The exciting times of apple picking, pumpkin patches and fall harvests are coming up quickly, and participating farms need a solid marketing plan to pull off a successful event.
NAFDMA, the international agritourism association, hosted a webinar to give farmers some tips on how to successfully market autumn events, with hosts Hugh McPherson, founder of Maize Quest, and Shadi Hayek, VP of sales for TicketSpice.
McPherson and Hayek introduced the “email apocalypse,” a change that various search engines (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc.) made to better control spammers sending emails to clients. These search engines declare if someone receiving your emails hasn’t interacted (opened and clicked) with any in the past 30 days, all your emails are immediately delivered to their promotions folder instead of their inbox.
Specifically, McPherson said, “if you have even one spam report per thousand [opened] emails … you’re a spammer” under these new rules. He went from having 27,000 people on his mailing list with a 30% open rate to a 4% open rate with the same exact list. That can make it difficult to promote anything.
Some ways to improve your open rate and have your emails delivered to inboxes include requiring people to double opt-in, continuously checking on your domain health and removing anyone inactive for the past 90 days from your email list. Although a longer email list may sound better in your mind, McPherson noted, “Sometimes you just want to send to the people that are opening.”
Another way to protect your domain health and improve your open rates is to diversify the email providers you use and the websites your email links bring customers to. Even if you’re using different email providers but are sending the clients to the same link/website, the domain health of that website is going to drop. Tracking which links clients click on helps you figure out what is working and see who’s getting where from what, explained McPherson.
“Based on what kind of link people are clicking from… you can have a much more seamless buying experience,” added Hayek.
McPherson and Hayek acknowledged that although money is tight for a lot of people due to inflation, consumer spending in the U.S. continues to increase. McPherson said, “People still will spend when they feel like they deserve it!”
A great marketing strategy is to use deserving language, like “You’ve earned it,” “Reward yourself” and “Make time for joy and celebration.” Also take advantage of offering discounts. Just by dropping the admission price to the event, more people will attend, and “once people are on site, their wallets are coming out,” McPherson said.
One of the best marketing strategies is to use multiple platforms. Hayek explained, “Everywhere that your customer goes, they should see you. You have to have a strategy to engage your customers everywhere that they’re at.”
Google is a very successful platform to use; Hayek observed that on average, “68% of everyone that comes [to your event] that is buying an online ticket is initially searching on Google.”
Texting (or SMS) is a very successful strategy as well, but McPherson said, “You can’t treat it like email. You cannot overdo it.”
Although SMS has a high open rate – around 98% – it also has a high opt-out rate. SMS is really successful when people are on your site at an event, because you already have their attention. Hayek explained that with certain platforms, like TicketSpice, an attendee’s phone number is often attached to the event ticket (which they opt-in to), and you can set up the account to automatically send a welcome message or promotional deals when their ticket is scanned.
Hayek recommends sending a message to attendees during an event about upgrading to a discounted season pass, as he’s found that “the likelihood that [attendees will] go to your fall festival and then come back again when they’ve bought a general admission ticket is 3%.”
McPherson likes the “boots on the ground” approach, where you do everything in your power to get more attendees at your event – enough to fill your parking lot. He believes that if you have any parking left, you should offer discounts on the admission price to get more attendees to come. At the end of the day, any person you get on your farm will be a profitable attendee.
No matter what ticketing software you use, or who runs your marketing department, Hayek believes “a custom audience needs a custom buying experience.”
by Kelsi Devolve
