Don’t keep me a secret!

Don't keep me a secret! Adrian Segar leading a workshop in Rome, ItalyDon’t keep me a secret!

For over thirty years I’ve been making clients’ conferences significantly better, for about the cost of a conference coffee break.

How? I make conferences better by dramatically increasing attendee satisfaction. Increasing attendee satisfaction increases the effectiveness of the event for all stakeholders: attendees, sponsors, and event owners. It’s a win-win-win.

I’d argue that hiring me is the most effective and cost-effective way to improve any event.

Since 1992, I’ve designed and facilitated hundreds of conferences and thousands of meetings. From small, high-level, high-stakes get-togethers to association regional and national meetings of every size. In-person, online, and hybrid. You name it, I’ve probably done it.

What do my clients think? They love my work!

I was inspired to write this post on reading Freeman‘s excellent 2024 Syndicated Survey of Event Attendees, If you haven’t already, read this survey which clearly reflects “the disconnect between what organizers provide and what attendees (and exhibitors) value most”.

Freeman’s report echoes the priorities I’ve been designing for events for decades. For example:

  • “Attendees want to connect with peers over shared challenges and specific topics.”
  • “Different attendees desire different things, but they all expect their unique needs to be met.”
  • “Substance, not celebrity…celebrity speakers will not boost registrations. Unless they’re experts in a relevant vertical, celebrities don’t drive behavior or outweigh what really matters.”
  • “Attendees have a clear desire for immersive experiences, customization, and event-enhancing technology. “
  • “Attendees get the most value from in-person learning opportunities when they incorporate demonstrations and hands-on activities.”
  • “Attendees’ most important learning element: Hands-on interaction or participatory activations.”

—Excerpts from the Winter 2024 Freeman Syndicated Survey of Event Attendees. © Freeman 2024.

Most event owners know that these expressed wants and needs are important.

But what most event owners don’t know is how to satisfy them.

That’s my job, and I have a great track record.

So, if you’re one of the thousands of people who have purchased my books or the hundreds of clients who have benefited from my meeting design and facilitation services, please don’t keep me a secret!

Get in touch, and I’ll make your conference better!

A hat tip to my friend and colleague Kristin Arnold for suggesting the title and sentiment of this post!

You’re right! (About trade show appointments.)

Reading two recent MeetingsNet articles about the value of trade show appointments reminds me of a story attributed to the wry 13th-century Sufi philosopher Nasreddin.

A woman demonstrates the American Sign Language for "You're right!"
American Sign Language for “You’re right!”

Two men who were quarreling came to Nasreddin and asked him to adjudicate their argument. The first man presented his case, and when he was done, Nasreddin exclaimed, “You’re right!” The second man shouted, “You haven’t even listened to my side of the story!” He then presented his case and when he was done, Nasreddin exclaimed again, “You’re right!”

Nasreddin’s wife, who had listened to the whole thing, remarked, “They can’t both be right.”

Nasreddin looked at his wife and exclaimed with a smile, “You’re right too!”

Yes, although the articles express seemingly very different points of view, I think they’re both right!

Desirée Knight on trade show appointments

Let’s start with Desirée Knight, senior director of meetings at the American Psychological Association (APA), who shares a pessimistic view of the future of prescheduled appointments at her association events.

MeetingsNet: Five years from now, what won’t we be doing on the trade-show floor that we’re doing today?

Knight: We will not be doing appointments on the trade-show floor. We must rethink this concept and find new approaches to customer engagement. This will require the industry to develop new approaches to KPIs and different measurement tools. In the end, we are responsible for creating engaging events for our stakeholders. Setting appointments within the trade-show environment is not engaging and, quite frankly, for some, not a good use of time. Creating collaborative spaces with AI gadgets or open forums to discuss current trends and issues will help vendors and buyers reset their views on developing business. The next generation of trade-show attendees are looking for engaging content and not just 15-minute appointments.
Two Minutes with Desirée Knight, CAE, CMP, DES • MeetingsNet, Mar 07, 2023

Carina Bauer’s point of view

Two weeks later, Carina Bauer, CEO of the IMEX Group, parent company to two leading trade shows in the business events industry, defended the value of trade show appointments:

“Let’s start with trade shows essentially being marketplaces (they’ve performed this role for hundreds of years) where the primary motivation for showing up is to do business. When planned and managed carefully, appointments are an efficient use of everyone’s time. A prescheduled appointment tells a business-hungry exhibitor that a motivated buyer is interested in them. A pre-agreed appointment allows time for sound preparation on both sides of the deal—a detailed RFP is often met by an exhibitor who’s done in-depth and detailed research. That instantly becomes an ROI win-win.

