Much like an air traffic control tower, a good Event Management Tool gives you a bird’s eye view of every aspect of your event. Here are four reasons why you should use Boomerang’s Event Management Tool for your next event:

1. You will increase attendance.

Inviting your customers to your event is as easy as clicking a button. You can also create marketing campaigns surrounding your events to further spread the word and increase ticket sales. And you can send reminders and notifications, which will help reduce the stress and workload that surrounds holding an event.

2. You will get instant information.

Boomerang’s Event Management tool has powerful reporting features. You’ll be able to access invitation open rates as well as real-time ticket sales. You can also offer questionnaires that allow your customers to give you feedback, helping you with your current event as well as helping plan future events. For example, if your customer cannot attend the event, you can instantly find out why.

3. You will offer improved service for your customers.

Using an event management tool means the ticket window is always open for your customers. You will be able to sell seats around the clock, and offer information on your event that can be accessed at any time. With the questionnaire feature, you will also be able to respond to any questions or concerns your customers may have.

4. You will be better organized.

Event Management software helps you better organize your event by creating and implementing an up-to-date plan. The system keeps your team and workflow coordinated by sharing tasks, objectives and goals. If done manually, event planning would require the creation and updating of several spreadsheets shared throughout several departments. Event Management software organizes all of the information in one place and can be exported as Excel files for analysis and review.

Boomerang is excited to launch our new Event Management tool, which will allow you to quickly and efficiently invite clients and friends to in-person or online events. The easy-to-use system helps with every aspect of your corporate, benefit or personal event, including planning, launching, organizing, promoting and selling out seats.

Here are some of its benefits and features:

• The wizard-based system offers simple-yet-custom event creation. Design invitations that match your branding using your own images, logos and colors. Create personalized email invitations and track your open rate. You can also send reminders as well as notifications to attendees.

 

• Each of your events will receive a customized URL, with an online registration form, allowing you to easily direct your customers to the event page. The web page can be designed to reflect your company’s brand and mission.

 

• Increase attendance by offering three levels of ticketing: free, donation and paid. Your customers can purchase multiple tickets, and you also have the ability to sell complementary merchandise, such as books or clothing. The system gives you the ability to accept fast and secure credit card payments online.

 

• You can offer your visitors a questionnaire for the event, allowing you to make better decisions and learn valuable information you can use to plan future events. Another added convenience for your attendees, you also have the ability to provide maps to your event location.

 

• And our Event Management tool will organize and provide reports on many aspects of the event scheduling and managing process. Data can be reviewed in real time and downloaded and shared as an Excel file.

Event Management by Boomerang is like hiring an event planner … one who works around the clock at an affordable price! For more information, click here.

We didn’t think so. While the method certainly kept the candidates’ names front and center, the lack of personalization made voters feel more like (phone) numbers than people with concerns.

The same trend is making its way into marketing. Marketing automation software is a largely robotic function designed to generate leads, segment markets, cross-sell and up-sell, and measure ROI. While its intention is to give businesses a streamlined and efficient method of marketing to clients, it forgets one important thing: marketing – like voting – is personal, and marketing automation takes out the ability to connect with heart and soul.

Here are two big reasons to cross “automated marketing” off of your list of potential strategies:

1. Automated marketing doesn’t place the needs of customers first

Admit it. You’re interested in automated marketing because it saves you time. But the problem is that it takes the customer’s needs and puts them second to your own.

Customers are always looking for useful and timely information, and marketers should make it their number one job to help customers get the exact information they need to make a decision. Once a lead has converted into a customer, it’s time to deepen the relationship to encourage repeat purchases. It’s time to personalize your marketing efforts, not kick back and hit the easy button.

Marketing automation also often ignores your best customers. Gather information about your customer and pay attention to the marketing efforts he or she responds to. Customers who purchase often or who try new products or services should receive individualized attention. As you gather this information, put it to good use. When you truly understand your audience, you can strengthen the relationship.

2. Automated marketing waters down your content

Marketing should provide customers with the exact information they need when they need it. Without well-planned, relevant content, emails can look and feel like spam.

The purpose of your content is to draw people in, nurture the relationship and convert prospects into customers. With a higher volume of emails being sent through automated marketing, the quality of the content often suffers. In email marketing, quality is much more important than quantity. Content that isn’t well planned or relevant weakens a brand. And content that is delivered too frequently often gets deleted before it’s read.

