For Inel Tomlinson, owner of Kinetic Comedy:“There’s nothing worse than having someone really love one event and then never come back again, so you’ve got to keep them interested in between.” All the hard work you put into building awareness around each event would be so much more worthwhile if you could keep your contacts coming back for more!
We asked Inel what he does to keep his audience engaged..
Make your communications an extension of your event
“To me, comedy is all about getting together and having fun in a friendly and interactive atmosphere – there’s so much going on at our shows that it’s almost impossible to experience it all in one go! I think the reason we sell out all the time is that everyone has so much fun and the shows feel really inclusive… there’s nothing stopping me from keeping that feeling alive in the lull between events!
“A big part of what we do is making people feel like part of a community, and the public event pages I create are the perfect way to continue this between shows. It’s like a dedicated website for each event. My event listings drive people to the page – and from it, they can click through to buy tickets. It’s linked to Facebook as well so everyone can see who’s attending, and attendees can share the event details with friends.”
Keep your website packed full of multimedia content
“I pay a lot of attention to our public event pages and direct people to them for more information and to book tickets, so they have to look great.
Making sure our website always has new content so our contacts can go there to watch an entertaining video or read something funny whenever they want and use a lot of the multimedia content from the shows and from backstage as exclusive material – this keeps my contacts interested long after the event is over. I also post video clips from upcoming comedians.
“Encouraging people to tweet about their experiences after the event, which continues the conversation between our comedians and audience members and shows up as a feed on the website. I publish blog posts covering funny interviews with comedians, and I post audience pictures from every event so that our contacts can go and check them out. And above everything else, I keep information about our upcoming events up to date.”
Make your contacts a part of the event
“I always try and make our contacts feel special, and the best way to do that is to include them: ‘no matter who you are, you can join us’… that’s how I want everyone to feel!
“I ask some of our previous attendees to do guest blog posts for our series ‘Journey 2 Kinetic’, which really gets them excited. Best of all, I think, is an ongoing campaign I’m running where contacts can win the chance to have our designer create an ‘avatar’ for them: a funny cartoon caricature of themselves, which I use in our marketing material and at the actual events. So those contacts can actually see themselves as part of our comedy community!
“I’ve also found that a lot of small things make a huge difference: for instance, I mail out tickets and put a little Kinetic Comedy sticker on the envelope so it’s an exciting thing to receive. I also mention people by name in our Facebook and Twitter interactions.”
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Thanks so much to Inel from Kinetic Comedy for his expert tips to keep your contacts coming back for more, even when there’s a lull between events.
For More Marketing Advice – https://evvnt.com/blog/category/event-marketing/