By Mary Tucker | Senior Communications and Content Manager | IAEE
Email marketing remains one of the most powerful tools for driving attendance and engagement at exhibitions and events. But with inboxes more crowded than ever, how do you cut through the noise and reach the right people at the right time?
Two industry veterans will be sharing exactly how to do that in IAEE’s upcoming webinar, Successful & Scalable Email Marketing Tactics. Chris Gloede, CAE, Chief Consultant at Ricochet and IAEE’s Vice President of Marketing and Communications Nicole Bowman, MBA, CEM-AP bring decades of combined experience in association marketing and event promotion, and they’re ready to share practical, scalable strategies you can implement immediately.
Successful & Scalable Email Marketing Tactics will focus on three critical areas:
- Identifying key strategies for segmenting and targeting email audiences to boost engagement;
- Exploring scalable tactics that can be adapted across different organizational contexts; and
- Developing actionable plans to implement innovative techniques that deliver measurable results.
Whether you’re struggling with audience segmentation, looking to scale your email efforts or simply want to see better ROI from your event promotion campaigns, this session promises to deliver solutions you can put into practice right away.
Here, Chris and Nicole share their thoughts on key challenges and opportunities industry professionals face when structuring their email marketing strategy.
CHRIS: Many associations struggle with email list segmentation. What is one overlooked segmentation strategy that can immediately improve engagement rates for event promotion emails?
Most associations segment by member type (Member vs. Non-Member), but the most overlooked strategy is Behavioral Intent Segmentation. Instead of just looking at who they are, look at what they did on your website. Use your marketing automation (like HubSpot) to deliver immediate emails to everyone after they visited the event registration page but didn’t complete the checkout. This “Abandoned Registration” segment is your highest-conversion opportunity. A quick, personalized ‘Did you have a question about the conference?’ email to this group will outperform a general blast to your entire database every single time.
NICOLE: As someone who manages marketing for multiple event types and audiences, what is your approach to creating email campaigns that are both scalable across different events and still feel tailored to each audience?
The key for me is knowing your audience and where initiatives overlap. This seems simple enough when you read it, but it’s actually quite an involved process. I am always looking at where communications plan overlap, the cadence of messaging and the channels used. You must have a strong value proposition for the event AND the community/audience it is for.
CHRIS: How can associations use email marketing automation to build stronger connections with members while still maintaining that personal touch?
The biggest mistake associations make is using automation to talk at people rather than with them. If you are sending emails from a no-reply@ address, you are effectively telling your members, ‘We want your money, but we don’t want your feedback.’
To maintain a personal touch through automation, you must adopt a Conversational Automation strategy focused on the “Reply-To” field:
- Kill the “No-Reply” Address: Every automated email – whether it’s an event reminder or a newsletter – should come from a real person’s name (e.g., ‘Sarah from the Membership Team’) with a monitored inbox.
- The “Reply-Trigger” Call to Action: Instead of just having a “Register Now” button, end your automated emails with a simple, text-based question: ‘What is the #1 challenge you’re hoping to solve at this year’s conference? Just hit reply and let me know.’
- Automated Triage and Routing: Use your CRM (like HubSpot) to monitor these incoming replies. You can automate the “listening” side by using sentiment analysis or keyword triggers to route specific replies to the right staff member immediately.
- The Human Hand-off: The automation handles the delivery of 10,000 emails, but the “personal touch” happens when a member replies and receives a thoughtful, human response within 24 hours. That moment – moving from a digital blast to a 1-to-1 conversation – is where loyalty is built.
NICOLE: In your experience managing comprehensive marketing strategies for chapters, membership, councils and events, what email metrics matter most when evaluating the success of event promotion campaigns, and how do you act on those insights?
First, I must know the universe of the audience. This is the foundation for open rates and click thru rates, and what I could call a first line of defense in reporting. We use HubSpot for our email marketing system and aside from the basic campaign messaging, I deploy automation campaigns after each message that act follow ups with CTAs based on what the contact does or doesn’t do with the email.
CHRIS: What is one scalable tactic that smaller associations with limited resources can implement to compete with larger organizations when promoting their events?
Small associations should stop trying to out-shout the big guys and start leveraging Member Ambassadors through Peer-to-Peer Social Proof. Larger organizations often feel “corporate” and distant. A smaller association can win by empowering its most active members with a “Digital Toolkit” – pre-written social posts, personalized graphics and even a unique referral link. When a prospect sees a peer they actually know sharing their excitement for an event, that carries more weight than any high-budget ad campaign. It’s low-cost, highly scalable, and hits on the “Member Voice” strategy that transforms an event from a meeting into a community must-attend.
NICOLE: What is one of your favorite email marketing tactics that delivers measurable results for event attendance, and how can other event professionals adapt it to their own contexts?
Well-planned automation campaigns with clearly defined content and cadence deliver the best results. This is achieved by spending time mapping out the digital journey that we want a user to take. It is not only about the emails being delivered, but where those emails are in the communication stream with digital ads, social content and other channels used to market a program.
