Whether you own a corporate event management company or are responsible for event marketing, the toughest challenge for event marketers is to get registrations.
For getting registrations, you might be following multiple strategies like promoting on social media, forming influencer partnerships, creating a special landing page for the event, offering early bird discounts, putting up hoarding, and many more.
These strategies might be working pretty well for you. But all these strategies are inbound, where you have to wait for the traffic to come, and some of them might register. Once you have set the inbound process, you simply need to sit, wait and pray.
Have you ever thought of a cold outreach strategy for the persona you are targeting? Sounds interesting? It’s more about taking control.
But before discussing the strategy, let’s just quickly have a glance at the probable issues you might be facing in getting registrations for your event.
Challenges faced by event marketers to get registrations
Challenges can differ based on the type of event you are organizing. Here are some of the common issues faced by event organizers.
Attracting attention
- Crowded events landscape. Attendees are bombarded with marketing messages.
- Targeting the right people with relevant messaging is essential
Convert interest into action
- Setting the right price. Ticket prices can be a barrier for some
- Potential attendees are unsure if the event will be worth the time and cost
- Long registration process
Engage attendees throughout the lifecycle:
- Attendees lose momentum between registrations to the event
- Inadequate use of attendee data to follow up after the event
Other challenges
- Finding a date and time that doesn’t clash with similar competitor events
- Manual tracking of metrics
- Adapting to new technologies and audience preferences
We might not be able to address all these challenges in a blog, but we will definitely cover how you can use an outreach strategy to get registration for your event. You will learn how to
- Reduce dependency on the inbound traffic to fill seats or get registrations
- Target niche audience, who have a higher chance of converting
- Automating the entire outreach process for your event
How to get event registrations faster with a cold outreach strategy?
As an event marketer, you would be juggling multiple tasks. With the help of automation tools, you will be able to save time so that you can focus on the strategic aspect of event planning.
This is why a sales engagement platform (SEP) is needed.
Sales engagement platforms are widely regarded as having the highest positive return on investment. More than 90% of organizations consider sales engagement platforms to contribute largely to their success.
Sales engagement tools, similar to SmartReach.io, offer a platform to set up your entire event marketing outreach process and help you build a reliable pipeline to get more registrations for your events.
Let’s take a step-wise approach towards implementing an event outreach strategy.
Identify the right target audience.
To make your events better and deliver your message more effectively, it’s essential to know your audience and investors well. Developing personas for your prospective attendees and stakeholders is a great way to personalize & enhance your communication.
By crafting these personas, you get to know about their personal details, background, and challenges. This helps you visualize who you are addressing and refine your audience accordingly.
You might have 3 to 4 personas to target for one event. List them down before you start building a list of prospective attendees based on these personas.
How to build a list of prospective attendees?
Before starting your cold outreach, you would need a verified list of your prospective attendees. You might already have one, but sending out emails to an unverified list might not be a good idea.
Avoid buying lists as well, as they will do more harm than good.
It’s not easy. It takes time to manually scrap sites search for contact information etc
How would you feel if I provided you with a tool that would provide you with a list of attendees along with their verified contact information?
That would be great, right? So let’s learn how.
LinkedIn has the highest number of members among all the social networking sites, with more than 900 million active users. So, there is a high chance that you will find the maximum of your target audience on LinkedIn.
You might be aware of prospect finder tools that provide verified contact details. One of the tools is ProspectDaddy, which provides you with your prospective attendee’s information such as company, designation, email address, LinkedIn profile URL, location, etc. Using this Chrome extension, you will be able to build a list of prospective attendees in minutes.
Let’s say you are marketing an event that speaks about leveraging LinkedIn for business growth, and you are targeting all the professionals who are working in the sales and marketing department.
So here is what you need to do.
On LinkedIn, you run a search for your targeted audience – say “sales leaders” or “marketing leaders.” Select ‘people,’ and you will get a list. If your targeting is more precise, then accordingly, add filters. You will get a list of prospective attendees for your event.
LinkedIn provides a list of 20 search results per page.
Note: Lately, LinkedIn has curbed the number of results in the free plan, so you might need a Premium or Sales Navigator account to get 20 search results per page.
Here, you need to open and run the ProspectDaddy extension; it will start searching for the prospect information for all the search pages you visit.
Once the search is completed, you can download the prospective attendee list in CSV format or add the list to your SmartReach outreach campaigns.
Engaging with prospective attendees
Once you have got your prospective attendees’ list ready, it’s time to reach out and start making connections and building relationships.
Your messaging is important. Work on your event elevator pitch; make it personal and focused. Talk about how your event can help and highlight the key takeaways.
SmartReach provides an AI content generator where you simply add inputs like email context, target persona, and writing style to get event elevator pitches in seconds.
Some of you might already be using a cold event outreach to market your event via multiple channels. So, wouldn’t it be great if you could automate all the communication and run it together on a single platform?
