SeminarSavvy.com

Are the links you’re including in your email promotions harming your marketing efforts? Could be … even if you don’t spot any obvious problems before you send your messages.

As the resident marketing expert for Business Expert Webinars (http://www.businessexpertwebinars.com), I help speakers plot their marketing strategy, as well as dissect past marketing campaigns that didn’t perform as expected.

In preparation for a recent consultation, the client forwarded an email he had sent out to promote his upcoming webinar. When I opened it, I saw a huge problem — the links he had included were so long they took up nearly two full lines!

Not only was this almost painful to look at, it was likely causing problems for a huge portion of his audience — if the link breaks, the link becomes inactive. The only way to follow the link is to copy and paste it into your browser window … and many people don’t know to do this.

The quick fix: use Tiny URL (http://www.tinyurl.com) to shrink long and ugly links down to a manageable size. Here’s an example:

http://www.on2url.com/app/adtrack.asp?MerchantID=43243&AdID=396893

turns into http://tinyurl.com/6gnuep — much better, isn’t it?

As it turned out, it was fortunate that this particular client had sent the email to me. Because on his end, the link looked fine — it was an embedded link, so the long and ugly version wasn’t visible on his computer screen. Once I returned the email he had sent to me, he could see the problem … and then fix it.

For many professionals, a huge benefit of attending seminars is the networking they’re able to do with other participants.

If you want to leverage your audience’s desire to connect with other professionals to generate sales, however, you can’t assume that your audience will think of this benefit on their own. Make sure that your promotional materials play up this unique aspect of attending a live event.

Here are 3 ideas to get you started:

1. List networking as a special benefit of attending your event. Tell readers how many and what type of networking opportunities you’ll be coordinating (for example, extra long lunch hours).

2. Send out an advance registration list a couple of times before your seminar. Show prospects which individuals have already signed up and/or which companies are sending employees to your event.

If you receive a registration from a well-known attendee or industry expert, send out a special promotional email focusing solely on that individual. The opportunity to meet this individual might sweeten the pot enough to get some previously undecided prospects to register right away.

3. Include testimonials from past attendees who raved about the networking opportunties and quality of attendee. If you can get them to include specific results in their testimonial (“I struck a deal that put $50,000 in my pocket during the first morning’s coffee break”) … even better.