How to Increase Ticket Sales Using an Email List
It's easy to overlook the benefits email marketing can have for your brand. With social media growing by the day, it begs the question; what can email do that social can't? What's important is to look at these two methods as a partnership instead of comparing them. Social media can be a good stepping stone for creating awareness for your brand, but if you're just setting up, it can be a while before you gain a big enough following for it to have a direct effect on conversion.
Email marketing, on the other hand, can have a closer tie-in with your web page and your service/product. Creating a means for the individual to opt into your email list after they've had a positive experience with your brand can greatly increase the chance that they will become a loyal customer. It's not always clear why people adopt this method as a primary source of marketing. Here are a few reasons why you should consider building an email list.
Email subscribers are more likely to be loyal buyers
Whether your subscribers came from a pop up opt-in form on your website or by deciding to find your contact page on their own. These are people that are engaged with your brand, want to know more and might even want more of your service/product. You'll want to use this to your advantage, let these people know more about you & everything you have planned.
If you're hosting an event, for example, email allows for an engaging way to deliver information about your event, costing and ticketing information (be sure to include Priorbooking here!) and any upcoming events without them having to do extra searching. This alleviates all the hassle on their end, improving the experience and opening up the potential for them to become regulars to your event.
You have full control
Social provides a great opportunity to increase exposure & to communicate with your audience. In this day in age, social media is essential for getting a foothold in your industry. The issue with social is that it's wildly unpredictable. Anything can happen & anything can change at any given time. In other words; you can't control it.
Unfortunately, you don't own Facebook or any of your social media accounts. Facebook owns Facebook and so on. At the click of a finger, they could change everything.
However, you own your newsletter, no one else. The only person who can change it is you. Whilst off the bat this doesn't seem that important, you have to remember; that with freedom comes experimentation. You're free to experiment with the tone of voice, design, topic and anything else you wish too, allowing your emails to have a personality instead of confining to social expectations. This is brilliant for marketers as you can track what change is working the best without fear of an outside influence changing something seemingly out of nowhere (I'm looking at you Facebook Algorithm) Spend time trailing different designs and don't be afraid to ask your audience for feedback.
It gives you direct contact with your audience
Chances are if you're part of a business that you check your emails at least once a day, if not more. In most cases, this is the same for your audience. With social media now playing a huge role in the populations day to day activities, most people have accounts on at least two social media platforms. Unless your audience makes it a religious activity to view your content at a specific time each day, chances are your updates will go unseen a majority of the time.
Email is a very useful tool to send important updates & content directly to your audience. You can also provide incentives & discounts as a further means to provide exclusive value to your email subscribers. Using methods like this create a sense of trust and meaning with your audience, they feel they're getting something more than just the product/service.
But how do you create an email list?
The first step you need to think about is; what email service to use. With the vast expansion of email marketing, there are numerous that I could list. Personally, I would recommend MailChimp due to its easy to use interface & the vast amount of features. ideally, you should search around, take a look at other software and compare them against what you need and what your goals are. Essentially, most are free until your subscribers begin hitting a bigger number or you require to send more emails out a month. At this stage, it will definitely be worthwhile comparing prices against features.
The main and most commonly used form to gain subscribers is to place "opt-in" forms over your website and blog pages. These provide a means for your audience to sign up to your newsletter after seeing who you are, what you do or some of your content. In other words, they're opting to see more from you because they've liked what they've seen so far. Another method is to create a pop-up, these act similarly to opt-in pages, however, they appear after a set amount of time or if an action is made (scrolling to the bottom of the page for example.) A great trick to incorporate into your opt-in pages is by offering a free incentive. Business' do this by offering e-books or free 30-minute consultancies etc... this creates a reason for the individual to sign up outside of any other interest they have with you & could be the difference between getting a new subscriber or not.
Incorporate Priorbooking
When you create an event with Priorbooking, you have the option to set questions against any ticket purchase the customer makes. These can be mandatory or not depending on what information you require. You can use this to collate emails from those already paying to see one of your events. The best thing about this is because they're already paying, likely hood is they would love to see more from you, if you can tailor to this through engaging emails then you're more likely to create loyal customers who keep coming back for more.
Use all the tools at your disposal and start compiling your email list today! let us know how it goes!
An email list provides you with a direct line of communication with your audience. Implement other Marketing Strategies alongside email to further entice your audience into purchasing tickets.