Automated marketing also often generates delivery of repeat content based on expressed interests. While it’s OK to refer to past emails, content should never be reused. It’s a clear indicator that the marketing system has been put on autopilot.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” is his famous quote, but it’s not a philosophy you want to incorporate in your own business. In today’s world of social marketing and transparency, you want to make sure that the voice you put forth into the world matches what’s behind the scenes.

Tone is the single most important consideration in social marketing. Voice isn’t just for speaking. Words in email marketing and social media efforts also carry attitude and tell your readers who you are. Stale, dry words tell your readers that you have a stale, dry company.

As a result, every bit of language your company puts online should align with your brand’s messaging, mission and goals. Take advantage of your marketing efforts to display personality – yours and that of your brand.

Social marketing is about engagement, and people engage with people. It’s a good idea to create a personality profile for your business, treating it like it’s a person. The traits “he” or “she” will depend on your mission, staff, industry and client base.

If your business was a person, identify five adjectives you’d use to describe him. For example, friendly, responsible, caring, playful and gentle might describe a daycare. Friendly, modern, hip, outgoing and assertive might describe a public relations firm.  The traits you identify as belonging to your business are often traits that your customers will possess.

Within an industry, different businesses can have different personalities. The classic Mac vs. PC advertising campaign is a good demonstration of different voices within a field. When determining your personal style, look at what your competitors are doing to identify their tone, then see were your business is similar and how you’re different.

Next, make sure the words you use to send out tweets and posts resonate with the personality you identified. Also, pay attention to the words and attitudes your followers use. When you engage with customers via social media, it’s similar to chatting at a party. You want to make sure you’re both talking the same language.

Pull from your existing messaging, especially email marketing efforts that were particularly successful. Can you identify words or phrases that seemed to resonate with readers? And don’t try to pretend you’re someone you’re not. Sincerity comes across.

One of the greatest benefits of social media is that it allows your potential clients to have direct contact with you. So take advantage of this “great and powerful tool” – and make sure the voice you use matches what’s behind the curtain.

Don’t do that with your business.

Too much self-promotion cheapens your brand. Whether it’s through your email marketing or your blog, it’s better to focus the spotlight on your customers. Here are two quick ways to know if you’re guilty of too much promotion:

1. Your email marketing or blog only contains news about your company.

Customers sign up for your email because there’s something in it for them. If your emails only contain information about you, there’s not much in it for them. Instead of talking about your newest product or award, turn the spotlight off of you and on to your customer. It’s OK to mention products and awards, as long as you clearly show how this information is of benefit to your reader.

For example, if you have a new product that was designed to save your customers’ time, lead with that benefit before you go into details about the item. If you won an industry award for high customer satisfaction, relay this information by thanking your customers. Or if you will be exhibiting at an event, invite your customers to put a face with an email address by attending and give them an added bonus for coming by offering free gift if they mention that they’re a newsletter subscriber.

2. Your email marketing is only about your latest deal.

Department stores are often guilty of this. They hold President’s Day sales, Fourth of July sales and Black Friday sales. Their circulars advertise door-buster deals, lowest-price-of-the-season sales, and sales of the century.

After a while, too many sales get tuned out. They also train your customers to never pay full price. If your email marketing efforts are only about sales and deals, your customers will buy what they need and unsubscribe to get away from your carnival barker tactics.

When you compose your email marketing, always imagine the reader asking this question: What’s in it for me? If you can clearly answer the question, they’ll never tire of hearing from you.

Clearly, neither of these men is relationship material, but could you be making similar mistakes with your email marketing tactics?

Of course you know that potential customers don’t have to hand over their email addresses. When they do, smart businesses should treat that gesture with respect. Don’t contact them too much, but don’t contact them too little, either. The key is to make your communication regular and pleasant, so readers expect and look forward to it.

Here are four steps to go from deadbeat to dreamboat when courting your customers via email:

1. Create a schedule.

Whether its weekly, biweekly or monthly, make sure you choose a time frame that you can stick to. It’s better to have less frequent communication that is consistent than communication that is sporadic. It’s also a good idea to clearly let your customers know when they sign up for your list what they can expect. Customize your signup box to say, “Sign Up for Our Biweekly Newsletter” or “Sign Up for Our Tip of the Week.” This establishes frequency and content before you ever wind up in an inbox.

2. Choose a good day.

Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules on the best day or time to send email marketing. It will depend on your audience. Monday mornings and Friday afternoons might not be the best time, as inboxes might be full and focus might be elsewhere. Determine which day and time is best for your list by doing a test and looking at your analytics. Which emails receive the best open rate? This measurement might give you a clue as to best time of delivery.

