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"Karen was exceptional. She nailed the key elements and concepts I'd like to see in the IDGA brochures. Thanks for bringing her in."

Michael Gallo,
Group Director, IDGA,
A Division of IQPC

Current & Archived Newsletters

Email & Event Marketing

Urgency Sells

How do you propel a senior executive out of their comfortable Aeron office chair... and into a seat at your conference?

Well, first you have to get their attention. Then, you have to offer a compelling business reason. The more urgent, the better.

Here's an example of an eye-catching and urgent promotion I wrote for a C-level event, sponsored by BusinessWeek and the consulting firm, Innosight.

The urgency on our end was that the marketing began just six weeks prior to the event. So I had to pull out all stops in the copy to fill 50 CEO roundtable seats.

BusinessWeek/Innosight Email

Click on the photo to enlarge.

BusinessWeek/Innosight Email To C-Level Executives Generates 15 Registrations the First Day. To view an actual sample, send me an email.

The first day of the e-blast brought in nearly 1/3 of the registrations! Clearly, the urgency of the copy was effective.

Here are a few copywriting techniques I used that helped accelerate the registration process:

  • Referring to the event as an "Emergency C-Level Intensive." That certainly revved up the urgency of the event from a stodgy "Executive Roundtable." It also put better spin on what was essentially a last-minute promotion!
  • The Fast 50 offer: Offering a registration incentive - one of the speaker's best-selling books - to the first 50 registrants encouraged people to act immediately, rather than putting it off.
  • Using urgent language and a fast-paced copy approach with lines like:
    • "With the swift economic downturn ravaging the Blue Chips...we believe it is time for an emergency C-level summit"
    • "...rapid deployment tactics and immediate action plans for halting the hammering your company is undoubtedly experiencing."
    • "In a life or death situation, most of us would stop at nothing to call in the world's finest specialists." (The copy then talks about the speakers as leading management specialists).

Of course, the neon yellow background highlighted the urgent nature of the e-mail message.

Here's the direct mail piece that used the same urgent approach.

Innosight Direct Mail Letter

Click on the photo to enlarge.

To view an actual sample, send me an email.

Some of the more motivating lines were:

"Ready to take a match to your corporate strategy? With New Economy business models crashing and burning worldwide, it's time for Crash Course."

"The post dot.com flameout has sparked a relentless, out-of-control wildfire through the markets."

"This is no golf outing. No celebrities will entertain. But if you're lucky, you just might walk away from the market crash intact."

"Yes, we know this is a last-minute invitation. But none of us expected the downturn to be this precipitous."

So if you want to increase your "speed to registration" for your events, add a little urgency to your writing.

Writing your own event promotions? Contact Karen for training in "Writing Successful Conference Promotions," which was delivered to rave reviews at SourceMedia and the International Quality & Productivity Center.



Karen's ClickZ Columns on B2B Email Marketing