ROI and ROE (return on experience) are clearly now more important than ever, and buyers are more discerning about which events they attend. However, our experience shows that once committed, 21st-century planners don’t want to leave their schedules to chance. In fact, what they want—demand—is flexible scheduling and to be treated with respect, e.g. no forced matchmaking or quotas. That means trusting them to do business; encouraging them to make appointments when they have firm business to place but also valuing their time spent in other ways such as learning or networking.”
In Defense of Buyer-Seller Appointments on the Trade-Show Floor by Carina Bauer • MeetingsNet, Mar 20, 2023

So, who’s right?

Associations’ needs vary

First of all, it’s important to note that Desirée is talking about the specific needs of her association. I have designed and facilitated events for hundreds of associations, and seen a large variation in the importance and positioning of trade shows at their meetings. Some associations do not even want a trade show component, while for others it’s a primary draw for members. Though I don’t know the specific objectives of the APA, reading between the lines gives the impression that the association wants its events to focus primarily on education and connection between participants, rather than creating and supporting supplier relationships.

Trade show organizers have a wider perspective

Second, it’s clear that Carina is coming from a wider perspective than that of an association meeting director. IMEX trade shows act as a marketplace for meeting industry suppliers and planners. Planners choose to attend because they see value in the convenience and efficiency of shopping for services and venues at one event. The ongoing popularity of IMEX trade shows, despite the significant impact of COVID, shows that trade show appointments meet genuine needs of both planners and suppliers.

Money, money, money

Finally, trade shows are the public face of a reality that few in the meeting industry discuss publicly. (It’s not mentioned in either of these articles, though it often influences decisions made by planners, suppliers, and trade show organizers.) The reality is that trade shows involve significant amounts of money. In many cases, they are the biggest event revenue sources for associations and the largest expense for participating suppliers. Some associations derive the bulk of their operating budget from trade show receipts and can charge low, sometimes no, fees to attendees. On the other side, the selling opportunities supplied by trade show appointments are perhaps the most compelling reason for suppliers to pay high fees to exhibit.

If APA (or any association) eliminates trade show appointments, they may see reduced revenue from suppliers that will need to be made up in some other area. (For example, by increasing participant fees to attend.) This is an issue that is discussed extensively internally by both:

  • Associations that are trying to optimize member satisfaction without sacrificing revenue; and
  • Suppliers that have to determine the value of exhibiting with or without secured and prescheduled appointments with potential or existing customers.

You’re both right!

Desirée and Carina are both right about the value of trade show appointments. The APA plans to move away from appointments, replacing them with increased opportunities for suppliers and participants to connect and learn in open forums that involve both groups. That’s what they and their members want. Meanwhile, IMEX has strong evidence that many association planners find trade show appointments valuable and are happy to attend them, especially with the sweetener of low or no attendance fees (and sometimes even subsidized travel and accommodations).

While trade show appointments may lead to tensions between the needs of suppliers and association members at meetings, it’s clear that they work for many though not all associations.

Sometimes, despite disagreement, everyone’s right!

Animated gif attribution: Clip from Learn ASL: Right, wrong, and more in American Sign Language for beginners

Are NFTs the future of event marketing?

NFTs event marketing: photograph of a snake-oil salesman sitting at the front of a "wild-west" stagecoach covered with advertisementsThe TLDR version: in my opinion, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are not the future of event marketing. Read on to learn why.

Introduction

This post was prompted by a recent conversation in the private EventProfs Mastermind for Event Planners Facebook group. [You’ll need to be a member to read it.] Entrepreneur hustler Gary Vaynerchuk has launched a novel way to sell access to his future conferences and services: VeeFriends.

Mr. Vee is using a conventional reverse Dutch auction to sell 10,255 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that act like traditional tickets for events and services. NFTs are data stored in a digital ledger, aka blockchain, that cryptographically certify a digital asset to be unique.