3. Assign the responsibility.

Whether you’re a small business or a large corporation, email marketing should be part of someone’s job description. Not only will it become a scheduled part of his or her workday, it will keep the voice of the emails consistent. If you are having a hard time sticking to a regular schedule, consider outsourcing your email marketing to a freelance professional.

4. Finally, send emails that do more than sell.

Too much selling will result in a higher opt-out rate as well as a higher risk of being caught in spam filters. Instead, use your emails as a means to deliver valuable information. Concentrate on quality. Creating an editorial calendar can help with your content planning. When you consistently send email marketing messages that contain relevant and useful information, your subscribers get to know you and gain an understanding of how your business, product or service can benefit them.

Remember, consistency builds relationships. It keeps your company fresh in the minds of consumers. As relationships deepen, it makes it more likely that these subscribers make purchases from your business instead of another competing business instead.

Alex Trebek: Answer: Renting an email list

Contestant: What is “How can a business increase its spam reports?”

Alex Trebek: Correct!

Are you playing games with your marketing efforts? Renting an email list could be putting your business in “Jeopardy!”

It’s true that email marketing performs better when you have a larger list. If you simply look at your current conversion rate, you’d be tempted to think that if your list was bigger, your conversion number would be bigger. But numbers alone don’t always guarantee success. It’s the quality behind those numbers that matter.

While some list providers might promise that their lists are hand picked for your target market, renting a list can cause more harm than good. Think of it as someone promising a get-rich-quick offer. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Most rented lists are filled with old or non-existent email addresses. If the addresses are good, many email providers will flag your email and send it directly to the recipient’s spam folder.

Email marketing is most effective when you have built a relationship with your audience. Renting the list takes the relationship out of the equation. When the recipient has no familiarity with you, your company or your product or services, you are just another email that came to them from out of the blue. And with the volume of emails being sent, there is a good chance they will delete your email or worse yet, mark it as spam. Too many complaints can ruin your reputation and that of your email service provider.

Email marketing is based on permission and when you rent a list, you simply don’t have permission. Almost all email service providers, including Boomerang, forbid buying email addresses to use in their systems. By buying a list, you’re risking losing your email marketing service access.

The size of your list doesn’t matter; if most recipients aren’t opening, reading or clicking through, what good does a large number do? When you build a list the organic way, you will be rewarded with a higher response rate. And that’s the real number that matters.

Remember, slow and steady, wins the race. Leave the beat-the-clock methods for television game shows.

When navigating the waters of email marketing, it may be tempting to try a speedboat approach, gliding over the water as quickly as possible. But speedboats can leave a wake of choppy water. Instead, the best way to build a healthy list is to think like a rowboat: a simple vessel propelled forward by strong oars.

Here are three steps for smooth sailing:

1. Have easy-to-find signup forms on your website

Think of your signup form as your vessel. Your job is to make sure it is eye-catching and doesn’t leak. Have you ever been in a store where you had to hunt down a salesperson to make a purchase? You want a signup form that is as easy to spot as it is to find the cash registers at Target. In other words, up front and colorful.

Using Boomerang’s Opt-In Form Designer Toolkit, it’s easy to customize and add signup forms to your site. Place the signup form in a prominent place on every page of your website. When you treat it with importance, you encourage visitors to sign up.

Also, make it clear what your visitor is signing up for. For example, a signup form that says “Sign Up for Our Weekly Newsletter” lets your visitors know how often they will hear from you. By establishing clear expectations, you avoid the potential that your emails will be marked as spam later.

2. Offer an incentive for signing up

Invite people to join your list by offering them a reason to sign up. This usually comes in the form of a freebie that can be considered a bonus to the valuable content you normally offer through your newsletter. It could be a free report or tool, an exclusive discount, a free trial or a free recording of a podcast or webinar.

Whatever you offer, make sure it’s appealing and useful to your audience. It should also fit with your brand and messaging. For ideas, check the traffic statistics on your blog posts and see what attracts the most views.

Then be sure to spread the word about your incentive. For example, post it on social media outlets. And issue a press release to fellow bloggers who might share your link with their audience. Be sure to stress the value of the incentive and why someone would benefit from joining your list.

3. Use social media to promote signup

Finally, you’ll want to further your efforts by offering signup options through your social media channels. For example, install an email signup box on Facebook to convert fans into email marketing list members. Or tweet out a link on Twitter. Be sure to share some of the content of your newsletter via your Facebook and Twitter updates to attract new list members. And don’t forget to put a signup box on your blog. If visitors love your posts, they’ll be more likely to sign up to receive your emails as well.

