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Guest post by Rachel Grate of EventbriteA whopping 91% of people check their email every day, but that doesn’t mean using email to promote your event is a sure thing. Hundreds of messages vie alongside yours for potential attendees’ attention. That means your standard newsletter in a busy inbox may languish unopened — or, worse, be marked as spam. That’s where sophisticated email marketing strategies come into play. Email marketing technology has more options to personalize your messages than ever before, and event professionals have more opportunity (and more pressure) to use email platforms to their full capacity.So what will it take to get the open in 2019? Start with these three event email strategies.Email strategy #1: Personalization and segmentation
86% of consumers today say that personalization plays a role in their purchasing decisions. But that doesn’t mean that you should use “Dear [name]” and call it a day — personalization is about much more than just dropping a first name into the subject line.That’s because personalization goes hand in hand with segmentation. Next time you try personalization out, start first by dividing your list by specific categories, such as:- Demographics (geographic location, age, income, behavior, etc.)
- Past events attended (e.g. someone who has attended your event multiple times before)
- Purchase history (e.g. someone who hasn’t attended, but signed up for your newsletter)
- Start with an email newsletter that has several different topics in it, linked to content
- Gather data on what each person clicks on, then drop them into different “tracks”
- Customize each track of multiple emails with content focused on the topic of interest
- Your sending cadences and content (Monday vs. Wednesday sends, morning vs. afternoon)
- Which subject lines and calls to action work best (“Buy Tickets” vs. “Learn More”)
- The effects of personalization on open and click-through rates