Emails!
(and digital marketing)
I’m in the planning stages of a running a tiny event (it’s on this weekend, and we’re almost finished with registrations), and I’ve done a much more careful marketing campaign this time (compared to the events I ran pre-covid).
My day job is working in social media management and digital marketing (which I wasn’t doing in this capacity before covid) and I’ve learnt a lot about marketing that I’m applying to dance stuff.
Things I’ve learnt:
– you HAVE to have a good website
– you need a solid email list (and a proper email marketing tool to manage it)
– social media is where you go to make friends and develop your brand, _not_ where you sell stuff
– you need a thoughtful marketing calendar and strategy (don’t just post randomly, and do not panic post)
– use some sort of url tracker so you can see what links sent people to your ecommerce site or website (so you can see what’s working)
– f2f marketing is king.
Today I was just looking at some stats for my emails and it was very satisfying.
My favourite part is the click map for each email. I use mailchimp, and the click map shows me which links in what email get what percentage of clicks. Something I know from my day job (and see played out in the dance world) is that people click on photos and buttons. ie stuff that looks like something you click. Actual url links in the body of text get fewer clicks.
We want clicks, because that helps your google search ranking (ie SEO), but it also shows you how many people were interested enough to click through to your page (ie which segments of your audience are being reached with which elements).
Another thing I really like is seeing which contacts (ie email recipients) click on which links, unsubscribe (and why), etc. A good email tool will let you see exactly who is interacting with your emails, and how. Yes, you can creep on your customers.
I use segments (and you should too), so that I’m not just spamming all my contacts with random emails. The most obvious segments are ‘events’ and ‘regular classes’. I also divide those segments again, using tags. I tag with info like where people signed up for emails (eg as a registrant for a particular event, or at classes), their postcode (so I don’t spam internationals with info about hyper local events), etc.
Structurally, a good marketing email has:
– a simple subject line like ‘Free tickets’ to get people to open the email;
– a small amount of text (eg one paragraph) to keep them reading;
– a call to action button (‘Free tickets here’) to get them clicking;
– and a photo or graphic. Animated ones are more engaging than static. Again, to get them clicking.
An email newsletter is a different thing, but you want the same elements. And you want to use your email to direct your audience to your website. Don’t send them to your socials (unless it’s an email about your socials). Tiktok in the US has taught us the problems with sending your traffic to a platform someone else controls.
And finally, I try to sync up all my digital marketing.
So in my socials I try not to do any sales (though that has collapsed with this event, as I started working on it far too late).
I post things that are all about brand building. eg I donated a bunch of CDs as a raffle prize for a local social night run by someone else. I made a reel where I talked to camera about it. No mention of my event. But when I got to the event (and did the raffle) I did mention the event, and had paper flyers at the door. So you can see how with that particular thing, I had to have:
– paper flyers (with QR codes) made up in advance,
– I had to have a plan for a raffle, incl tickets, etc (which I then ran at the event),
– I had to have contacts in the scene (that I could go to with a plan),
– I had to have a sense of my brand’s values (my brand is basically me) and what works
– actual CDs
…and so on. I had to have a strategy for this little campaign. You can’t just wing it.
Before I started this little campaign, I had a list of S.M.A.R.T. goals for it (eg increase brand reputation; the reel had the goal of increasing engagement (likes) by 10% within a 24 hour period, and then by a further 10% within the next seven day period; etc etc).
All of this (hopefully) develop’s my brand’s reputation. So that when I do drop a social post about a product, people think ‘Oh, i know that brand. They’re good community folk. I wonder what sort of event they run?’
It can be quite mercenary and sales-focussed. But I try to make my brand values align with my own values. ie queer-friendly, feminist, anti-racist, community-centered, contributing to a good community culture, etc etc. I don’t actually plan to run any more events (though I bet I end up doing it), but if I keep my socials working with regular posts, I will have the foundations for a sales centered campaign.
And of course, the email is the last point in the sales journey (or the bottom of the sales funnel). After you do all this, you send an email to the people who’re on your list (ie who’ve said ‘yes, i want you to reach out to me directly’) with your product.
If you’re not an organisation selling something, that final call to action in your email can be ‘donate to this fund’ or ‘volunteer for this action’ instead of ‘book now’.