SeminarSavvy.com

Satisfaction guarantees are essential to convincing uncertain prospects to register for your event. It’s how you ease their fears about making a mistake in signing up for your seminar.

There are several types of guarantees you can offer. Which do you feel most comfortable with?

1. Lifetime guarantee: if participants become dissatisfied with their attendance at the seminar at any point, either at the event or even months later when they’re using the information, you’ll give them a total refund of their registration fee. Add even more power to your guarantee by also giving them a gift or cash bonus to compensate them for their trouble.

2. Total satisfaction or 100% money back with a time limit, say 30 to 90 days. You might require that attendees prove that they honestly tried implementing the information taught in the seminar. Attendees get to keep their seminar materials.
3. Total satisfaction or 100% money back, no questions asked. Prospects must speak up and ask for their money back by the end of the event. You may want to let them keep their materials, but you could require that they turn them in.

4. Partial attendance with a total-satisfaction guarantee. Participants can attend part of the event (e.g., the first morning or the first day). Then, if they’re not satisfied, they can turn their materials in at the registration table for a full refund.

5. Total satisfaction or you offer a partial refund. You withhold either a percentage or a specific dollar amount to cover your meeting room costs. You can use this with any of the guarantees above, though it’s more common with #3 and #4.

The stronger your guarantee, the better. It shows that you are 100 percent confident about the quality of your content and seminar. The more “weasel clauses” you put in — such as making people prove they’ve used the materials — the more it appears that you have something to hide and are not sincere about your offer. The most successful seminar marketers offer total satisfaction guarantees.

There is a chance that strengthening your guarantee will increase the number of refund requests that you get. If that happens, go back and analyze your numbers. What you’ll probably find is that although more people requested refunds, the stronger guarantee also helped you secure significantly more registrations. Even after you honor all refund requests, you’ll still have a larger net profit with the stronger guarantee.

Also recognize that the longer your guarantee is (e.g., a 30-day guarantee vs. a guarantee that expires the minute your seminar ends), the less likely it is to be invoked. If you tell attendees that they have to let you know by lunchtime whether they want their money back, they’ll feel pressured to make a decision about requesting a refund. If they have just the tiniest shred of dissatisfaction, the chances that they’ll ask for their money back will skyrocket. Extending your guarantee to 30, 60, 90 or even 365 days after the event takes the time pressure off of them. It also shows that you have their best interests at heart, because you want to give them a chance to put their skills to the test before they make the “final” buying decision.

Convincing busy, budget-conscious people to invest their time and money to attend your seminar can be a challenge. That is why you should sit up and pay attention when a prospective attendee indicates even the tiniest bit of interest in your event. Seminar leads are golden.

Yet many seminar promoters treat their leads casually. They will field phone calls and emails from prospects who have questions, yet they will not keep records about who has called in. They will deliver free preview seminars, but assume that prospects who leave without registering aren’t interested. They let the sale go, assuming that prospects will call back on their own if they are really interested in participating.

If this sounds like you, it is time to change. Anyone who has summoned enough energy to get in touch with you to ask questions about your event if far more qualified as a prospect than the average person on your list. These individuals have indicated some level of interest in your material. Therefore, they deserve more attention when it is time to market your seminar or workshop.

Here are 5 tips to increase seminar registrations by improving your follow-up:

1. Capture as much contact information about the prospect as possible. This includes first and last name, phone number, email address, company and mailing address. The more information you gather, the more flexibility you will have when choosing how to follow up. At a minimum, get a first name and phone number or first name and email. This will allow you at least make a follow-up courtesy call or send a reminder email.
2. Do something with the information! In other words, create a list of people who are interested in the event, so that you may easily identify and follow up with them.

   Note: I don’t recommend adding email addresses to your broadcast list without explicit permission. If you want to contact prospects via email, do privately from your desktop. Feel free to offer them the opportunity to opt-in to your list. For example, you could tell them about a free preview teleseminar you are hosting to promote your next seminar, and provide the link where they could get full details about your event.

