Written By:
John Hayes, iContact EMEA Business Development Executive
iContact ran their first ever Crash Course in Email and Social Media Marketing for SMEs in London on Thursday, January 26th.
The 25 delegates came from all walks of life, ranging from large retailers to professional musicians, fresh-faced start-ups to long-established businesses; their one goal was to be inspired. Little did they know that they were already pretty inspirational.
The event started with the attendees briefly introducing themselves, describing what they did and then telling the room something “interesting” about themselves. One lady told the room her first client was Gordon Ramsay; another had performed at London’s famous O2 venue. In fact, there wasn’t a single person who didn’t have an interesting story to tell.
From this point on my job was easy.
Successful email and social media marketing is all about maintaining a conversation that is both interesting and relevant. They had already proved that they had the making of this and so transferring this newly acquired knowledge to their email and social media strategies would be easy.
The course revolved around a simple set of rules that reinforced the concepts of permission, relevancy, creative content, testing and the often overlooked fact that people buy from people they like.
The loose agenda and informal setting were conducive to debate, testimonial and plenty of questions. I certainly learned a lot from the attendees. It was also great to see attendees swapping business cards and hopefully forming relationships that will be beneficial to their future growth.
The Crash Course in Email and Social Media Marketing for SMEs will be visiting Birmingham on February 9th, Sheffield on February 23rd and Newcastle on March 9th. More dates will be added soon.
Did you attend the London event? We’d love to hear your comments on the event below.