Of course, it would save manual efforts and increase productivity.
SEPs provide multichannel outreach for this purpose. It is where you can manage all your outreach tasks on a single platform. Your intent and content would be consistent across every channel, giving prospective attendees a clear idea of what is expected from them.
Later in this blog, I have listed down the features that you should be looking out for while shortlisting a sales engagement platform for event outreach. Before that, let’s see what a sample structure for your event outreach using multiple channels looks like.
Sample Structure for an Event Outreach Sequence
Based on the data analyzed from existing events-based outreach campaigns, event marketers should target a minimum of 6 touchpoints across multiple channels to get the highest response rates.
This is just an example of how you can set up a sequence using different ways to reach out. Depending on what you need, you can use emails, messages, calls, or LinkedIn.
Step 1: Introductory Email
(Day 1)
In the first step, you can send an introductory email giving an overview of your event and briefly point out the benefits of attending it (keep it short).
You can check out our blog on writing subject lines and body copy for better understanding.
Step 2: LinkedIn profile view
(Day 2)
For the next step, you might want to check out their LinkedIn profile. It’s more likely to catch their attention than sending an email.
Lots of people on LinkedIn are curious about who’s viewed their profile.
Step 3: LinkedIn connect request
(Day 3)
Use an automated LinkedIn request to connect. It is recommended to add a personalized message. This will help in getting your prospect’s attention.
Step 4: Follow up email
(Day 5)
Set up a follow-up email to go out automatically. You don’t have to worry about remembering to send it manually.
Just add the steps in SmartReach’s campaign and closely monitor the outreach.
Step 5: Send LinkedIn message
(Day 7)
You can send a personalized message on LinkedIn. You can either use an automated message or add it manually as a step in the process (if in case you want to add any additional details about the event).
Step 6: Follow-up email 2
(Day 9)
Second follow-up email. It would be a friendly reminder to register for your event.
Step 7: Calling
(Day 11)
Reach out to your prospect via call and pitch about the event. Based on their response, you can softly ask about registering for the event.
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With this strategy, you have used most channels to connect with your prospective attendees and make them aware of the event.
If they reply with an inquiry, then the campaign stops for that specific prospect.
Now that your campaign is set, you will need an automated and collaborative outreach response management system.
Managing inquiries from interested attendees
SmartReach provides a shared inbox where all prospective attendee responses can be accessed in one place. It keeps things organized and available to everyone on your team, so messages aren’t all over the place, and you don’t do the same thing twice. This makes managing responses easier.
For those prospective attendees who might not respond or register directly but prefer to book a call with your event team to get more details, SmartReach offers a complimentary meeting scheduling tool. You can integrate it seamlessly with your Google & Microsoft calendars as well as Zoom.
Managing prospective attendees’ pipeline
SmartReach.io has recently introduced a feature that would help you track opportunities in your event attendance pipeline. This allows you to keep a close eye on your progress, helping you to make well-informed decisions and adjust your strategies as needed.
Real-time data updates to your CRM
Event marketers can make use of CRM tools to manage potential attendees and keep track of their statuses.
For those who don’t already have a CRM system in place, sales engagement platforms (SEPs) like SmartReach.io offer a two-way sync and smooth data integration with popular CRMs such as Hubspot, Salesforce, Zoho Recruit, and more.
So if you plan to try out the event outreach strategy, look for an SEP that provides a free CRM feature. You will shave off a lot of software costs.
Keeping up with the latest trends & tech revolving outreach
Not all event marketers may have prior experience in filling seats or getting registrations for events. Hiring experienced event marketers can be costly, affecting the team’s knowledge of the latest tools and strategies.
Certain team members might not be aware of the event outreach best practices like optimizing event domains, checking for blacklist issues, or leveraging personalized content effectively. This lack of know-how could pose a challenge when competing with other events in the market.
But when you use a sales engagement platform, you need not worry about the industry trends and the latest features. Your SEP will keep you posted, and they will keep adding new features to keep up.
Must have SEP features for event marketing outreach
You probably now understand how a sales engagement platform can help in getting registration for your event and also how to set up an automated sequence to reach potential attendees.
Let’s see what features you should be checking before subscribing to a sales engagement platform.
Note: SmartReach provides all of the below features but has listed them out in case you would like to look at other sales engagement tools for a comparison
Prospect Finder
Using a prospect finder tool is essential before starting your cold outreach. You should make sure the platform you choose provides a prospecting feature or should have the option to integrate any prospect finder tool with the platform.
Choose a prospect finder similar to SmartReach’s offering of ProspectDaddy, which will give you prospective attendee information like business emails, LinkedIn profile, name, company, designation, location, etc
Multichannel Outreach
Gone are the days when you had to rely only on email for your cold outreach. You should make sure the SEP you shortlist provides multiple channels to reach out to prospects, including LinkedIn, WhatsApp, messaging, and calling.
