Your Email Database Is Not Your Market

“We have 150,000 people in our database. We only need 5,000 people to register.”

I hear some version of this in event planning meetings all the time.

I get it. A big database feels good. Five thousand is only about three percent of the list, and suddenly your attendance goal feels pretty reasonable.

Except your association’s email database is not your market.

And confusing the two can get you into trouble fast.

I work with associations that have spent decades building large contact databases. Members. Former members. Attendees. Exhibitors. Prospects. Newsletter subscribers. People who downloaded something seven years ago. People nobody quite remembers adding.

The number gets bigger every year.

The useful audience does not always grow with it.

On many large association campaigns I’ve led, only about 20 to 40 percent of the total email file may be meaningfully usable, relevant, and active for a specific event campaign. That’s not an industry benchmark. It’s a pattern I’ve seen often enough to make me suspicious of any big database count.

Because once you start asking harder questions, the audience can shrink quickly.

• ‍Can you reach them?
• Are they still in the industry? ‍
• Do you know what they do? ‍
• Do you know what they care about? ‍
• Have they engaged with you recently? ‍
• Would they have any reason to attend this event?

Those are very different questions from, “How many contacts do we have?”

Now go back to that planning meeting. If only 30 percent of those 150,000 contacts make it through these questions, you’re working with 45,000 people. Your 5,000 registrations no longer need three percent of the list. You need one out of every nine.

The goal is the same. But your job just got three times harder.

Big numbers can hide real problems

A database of 150,000 people might include an incredible audience for your event.

It might also include 150,000 records with limited information about job function, interests, buying authority, event history, or current relevance.

That matters.

Say you want to grow attendance among a specific part of your industry. Maybe it is an emerging job function. A new vertical. A type of company that has historically been underrepresented at your show.

Great.

Now find them.

If your data cannot tell you who those people are, your 150,000-person database is suddenly a lot less comforting.

This is one reason audience growth can look easy in a planning meeting and feel much harder three months later when it’s time to launch registration.

Everyone agrees there is a big opportunity in the market.

Everyone agrees the event should reach more of it.

Then marketing starts.

And you discover that the people you need are not neatly waiting inside your CRM.

Growth usually means leaving the house

Most established events have a core audience. Your “house” email list.  

They know you. They open your emails. They have attended before. Some of them may come almost every year.

You need those people.

But if your event has a real growth goal, there is a good chance some of that growth has to come from somewhere other than your house list.

That changes the job.

Emailing your existing contacts more frequently will not create a new audience.

Instead, you may need to explore paid advertising, industry media, partnerships, list rentals, new prospect sources, or different content channels.

Start with your exhibitors and sponsors. They spend all year selling to the exact people you wish were in your database. Give them a reason to invite those people, and make it easy for them to do it.

Don’t forget to ask people already in your community to update what you know about them. When was the last time you asked your contacts to update their profiles?

And if you have the runway, bring in outside help to clean and append your data. Know what you have before you start spending against it.

None of this is especially glamorous.

A new campaign theme is more fun to talk about. So is the keynote speaker you’re dying to book.

But reach comes before response.

You cannot persuade someone you never reach.

Growing event attendance takes more than reach

Finding new people is only half the challenge.

You still have to give them a reason to care.

I hear organizations say they want to reach “the entire industry” or “the full ecosystem.”

Okay.

Why would that new part of the ecosystem attend?

If you want a different audience, the event may need to show them something different.

That might be exhibitors they want to meet, education built for their jobs, or a room full of peers who face the same problems they do. Sometimes it’s as simple as a speaker they already follow or a partner they already trust.

Marketing can help you find the audience.

Marketing can help explain the value.

But the promise still has to be real.

This is where audience growth becomes more than a communications exercise.

You are building the audience and the case for attendance at the same time.

Which makes it a leadership conversation. Programming, exhibit sales, and marketing all own a piece of the answer.

Start with the number that matters

The next time someone tells you the organization has 150,000 contacts, resist the urge to celebrate.

Instead, ask better questions.

• ‍How many of the people we need to reach can we really reach? ‍
• Who are we missing? ‍
• What do we know about them? ‍
• Where else can we find them? ‍
• What would make them pay attention when we do?

Those questions may make your audience opportunity look smaller at first.

Good.

Now you are looking at something real.

A huge database can create confidence.

A clear view of your reachable market creates a plan.

Know the difference before registration opens.

My team at 360 Live Media helps associations find the audience their database is missing, and give those people a reason to show up. Let’s talk about your next show.