Evently Case Study: Horse & Groom and Horatia

In a new feature for the Evently blog we take a look at some of the people already using Evently and the different ways they’re taking advantage of the tools to optimise their online marketing. In this edition we’re looking at how The Horse & Groom in Shoreditch, and their sister venue The Horatia in Islington,  were using Evently’s event broadcast and email management tools to boost their profile online and keep their venues busy at the quietest time of the year.

Who?

Neil at The Horse & Groom – Shoreditch mainstay and disco pub de jour.
And the sister venue: The Horatia in Islington – classic boozer meets dirty disco with a 2am licence and one hell of a soundsystem.

What Evently tools were they using?
The Horse & Groom and their sister venue The Horatia were using Evently’s event tools; hitting all the major event listings websites to let people know about their upcoming events.

Getting Listed – A short cut to SEO for your venues

“The Evently event tools have had a great effect on getting our brands out there and giving us a real presence online”

- Neil, Horse & Groom/Horatia

For every new website that lists your venue details, your company builds a greater presence on the web. It’s free SEO – search engine optimisation, meaning people will find you on Google or Bing without you paying a search engine marketer to engineer you a good listing in natural searches.

This is exactly what happened for the Horse & Groom and Horatia, they had a strong presence online even when the Horatia website was in development and not fully live. Web presence no longer needs to be limited to a website;  with Evently the Horatia has a strong presence on search engines thanks to the event listing websites they reach, combined with easy and quick distribution on social media and targeted emails to their subscribers.

January can be the cruellest month, but not with Evently!

“Since using Evently, we had a fantastic January which can be a really hard month for venues, the venue was often full to capacity when we might have expected to be struggling instead.”

- Neil, Horse & Groom/Horatia

In fact, throughout January 2011 attendance was up by over 25% on the previous year and the amazing NYE nights they’d had (promoted through Evently, natch) were just the start of a busy new year, rather than the traditional sell-out before the quiet month ahead.

Expanding into different genres and targeting them with Evently’s emails

“Evently has given us the confidence to expand into different genres of events beyond our usual clubbing events. We’re reaching new crowds and we can target them with Evently’s emails as we continue to grow.”

- Neil, Horse & Groom/Horatia

At the Horatia they took a chance, moving away from their clubbing background and into comedy events. As you can see below, although they were new to comedy, the Evently event tools meant they could be confident that the right people knew their events were happening.

The first comedy event at the Horatia was a great success and luckily what could have disappeared as just another obscure stand-up night with minimal promotion was visible on all the major comedy guides across the capital.

Buoyed up by this success, Horatia are now also featuring live music events. As they grow, they’re collecting emails from the new clienteles of the different themed nights. These emails are saved in Evently in different contact lists to receive targeted emails about the types of events they’ve expressed an interest in. So no-one gets spammed, keeping unsubscribes low, and keeping the Horatia’s different nights busy week-in week-out.