Today's Digital Environment Is Changing Seminar Marketing

His results for both campaigns were actually better than expected. The mailers generated 27 registrations, or a 0.7% response rate. But his digital campaign delivered 63 household registrations (over 100 total people), costing him only $22.22 per lead—less than a quarter of the cost of his direct mail leads.

2. Advisors no longer need to experiment to perfect their campaigns.

Current digital platforms are robust and dependable, and event planners should be able to understand the outcomes before they start their campaigns. When direct mail was the most effective way to send out invitations, experimentation wasn't much of an option. Split testing usually didn't get much more complicated than trying out two competing headlines on the mailers, or maybe showing a picture of a steak on half of the invites and crab legs on the other half. This was a slow, cumbersome and expensive process, and producers didn't get much usable feedback until after each campaign was completed.

But now, digital marketers can easily test multiple elements in a campaign, all in real time. For example, they can design multiple ad groups, all employing different images, headlines, body copy, demographics or even calls to action. As soon as a campaign launches, marketers can monitor which ad sets are or are not performing well. Then, they can quickly increase ad spend to the groups that are working and reduce or even eliminate the ads that don't perform well. This allows them to adjust campaign elements and continually increase conversions while reducing costs.

As an example, getting a conversion to a retirement income planning workshop via direct mail often costs as much as $125 per household registration. Meanwhile, a similar Facebook campaign may start off with a conversion cost at around $85 and after a few days of optimization that cost often drops to as low as $30 to $40.

3. But: Should you feed your guests?

In the days of direct mail, buying dinner for seminar guests wasn't really an option. It was a necessity. Inviting guests to a free dinner and a retirement seminar was often the only way to get people interested in signing up. But now, the digital world is changing all of that. For years, baby boomers have been getting postcards and wedding style invitations mailed to them on a regular basis. They are used to seeing these types of offers and understand that the free dinner comes along with some sort of a sales presentation.

But the same does not hold true for online offers. This audience is relatively new to social media and likely a little more skeptical about the ads they are shown. They are comfortable signing up for educational events, but as soon as they're offered food, they shy away from registering. In fact, I've seen digital campaigns that offer food generally get about half as many registrations versus a similar event held at a library or small college campus. Over time, this may change. People may become more responsive to Facebook dinner seminar invitations, but for now, the educational workshop is the best way to persuade them to sign up.

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Chris Hooper is director of seminar services with M&O Marketing, Southfield, Mich. He has over 20 years of experience in event management and digital marketing.