“Let me check my calendar.”
“Looks like I have 30 minutes next Wednesday, does that work for you?”
“OMG my calendar is crazy this week.”
If these phrases sound familiar, it should be no surprise to hear that corporate America runs on calendars. Already an important part of a professional’s workday, maintaining digital calendars became imperative to remote work.
Opus Creative learned early on during the Dell Technologies World 2020 digital campaign that the increased relevance of the calendar must be leveraged to attract and resonate with prospective attendees.
“If it’s not on their calendar, people won’t remember to attend,” said Todd McIlhenny, Business Director at Opus Creative. “If the number one thing we could convince people to do was either register or add the event to their calendar, it was the latter for sure.”
Rather than convincing attendees to travel to Dell Technologies World through logistical help, letters to their bosses, ticket sales, and other tactics, Opus Creative opted for a simpler approach that would resonate with remote workers. The primary Call to Action (CTA) morphed from “Register Now” to “Add to Calendar” – which effectively changed the strategy of the entire campaign.
One downside to digital events is that retention rate – in other words, how many people actually show up – is typically abysmal. Industry-wide, only 54% of virtual event registrants actually attend the event, and that rate can be even smaller for large productions like Dell Technologies World. The digital event spanned sixteen hours over two days – much longer and in-depth than your average webinar.
That’s why Opus Creative began to focus on messages to individuals rather than the broader prospect pool. By segmenting audiences and presenting them with specific recommendations for breakout sessions and keynote speakers, it helped break up the large event into “meeting-sized” portions.
Nobody expected attendees to sit through a full day. So rather than highlight the entire event, only the most relevant sections were pushed to a more precise audience. All segmented content recommendations ended with a simple CTA: “Add To Calendar.”
It worked.
“Add to Calendar” engagement resulted in about 40% of all newsletter clicks, and led to 56,000 registrations. Perhaps most importantly, retention rate was an astounding 87% – much higher than the internal goal set for the team.
“(The retention rate) was really great, and we partly attribute it to Add to Calendar,” Todd said. “Not only did they attend, but they attended the sessions that they signed up for.”
Read more in this Digital Event series: