Whether you just wound down your event or only beginning the hard work preparing for this year’s, today is always the day to be thinking about e-commerce. If your event just ended, you might be able to capture extra merchandise sales that help capture the memories. If you’re just ramping up, start thinking strategically about the best time to start selling tickets and this year’s signature items. To jump-start your efforts, we’ve pulled together 5 tips to help you drive more revenue with e-commerce.

1) Create a sense of urgency

Create special bundles of items or a limited-time discounts, so you can tap into your customers’ sense that they may be missing out on something if they don’t take action (e.g., for a limited time, offer free parking with event tickets). Use retail as your guide here. They often have repeated sales, sometimes with a little twist, to keep eyes on their offerings. These don’t just happen. Create an editorial calendar that includes promotions throughout the year.

2) Mobile – If your site isn’t mobile friendly, you are losing sales

Use your smartphone or tablet to purchase something from your website. How was the experience? Would you buy from your site? Make sure you have a touch-friendly user experience. Get rid of the Flash and minimize how much the customer has to type. Consumers must be able to easily interact with your site no matter where they are. If not, consumers will lose patience and you will lose a sale. Picture it this way – we use computers during the day, tablets on the sofa in the evening and we always have our smartphones on us.  Internet Retailer reports that M-Commerce sales were up 82% in 2012 and they will rise another 56.5% in 2013. Even though mobile doesn’t represent a huge percentage of sales now, it’s only going UP!

3) Email everyone that bought something last year

Thank them for being your customer in 2012, and highlight anything that is new this year, potentially including a promotion to reward their loyalty (e.g., special pre-sale privileges or discounts). Train your customers to know they will get the latest and best info by signing up for your email. Facebook and Twitter are also obviously important ways to get information out, but don’t spend all your time there at the expense of email, which will create your highest revenue days of the year.

 4) Make it social

The audiences you get in your online store are active on social networking sites. (Nearly everyone on the internet is on some social platform.) They use social media to share and recommend things they are currently excited about, including things they buy. And for most, if they are making a purchase, then they’ve gotten excited enough to open their wallets. Consider posting exclusive promotions just for your fans or followers. Encourage them to interact by posing questions to get the conversation started.

5) Give your customers the choice of how to get their tickets

You’ve optimized your website for the best experience, insured that your site works great on mobile, streamlined purchasing to make it as easy as possible, and added social links to encourage sharing.But how do you deliver tickets? Make it just as easy to get tickets as it is to buy from you by allowing your customers to print their tickets at home. Not only do you “Wow!” your customers and give them instant gratification on their purchase, you’ll save money. Fulfilling advanced ticket orders in-house, whether by mail or will call, can be expensive and time consuming. In addition to hardware and paper stock expenses, fulfillment requires your event to devote staff resources to print, sort, and mail tickets to each of your customers. Leary of fraud? With the right application and bar-code scanners (like SaffireScan just introduced from Saffire),  you can verify not only the validity of a ticket, but also eliminate counterfeit tickets by including a unique code on each ticket.

Each of these tips can make its own impact, but as you use them together, you’ll have the best chance of increasing online sales.

Most events have board of directors. And boards have meetings. Some of them are tough.

The tougher they are, the more important it becomes to end meetings well. So even though Saffire specializes in online marketing, today we’re stepping away from the computer and sharing 6 tips for what to do when the meeting’s over.

It’s not so much about ending the meeting. It’s what to do when the meeting is over.

1. This one is obvious. You shake hands. You smile. But here’s the key. Smile and shake hands in a way that suggests you are 30% happier with the outcome than you actually are.
2. If it was tough, acknowledge it. Say this was hard, and I’m happy we dealt with it. This gives everybody an understanding that it was hard on everyone. Plus it gets the elephant out in the room. (I’m a big fan of that.)
3. Establish common ground about anything, even if you couldn’t in the meeting. Talk about anything except what you just met about. Talk about something personal and above all, neutral. Before you physically move on, establish that you’ve moved on from the topic.
4. Who do you talk to? Engage anyone who for whatever reason didn’t participate much. It’s a nice thing to do and fulfills the purpose of the meeting, to get everyone involved.
5. The main message to communicate is gratitude. No matter what, find something to be grateful about the meeting.  Again, 30% more positive than you feel.
6. This one is the toughest for me. Don’t take the last doughnut. Step away from the doughnut. OK come to think of it, go ahead and take it. We won’t judge!

