No matter how perfect your event idea may be, getting it off the ground is complicated, and the first and the last week of organizing an event are always the most stressful.
Where is the best place to hold the event? Is the venue available for the dates you want? Can you afford it? Who are the lecturers? Are they available? Can you afford them?
What about catering? Do you want plastic spoons or toothpicks? Is it okay to give people plastic spoons for a big-ticket event?
And when you’ve finally sorted out such important issues as the chair color and the texture of the 3D letters, somehow the final week has snuck up on you…
Everything is set in motion and paid for, but the number of tickets sold (or not!) is starting to keep you up at night.
A half-empty room haunts your dreams, and you start thinking about who can you gift tickets to or how many chairs to throw out so it looks more crowded in the pictures.
“It’s fine. We don’t have to break even. We will write it off as branding,” you might hear yourself saying. But in the bottom of your heart, you know that means money poured down the drain.
Because you know that what’s even better for branding is an auditorium filled to the brim and a juicy big headline on the website — SOLD OUT.
Sound like a fairy tale? Maybe, but we are on the path to do exactly that for Wonderland AI.
Read this case study to find out how we helped Wonderland AI team sell more than 50% of available tickets a whole month before the event.
THE CLIENT
Wonderland AI Summit, the most innovative Artificial Intelligence conference in Europe, will be held in Serbia for the second time in early November. The conference shows companies and individuals the importance of investing, developing technology, and furthering innovation in artificial intelligence.
Experienced international AI experts share tools, methods, and practices through lectures and workshops with participants. The event is also an opportunity for companies to get acquainted with AI startups and find partners as well as exchange ideas on how to improve existing AI tools.
The Wonderland AI Conference consists of programs divided into four sections: artificial intelligence in agriculture, artificial intelligence in health, artificial intelligence in the field of autonomous driving, and artificial intelligence in the field of financial technology.
THE PROBLEM
Using media to promote an event is a tried and tested method.
The problem with using only media to promote an event is that people are so caught up in work and daily struggles that they seldom bother to check for events — or if they do, they might simply forget about an event that caught their attention, once it’s out of sight and out of mind.
Cutting through the noise to get — and keep — people’s attention requires an approach that covers more than one channel.
One of the most effective channels is communicating directly with your target audience, and our job was to learn who they are, where to find them, and how best to reach them.
THE SOLUTION
As with any outreach campaign, the first thing we did was to build an ICP and Buyer Persona for Wonderland AI.
An ICP, or Ideal Customer Profile, allows us to identify the companies that will benefit the most from the offer and are most likely to convert. Buyer Persona refers to specific job titles and roles within those companies — the people we will be reaching out to.
Once we have these elements of the target audience profile, we can build a complete prospect list, with accounts and contacts within those accounts.
Then, working closely with Wonderland AI, we shaped the messaging. We relied on our ICP research and our extensive experience and understanding of human behavior to craft a message that would resonate with this audience.
After the content was shaped we carefully spread the communication out over several email threads, each consisting of five or six emails, so that the message would not be over-complicated or annoying.
Getting the most out of an outreach campaign means careful monitoring and adjustments. By constantly analyzing who opened and took action after reading our emails, we were able to single out warm leads and open up further communication channels with them on LinkedIn.
Contacting warm leads on LinkedIn improves results, as it lets people put a face behind an email address, which makes them more open to respond and start a conversation.
THE RESULT
Precise targeting, meticulously crafted messaging, and smart contact cadence never fail to bring us results.
In the case of Wonderland AI, we were able to achieve open rates as high as 84.6% and a conversion rate of 27% — and that was a month before the event.
Our combined approach of traditional media, personal branding, and direct communication enabled Wonderland AI to sell more than 50% of available tickets a whole month before the event!
We have no doubt they will soon put out a big juicy headline – SOLD OUT.
UPDATE:
As we predicted the event was sold out completely. Great job Wonderland AI team!