Let’s be clear that digital assets linked to their NFT owners are not private. Anyone can view or make a copy of the digital asset. For example, anyone can view or download Beeple’s “The First 5000 Days” artwork, the NFT for which sold for $69.3 million on March 11, 2021.


The sole advantage of “owning” an NFT, then, is that you can prove to others you own it.

In addition, NFTs are typically purchased with cryptocurrency, adding an extra layer of complexity (at least for most of us) to the sales process.

What are the advantages of event marketing using NFTs?

Using NFTs to market access to events has a few, in my view dubious, advantages.

NFTs are flashy and hot

We already have perfectly good ways to buy and bid for things we want. Perhaps you’ve heard of “money”, and “auctions”? However, Mr. Vee is jazzing up his marketing with cryptocurrency and NFTs, and this has generated great publicity for him.

NFTs are (hopefully) hard to forge

Due to the way blockchain works, it’s thought to be hard to forge ownership of an NFT (though that hasn’t stopped people from trying). From the event marketing perspective, that means that using NFTs may make it harder to fake an entry credential or service access than when using conventional ticket security. But I’m not sure this is a big deal, except perhaps for very high-security events.

NFTs can provide control over the resale of event purchases

Like regular tickets, NFTs can be set to expire at a future date. You can also resell NFTs on NFT marketplaces. The original issuer of the NFT can keep track of resales and, if desired, extract a fee on resale. (For example, Mr. Vee’s NFTs can be resold, and Mr. Vee receives an additional 10% “royalty” when this occurs.) NFT issuers probably see this as an advantage, while resellers and repurchasers probably don’t.

What are the disadvantages of event marketing using NFTs?

Sustainability

Ethically, the biggest strike against using NFTs is that they are an incredibly energy-wasteful technology. NFT transactions involve minting, bidding, selling, and transferring a digital token. Because of the energy-intensive processes that blockchain uses, the transactions involved in creating and selling a single NFT consume large amounts of electricity, with associated carbon emissions.

For example:

There are arguments about how to accurately calculate the energy and climate effects of NFTs (and cryptocurrencies in general—bitcoin alone already consumes ~0.6% of global electricity consumption). In addition, people have proposed new crypto approaches to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. Nevertheless, using NFTs to replace far simpler and less energy-wasteful traditional methods of proving ownership is hard to justify in the face of humankind’s climate emergency.

Over the past ten years, the meeting industry has become increasingly aware of the global effects of in-person meetings on energy and resource consumption. We need to continue to do our part by eschewing new, unnecessary ways to consume energy and emit carbon.

No added value to purchasers over existing channels

By incorporating NFTs into his business model, Mr. Vee adds nothing of value to what he’s doing, which is selling access to his conferences and person and networking with other fans.

Yes, Mr. Vee gets publicity and additional NFT resale income. And I’m sure his fans will suck it right up.

That’s great for him. But I see no upside for buyers.

Added, unnecessary, complexity

Purchasing NFTs requires the involvement of blockchain, and access to cryptocurrencies (currently, usually Ethereum).

Here’s what you have to do to purchase one of Mr Vee’s NFTs!

I’d prefer to use my credit card.

Conclusions

Last week, the value of most cryptocurrencies dropped ~10% in one day.

You may think I’ve been harsh on Mr. Vee’s enthusiasm for NFTs for event marketing. There are some who are harsher. For example, the well-known author Charlie Stross (I’m a fan) said:

“And about NFTs, the less said the better. Grift, 100% grift, and exploitation of artists as well. Oh, and it appears to be mostly used for money laundering. So fuck off and die if you own any, and especially if you thought pirating some of my work and turning it into NFTs would be a good way to milk the gullible.”
Charlie Stross, Because I am bored …
(I recommend reading the whole article.)

And I haven’t the time or energy to go into what many believe are fundamental problems using cryptocurrency as money (e.g. 1, 23).

Anyway.

These are my reasons why NFTs are not the future of event marketing. I’d love to hear why I’m wrong, or any other comments you’d like to share below!

My new book Event Crowdsourcing will be released this Fall

[Update] Now released! Purchase here!

"Event Crowdsourcing" release this Fall
Event Crowdsourcing: Creating Meetings People Actually Want and Need

I’m happy to announce that my third book Event Crowdsourcing will be released this Fall. It covers a fundamental yet neglected topic: creating meetings people actually want and need.

