How to Increase Event Attendance With SMS

Whether online or off. Big or small. Events are an incredible way to build buzz about your brand while providing tons of value to current and future customers.

Plus, they’re incredibly versatile. You can offer small workshops guiding clients through new product features, host webinars with hundreds of guests from all over the world, or create your own in-person event that becomes the “go-to” conference for your niche.

The size of the event isn’t as important as the value you’re creating for your customers, future customers, and your brand. 

But, benefits aside, how do you actually get people to show up?

Let’s face it. People are busier than ever. Meetings, vacations, family time. How is your event going to become a priority?

That’s what you’re here to learn.

We aren’t going to get into the finer details of event management and planning. Instead, we’re going to focus on how you can boost registration and attendance for your events by utilizing the power of SMS marketing and HubSpot. 

The Power of SMS for Event Promotion

When it comes to getting the word out, you have a million and one channels to utilize. 

You’ve got email. Your company blog. Social media. Paid ads. Word of mouth. Podcasts. Guest posting. But, there’s one method that can drive near-instant demand. 

It’s SMS messaging. 

Think about it: texts get eyeballs, fast. You're looking at an open rate of over 98%. Plus, with the number of mobile users rocketing towards the 5 billion mark, the audience you can tap into is vast.

Now, we’re not talking about using texting as a standalone channel. But instead, you can integrate SMS into your existing plan of attack. 

There are three main areas where SMS thrives:

• Leading up to the event
• Marketing during the event
• Follow-up after the event

Let’s look at each of these more in-depth:

SMS Marketing Before the Event

Before the event, you can use SMS to help build buzz surrounding your event. You can talk about the guests that are going to show up, the exclusive topics that are going to be covered, and send simple confirmation messages. Plus, you can send early VIP ticket reminders and event notifications.

SMS Marketing During the Event

During the event, SMS works great as a communication channel. For in-person events, it can be used to let people know when and where people are speaking. While, if you’re hosting an online conference, you can send quick alerts to let people know who’s presenting next. 

SMS Marketing Follow-up After the Event

Finally, when the event is over, you’re going to have a ton of new leads sitting in your pipeline. Now, you can use texting to gather important event feedback, help qualify leads, and more. Plus, you can send this data directly to your HubSpot contacts to help build your lead profiles.  

Creating SMS Campaigns to Promote Events

SMS lets you promote and sign people up for events at record speed. 

Imagine having an idea for an event, sending out a quick text message, and having a handful of people registered in a single day.

That’s essentially what we did for an upcoming webinar. 

Here’s a quick message we sent out the other day to help get people interested in an upcoming webinar:

“Hey (name), we’re having a webinar next Thursday, interested? Text RSVP to join”.

Your Turn: Text RSVP to (888) 409-2298 to Register For Our Webinar on July 11th, 2023 and see how this simple approach works!

Within a couple of minutes, we had 16 people signed up and ready to go and a total of 90 “conversations” in one day!

All they had to do was send one text message and it was confirmed. When it comes to making it as easy as possible for guests to register for your event, you really can’t beat SMS.

Compare this process to sending out an email, which then directs to a form, which the lead then has to fill out. So, many steps where they might drop-off.

It’s also personal. You feel like you’re being invited by a friend. 

Of course, we also followed up to collect more information following their reservation. But, texting makes it dead simple for someone to raise their hand and say, “Yes, I want to go.”

Before you do this, you need to be clear on the value proposition for your event. Ask yourself: what’s going to be the big takeaway for my customer for showing up?

You also need to be clear on the exact information you need to collect from your lead to sign up. If it’s a B2B event, then you’ll probably want to gather relevant business info, along with payment (if it’s a premium event). 

Here are a few other ways you can use SMS to promote your event and drive registrations:

• Sending quick announcement texts to gauge interest in your event
• Sending personalized messages to users who have attended similar events in the past
• Offering exclusive VIP discounts to first-movers
• Offering incentivized referrals to refer a colleague to friend to your event
• Sending quick reminder texts that the registration page is closing soon
• Sending real-time updates as new speakers or other benefits get added to the event

Finally, SMS lets you engage in a two-way conversation with potential attendees. It’s not a simple one-and-done broadcast. You can quickly answer questions about the event and address objections that are in the way of signing up.

