The OpenWater Blog

Resources for Motivated Awards Professionals: January 15

Are you ready for your weekly dose of resources to continue to grow your events business? Hopefully you are because this week we’re covering all of the regular bases with information regarding marketing, event planning, IT management, project coordination, and more!

This week we’re paying special attention to millennial engagement, email ROI, emotions that make campaigns viral, HTML, CSS, and more! Start scrolling and get learning below!

Upcoming Events/Courses

Fandom in the Social Age: Lessons in Millennial Engagement From Tumblr, MTV and Coca-Cola
Webinar | January 21, 2016 | 1:00 PM EST

Millennials are an increasingly important target for event professionals like yourself. As such, it’s vital that you pay attention to pop culture icons that are successfully connecting with millennials to adopt new strategies for your own business. In this 1-hour webinar on January 21, 2016, you’ll learn how to connect with younger audience members, expand social audiences, and create a sense of fandom for meaningful engagement at events.

Three Strategies to Boost Your Email ROI
Online Webinar

Email is a traditional, free strategy you can use to connect with your audience and drive traffic to your website or other online platforms used to marketing your event. But standing out in your target audience’s inbox can be difficult, especially if you aren’t quite sure how to stand out. In this pre-recorded 45-minute webinar from Salesforce, you’ll learn how to target the right inboxes with the right messages and at the right time. The result? Better relationships, increased responses, and maximum revenue.

Get Better at Marketing

Research: The Emotions That Make Marketing Campaigns Go Viral
Harvard Business Review

It isn’t enough for your marketing campaigns to have an average performance when you want each event to be more successful than the last. And as interruptive marketing practices become increasingly obsolete, understanding how to reach your customers is essential to maximize exposure for each campaign and exceed the demands of your most discerning clients. Learn the emotions that can help you achieve this in this article!

[INFOGRAPHIC] A Newbie’s Guide to A/B-Testing
MarketingProfs

Whether you’re testing a new call-to-action or are working to determine the best layout of certain pages for conversions on your site or others, A/B-testing is an essential way to determine what works best for your audience. Doing so allows you to test two similar yet different versions of a page or graphic to see which your audience prefers. If you’ve never done so, it’s time to get started and the best way is with this infographic!

Get Better at Event Planning

20 Hashtags Every Hospitality Professional Should Use in 2016
Social Tables

You can find hashtags everywhere these days, particularly in the marketing realm. After all, hashtags make it simple for your audience to find your content, events, and more! However, you can’t just type any hashtag and expect it to work. Instead, you must use popular hashtags your audience is using for the best results. Learn more about the most effective hashtags for your social strategy in the article from Social Tables! 

How to Get Your Event Budget Planning Right
EventBrite

Even the most seasoned event professional needs to understand event budget planning. And even if you’ve planned hundreds of events or are reading this while planning your first, there are always new tips and more to be learned! Check out this comprehensive article from EventBrite below to learn more about budgeting and the steps you can take to keep yours organized and on track! 

Get Better with Technology

Learn to Code HTML & CSS
Shay Howe

Whether you’re a beginner or have limited experience with HTML and CSS, there’s more to learn. In this free, comprehensive course, you can learn the common elements of front-end design and development like building your first web page, positioning content, creating lists, and more. Get learning by clicking the article title!

Not Just for Data Geeks? Why Marketers Need to Know Excel
HubSpot

Most event planners know and use Microsoft Excel for any number of purposes. In fact, most marketers use it to analyze data, organize a budget, or fulfill any number of other functions. Learn more about why you need to know Excel (and find out how to use it with helpful video tutorials) with this article and free tutorial from HubSpot!

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Theresa Delgado

Theresa is our resident awards guru. She managed the Greeting Card Association's LOUIE Awards before joining us here at OpenWater. She brings first hand knowledge and experience in successfully managing and expanding awards programs.

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