Make sure you are using “share with your network” buttons. People are more likely to trust a recommendation from a friend. If your newsletter is shared, it increases the chances the friend will sign up for your list themselves.

By building your email lists through these tried-and-true methods, you’ll increase your list numbers with loyal followers. All aboard!

• Do you create a formal marketing plan and stick to it?
• Do you prefer to follow trends and create marketing strategies on the fly?
• Or maybe you like to do a little both?

Whether you’re top-down or reactionary, each has its strengths and each has its weaknesses. Take a look at how you can pull the best from both:

Top-Down Marketing

Top-down marketing analyzes a company’s situation, measures objectives, develops key strategies, and creates specific tactics to achieve company goals. This is best done by researching trends and marrying the findings with company objectives.

Top-down marketing requires planning and follow through. It also requires closely tracking results and measuring success.

This type of marketing can also include offensive strategies. It involves evaluating the competition and forming comparisons. For example, a company using top-down marketing might identify a competitor’s weakness and emphasize its own strengths as an answer to customers’ problems.

You might call top-down marketing “Type A.” It’s strategic, specific, quantitative and realistic. And in certain cases, it can be considered contrived.

Reactionary Marketing

Reactionary marketing is the opposite of the top-down marketing. It’s the kind of plan that is formed as a reaction to trends, news or perhaps simply how the marketer feels that day. Reactionary marketing forces a company to stay current and be in the same places that their customers frequent.

A reactionary marketing campaign might involve the creation of a YouTube, Facebook or Pinterest campaign. Before you initiate a reactionary marketing strategy, ask yourself: Does this marketing effort fit with our overall company mission or are we simply jumping on a trend? If you can answer that question honestly, you can decide whether the reactionary tactic is worth following.

Reactionary marketing can also be a defensive strategy. It might lead you to counter a claim made by your competition or create a solutions for your market that is better than the offerings your competitors have.

Reactionary marketing can be quite effective. It’s nimble and current. Companies that make the best use of reactionary marketing have already established a well-built reputation and a solid customer base. If not executed correctly, however, reactionary marketing can feel haphazard. It can also be the kind of strategy that compels the marketer to chase the next “shiny” thing.

What kind should you use?

The best answer is “both!”

As you plan your marketing strategies for 2013, make room for top-down and reactionary. Create a plan with structure, but be willing to change if necessary or make additions when an opportunity presents itself. The best companies demonstrate stability with a twist of spontaneity.

Your marketing plan may be the most important document your company possesses. It should include an overview of your company’s mission, a description of your market demographics, an outline of your products or services and how they fill a need in your market, and an analysis of your competition. A marketing plan should also set specific goals and objectives that you wish to achieve in the coming year.

An efficient way to create a marketing plan is by taking a look at the marketing campaigns you ran in the past. And the best way to do that is to review your email marketing performance metrics. The information the metrics hold will help you design your marketing plan for the upcoming year.

First, which campaign had the highest open rate?

This is a good indication of successful subject lines. A subject line is an important clue to what kind of information is most important to your market. Do they respond to teasers? Or do they open emails when the subject line is direct? If you don’t know, make sure you run A/B testing of subject lines this year to find out.

Which campaigns had the highest click-through rate?

This is a good indicator of the topics your customers are most interested in. Also, if your newsletter has multiple clicks, measure which type of link is the best call to action. For example, do your customers respond to links to informative blog posts? Do they click through links that lead to a special offer? Or perhaps your customers react best to solutions for their most common dilemmas? By analyzing the topics that generate the most clicks, you can plan future email marketing content and special offers.

Which had the lowest open rate or the highest unsubscribe rate?

Reviewing this data can help you plan better email marketing campaigns. The top two reasons people unsubscribe from email marketing lists are that the emails are too frequent or they are irrelevant. Did these campaigns fit this bill? You should consider your delivery schedule and make sure you’re sticking to it. Also survey your subscribers to make sure you are delivering the type of content at the frequency they most desire.

Finally, who opens your emails?

Your performance metrics will tell which clients open your emails on a regular basis. Consider these to be the most loyal members of your list. They trust you and look forward to engaging with you. Be sure to design your marketing plan by targeting this group, and reward them with special campaigns.

By looking at these key metrics, you can design a strong marketing plan for 2013 and best serve your clients … and isn’t that the reason you’re in business?