My research has shown that over half the sessions offered at traditional preplanned conferences are not what attendees actually want! Event crowdsourcing allows you to create meetings where attendees want and need every session.

Who should buy this book?

    • Are you a meeting planner/designer who wants to create the best possible meetings for your clients? Then you need this book!
    • Are you a presenter who knows the importance of meeting the wants and needs of your audience? Session crowdsourcing ensures that your sessions will reflect the real-time needs of those who attend.
    • Are you a conference stakeholder eager to grow an event by making it the very best it can be? When attendees are enthusiastic about your event because it meets their wants and needs, they recommend your event to their peers and return year after year. As a result, your event grows, continually adapting to the changing desires of your participants, and your event and organization communities strengthen over time.
    • Are you an attendee who tires of events full of irrelevant pre-planned sessions? Event crowdsourcing ensures that you will be enthusiastic about the content and value of events and sessions.

Read the rest of this entry »

How to trash your brand

Photograph: An American Airlines flight attendant pitches a credit card on a full plane.

American Airlines just provided a great example of how to trash your brand. At this point, if I could completely avoid flying American Airlines I would. Not because of the airline’s mediocre rankings in on-time arrivals, lost baggage, fees, and customer satisfaction. After all, there are some airlines that are even worse. (Spirit, I’m looking at you.)

No, it’s their infuriating habit of pitching credit cards to passengers on every flight. For example, while I was trying to sleep on the red-eye I took last week.

I find the two- to three-minute pitches really annoying. We are literally a captive audience, strapped into our seats with nowhere to escape.

To add insult to injury, The Points Guy reports that many of the claims made for the credit card are misleading or simply incorrect.

What the airline says

According to American Airlines spokesperson, Sunny Rodriguez: “We have found that in-flight is a great time to talk with our customers about airline credit cards.”

Actually, Sunny, you’re not talking with your customers, you’re talking at them. There’s a big difference.

Notice that this justification is 100% about what’s good for American Airlines. Not what’s good for its customers, as the following sample of customer complaints illustrates:

Why does American Airlines do this?

Besides annoying the heck out of me, I’m at a loss to understand how this is a good business decision.
—Is the revenue they receive when some hapless passenger signs up a significant boost to their bottom line?

—Are flight attendants so eager to supplement their salaries (apparently, they get ~$50 for every new customer) that they beg the airline to add extra work to their flight duties?

—And, most importantly, does American Airlines think that pitching their credit card on every flight to captive passengers improves their brand?

After all, this survey found that over 90% of airline passengers said they’d never apply for a credit card in flight. (And, of course, there are those who have already got one—yet still have to put up with the same spiel on every subsequent trip!)

A creative alternative

Even if American Airlines truly believe that hawking credit cards to a captive audience is a good thing, they don’t have to do it in a way that annoys almost everyone on the airplane. Edward Pizzarello notes that United Airlines also pitches cards on their flights, using a classic marketing technique that is far less intrusive and, I suspect, far more effective.

Flight attendants walk through the cabin handing out free boxes of mints printed with a code for a United Airlines card offer. Yes, the classic giveaway, goodwill marketing approach! Passengers are free to ignore the advertisement and, regardless, receive a small gift. Pizzarello concludes: “Mints versus speeches?  I’ll take the mints.”

Can American Airlines learn?

It amazes me that AA doesn’t realize (or doesn’t care) that customers are turned off by brands that spray unwanted pitches on trapped consumers.

Frankly, I’m pessimistic that American Airlines can change the culture that leads to this kind of clueless marketing.

A final piece of evidence: the American Airlines pitch for paying more for seats that are as roomy as those they provided standard five years ago.

I call it “The seat I used to have in Economy.”

Image attribution: Quartzy

Another triumph of automated marketing!

automated marketing: A photograph of a damaged catalytic converter attached with a chain to a car's rear bumper. Image attribution: Flickr Hapless automated marketing abounds. Here’s an email I received this morning:

Subject:  Love Your Content (Collaboration Proposal)
“My name is RJ, I am the main editor at [a website about car care].

I just wanted to send you a quick email to let you know that we recently released a comprehensive blog post on “How Much!? Replacing A Catalytic Converter”.

While browsing your site, I noticed this page
https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/facilitating-change/2014/09/a-caveat-on-working-with-human-catalysts.

I believe our piece would be a great addition to your page.”

