How To Grow Your Email List With Virtual Events

Traditional landing pages and pop-up forms can be powerful tools for generating prospects and growing your contact database, but what do you do when they don’t lead to the top-of-funnel ROI you need? Cue virtual events!

Over the past few years, marketers have contributed to their pipelines and grown their email lists through virtual events. Virtual events introduce brands, demonstrate value, and drive prospects to want to learn more.

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Continue reading to learn how to positively impact marketing and sales pipeline and grow your email list with virtual events.

Compelling Virtual Event Content Is Influential

The key to growing your email list is creating content your prospects find valuable and want to consume. You can introduce them to your brand and content through fun and engaging virtual events.

These events must have actionable and helpful content to catch a prospect's attention. Take a deep dive into your analytics and customer data to craft an event centered on helping your audience be great at their job.

For example, your brand’s help center can provide a wealth of information about possible virtual event content. Look at the help articles customers comment on or upvote and build content that discusses a possible problem and shares a solution.

You can also look at your website analytics and see the most visited blogs or content with the most downloads. This can provide insight into a subject your prospects might want to learn more about.

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Suppose you're a real estate SaaS company, and your audience is interested in creating real estate landing pages. In that case, your virtual event should focus on best practices for developing real estate landing pages that convert. 

Try to hook your visitors with clever promotion tactics like: 

• Using short and sweet headlines that provide value - Create headlines that speak directly to your audience.

• Sparking curiosity - Highlight what makes your virtual event different from the rest.

• Utilizing time-sensitive content - Take advantage of FOMO (fear of missing out) and offer content prospects won’t be able to get anywhere else.

• Creating an easy-to-complete virtual event registration form - Collect your registrants’ information and help prospects understand the next steps for attending your virtual event.

Virtual Event Promotion Done Right

Generating quality virtual event registrations can be tricky if you fail to promote your virtual event adequately. Without a well-thought-out promotion plan, marketers will not reach their target audience and not generate the opt-ins they need to grow their email list.

To that end, cross-promotion is a critical aspect of your event strategy. Cross-promoting through platforms effectively attracts new registrants and engages your old ones. A few ways to promote your virtual event include:

1. Craft posts dedicated to your virtual event for your social media traffic. 

2. Leverage your website to attract registrants. This encourages your organic traffic and the users in your sales pipeline to sign up for the event.

3. Email your existing subscribers and urge them to share that communication with their peers.

4. If the date of your virtual event passes, encourage users to sign up to receive a dedicated link to the virtual event on demand.

Direct all virtual event registrants to a confirmation page as soon as they sign up and let them know how they can opt into your email newsletter to receive updates about other upcoming events. This is a simple way to grow your email list and boost your virtual event ROI.

Lean on Partners 

Don't shy away from partnering with brands in your niche. If your focus is email account management, you can partner with a dedicated email marketing and marketing automation platform to offer their expertise and provide valuable virtual event content to your event audience.

Partnering with brands attracts a broader audience that may need your product or the expertise your content provides. Whatever their needs, partner events allow you to cast a wider net and draw in people with pain points you can address either directly or indirectly.

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Remember to announce this partnership to your existing email list to maximize your reach. Co-marketing virtual events with your partners drive awareness, increases virtual event ROI, and can boost your sales pipeline in the long term. 

Create Meaningful Interactions and Actionable Next Steps

Not every person who registers for your virtual event will be immediately convinced to opt into your email list. The goal is to get virtual event attendees to opt-in to product updates and content, ultimately growing your contact database.

You can do this by creating virtual event content and engagement opportunities that align with your customer journey. Your registrants will be at different stages of evaluating your company. You must allow them to select how they want to engage with your brand once your virtual event is over.

Different ways to grow your email list with virtual events

People are pulled in many directions every day, so to get their attention and drive action, marketers need to demonstrate value and make it easy to subscribe to future content.

A few ways to do this include:

• Including a newsletter signup on your registration confirmation page

• Helping registrants become familiar with your brand and content by providing reading suggestions leading up to your virtual event

• Aligning your virtual event presentation with a specific piece of gated content that’s shared during and after your event

• Creating a virtual event follow-up email that provides registrants with options for receiving future content, including:

                     - Opt into all company emails

                      - Opt into upcoming event announcements

                      - Opt into a monthly newsletter 

Marketers who capitalize on an attendee's limited attention span by demonstrating value and making it simple for them to choose how they want to interact with their content are able to grow their email list with engaged prospects.

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Final Takeaway

Virtual events are the perfect opportunity to introduce prospects to your brand and your company’s thought leadership. Use your registrations and attendees' limited attention strategically to convince them to opt into your content, enabling you to grow your email list with quality contacts who are more likely to convert.

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Author Bio:

Téa Liarokapi is a Senior Content Writer for Moosend, an email marketing and marketing automation platform, and an obsessive writer in general. In her free time, she tries to find new ways to stuff more books on her bookcase and content ideas — and cats — to play with.

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