3. Pick up the phone. Taking the time to call someone can quickly strengthen your relationship, simply because so few companies use the telephone to reach their clients. But let me be clear: you do not need to engage in “telemarketing.” You don’t need to have a script. You don’t need to be pushy. You don’t need to badger prospects. You don’t need to make impersonal, automated calls. Instead, make courtesy calls. Follow up to see if the prospects who contacted you with questions need any additional information or if they want to reserve a seat. It’s short, sweet and can make a powerful difference.
4. Hook them online. Incorporate a mechanism on your website to gather names and email addresses of people who are tentatively interested in your event and want to learn more. When promoting live events, the best tool to use for this purpose is a free teleseminar or webinar, which can be delivered live or prerecorded and made available on demand.
5. Automate your follow up. Once people have opted in to your list, follow up via email. Send a series of messages via autoresponder, so that they continue to receive marketing “touches” about your event, but you don’t have to do the work yourself. Set it up and let technology take care of the rest.

Warm leads offer a significant opportunity for improvement for most seminar promoters. If they are interested enough to reach out to learn more about your event, they are closer to buying from you than the average person on your list. Invest the extra time, money and resources to follow up regularly with this motivated group, and watch your registrations and revenue climb.

Experienced seminar promoters know that the number of registrations that come in each day generally increases as the seminar draws closer. While you might receive only one registration per day four weeks before your seminar, you could see 20 registrations per day the last week before your event.

The reason for this trend, by and large, is prospects’ procrastination. Like you, your prospective seminar attendees are busy. They might be interested in attending your event, but if there is no compelling reason to sign up in the moment, they will put your promotions aside (or print a copy of your web page) for later review. After all, they have fires to put out right now, and your seminar does not take place for weeks.

Here are three ways to overcome your prospects’ natural tendency to put off making a decision about whether to attend your seminar:

1. Use deadlines. The starting date of your seminar is a prime example of the motivational power provided by deadlines. As the seminar gets closer, registrations increase because prospects are finally getting around to reviewing your promotions and making a decision. And they finally sit down to review your materials because they know they have to. If they do not, they will miss your event, plain and simple.

   A common, proven way to use deadlines is to offer a tuition discount for early bird registrants. If you do not want to offer a discount, try offering one or more additional bonuses instead. For example, give early registrants a copy of your latest book or access to a monthly coaching group that you run.

2. Increase the frequency of your communication around deadlines. Don’t set a deadline and then forget to remind prospects about them. Remember, your prospects are busy. They probably are not writing notes in their calendars to jog their memory, so it is up to you to prod them into action.

   Increasing the frequency and quantity of your promotions right before a deadline raises awareness that something urgent is happening. As much as we like to think that our prospects eagerly read every word of every promotion, the reality is that most of our promotions end up unread in the trash. Sending a few more messages before a deadline increases the chances that prospects will read your messages (“Hmmm, why does Jenny keep emailing me. Maybe I should read this email….”). Each reminder also becomes an opportunity to give a prospect the final nudge he or she needs to take action.

3. Make courtesy calls. I learned early in my seminar marketing career that some prospects are so busy that they will never get around to reviewing promotional materials. Courtesy calls can be an effective way to support these clients, who otherwise might miss important deadlines or perhaps miss your event altogether. If you are lucky enough to get your prospects on the phone, be prepared to take the registration.

Improving your marketing copy and making irresistible offers will increase the number of prospects who will sign up for your seminar right away. But a certain portion of your audience will always procrastinate. Use these three ideas to gently move them toward making the decision to register for your seminar.

When promoting live seminars, as well as virtual events such as teleseminars and webinars, it’s critical to continue promoting your event right up until you start delivering content. Seminar producers who track their sales typically see a dramatic increase in their registrations in the days leading up to an event. For teleseminars and webinars, the big increase is seen in the final few days before the event. If offering a live event that lasts a full day or more, the increase usually happens in the last two weeks.

