Author: Franz Malten Buemann

In 2020, Email Volume Grew 7% and Consumers Responded with a 13% Increase in Open Rates
We’re excited to announce the release of our annual 2021 Benchmarks Report. So many of our customers dealt with huge changes to their businesses, including everything from decreased in-person business to managing increased online behavior, as well as problems with supply chain and fulfillment. During all of this upheaval, email became an important communication channel in order to provide COVID-19 information and content—and of course, transaction details. 
The 2021 Email Benchmarks Report analyzed over 100 billion emails sent globally by CM Group clients. With so much more customer interaction happening online, email grew an incredible 7% in 2020, compared to a growth rate of only 2.5% the year before. This equates to more than 1 billion more emails sent year over year by CM Group clients per month, with the highest increases happening in March and July when clients sent 1.5 billion more emails.
Not only that, we saw that our customers’ audiences were highly engaged, with an increase in open rates at a staggering 13%. Even with the record number of emails going to inboxes, people were more likely to engage than ever before, with the peak open rates happening in April and May. 
This is a highly encouraging sign for our customers, especially as many will continue to rely on email this year as new changes unfold and as they learn to balance “back-to-normal” behavior with their newfound online preferences.
Here are several other key findings from the Report:

Friday had the highest open rates: In a shift from past years where early week-day performed the best, Friday was the highest performer in 2020.

Mobile share decreased: With less time in lines and commuting, mobile’s share of opened emails went down for the first time in years, from 63% to 54%.

Click-to-open rates decreased: Many more emails were sent to simply provide information, rather than to drive an action, resulting in a slight click-to-open rate decrease from 2019.

Several industries saw click-through rates above 4%: Four industries — government, education, nonprofits and agriculture — all saw increases to its click-through rates in 2020, all reaching above 4%.

Unsubscribe rates were historically low: Specifically for entertainment, media and, importantly, retail, Campaign Monitor saw unsubscribe rates near 0% throughout the year.

Looking ahead, we see the opportunity to have larger and more engaged email subscriber lists this year. But as everyone gets back to life as usual, having the right segmentation and personalization will be even more critical to reaching your audience. Now is the time to test, test, test, in order to determine what keeps subscribers most interested over the long term, not just for an individual email or campaign. 
To get a full breakdown of performance benchmarks in 2020, including send volume, open rate and click-through rate by industry and day of week, we encourage you to download the full Report. 
These benchmarks serve as an important and valuable baseline for marketers as they try to plan 2021 without their typical historical data to rely on.
To download the full 2021 Benchmarks Report, click here.
The post 2021 Benchmarks Report Shows 3x Email Growth appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

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You need it for networking, job recruitment, downloading resources, transferring files, setting reminders, meeting with colleagues, and so much more.
Even with the rise of office chat platforms, you still depend on email for a surprising number of things. But unfortunately, not every email service is completely free. And even the free ones might not be the easiest to use or have all the features you need.

It can be a challenge to find an email service provider at no cost that balances the right features with usability. To help make your search easier, we put together a list of the different types of email accounts you can set up, followed by the eleven best email service providers you can host your account on right now for free.
Types of Email Accounts
There are two main types of email service providers to choose from: email clients and webmail. When you use your provider to access your email from a different device or location online, you can use one of three major email protocols to do so: POP3, IMAP, and Exchange.
Let’s briefly go over these different types of providers and protocols.
Email Clients
Email clients are software applications that you install onto the computer itself to manage the email you send and receive. To access this email, the client interacts with a remote email server.
Email clients you’ve likely heard of include Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Apple Mail.
If you want to access this type of email from the web, rather than the client’s computer application, the email client uses one of the email protocols described below. For example, although you might have Outlook installed on your computer, you can also log in to your email account via outlook.com using a specific email protocol.
Webmail
Webmail is a form of email you access exclusively from the internet, and therefore exists primarily on the cloud rather than your computer. Instead of an installed application fetching your email, you manage your inbox right from your internet browser.
Webmail providers you’ve likely heard of include Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and AOL (all of which have made our list of best free email accounts, below).
If you want to access your webmail from a mail app on your mobile device, rather than your desktop web browser, your webmail provider can use one of the email protocols described below.
Now, before we get into the best free email accounts, let’s talk about those email protocols.
Email Protocols
Email protocols are the systems that actually retrieve your email for you. They can be used to fetch email client accounts on the internet, and fetch webmail accounts on a mobile app. Here are the three main types of email protocol your account can use.
POP3
POP stands for “post office protocol,” and is best suited for people who have just one email account and email client. POP3 is the latest version of this email protocol, and allows you to access email while offline. It therefore requires less internet bandwidth.
IMAP
IMAP stands for “internet mail access protocol,” and is one of the older email protocol available today. IMAP4 is considered the latest version, and unlike the POP protocol, you do not download your email to your offline email client. Instead, all your email stays online while you’re accessing and managing it.
IMAP is particularly useful for people who have more than one email account and access them from multiple devices or locations.
Exchange
Exchange is a Microsoft email protocol, and is pretty similar to the IMAP protocol explained above. This protocol allows you to not only access your email over the internet from multiple devices, but also tasks, calendars, and contact information tethered to that email address. For this reason, it’s particularly helpful to organizations whose employees share many types of information and collaborate remotely.
Now, take a look at seven of the best free email service providers you can get your hands on today — both webmail and email clients included. For each email service provider, we highlighted a unique feature to help you find the best fit.

