Matt Folson shows how to build an email list through in-person events: create an Eventbrite event, promote it on Facebook, export registrants as a CSV, and import them into Mailchimp with tags. Startup Sioux Falls got 2,000 local signups this way in six months.
Questions this video answers
About 2,000 people.
About 10,000 businesses.
January 9, 2020.
37 attendees/registrants.
About 100 Eventbrite orders and roughly 50 people actually show up (example ratio).
Chapters
Hey guys, Matt Folson here. In this video, I'm going to share a quick tip on how to build your email list using in person events. So with startup Sioux Falls, we've built a mailing list of about 2,000 people within the last six months. These are all local people, so it's not a big online list that caters to everybody. Our total addressable market is about 10,000 businesses that are in the Sioux Falls area and we've already got 2,000 of them on our list and in less than a year. So with markbeat, it's obviously a much bigger list, but this is a local thing and 2000 MIMO signups is something to be proud of. And I want to share kind of how we did that. And one of the ways that we've done it is through in person events. So here we have an event coming up on January 9th of 2020 called Failure Fest. And we're going to highlight the stories of entrepreneurs that have had businesses that didn't make it. And really what we're trying to do here is saying it's okay to fail sometimes. Not every business is going to be a success. It's more important that you try to do something versus never did something at all. So we've got this event, we'll hold it in downtown Sioux Falls and we made a big Facebook event for it. So we promoted on Facebook to our Facebook group and to other Facebook friends. We have event signups on here through Eventbrite and that's kind of the key here. So when you see the Facebook event, you get a Facebook invite event, it'll say get tickets and then that will kind of connect to our Eventbrite account and then it will pass my name and my email over to Eventbrite. So this is me getting a ticket, I guess. I have two tickets, I only need one ticket. So I'm going to sign up for a ticket on Eventbrite. So it's going to. This is basically an Eventbrite registration within Facebook. So my name, my email and then I'm going to click confirm and then now it'll process the order. Or assume that's going. Now I'm going to go over to Eventbrite. Here's the event on Failure Fest. We just started promoting it. We have 37 attendees. Here's another quick tip with your Eventbrite. Even if you're doing a free event, you can do an optional donation. So if you're on a non profit, you're doing an event, you can let people donate as they do an event checkout and that's an easy way to maybe get 100 or $200 per event and just extra donations. But I'm going to go to the list of registrants and try not to show it too much on the thing. Let's see. All right, so I'm on the event in Eventbrite. It registered over here on Facebook. So now I'm going to go to Eventbrite. And the thing that you're looking for is the export. So you click on the number of attendees kind of in the bottom there and then you see there's an export button that says export a CSV file. So maybe you can see it on the recording, maybe you can't. But it just gave me a CSV file. So a spreadsheet of all the names and the emails that have signed up. So I, you know, I haven't even had the event yet, but I've already had 37 signups. That means there are 37 people that I can import into the startups two follows mailing list. So now I'm over on the Mailchimp which, you know, a lot of people use Mailchimp. We use it for startups. Who follows works just fine. They have this thing or you can import contacts. So you know, with the way that the can spam legislation works in Sioux Falls in the United States, you know the anti spam legislation, like somebody signs up for your event, you can send them email. That's totally okay as long as you're not obnoxious about it. Emailing people every day, most people don't care either. We've never really had any spam complaints from people that we've have signed up for our events. And then we started sending emails to. So I'm going to use the CSV file right there. So I'm in my mailchimp account, I went manage audience and then import contacts went to CSV file or tab delimited file and do that. And then you probably can't see this part. I'm going to pick out the CSV file, then it will go grab that and it's going to match it. You just skip all the columns that don't match. Then just go to continue to organize and I like to create a tag for each event. So we're going to call this one 2020 failure fest. There'll be a new T. These people will be subscribed because they're new contacts. And mailchimp gives you an option to update existing contacts if somebody's out in your database. It will give them this new tag that they attended failurefest 2020, which I recommend doing because that will kind of let you know what events people have engaged with. So it says, all right, we're all ready to go. We've got the file. We're going to import, basically name email, and that's probably it. It's going to apply that tag. It's going to mark people as subscribed, and then I'm going to click import. And then mailchimp has added those 37 contacts to our mailing list. So I've been basically able to take a Facebook event invite. Excuse me, a Facebook event invite and turn that into an email sign up. So obviously, you know, it's difficult to get people to go to your website and type in their email address. It's very easy for them to sign up for an event that's in person. When you say going and get to kind of get them, you know, it's a much lower bar to entry. People are already on Facebook. People like going to events. People like to sign up for events even when they end up not going to them for some reason. You know, we'll get 100 Eventbrite orders or Facebook orders and then 50 people show up. But I can still add those hundred people to the mailing list. So this is just a really good thing for any nonprofit or business to do. If you're going to have an in person event, do a free event, sign up on Eventbrite, hook that up your Facebook, and then you'll get a spreadsheet of all the email signups for the event, and then you can import that into your mailchimp. And then you've got a bunch of new email subscribers that you didn't pay anything for. And these are people that are interested in your content because they signed up for your event. It's just a very nice way to grow your email list. That's it for this video. Thank you for watching.
