Sponsorship Boost, White Marsh, MD, is one of the premier trade show sponsorship sales organizations in the USA. Last week they penned a blog post entitled “Digital Communications – A Vehicle for Sponsorship Revenue“. With literally every live event cancelled, almost all of the usual sponsorship vehicles available to the event organizers have been eliminated, from charging stations, lanyards, tote bags, floor and column signage, and advertising of all kinds. In the blog, many great ideas were discussed but the one at the top of the list was Eblasts . To quote some of the article:
Sponsored eblasts are also an obvious vehicle to raise revenue. The large number of cancelled events around the nation means that regular channels of communication between sponsors and their audience are minimized, and companies will pay to send eblasts to your members and attendees.
We agree wholeheartedly, as sending “sponsored emails” on behalf of trade show exhibitors has been our primary business since 2012. Eblasts are effective in communicating an exhibitor’s marketing message and invitation to visit their booth to the registered attendees. The emails are inexpensive to generate and can be a significant source of revenue. That was true for live events and will be even more so as the virtual and hybrid events of the future take shape.
However, sending effective Eblasts requires more than a simple Outlook / Word mail merge. Event Technologies has sent millions of exhibitor sponsored Emails since 2012 and learned a few lessons along the way:
- Emails need to be checked for deliverability, which includes insuring they render correctly on the dozens and dozens of email clients and devices in use today.
- Emails must be compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, GDPR regulations and others.
- Attendees must have an easy way to OPT-OUT of the sponsored emails without opting out of the event emails.
- Exhibitors will require a way to upload a suppression list so that competitors and selected companies do not receive the email.
- Exhibitors must have an effective way to create and send emails without having direct access to the attendee email addresses. You cannot give the list away.
- … and on and on …
Event Technologies offers eShowMail™ as a service to events to enable selected exhibitors to send Eblasts to the event’s attendee base and generate Sponsorship Revenue for the organizer. The service is available on a turn-key basis or as an exhibitor Self Serve offering. For more information, to get a proposal or to just discuss your situation, please contact us at 310-581-2696 or email chris@event-techs.com. Together we will get through this.
