Do you ever get the feeling that a particular event you are about to organise is going to be a difficult one to market, and filling the seats will probably be quite a task?

On paper it’s such an easy thing to do: choose the topic, organise the location, speakers etc. then email your contacts and await the RSVPs.

If only it was that simple! Getting people to give up their valuable time is so difficult. Is it really worth them taking time out of their working day? How do you convey the value they will get by attending?

A lesson I learned on one of our recent workshops is to make sure your message is very clear to the reader on why they should attend. After carefully crafting an e-invitation detailing the workshop content we received a really low response rate. I decided to send out a more personalised message to directly point out key aspects as to why they would benefit from attending.
In the back of my mind I did think that maybe, if there was still no interest, I would admit defeat and cancel the event. As it transpired my original message wasn’t as clear as I had thought, my recipients had dismissed it, thinking that the topic would not apply to their business area.

Consequently, when I followed this up with a more personalised direct marketing campaign, explaining why they should attend and what they would learn, it resulted in a full house.

The feedback that was received following this event confirmed that they had all found the content valuable and were pleased they had attended. This has now led us to plan a rerun of the workshop in the future.

Sharon Hammond

Marketing Coordinator

Roffe Swayne

Tags: UK200

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