Honestly, I think writing is a kind of magic. It connects people with something when they’re not in the room with that thing. And for events this is really important; more important than it is for brands in other industries. Because most events happen once a year (sometimes even less – one of our clients’ events only happens once every two years) but you want people to feel a connection with your event all the time, even though they can only be there, physically in the room, for two or three days out of every 365.
Content is how you do that. If you get it right, you can become part of your audience’s lives. They’ll read you regularly, share your posts, talk about your content online - it helps to build a brand that lives alongside them instead of just an event.
And yet even though good content provides so much long-term value for event brands, hardly any events in the B2B space are publishing really good content.
We asked event marketing directors about their newsletters
Earlier this year, when Natasha and I were launching our content agency, we spoke to eight B2B event marketing directors about what the content situation looks like for their brands. And yes, we know that’s a tiny sample size, but event marketers are busy, and we went for deep qualitative research over high volume – we wanted to make sure we were solving the right problems from the start, for our small but mighty client base.
We asked them about their email newsletters. Six of the eight said they don’t have a consistent brand-building newsletter at all – their email comms with their audience focus on selling (exhibitor spots, sponsorships packages, attendee tickets).
The two that did have a regular brand-building newsletter were, erm, our clients. So obviously we think their newsletters are amazing.
But no, in all seriousness, we’re always learning and looking for ways to make our content work harder for our clients, so we did ask them what they think could be better about those newsletters, and both said their biggest challenge is post-publication engagement. They don’t have a solid system for reading and responding to comments on their newsletters and integrating those reader comments into future editions. That’s a distribution issue – we’ll write about it in detail next month.
When we asked each MD what they wished they could achieve with their content marketing, a few themes appeared. They wanted to:
Keep the conversation going among their event audience throughout the year, instead of just in hotspots just before and after the event.
Create a brand that people look to for more than just buying/selling – a knowledge hub; a media brand in its own right.
Build the kind of content offering that self-sustains over time; people keep coming back online because they know they’ll be entertained/informed/inspired/delighted.
Make digital content that’s just as valuable as the on-the-ground content their audience will experience at the event itself.
They said doing all of the above feels kind of impossible. They try, but it ends up being a start-and-stop project, getting pushed to the bottom of the priorities list every time they have to put out another fire somewhere else. And I get it – it’s not easy, and it takes a level of time commitment and consistency that’s hard to achieve in a busy marketing team. Especially when it’s so difficult to measure the ROI on content, which means it’s not immediately obvious that it’s making any difference to your business.
But it’s so worth doing. And your email newsletters – a simple, beautiful email – can enable you to achieve everything in those bullet points above, and more.
Should you really care about your newsletter?
Yep. I know this because I’ve been helping event brands do it for years. At LEAP, the most-attended tech event in the world, the weekly newsletter has well over 50,000 subscribers with an open rate that has remained stable at around 50% (give or take a percentage point or three from week to week) for the last three years. It’s widely agreed that any open rate above 17% is pretty good, with 25% being very good.
Above 40% is hard to achieve. But with the right content it really can happen.
The implication of a strong open rate isn’t just that lots of people open your emails. It’s that lots of people actively want to open your emails, week after week, because they know they’re going to like what they read. When they like what they read in your newsletter, they like your brand more. They start to see your event as more than just an event. They want to come – because they experience the value and attention-to-detail that you offer every single week, in their inbox.
Good content delivers an experience that proves to the reader that you respect them. If people aren’t getting genuine value and inspiration and entertainment and original ideas from your online content then why would they expect to get genuine value from coming to your event? So good content is a reflection of the quality of experience you want to give your audience – which then gives them more confidence that their experience at your event will be worth their time, money, effort.
Consider impact over ROI
Over a period of months and years, you’ll be able to connect measurable results back to your content strategy. But when I first start working with new clients I always encourage them to focus on impact over ROI – because attribution is tricky.
You can create a benchmark of where you’re at right at the start of your content journey and then record growth for traffic, leads, and brand awareness as time goes on. Definitely do that.
But start with impact. Impact and ROI aren’t the same thing. Content, including your completely brilliant email newsletter, needs to be an ongoing part of your overall marketing strategy, so you can’t accurately measure its ROI because it doesn’t fit into a defined timescale. You just keep investing in content and the return is cumulative.
I absolutely believe that the trust and engagement you build by sending out a brilliant newsletter has an incredibly important (and chronically underestimated) impact on leads and sales. And this is where content works its magic – it drives big results over time. It makes your event sell itself more and more, year-on-year. And it protects against the whims of digital advertising and social media algorithms, because you own it, and you’re engaging with your audience on your own terms.
Meet me and Natasha back here next month for a closer look at content distribution? Um, yes.
Until then,
Izzy