But to enjoy the big increase and maximize your registrations, you have to stay in front of your prospects. Many promoters give up too soon, pulling the plug on their events three, four and sometimes more weeks out. They do so out of the fear of being stuck with food and beverage costs, as well as paying for unused sleeping rooms, for an event that won’t happen. In fact, they may be canceling their event right around the time that many prospects are getting around to evaluating whether to attend.

Email is an excellent and affordable way to keep prospects updated about your event. But some promoters are wary about using this tool too often, for fear of irritating their prospects. If you’re concerned that you are emailing your list too often, consider these tips:

1. Segment your list so that you emailing only the people who are likely to attend your seminar. If your seminar is designed for residential contractors, for example, don’t mail your promotions to the commercial contractors on your list.
2. Customize your message so that it is clear why you are mailing to your targeted list — and why they should be interested in reading your promotion. Not only will recipients be more receptive to your message (there’s nothing like opening an email that has nothing to do with your interests to feel like you are being spammed), they’ll also be more likely to read and respond to your promotions.
3. Incorporate helpful information. Try incorporating a few tips into your promotional messages. Then segue to your sales pitch by explaining that the information you shared is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you’ll cover at your upcoming event. You’ll prove that you have valuable content. Plus you’ll feel better about contacting your prospects again.
4. Shift from sales to courtesy reminders near the end. Some people are uncomfortable doing heavy-handed sales pitches. Sending out a courtesy reminder (“Hi, it’s Jenny, writing with a courtesy reminder about my teleseminar tomorrow night …”) keeps your event in front of your prospects, but in a helpful, less pushy way.
5. Find your style. Although it IS critical to promote yourself and your seminars, there are different ways of doing so. Some promoters come across like carnival barkers trying to get crowds to see the world-famous three-headed dog. Others feel queasy at the thought of being so pushy.

The best approach is one that makes you feel slightly uncomfortable, as well as a little more confident, bolder and promotional than you normally feel. You need to have a bit of swagger and sass when marketing. But at the same time, you need to feel comfortable with how you are promoting. If you’re not, your discomfort will be communicated on some level. Unfortunately, your uncertainty will come across as not believing in your event vs. not believing in your marketing approach.

A recent trip to the grocery store reminded me of a valuable Internet marketing tip I learned years ago.

When I was headed out the door with my cartful of groceries, the greeter — an elderly man who always welcomes me with a big smile and friendly “hello” — flagged me down. His job that day was to hand out fliers directing customers to the store’s web site to take a customer satisfaction survey.

I like George. So I went to the site to share my rave reviews about the store’s customer service.

Unforunately, the flier directed me to the superstore’s home page, which featured dozens of links and buttons. Even after some persistent digging around, I couldn’t find the survey. So I left without sharing my input.

Contrast this experience with the survey offered by a local pizza franchise — their coupon takes you directly to the survey form. And when you’re done, you get a discount coupon as a thank you.

I firmly believe that you can learn a lot about marketing simply by paying attention to what annoys you, as well as what wows you. From these two experiences come the following lessons:

1. Direct visitors to exactly the page you want them to visit. Depending on how your site is organized, dropping visitors off at your home page in hopes that they’ll find their way to your seminar page can be like kicking someone out of your car miles from nowhere with a hearty “Good luck!” They might be persistent enough to find a trail; they could easily get lost in the forest. If seminar registrations are your goal, take visitors by the hand and lead them to exactly the page you want them to go.

2. If the URL of the page you want prospects to visit is long and convoluted, set up an abbreviated URL that redirects to the target page. For example, a client of mine runs advertising to promote its personal development seminars. Rather than including their web page’s full address http://www.foundations1.com/personal-success/cornerstone/ which would be too long and clunky for a print ad, their webmaster provides shortened URLs that point to this page (foundations1.com/publicationname) Tip: This strategy allows you the ability to track web traffic. In this case, setting up a unique URL for each publication allows us to see how many visitors come to the site from each ad placed.