You should be able to access all the channels from a single platform without the need to switch from one channel to another.
Look for features like semi or full automation of LinkedIn and a multichannel inbox where prospect replies from multiple channels come into one inbox.
Cold Email Automation
Unlike Gmail or Outlook, where you would have to copy-paste email content for each prospective attendee, here you just need to set up a campaign with the content for the introductory email and the follow-up sequence once.
Your campaign should be completely automated without any manual intervention.
You should check if your shortlisted SEP provides features like unlimited sequence, auto-pause of the campaign on getting a response, direct & indirect reply detection, and a holiday calendar where the tool does not send any emails on the holidays of your prospect.
A free AI content recommendation feature is a bonus.
Look if the platform provides A/B testing to check which subject line or email content gives a better response.
However, remember that you can combine emails with other channels as well.
Email deliverability – Reach the primary inbox
YES – NOT SPAM, NOT PROMOTION BUT PRIMARY INBOX
Some SEPs, such as SmartReach, mimic human-like email sending to ensure that your emails land in the primary inbox of your potential attendees.
The SEP you shortlist should offer tools such as spam test reports to address authentication or campaign setup problems and email warmups to help you maintain a good email reputation by constantly monitoring your email and taking auto-corrective measures if they end up in spam to ensure your email reaches the primary inbox.
Look out for features like email verification or email validation, auto-pause on missing or broken merge tags, spintax, or campaign soft start, where you could gradually increase your email sending for new email domains
By utilizing these functionalities, the likelihood of your email reaching the main inbox increases. This, in turn, leads to increased open and engagement rates, contributing to the increase in registrations and a sold-out event.
Personalization at Scale
SEPs should help you create highly personalized outreach communication to thousands of prospective attendees without having to manually edit every communication.
Look if it provides hyper-personalization features like adding custom columns, merge tags, spintax, conditional merge-tag, etc
These features will help you use the data provided by the prospect finder and convert every email into a unique personalized email for each prospective attendee.
And yes, all this will be automated. You don’t have to do it manually
AI-Powered Content
Not every SEP provides AI-powered content. Check if your chosen SEP provides AI-generated email content based on the email and audience inputs you provide.
SEPs, like SmartReach.io, allow you to create content by providing some prompts like your target audience, writing style, tone, words, etc. and options to generate.
Also, check if the tool provides an option to generate a subject line based on the email content. Along with that, the option to rephrase or shorten any paragraph would be an added advantage.
Very few SEPs provide this feature, but it is necessary as it gives a consolidated view of all inquiries from prospective attendees.
Your shortlisted SEP should provide a single sign-on for managing all your sending email inboxes from one common inbox. It should also provide reply sentiment, which would help you analyze the health of your prospective attendees’ pipeline.
The tool should be able to provide transparency across the team and provide an overview of your sales team’s performance.
Detailed Reporting
Every SEP provides reports, but it also depends on what information the tool is capturing and how well they are showcasing. The reports should not be complicated to analyze.
The SEP you shortlist should provide you with reports like team activity reports showing your team’s daily outreach activity, team leaderboard reports showing where your team can improve their campaign, and prospect category reports which would analyze the quality of attendees your team reaches out to.
You should also check out other reports like advanced tracking, the best time to send, and hot prospect report, which shows the list of prospects who have clicked or replied to your email.
CRM Integration & Workflows
Some sales engagement platforms provide workflow automation, where you can perform a sequence of actions for specific events & triggers.
This feature removes the need for manual intervention, reducing the chances of conflicting information. Your team can consistently access the most up-to-date data, no matter which platform they are using.
Check if your shortlisted SEP provides two-way sync with CRMs. Platforms like SmartReach.io sync with top CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, Pipedrive, and more.
Note: It might be quite overwhelming for you to choose a sales engagement platform that matches your requirements. The best option would be to go for a free trial. Almost every SEP provides a free trial for some days. SmartReach.io provides 14 days free trial. If interested, click here to start your free trial.
Final thoughts on an outreach strategy to increase registration
To get registrations and fill seats for your event faster, you need to go beyond traditional methods like early bird discounts and media outreach. Introduce a strategy utilizing a sales engagement platform like SmartReach.io.
It can help you with:
- Target with precision – Use LinkedIn to find your ideal attendees
- Build a clean list – No spam traps! Use free tools like ProspectDaddy to get verified contact details
- Go multichannel – Engage attendees on email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, messages, and even calls.
- Automate & personalize – Schedule automated email sequences, hyper-personalize with merge tags, and even use AI-powered content generation.
- Stay organized – Manage all attendee interactions from a single platform.
- Data update – Track your campaigns, see what works, and constantly adapt your outreach for maximum impact.
With these tactics, you will attract the right attendees, get more registrations, fill seats faster, and watch your events become a success.
