journalist to run the story.

Media releases should also be incorporated with your website and distributed to sponsors to demonstrate the publicity you are undertaking for the event.