Using direct marketing to target the audience to which you are marketing an event is a technique that’s as old as the hills. Often, an organisation has people on its database because they have previously attended or expressed interest in attending an event. This makes them a ‘warm’ audience – more receptive to the marketing message than a random section of the general population would be.
Direct marketing is a useful and effective tool – but to really stay on top of the game, you need to be thinking about segmented audiences for your direct marketing.
What is a segmented audience?
Often your audience can be broken down further by demographic, previous interactions and other factors. By doing this, you can market more effectively to your audience. For example, older audiences might respond better to postal contact than text messages. In another example, you might find that male audiences are more price-sensitive than female audiences or vice versa, and change the messaging in your communications.
By dividing up the audience and targeting their specific interests and proclivities, you can increase your chances of successfully reaching them. In the context of an event, this might mean marketing tickets in different ways, helping you to sell out your event and achieve your goal, be it a charity gala or a free event to raise your brand profile.
How do I segment my audience?
Depending on the size of the audience you’re marketing to, it may be possible to segment your audience manually. If you have a mailout list of 100 people, and some data about them, it’s possible to sort them into some rough segments using a spreadsheet or email groups. For larger lists, many mailing programmes and databases will allow you to create segments based on data already held.
You may think that you don’t hold enough data on your audience to segment it, but even if you don’t have demographic information like age, gender and postcode, you can segment based on previous contact. For example, a charity donor with a £3 regular direct debit may be very different in their interests to a high-value individual making one-off donations of thousands of pounds.
A/B testing
One of the best ways to test if your segmented audiences are more effective than your non-segmented audiences is by doing A/B testing. Send half of your audience a marketing communication that is one-size-fits-all, and segment the other half of your audience to see which method gleans more opens, clicks or responses. If the segmented audience works better, you can see that it’s a more effective way of marketing your event.
Segmented audiences
In the competitive events industry it’s important to be at the top of your game, and segmented audiences are one way to do that. Take our top tips on making and testing a segmented audience, and you should find ticket sales are on the up.
Another great way to market your event is by booking a celebrity guest who will appeal to your audience. You could even segment your messaging so that marketing to those who might be most interested in your guest focuses more on that aspect of the event! If you’re looking for a celebrity guest to give your event the wow factor, contact MN2S international talent booking agency today.
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