How can you use retargeting to increase event attendance?

1 What is retargeting and how does it work?

Retargeting is a form of online advertising that uses cookies or pixels to track the online behavior and preferences of your website visitors or email subscribers. Based on this data, you can create and show ads that are tailored to their specific interests, needs, and actions. For example, if someone visits your event landing page but does not register, you can retarget them with an ad that reminds them of the benefits of attending, offers a discount, or creates a sense of urgency.

2 Why is retargeting effective for event promotion?

Retargeting is an effective tool for event promotion because it increases brand awareness and recall, builds trust and credibility, allows you to segment and personalize your messages, and helps you optimize your budget and ROI. Retargeting keeps your event top of mind for your audience, especially if you use consistent visuals, slogans, and logos. It also shows your audience that you are a professional and reliable organizer. With retargeting, you can create different ads for different segments of your audience based on their behavior, demographics, or preferences. For example, you can retarget people who have registered but not paid with an ad that emphasizes the payment deadline or retarget people who have attended your previous events with an ad that highlights the new features or speakers of your upcoming event. Furthermore, retargeting helps you focus your ad spend on the most qualified and engaged leads and measure the effectiveness of your campaigns based on conversions, click-through rates, and cost per acquisition.

3 How to set up a retargeting campaign for your event?

To set up a retargeting campaign for your event, you need to define your goals and objectives, choose the platforms and tools that you want to use, install tracking codes or pixels on your website or email campaigns, create audience segments and lists, and design and test your ads. When defining your goals and objectives, consider what you want to achieve and how you will measure success. As for the platforms and tools, consider using social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter, display networks such as Google Ads or AdRoll, or email marketing platforms such as Mailchimp or HubSpot. Additionally, tracking codes or pixels will collect data about visitors or subscribers such as their IP address, device, location, pages visited, time spent, actions taken etc. Furthermore, create different audience segments and lists based on their data and interests. Finally, design and test ads with clear and compelling headlines, images, videos, copy, and calls to action that match your goals and objectives. Test different variations of your ads to see which ones perform better.

4 How to optimize and monitor your retargeting campaign for your event?

To optimize and monitor your retargeting campaign for your event, you need to use frequency caps and burn codes to limit the number of times and the duration that your ads are displayed to your audience segments. Additionally, you should use dynamic and interactive ads that change or update based on the data and actions of your audience segments. Finally, A/B testing and analytics are essential for measuring and improving the performance of your ads and campaigns. These tools compare and evaluate different versions of your ads and campaigns, based on metrics such as conversions, click-through rates, cost per acquisition, etc., and provide insights and recommendations for optimization.

5 How to retarget your event attendees after the event?

Retargeting can be useful for more than just increasing event attendance; it can also help to maintain and strengthen the relationship with event attendees after the event. Through retargeting, you can collect feedback and testimonials from attendees, offer value and incentives, such as e-books, videos, podcasts, webinars, courses, discounts, or free trials, and promote your next event or product. This can help you to improve your future events, showcase social proof and credibility, educate, entertain, or solve problems for your attendees, generate leads or sales, build anticipation and excitement for your next event or product, and increase loyalty or retention.