Email marketing is one of the most useful tools in your marketing toolbox to boost word-of-mouth marketing and fair ticket sales. However, simply sending generic mass email messages to everyone on your list won’t work. To optimize your email marketing results and convert as many people to ticket buyers as possible, you need to segment and target.
Email marketing works, but it works a lot better when you send the right messages to the right people. Have you ever gotten a message inviting you to buy a product (or attend an event) that you already purchased (or bought tickets to)? How did that message make you feel? Did it make you happy and motivate you to tell other people about the product (or event) so they would buy it too?
Probably not.
In fact, most consumers have a negative opinion of brands that send them email messages which are either irrelevant or prove the business knows nothing about them.
To be successful with email marketing today, personalization is the top priority, and that includes segmenting your list to ensure you’re sending messages that each person on your email list wants.
Following are four clever ways to use email marketing to boost word-of-mouth marketing and fair ticket sales by segmenting your list and sending targeted messages to critical audiences.
Ticket Buyers
There is no better audience to target if you want to boost word-of-mouth marketing about your fair than people who already bought tickets. Don’t send email messages to people who already bought tickets to your fair and ask them to buy tickets. They already took the action you’re asking in the message!
Instead, focus on sending them useful, entertaining, and engaging information about the event that will get them excited and motivate them to share it with their friends and family, on social media, and so on. AttendStar’s Ticket Buyer Buzz feature makes it easy for fair organizers to set a series of these messages up once and then let it run automatically in the weeks leading up to the fair.
Previous Attendees
If you hold your fair on an annual basis (or another ongoing basis), then previous attendees are a perfect audience to target your marketing to. While generic email messages promoting your fair are often enough to motivate previous ticket buyers to attend, you should make an extra effort to connect with them.
Personalize your messages to boost conversions, particularly to sell more tickets earlier and recoup some of your investments as soon as possible. It should be easier and quicker to convert previous attendees into current ticket buyers than it will be to convince and convert former attendees or new prospects.
Former Attendees
The former attendee audience includes people who bought tickets to one of your fairs in the past but haven’t done so recently. For example, a person may have bought tickets to your annual fair two years ago (or previously) but didn’t buy tickets last year.
To win back former attendees, you’ll need to send targeted messages. Tell them you miss them and hype all of the fun activities happening at your fair this year. If they don’t respond initially, create some exclusive discounts to motivate them to buy, and personalize the email messages you send to them with those special offers.
New Subscribers
In the months preceding your event, you should be working on building your email marketing list. Develop lead generation campaigns, leverage the Remind Me feature built into AttendStar to connect with prospective ticket buyers, and motivate new subscribers to purchase tickets to your fair.
The key is to segment new subscribers so they get messages tailored to audiences who haven’t attended your fair in the past. They’ll need very different messages from you then people who attended last year or who already purchased tickets for this year’s fair.
Key Takeaways about Using Email Marketing to Boost Word-of-Mouth Marketing and Fair Ticket Sales
Segmentation is the secret to improve your email marketing ROI and increasing fair ticket sales. Focus on sending information that will get different audiences excited about and talking about your fair. Sending the right message to the right person at the right time and in the right place (the 4 Rights of Marketing) can make a big difference in your ticket sales and your fair’s success.