Who doesn’t love a great party? So why not extend the invitation to your best customers, your handy pocketbook of assets at your fingertips… your email contacts of course! Show your customers a great time and turn this party into a unique and creative opportunity to stir buzz, collect and grow your email list and more importantly, grow your business.
Here is a simple roadmap on how to go about planning your special event.
THE THEME
Conjure up a theme or marketing scheme that will drive traffic to you and your business. The specifics will depend on your field of operation, whether you are an online or offline business, the specific interests and areas of interest of your customers. For example, if you are a retail salon owner, you can host a Cocktail Blow-dry Bar, where you invite your clients and their referrals, as well as the general public to come in, get a blow dry for $10 while sipping on a complimentary Martini between 5 and 8 PM.
THE INVITE
Once you have the theme in place, set up the invite. This is where you plan the who, the what and the where. You can host a party at your place of business, drinks at a local bar or why not even a virtual party online with an open forum. You may decide to have your event during normal business hours, or maybe even after hours. It all depends on your particular marketing scheme and target audience.
For example, a children’s book store will likely host a special event, midday on a weekend, so children and their parents may attend, during regular business hours, to maximize the full potential of profits able to be made from the influx of traffic that day. To actually set up the invite, you may use RedCappi’s simple editor to design your invite, much like any other email campaign to reflect the feel you are going for with all the lovely enticing trimmings and send it to your email list.
INCENTIVES FOR ATTENDANCE AND REFERRALS
Aside from the traditional invitation requirements, your invite and your special event as a whole should carry valuable incentives for attendance and referrals. Ask your contacts to forward your email to a friend and to share it on their social media networks. Your invite should stop your audience in their tracks and your planned event should be irresistible to all. You need to make your subscribers say, “I want to go to that!” Much like the discussion above regarding themes, the specifics of your incentives offered will necessarily rely on the particulars of your type of business.
For example, a high-end plastic surgeon hosting an After-Hours Botox Party for his patients may choose to reward his patients with mini-in-office micro-dermabrasion treatments, and as a further incentive to anyone referring a plastic surgery patient, one free session of facial Botox injections. These are real, noteworthy incentives that are worth spreading the word about.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Besides asking your contacts to share your special event invite with others in their own lives and social circles, you too should promote your event on Facebook and Twitter to magnetize a a brand new audience not already on your existing email list.
And the sky is the limit when it comes to the bounds and bounties of social media marketing. Make your special event come to life, all as it is happening, while in full throttle… snap pictures to showcase your event’s success, do little interviews of attendees and share their favorable thoughts of your company with a YouTube video link, and post these to your Facebook pages to stir some hype about your company and get people interested in checking in on you, eventually becoming a customer.
THE UPSHOT
Always remember that email marketing is all about building relationships based on longevity and mutual trust. So, please do not make the mistake of thinking your job is done once the lights go out and the party is over. It is imperative to follow up and keep those lines of communication you have worked so hard to establish open. Send follow up emails to all who attended, thanking them for their continued business with further offerings and discounts. Send new registrants a welcome email with special offers to come back and visit. Send little surveys to score the experiences of your attendees, so that you can tweak future events to perfection.