One email can boost event ROI significantly

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Want better event ROI, especially for major events like Dreamforce and SxSW? One email can significantly improve the performance of these events for your business if your audience attends them.

Here’s the “secret recipe”: send an email like your weekly/monthly newsletter either the night before or the first day of the event. (I tend to do night before) Then set up a simple search in your newsletter’s inbox to collect all of the Out of Office Replies from people attending that event.

Email them back with a quick personal note letting them know you’ll be at the event, too, and let’s meet up for a cup of coffee. You’ll book more meetings (as long as your audience attends the event in question) and make better use of your time than randomly walking the floor, hoping to meet people – after all, these are people already on your mailing list. They’re either customers or prospects, so you have much to gain and little to lose either way.

Note that this tactic completely fails if you send your newsletters from a “do not reply” address that is unmonitored. Don’t use those! Not only are you giving up the ability to clean your list of dead addresses, you miss sales and marketing opportunities like this.

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