(We were originally inspired to cover this topic by an article in Entrepreneur, but we had thoughts too, so we made it our own.)

If you know me, you know I (Kendra Wright) love music. No, I LOVE music.

I’m not biased as to genre. I love country music – Willie Nelson, Tim McGraw, Randy Travis, Darius Rucker… I love crossovers like Zac Brown Band more than I can express.

And, I love many other kinds of music, including artists like Kanye West and Justin Timberlake. (Somehow I can separate out behavior from musical talent, in case you noticed that several of the artists mentioned have exhibited less than exemplary behaviors at times.)

But I digress.

As events, we ARE entertainment. So when I see musicians promote themselves well, I feel there is something to be learned. Justin Timberlake’s recent release of his 20/20 Experience album was admirable, no matter what you think of his music.

I often talk to events about building up to a fevered pitch (and doing this as early as possible with strategically-timed, pre-event announcements). JT (you don’t mind if I call him JT, do you?) did this brilliantly, by doing these four things incredibly right:

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Chances are that you’re already using social media as part of your marketing toolkit. Here you’ll find 5 ways to increase odds on having a spectacular event.

1) Create buzz with a contest

Any type of free giveaways get people excited and scrambling to get in on the action. Contests are a great way to generate interest in your event and get people talking about it.

Recently Rodeo Houston targeted the younger audience with a contest promoting their Demi Lovato concert.

Participants only needed to say where Demi was born (and spell it correctly). The winner got two chute tickets to Demi Lovato’s concert at Rodeo Houston, plus the chance to meet Demi Lovato backstage. Also, Carnival tickets, a steak dinner for two before the Rodeo, two season passes to the grounds and a parking pass. Now that’s a serious prize package!

As Leroy Shafer, chief operating officer of Rodeo Houston, said, “these entertainers introduce rodeo to a new generation that will stay with us for generations to come.”

Create a hashtag to easily track your entries on twitter and use a similar phrase on Facebook. Keep the requirements super-simple to encourage participation.

2) Create a video that people will share

A video is the next best thing to experiencing your event in person. Great visuals and sound will not only get people excited to attend, but also will get them motivated to share their excitement.

Make a video (and remember, it doesn’t have to be slick – just take it with your phone!), and leverage it everywhere you can. Post it on YouTube, Facebook and on your own site.

We aren’t sure if this was truly done by a fan or someone at the Los Angeles County Fair, but it’s unique, clever and catchy , proving that even slightly annoying things catch on with repetition.

Some Things I Saw At The 2012 Los Angeles County Fair

3) Interview Performers or Guests for Special Content

One of the main reasons people attend your event is to see your performers – rodeo cowboys & cowgirls, famous singers or even the chef at a crowd favorite fair food cart. Getting more exposure is one of the primary reasons that they are performing at your event.

So take advantage of this by doing a short interview with your performers, and this will be valuable event content. Here’s an example:

Trevor Brazile talking about the prestige of the Pendleton Round-Up

Again, leverage the content everywhere – YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and your own site.

4) Create a “Great Tips” post for your blog

Help your guests organize their day by creating a post with tips about your event. Highlight the “Don’t Miss It” attractions. Suggest ways to avoid the crowds for the most popular attractions. Let them know helpful information about any event changes; for instance, you have now moved several kiddie rides over near the petting barn rather than everything being in the midway. (If you have a Saffire site, your guests can use all of this information to customize their own event schedule right on your site.)

Encourage your visitors to contribute their own tips. Make sure it’s easy for them to share this great content on Facebook and Twitter.

5) Create a tweet for your attendees

If people are excited about attending, why not make it easy for them to tell their friends by just clicking a button. You can create a custom Twitter button with your specific message already set up in the Tweet text. Here is the link to Twitter’s Button resource. Once you’ve built it, you embed the HTML code that Twitter provides.

These are just 5 Ways to promote your event with Social Media. Be creative and try out your own ideas. One of the great things about social media is that you never can predict what will catch everyone’s attention and go viral. Just keep the content flowing.