Integrating SMS with HubSpot's Campaign Management Tools

The key to events is viewing them as another marketing campaign. Sure, there are a lot of moving pieces that go into events, especially, live conferences. 

But, the marketing part is similar to other campaigns you’ve done before. 

As a HubSpot user, you’re probably using HubSpot’s marketing tools to create campaigns surrounding your event. So, you can integrate and automate your SMS messages too.

You can integrate SMS into every part of your existing marketing workflows including event invitation, promotion, confirmation, and event follow-up messages. All of these messages can be triggered instantly within your HubSpot workflow. 

It’s important to highlight again, we’re not sending SMS messages in a vacuum. We’re using them to boost the effectiveness of the rest of our marketing. So, a customer might get an email about an upcoming event, a few text messages, and get re-targeted by ads when they’re browsing LinkedIn.

All of this works together to keep your company and your upcoming event, at the top of their minds. 

Event Reminders and Updates via SMS

Getting people to sign up for your event is a pretty straightforward process. You create a value-packed event, promote it, and people register or buy tickets.

Now, you need to make sure people actually show up. This is a bit different for online and offline events. With in-person events, people are more invested, and likely to show up. They’ve already bought a ticket and booked airfare and a hotel. Unless an emergency comes up, you can bet they’re showing up.

But, online webinars, workshops, and conferences are a bit easier to pass up. 

After all, it’s a beautiful sunny day, and the dog needs a walk, you can always watch the recording later.

Here’s where SMS marketing comes in.

SMS thrives with real-time updates. You can build buzz quickly. And make sure people actually attend. 

Think about it, Greg Hickman, CEO of System.ly, was able to reduce appointment no-shows by 45%, just by sending out simple text reminders. This same style of thinking can apply to your events.

You can send out automated SMS messages like, "Hi (Name), we're counting down to (Event Name) tomorrow. Can't wait to see you!”, the day before the event. 

Then, on the day of, you can send a message like, “(Name), our first presenter is live in 15 minutes! Here’s your link to watch it live: (link)”.

You can continue sending reminders throughout the event, and re-send messages to people who didn’t open previous messages. 

Plus, you can do all of this directly within HubSpot. So, if you have other event management integrations set up, like Eventbrite, or GoToWebinar, then you’ll be able to manage your entire event from one dashboard. 

Tracking Event Success with SMS Metrics

Once your event is over, it’s time to pour through your data. Luckily, by using Salesmsg with HubSpot, all of this data is available in a single dashboard. 

And if your event was more conference-based, then you have a wealth of data from your new leads to sort through. 

You’ll get access to standard SMS campaign metrics that’ll show you how your messages performed and contributed to your event. You’ll be able to see comprehensive reporting data that includes:

• Message delivery rates
• Open and click through rates
• Conversions and replies

You’ll even have this data available on a person-by-person basis. So, you can centralize all of your communication data with a single lead. 

Plus, all of this is combined with your existing HubSpot marketing and sales data. This will let you see how your event has done overall. This will depend on your overall goals for the event, but here are some of the event success metrics worth tracking:

• The total number of check-ins and registrations
• The cost-to-revenue ratio
• The overall satisfaction of your attendees
• Overall email and SMS list growth
• New business generated

As you can see, this data will tell you if your event was a success and help you inform your strategy and messaging moving forward. It’ll also highlight which channels were the most effective in generating leads for your event. 

Using Salesmsg and HubSpot to Boost Event Attendance

Whether you're organizing a small workshop, a value-packed webinar, or the next 'it' conference, integrating SMS into your event marketing process can do wonders. 

Keeping your customers engaged and informed takes constant communication and dynamic strategies. By capitalizing on the speed of SMS and contact management and marketing abilities of HubSpot, you can ensure your next event is your best event. 

This isn't just about boosting attendance for one event either. It's about establishing a reliable system for all your future events. With Salesmsg and HubSpot, you're not just inviting people to an event; you're fostering a community.

By studying patterns, understanding your audience, and leveraging the power of these tools, you're well on your way to making each event better than the last. Here's to packed attendee lists, amazing events, and the growth of your brand.

So go on, give it a shot today. Click here to use the power of Salesmsg and HubSpot to revolutionize the way you promote events.