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In our last blog post, we highlighted the 10 email marketing tips every event organizer should know. And if you read it, you learned that the single most impactful thing in your email campaign is the subject line. So let’s take a deeper dive into subject lines, shall we? According to our friends at MailChimp, the best email subject lines are short, descriptive, and provide the reader with a reason to explore your message further. Last year, MailChimp did a study in which they analyzed the open rates for over 200 million emails. Here’s a snippet of what they learned:

Most of our customers are volunteer-based organization that have zero-to-no budget for promoting their motorsport events. That’s where email marketing comes in. Our email blaster tool is a core component of our registration management platform and is a quick and easy way to get the word out. There are also a handful of email marketing service providers out there which allow you to run more sophisticated campaigns. Our favorite is MailChimp.

I’m guessing most of you already send email campaigns in one form or another. But is anyone reading the emails you’re sending? Before starting any email blitz, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Why does this audience want to hear from me?
2. What useful information can I provide this audience?
3. What do I want to accomplish with my email marketing?

This is just the basics. If you haven't answered these three questions in the email you just wrote, delete and start over! Now for the good stuff.

10 Tips to Make Sure Your Emails Will Actually Get Opened

1. The single most impactful thing in your email campaign is the subject line. Choose a subject line that grabs your reader’s attention. Avoid vague content like "Our Upcoming Event." Instead, use an interesting topic or headline from the email, such as "What You’ll Learn in a One-Day Rally School" or "How to Win an Autocross."
2. Personalize the ‘From’ part of your email and be clear who the email is from. People are more likely to open an email from an actual person than from a company, organization or random email address.
3. Get the length right. A good rule of thumb is the more frequent your emails, the shorter they should be. Brevity is a good thing. One benchmark we’ve seen is 300 words or less.
4. Personalize each message. Personalizing your email message makes it more relevant to your recipient and consequently, they will more likely open it. There are lots of ways to personalize an email, but at the very least, always include the recipient’s name.
   
5. Minimize the use of ALL CAPS and italics as they are hard to read, AND TOTALLY ANNOYING!
6. Your email should immediately address what your offer is and why it’s valuable to your audience. Add a value proposition for your offer in the first sentence in your email copy.
7. Send passionate emails- don’t be neutral. We are part of a large community of motorsport enthusiasts and any passion you share in your emails is highly appreciated, not to mention infectious.
8. Segment your emails based on what people want. Our email blaster allows you to send emails to everyone in your database, everyone attending an event, and everyone not attending an event. Send different messages to each group that’s tailored specifically to them.
9. Your email should have a single conversion goal (what you want the recipient to do), whether it’s register for your event, volunteer for the club, or pay their membership dues. The call-to-action is the link that triggers this action- so make sure that you include a call-to-action and that it’s prominently displayed in your email.
10. People like pictures! Incorporate a relevant image into your email marketing campaigns to really engage your audience.

So start your event promotion engines! You are now equipped to optimize your email marketing for success.

We all know how obsessive drivers can be.  They’re obsessive about their cars/karts, about their times, about their gear, about their in-car video and most importantly, about talking about their cars/karts, their times, their gear and their in-car video.  A lot of this chit-chat happens in forums.

Our customers are always looking for creative ideas to promote their events and increase attendance.  Back in February we hosted a webinar called 7 Killer Tips on Filling Your Events and it was our best-attended webinar to date.  Some of the cheapest and most effective promotion tools out there are through social media.  Is this a good idea for your organization?

Let’s face it, attendees at the types of motorsport events our customers put on, in general, skew a little older.  We hear it all the time, “my attendees don’t use computers.”  Or “my attendees don’t look at Facebook.”  In fact the opposite is true.  According to a report released by the PewResearch Center, as of December 2012

67% of online adults use social networking sites!

That number is staggering!  And if you looker deeper into the numbers you’ll find that it’s not just young people cruising these sites.  Here are the stats for the number of internet users by age that are using social media networking sites:

• Ages 30 to 49- 77%
• Ages 50 to 64- 52%
• Ages 65+- 32%

So the next time you consider forgoing Facebook or Twitter to promote your event because your attendees aren't on these sites, think again!

It's that time of the year! The weather is getting a little warmer, the flowers are blooming, and drivers are dreaming about their upcoming season.  The vast majority of drivers have a set budget and set time limit dedicated to chasing that checkered flag each year.  And where do they look to determine which events they'll attend?  The MotorsportReg.com National Calendar.

Last year over 500,000 people viewed events on our website and at the writing of this post, nearly 1,800 events were listed on our calendar!  If your events aren't listed, you're missing out.  And it's best to list all of your events for the entire year.  NOW. Why? Because drivers are making their buying decisions today for the whole year. If they don't see your event, they're choosing an event from another organization.

A few weeks ago we hosted our most successful webinar yet, 7 Killer Tips on Filling Your Events.  And this past weekend we presented it again before a very enthusiastic crowd at the SCCA National Convention.  In case you missed it you can check out the recording here.  And you can download the slides here.

If you want to be notified of upcoming webinars sign up below!

As part of our big Canadian launch this year, we’re hitting the road this weekend with our first official MSR trip to Canada!  Friday, Saturday and Sunday the International Centre in Toronto is hosting Canada’s ultimate racing show, the Canadian Motorsports Expo. You can find us in booth #314, directly across from Canadian Automobile Sports Club- Ontario Region.  We’d love to meet you so stop on by.  We’ll be giving demos, talking to drivers and race fans and soaking up the Canadian motorsport culture.

Also, MSR founder Brian Ghidinelli will be giving his always popular presentation, “How to Rule the Internet- Web & Social Media for Drivers, Car Clubs and Businesses.” You’re guaranteed to pick up a few tips to improve your program from this presentation.   Check the CME schedule for exact time and location.

So if you’re in the Toronto area, come by and say hi!

"The younger generation just isn't into cars like we were." I've heard three variations of this in the past two weeks from car club leadership. It stems from a shortage of young enthusiasts turning up to events so the knee-jerk reaction is that it must not be the product on sale but rather the consumer has changed. I'm not so sure I agree. Allow me to present exhibits A, B and C:

We gave two presentations earlier this year at the BMW CCA and SCCA National Convention on social media strategy for car clubs. One of our recommendations was to use an editorial calendar in order to help plan content and marketing in advance. So long as everything remains in the head of a single volunteer, it's impossible to share the workload. We saw many eyes grow wide with excitement as we talked about scheduling all of the emails, Facebook posts and tweets for an event in one sitting using a social media dashboard like

Following up on our presentation at the BMW CCA Congress last week, we presented our session on "How to Rule the Web (or at least get started)" yesterday in Las Vegas at the SCCA National Convention.



These slides are a slightly updated version of the BMW CCA deck so please download these.



Thanks for all of the great questions and comments. Now get out there and make one small step for 2012 to build on!

Update 3/6: I just learned this morning that in addition to Twitter and Facebook, HootSuite's social media dashboard also has installable apps for Flickr, YouTube and Tumblr. This gives you one single place to create and curate your content as we discussed during the preso. Give it a look!