Leveraging Your Event Audience
As audience developers continue to expand their roles beyond doing direct mail campaigns and circulation audits, one of the areas starting to benefit from their expertise is events. Just like those who read the magazine and visit the Web site, event attendees are a valuable part of a publisher’s audience. When approached correctly, event attendees can often be persuaded to convert to other products within the company, therefore lengthening their affinity with the brand.
At Working Mother Media, the circulation and events departments work together to develop and promote the three national events and 20 regional/custom events the company holds each year, including the Multicultural Women National Conference and the NAFE (National Association for Female Executives) National Conference. About 4,000 people attend these events each year. But that wasn’t always the case.
Two Departments Are Better than One
“A few years ago, the events group handled all of the promotions for the events,” says Diane Potter, consumer marketing director, Working Mother Media. “But as we increased the number of our events, we had to find a more structured way of doing everything.”
Now, when an event date looms, the two teams hold weekly meetings together to review how they will develop and promote it. “We keep a calendar that identifies key moments in time when we should be communicating with [attendees] which ultimately leads to us starting a email promotion for registration.”
The events are targeted towards human resources individuals and are closely tied to WM’s editorial content, such as “The 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers” list, which boasts a 100 Best Companies Worklife Congress event each year. As a result, the conversion tactics used to get attendees to subscribe to the magazine are often tied to the workplace.
“For those companies that make our 100 Best, we send them a special link for a low priced offer to subscribe to WM,” Potter says. “And some companies that have support groups for their employees who are new parents will actually buy a one-year sub for these individuals. And then other companies choose to give a gift bag to employees who have children, which will include a one-year sub. Tactics like these have really worked well for us, and within the last year, we’ve sold thousands of subscriptions this way.”
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