RJ “believes” his/her post would be “a great addition” to this post:

 

I am receiving more and more hapless automated marketing efforts like this: no careful thought, no subtlety, no serious attempt to check that the target might be relevant to the pitch.

Just spray and pray.

Perhaps some “marketer” thought that instead of just scraping page titles that mentioned the phrase “catalytic converter” (which might make more sense) they could increase the volume of useless mass emails (and extract more money from their client?) by expanding their target search to anyone who mentions the phrase anywhere on the page.

The only reason my post mentions “catalytic converter” is as an example of what the word “catalyst” means. Otherwise, it has as much in common with RJ’s content as a toothbrush has with a lunar eclipse.

Compare this waste of time and resources with an example of marketing done right.

Experienced and respected marketers have told me that expanding your email list is crucial to getting your message across, and I believe them.

But finding and/or creating the right email list are clearly crucial too, and every misdirected pitch I get like this one gives good marketers a black eye.

Please stop it guys!

Image attribution: Flickr user pnglife

How to accidentally write a popular blog post

write a popular blog post: a screenshot of a Google search for "delete mail". It shows an article I wrote at the top of the list of 127 million results.I accidentally wrote a blog post that receives more than a million page views every year. For proof, type “delete mail” into Google. My post How to delete ALL mail messages from iPhone/iPad in one step is #1 of the 127+ million results [as of 2017].

How to accidentally write a popular blog post? Actually, I’ve accidentally written several popular posts, and I’ve finally figured out what happened. Want to know what I’ve learned, so you can deliberately write popular posts? Read on!

First, check out a couple more of my popular posts [as of 2017].

  1. Google “iPad plan transfer“. Of the 17+ million results, How to move an unlimited AT&T data plan to a new iPad ranks #2 — right behind Apple’s official support article on this topic.
  2. Google “http error wordpress“. Even though my post How to solve the infuriating HTTP error when uploading images or videos to WordPress is only a few months old, it ranks #7 of the 8+ million results. (And it’s moving up the page!)

Surprisingly, I didn’t write these posts to get lots of page views. Here’s what happened. I wrote these posts because I discovered good answers for problems that were bugging me and wanted to share my solutions with the world. What I didn’t realize was that many other people were also having these problems and, while looking for good answers, found my posts. Google did its magic…and the rest is history!

So I’m going to share what I’ve accidentally learned about how to write popular blog posts. While celebrity dramas, heartrending stories, and clickbait content are always going to be big draws, anyone who has solved a common tricky problem can use the following process to write a popular blog post.

First: Choose a problem you’ve encountered that drives you crazy

Choose a problem you’ve encountered that drives you crazy, either because the answer:

  • Isn’t on the internet; or
  • There are articles on how to fix the problem, but none of them are helpful, clear, and definitive.

For example, in January 2014 I got tired of deleting emails from my iPhone one at a time. Surely, I thought, there must be some way to delete all emails at once. I spent an hour searching for a solution and, buried amongst numerous complaints that Apple was so [expletive deleted] unreasonable, found a completely unintuitive method that was somewhat poorly explained. I tried it and it worked. So I wrote up a cleaner version of the process (with full attribution to the original poster). That’s how my most popular “delete mail” post came into being.

Remember this. Just about every time you find a solution on the internet, you end up on a web page that’s highly ranked for that problem. For example, Googling “diy treadmill desk” takes you to “How To Build A Treadmill Desk For Under $20” (on a lifestyle blogger’s site). Googling “fix broken dishwasher” gives you “How To Fix Broken Dishwasher” (a dishwasher parts commercial site that contains useful information for diagnosing dishwasher problems). In my experience, Google is pretty good at discovering and highly ranking web pages that contain genuinely useful information. It may take a few months for the Googleverse to recognize quality, but I’ll bet on quality over tortuous SEO machinations any time. Find and solve a problem that drives people crazy — and the post that people flock to could be yours.

Second: Figure out how to definitively solve the problem (best). Or at least solve it far better than any other “solution” you can find (still useful)

OK, this can be tricky. Finding a definitive or best solution may take a while.

I purchased the original Apple iPad from AT&T the day it shipped. AT&T promised an unlimited AT&T cellular data access plan for the sum of $29.99/month. Within 30 days, AT&T reneged on this promise and discontinued all unlimited data plans, but said that people like me could keep their unlimited plans as long as they were never canceled.