3. Continue the conversation. When prospects are motivated by a promotion to visit your web site, it can be jarring to land on a web page that doesn’t relate to what was presented in the original promotion. Some will be confused and leave. Others may find their way to the seminar page, but by the time they do, they’ve lost their interest in what you were saying.

Continuing the conversation can be as simple as making sure that your landing page promotes the same thing that was offered in the original promotion. In other cases, you may want to go deeper. For example, if one ad plays up your seminar’s ability to boost revenue, make sure that copy on your landing page also plays up this benefit. Ads that highlight a different benefit should point to a different landing page with matching copy.

If you’re working with a finite budget, you want to make sure that every dollar counts. By using these three tips to create a more seamless customer experience, you’ll eliminate the unncessary loss of web site visitors, as well as increase your chances of seminar success.

When working with a limited budget, you need to make tough decisions about where you want to invest your marketing dollars. If you have enough funds to send a single direct mail package to your entire list or three direct mail packages to a third of your list, it makes sense to carefully choose who is “worthy” of receiving your direct mail package — in other words, who is most likely to respond to your offer.

Candidates for the “A” list could include people who have recently joined your list, customers who have purchased within the past six months, prospects within driving distance of your event, and your most loyal clients. You’d spend the most marketing dollars on these prospects, while relying on free and low-cost tools to reach your B-quality prospects.

While segmenting your database, you might be tempted to delete the oldest and least responsive names. After all, why waste time and money contacting them if they obviously aren’t interested in participating in your events?

It’s true that removing inactive prospects from your list can free up marketing dollars which then can be devoted to reaching more responsive customers.

However, don’t delete the names. Keep them in a separate sublist if you must. But don’t get rid of the names entirely. You never know when someone will be ready to attend your event. If you delete the names, you may miss the opportunity to make a sale. Plus, even if these prospects haven’t bought in years, it’s entirely possible that they’re referring colleagues and friends to you events.

The bottom line is that you’ve worked hard for every lead in your database. Although you may want to reduce the amount of time and money you spend marketing to the least responsive segments of your databse, don’t eliminate them from your list entirely. Instead, mail to them occasionally — once a year even — to gently remind them that you’re still around.

Last week, I received three emails in one day from a subscriber of mine. It seems that because he had subscribed to my email list, he thought it was fair to add my email address to his distribution list, as well.

If you’re using this type of list building — opting the people you meet into your list as a “courtesy,” without their consent or knowledge – beware. You are running afoul of anti-spam laws, not to mention being rude, from an Internet etiquette point of view. (An even bigger faux pas? Making the email addresses of your “subscribers” visible to everyone on the distribution list.)

The smarter and more courteous approach: Send an email introducing yourself and your business to the people you meet and include a link back to your opt-in page. That way, they can decide whether they want to opt-in to your list … and you can build your list ethically and legally.

Want to learn more about the rules and regulations governing email marketing? Visit the FTC’s CAN-SPAM website.

Recommended Resource: The Internet Law Compliance System

Using other people to help promote your seminars is a powerful marketing tool — especially when you are first starting out and don’t have your own mailing list.

But relying on affiliates (other people who promote your events to their lists for a commission on each sale they generate) has a big downside: many, if not most, of your partners won’t follow through and promote your seminar as promised.

The problem isn’t that they don’t believe in your seminar … or that they are “bad” people. A lack of action is usually due to your affiliates being so busy running their own businesses that they forget about or run out of time to send your promotions.

Three things you can do to help your affiliates promote your seminars:

1. Provide a timeline. Spell out when you want  affiliates to take action … and what action to take.

2. Provide the materials. The more work you do for your affiliates, the less they have to do … and the easier it becomes for them to execute. So give them the promotional materials you want them to send to their lists.

3. Follow up. Your affiliates are busy. Help keep your seminar front and center by sending reminders about upcoming actions you want them to take.