How to make all your customers feel like VIPs

When you’re promoting events with possibly thousands of people in attendance and tens of thousands in your contact database, it can be a challenge to make your attendees feel like individuals rather than one of the crowd.

But treating your customers as real people rather than just names on a list makes their experience of the whole event so much better – and will not only increase your ticket sales but also build customer loyalty.

Even if you’re promoting an event with thousands of attendees, you can create that elusive feeling of exclusivity through your event marketing. Here’s how:

1. Group your contacts

Firstly, group your contacts together with other like-minded contacts. By segmenting your database, you can reach each group with targeted communications that are relevant to them.

There are a few ways to segment your contacts, for example by:

• Their familiarity: how well do they already know your brand or the events you hold? For example, put former attendees in one group, people who’ve engaged with your content before but haven’t attended events in another, and contacts that you’ve never interacted with before in a third.
• Their preferences: what do they really like? So, if you hold music events, maybe you have some contacts who love reggae and some that love metal.

2. Make it personal

Once your contacts are in their very own ‘VIP’ groups, you can make all your communications just that bit more personal to make them feel special. Use the information you have about your contacts – how much they’ve interacted with you in the past, what events they’ve been to, what their interests are – to create a personal feel in your event marketing.

Customise each email with your customer’s name and with content that’s valuable and relevant – based on the knowledge you have from your segmentation. So, something like… “As you’ve been to our comedy shows in the past, we think you’ll love our upcoming event…”

You can also make your social media just that extra bit more personal. If someone mentions the event on Twitter, reply and encourage discussions on Facebook among your customers. It’s all about recognition and showing you value what they say.

3. Reward loyalty

A great way to make feel people valued is to give past attendees exclusive deals or opportunities. Offer sneak previews of future events, access to exclusive content, a chance to enter a prize draw, VIP passes for the next event, or a short ticket booking period before public ticket sales begins. Then they feel like valued customers!

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If you take the time to make your customers feel special, it will pay off by driving attendance and future engagement.  Let us know if you have any tips to help make your customers feel like VIPs.