So when it became time to upgrade my original iPad I wanted to transfer my unlimited data plan to my newer iPad 3.

I quickly discovered that AT&T did [and still does] not make this process easy. Searching the internet again turned up multiple complaints and pleas for help, but did not provide any useful information on what I should do. It took me several hours of numerous calls and research, to discover out how to transfer the plan. Since the resulting solution took about ten minutes, I thought I’d share what I had learned so that other people wouldn’t have to go through the same thing.

It turns out that AT&T sold about a million of the original iPads, and some sizable fraction of these buyers continue to buy newer iPads and want to keep their unlimited data plans (still $29.99/month!) According to Google, my blog post still remains [as of 2017] the definitive resource for a successful upgrade.

Third: Write up how you solved the problem as clearly as possible

Having found how to quickly transfer my iPad data plan, I documented the steps as simply and clearly as possible. I had gone through several blind alleys during my solution exploration. So I was careful to strip them out and provide an accurate set of instructions with no errors or ambiguity. When a new iPhone or iPad is released — and also, amusingly, at the start of every year when owners make new year resolutions to clear up all the emails on their iDevice — my post receives a swell of interest, though it has active readers at every moment.

To ensure that the post remains an accurate solution, I’ve made a few minor updates when Apple changes things or someone adds a helpful comment.

Fourth: Add a blog title that clearly describes the problem you’ve solved

I suggest that your title starts with the phrase “How to”. Make sure that the products or platforms that the solution covers are included in the title. I’m not an expert at titling for maximum SEO, but these post titles seem to have done the trick:

1. How to delete ALL mail messages from iPhone/iPad in one step
2. How to move an unlimited AT&T data plan to a new iPad
3. How to solve the infuriating HTTP error when uploading images or videos to WordPress

Fifth (optional, but recommended): Look for other posts on the problem and add comments pointing to your solution

There are many “solutions” to the http WordPress image uploading issue, but they all describe things to try that may solve the problem. You can spend hours trying them out, often without success. Since I’d found a foolproof way to upload the images, I added comments to some of the top Google results. I shared I had found a solution that works and included a link to my post. I have already received some responses from the authors of these posts, thanking me, and in one case pinning my comment to the top of the comment list.

Spending a little time doing this — being sure to use respectful “trying to help” phrasing — may well help the popularity of your blog post to rise.

That’s it!

I hope this post has helped you to think about ways for you to write popular blog posts too. As always, please feel free to add improvements and suggestions in the comments below. And if you get to write a popular blog post as a result of this post, please let us know!

Is paid influencer marketing ethical in the event industry?

paid influencer marketing: an illustration of a human silhouette flanked by a heart and a dollar sign

Is paid influencer marketing ethical in the meeting industry?

Paid influencer marketing is spreading to the event industry, and I doubt that it’s an ethical practice.

I receive a voice mail

Last week I received the following voice mail (identifying details bleeped; transcript below.)

Hi Adrian, my name is _____, I work for an influence marketing agency _____, and I’m reaching out to you this afternoon about an opportunity with _____, who is one of our clients, and I know you are an influencer in the meeting/event/conference planning sphere which is the focus of this campaign with _____  and we’re just hoping to have you involved in this campaign: involves a blog post, some social posting, hopefully a visit to the property with a bit of filming. If you’re interested in more details I would love to chat with you; my phone number is _____. Thanks, and looking forward to talking to you soon; bye bye.”

I quickly learned that the agency called other event professionals with the same pitch. One of them, whom I’ll call InfluentialEventProf, forwarded me an email with more details of how the “opportunity” would work (identifying details replaced with generic terms):

An email pitch

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: 9/8/2016
Subj: Paid Campaign Opportunity: Complimentary Stay at Property Z

Hi InfluentialEventProf,

Hope this note finds you very well! Brand X’s Property in Somewhere, USA is a client of ours, and I am working on an influencer campaign to help promote Property Z’s event spaces as ideal venues for conferences and corporate meetings. Brand X would love to have you–a known industry expert on event/meeting planning–involved in this campaign!

