Ever wonder why you’re getting ever-decreasing returns on your e-mail marketing efforts? Check out this post by Kevin Holland: Our Emails Are So Pretty, Our Messaging So Consistent … I Wonder Why Everybody Ignores Them? Like Kevin, there are some organization’s whose e-mails are absolutely recognizable and always deleted from my in-box before opening. Who knows what I may be missing, but in the flood of hundreds of messages I get daily, a little variety definitely stands out. A little humanity would stand out even more. When I read his examples of two events-related messages Kevin wrote in response to a commenter, my eyes automatically skimmed the first, started skimming the second and stopped as soon as it started getting a little personality.

I know I’m a data point of one, but why not test different ways of e-mailing to small pieces of your list and see what happens. It might be something good, like actually getting their attention.

It’s interesting to see the different ways hoteliers and their CVB (sorry, I mean DMO — having a hard time making the switch still) partners are marketing their wares in tight times.

On one end you have Northern Kentucky, which promotes the destination’s lack of glitz and glam with this tagline: “You won’t get the third degree when you choose Northern Kentucky.” On the other end is this Lauderdale Lux promotion of Greater Ft. Lauderdale’s high-end properties. Each is playing to its strengths, and both campaigns are pretty brilliant in their own ways.

(Thanks to Bill Geist’s Zeitgeist, where I found both links in separate posts.)

Steve Yastrow makes an interesting analogy on the TomPeters blog:

In the 2004 movie, 50 First Dates, Henry (Adam Sandler) and Lucy (Drew Barrymore) meet, have a great first date, and plan to see each other again. But the next day Lucy acts like she doesn’t know Henry. Lucy has a short-term memory loss problem, so each day is a new “first date,” in which Henry has to attempt to rekindle the relationship.

Most people think of 50 First Dates as a romantic comedy. Not me. I think it is a business movie. Isn’t this what it is like to do business with most companies?

And, I would add, isn’t this like registering for all too many conferences? You get the generic brochure, the generic Web portal, etc. — where’s the appreciation for your loyal attendance all these years? Where’s the attention paid to your needs and wants? If you ever needed a prod to get started in segmenting your prospective attendee base to personalize your offerings, especially to your returning attendees and your first-timers, consider yourself prodded.

First dates are hard enough the first time you have them. To have to go through it year after year just makes you feel like the sponsoring organization just doesn’t care. And I’m pretty sure that’s not the message you want to send.

Here are some good meeting promotion tips from Susan Nowicki on The Forum Effect. Also, check out this article by Dave Lutz for some examples of associations doing it well. Thanks to both for the good ideas!

Looking for some tips to promote your meeting? Check out these ideas from The Forum Effect. I would emphasize writer Susan Nowicky’s fifth tip: “Market your meeting aggressively with regular targeted messages to your key attendee segments.”

But I mean really target. Tell each segment (students, senior-level people, every niche your industry serves) specifically what they’ll get out of it, which sessions are there just for them, people in their segment who will be speaking, special networking events just for them, etc.

And triple-check your database sort to make sure the right message goes out to the right person. There’s nothing worse than getting a message that’s beautifully targeted…to someone who’s not remotely like you.

Is this not the best logo ever (it’s for the Internet Identity Workshop 2009)? I actually did laugh out loud when I saw it over on BoingBoing.

Don’t settle for boring, even when it comes to a conference logo. It all counts. (Sorry, I just realized the image isn’t displaying for some weird reason. If you click on the jpg, it does come up. Have to figure out what’s going on with that!)

Alli reminds us why design and presentation matter when it comes to events (and oatmeal). Content is king, but design is what gets people to the court to begin with. Especially important to think about these days when so many are having problems getting people to show up at their events. As she says:

If the content at a conference doesn’t live up to the hopes of the audience, people will tell you. But nobody will tell you that the reason they didn’t go to your conference (no matter how great the content) was that you packaged it wrong.

Good tips on how to avoid problems when marketing your meeting via the Web. Lots of good, basic advice that should keep you out of legal trouble, at the very least.

How did an event use Facebook to get 15,000 people to attend the Singapore Tattoo Show? Read all about a cool case study on using social media to market an event, brought to you by the Podcast Guys. Lots to learn from here.

Here’s a Wordle I just made of recent posts here on face2face (click on the image for enlarged view). Inspired by this Wordl created from Twitter posts about ASAE’s Great Ideas conference, I love this idea! Wouldn’t it be a great thing to put on the cover of your next conference brochure?