When you hear the word hashtags, do you dream of a new delicious, bite-size breakfast treat?

Or do you think of categorizing messages on Twitter?

The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a tweet (e.g., #mybigevent). Twitter didn’t create hashtags; they were created organically by users as a way to categorize messages.

By clicking on a hashtagged word in any message, it will show you all messages marked with that same hashtag.  So you can easily see all the posts on that topic. And anyone that does a search for that hashtag may find your Tweet.

Here are four things to remember to successfully use hashtags in marketing.

1) Be Unique

Hashtags are a great way to engage your customers about your event and allow them to engage with each other. Using your event’s name or a common abbreviation may be a good start, but try to pick something unique and specific.

For example, #SEwebinar allows us to focus in on the specific topic of webinars rather than just using #SaffireEvents for everything. It will also allow others to search for a specific topic much easier too. You wouldn’t want to promote a contest and then make your participants wade through all your other tweets in order to find the contest updates. (more…)

Instagram is a very popular program for sharing photos on smart phones – especially among the younger audiences our events need to reach.

Instagram pictures provide another great way to tell your audience the story of your event. You can promote anything that represents part of your event—from concerts to competitive events to the midway and food.

Here are 6 ways to get started on Instagram and make the most of it to market your event.

#1 Get started now!

Sign up for an account – It takes two minutes. Download the app and simply use your Facebook info to link the accounts. Choose a user name, like your Event’s name, and pick a password. Select any Facebook friends that you’d like to follow on Instagram, and you’re done. Now you are ready to choose some event photos, enhance them using Instagram filters and upload them.

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There are moments when I’m almost painfully aware of how long I’ve been doing internet marketing (since 1995, if we’re really keeping track).

One of my main reminders is seeing the change in web browsers. In the old days, it was Netscape vs. Internet Explorer, and it was a constant challenge to make websites look good in both browsers. Then along came Firefox, Chrome and others.

As is true in real life, the only thing constant is change, except I’d say this is even more so with how quickly things change on the Internet.

The shift of search engines is another reminder of my time in online marketing. Before Google, website managers had to worry about getting found in a whole myriad of search engines. Google domination has actually made our lives easier!

But then as is often the case with putting all eggs in one basket, when the Google algorithm shifts, the aftershocks are seismic.

This spring, Google has been busy teaching us what they think is important online by changing the rankings (often for the worse) of  many websites. The bottom line is this: We in the industry have always known that what you have on your page is dwarfed in importance by who links to you. “Who links to you” used to mean other websites., but now it mostly means social media.

Google understands that a website isn’t the only place online where a brand needs a presence, so exchanges via social media about and with your brand are now more important than ever. You must interact with your customers, which will get you a great reputation and also rankings in Google.

The Checklist

What are the most important places where you need a presence? Our answer, inspired by a Fast Company article on the topic, is nothing new. But you should consider it your checklist in having a strong brand, both for your customers and for Google.

1. Have conversations on Facebook. Invite questions, suggest reading, provide links, and curate content. Share content that inspires more followers, and if you aren’t getting more followers, tweak your strategy and repeat what works.
2. Share tweets about topics of interest. Notice we didn’t say self-serving announcements. Nobody wants to read over and over how great your brand is. Provide info that is of real use to people, then measure what gets retweeted the most and repeat what is successful.
3. Upload videos to Youtube. If people aren’t watching and sharing your videos, then tweak your videos and repeat what is successful. (Remember, Google owns YouTube – reason enough not to leave video out of your strategy.)
4. Pin and repin interesting images on Pinterest. Most businesses can communicate better with images than text, which is handy, since as we all know, reading online isn’t exactly pervasive. Pin things that you think will be interest to your customers
5. Participate in groups and post company updates on LinkedIn. If a customer sends you a referral, ask them to post it on Linked In. (Send them a link to make it easy for them.) Because company pages are public and now feature status updates, these pages can be useful both for search engines and people.

Branding is definitely a marathon, not a sprint. But the time you put in pays dividends that your event will feel for years to come. Your goal is to be sought after, both online and offline, to share the relevant information you become known for sharing.

So what are you waiting for? Get going!