We are inviting you to come for a complimentary stay to experience Property Z during a major Industry Sector S conference during TheseDates. Brand X would like you to review the visit and conference experience on your company’s blog and promote Property Z on social media. To give you a general idea of the campaign’s scope, here are some details regarding the influencer package and campaign components:

Influencer package:

One or two (1-2) complimentary nights at Property Z (dependent on your availability)

One (1) complimentary breakfast

One (1) complimentary dinner

$500 compensation

Complimentary parking

Campaign components:

One (1) post-stay blog post highlighting the Property Z as a venue for corporate conferences/meetings/events. Ideally, this blog post would be published both on your company’s blog and on your Linkedin page.

Two (2) real-time Twitter photo posts during your stay

Two (2) post-stay Twitter photo posts

(Use the hashtags of {3 PropertyZHashtags}, and any Property Z social channel handles on all relevant content.)

Would you be interested in participating? If so, I can send you more detailed information regarding these campaign components.

We are really hoping to work with you!

All the best,

YYY

Paid influencer marketing

This is classic paid influencer marketing via social media, a rapidly growing marketing trend since 2014. Celebrities receive big bucks to casually introduce positive experiences of brands into their social media feeds. Now sponsors ask event industry influencers to do the same thing.

Will Brand X require all resulting social media posts by InfluentialEventProf to include the word “Sponsored”? (Does “Sponsored” even fit into the resulting tweets?) Will the post-stay blog post include the information that Brand X  paid for the stay and meals and that Brand X paid the InfluentialEventProf a fee?

Even if InfluentialEventProf provides all this information, there is plenty of research that shows that such paid marketing biases influencers to be more positive about their review than they would have been otherwise. (See, for example: High bias found in Amazon reviews of low-cost or free samples, where the provision of free or low-cost products boosted ratings from the 54th percentile to the 94th percentile!)

So, is paid influencer marketing ethical?

I think such practices are ethically questionable. The CMP Standards of Ethical Conduct Statement and Policy includes the pledge “Never use my position for undue personal gain and to promptly disclose to appropriate parties all potential and actual conflicts of interest“, and I’d argue that what is being offered here is “undue personal gain”. In addition, any employee event professional should review their employer’s ethics policy. And consider these questions to0:

  • “In what way could you justify participation to your employer?”
  • “In what way could you justify participation to your clients?”
  • “Are there ways that this participation could influence site selection?”

What do you think?

[My thanks to InfluentialEventProf for permission given to reproduce the above email, and for suggestions that improved this post.]

Paperback versus ebook popularity over time

Paperback versus ebook popularity over timeMy book Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love has now been available for over five years in both paperback and ebook versions and is still selling well. I thought it might be of interest to share how the proportion of paperback versus ebook sales has changed over time. The following figures include both indirect (mainly Amazon) and direct (my web store) sales.

As you can see from the above graph, paperbacks were, on average, 82%, of sales when the book was published in 2009. Although there’s significant variation from month to month, due mainly to bulk sales of one format or the other, the five-year trendline shows that by March 2015, the most recent month for which I have full indirect sales figures, paperback book sales dropped to just over 60% of all sales.

The paperback costs $27.95 (Amazon) or $26.00 (from me directly), and the ebook format costs $11.00 (only from me). I haven’t changed any prices over the years, though Amazon plays tricks with the paperback pricing from time to time. These pricing levels provide me with approximately the same income per copy for direct sales, regardless of the format.

One factor that affects the quantity of new paperback sales is that, these days, there are usually a few used copies of the paperback available on Amazon for a few dollars under the new price. Sales of used copies reduce new copy sales. On the other hand, I expect some copies of the ebook get shared too.

An additional trend I am noting for my website sales is that combination sales (both ebook and paperback versions of the same book) have been increasing over the last year. I offer a discount when people buy both formats simultaneously. Consider this if you are selling your books yourself.

Conclusions

  • People still like paperbacks! Even though the ebook is 40% of the price of the paperback, I’m still selling more paperbacks than ebooks.
  • The ebook format is becoming more popular over time. If, and that’s a big if, the trend continues, both formats will become equally popular sometime in 2017. Interestingly, my new book The Power of Participation: Creating Conferences That Deliver Learning, Connection, Engagement, and Action which has only been available for three months has sold about equal numbers of each format to date.
  • Don’t read too much into my experience. Conferences That Work is non-fiction, priced higher than most ebooks, and is only available as an ebook directly from me, so there’s no comparable Amazon sales channel. Your mileage may vary.

Are you an author with book format sales history of your own? Feel free to share your experience in the comments below!