Best Free Email Accounts

Gmail
AOL
Outlook
Zoho
Mail.com
Yahoo! Mail
ProtonMail
iCloud Mail
GMX Mail
Mozilla Thunderbird
Yandex Mail

1. Gmail
Unique Feature: Native File Collaboration

Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: anyone who already uses and loves the rest of Google’s products.
It might seem like an obvious top pick, but Gmail is just too versatile to not award the first slot. Gmail has the second-highest email provider market share (behind Apple iPhone’s native email app), according to Litmus Labs. And ironically, one of the reasons Gmail has become so popular is because of all the communication options in your inbox that don’t involve email.
Gmail is an everyday email inbox you can sign up for by registering for a Google account. But it’s built into Google Suite, a group of free apps that allow you to chat, video-conference, and share files with the people in your contact list.
Google Hangouts, available from your inbox’s left sidebar (or the right — you can customize how you inbox is displayed), lets you text and video chat with other Gmail users for the things that might not warrant an email message. Like most other email accounts today, Gmail also has an intuitive calendar where you can set meetings and reminders.
Pro tip: You can also use a free product like HubSpot Meetings to easily schedule meetings without back-and-forth emails.
Unlike other email accounts, you can use your Gmail address to log into and manage your YouTube account, as well as collaborate on shared documents and spreadsheets right from a cloud-based Google Drive.
Offering a generous 15 GB of free email storage, Gmail does everything it can to make your inbox less chaotic, including advanced filters that automatically push emails into separate folders as they arrive. And none of these functions costs a dime.
2. AOL
Unique Feature: Unlimited Storage

Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: people who use email for most of their communication.
America Online (I feel nostalgic just typing those words) has quietly kept up with today’s standards for a good user experience. The classic AOL is now once again one of the best free email accounts available to you.
Purchased by Verizon in 2015, AOL delivers you email from its classic news-driven homepage, and comes with the contemporary spam filters and virus protection you’d expect from your email provider. You can also send text and instant messages from specific windows in your email inbox.
AOL does have something over Gmail, though: unlimited storage. Additionally, you can import email contacts from a CSV, TXT, or LDIF file so you’re not creating your “buddy list” (get it?) from scratch.
3. Outlook
Unique Feature: Multiple App Integrations

Sign up here.
Type of email: Email client
Who should use it: people who use many different platforms to connect with others.
If you ever cringed at the sight of a “Hotmail.com” email address, you can thank Outlook for this outdated domain name. But there’s good news: Microsoft has reinvented its longstanding email service, and your free Outlook.com email address has many progressive features waiting for you.
While it touts a calendar and message filter that is similar to Gmail, Outlook also integrates with a number of other popular communication apps. You can connect Skype, Facebook, PowerPoint, PayPal, and even task-management software such as Trello — making it very easy to reach and work with non-Outlook users without leaving your inbox.
Outlook offers 15 GB of free storage for each user, along with a super-clean interface.
4. Zoho
Unique Feature: 25 Business Addresses

Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: startups and small businesses.
This is the first of the lesser-known free email accounts to make our list, but it holds a lot of potential for businesses.
The first thing you’ll notice about Zoho is its user-friendliness. From integrating with Google Drive, Box, and other cloud-based file managers, to its built-in task manager, this email service offers a simple way to accomplish all of your daily tasks.
The real difference-maker, though, is the ability to customize the domain name for up to 25 connected email addresses. Want to replace “@zoho.com” with the name of your business’s website? You can do so under Zoho Lite, which gives you 5 GB for free — all under username@yourdomainname.com.
5. Mail.com
Unique Feature: 200 Custom Domain Names

Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: small businesses, freelancers, and the self-employed.
It doesn’t get more self-explanatory than “Mail.com,” does it? This email provider knows its audience — or should I say, audiences.
Right off the bat, you’ll probably notice Mail.com doesn’t have stellar storage space compared to the options above: only 2 GB. But what this webmail service lacks in gigabytes it makes up for with … drumroll … 200 free custom domain names. You can replace “@mail.com” at the end of your username with just about anything that describes you. Here are some options Mail.com has precreated for you to choose from:

Bartender.net
Musician.org
Columnist.com
Engineer.com
Accountant.com
Toothfairy.com (who knew she was online?)

Mail.com doesn’t rest on its 200 laurels, though, as the email provider also comes with a calendar for creating and tracking your events each week.
6. Yahoo! Mail
Unique Feature: Media and attachment history
Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: creatives and those who send and receive attachments frequently via email.
Yahoo! Mail, another well-known platform, sits just behind AOL in storage space with a whopping 1 TB (that’s a terabyte) for free, along with a few key social media integrations.
In addition to custom background themes and being able to search key information from your inbox, Yahoo! Mail also makes it easy to find every photo, video, and document you’ve ever attached or received via email in their own tabs on your inbox’s sidebar. This makes the platform especially appealing to those who share documents on a regular basis or simply want an album made of every photo they’ve ever had shared.
7. ProtonMail
Unique Feature: Encrypted email
Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: people who send and receive sensitive information.
ProtonMail offers just 500 MB of free space, but for the worthy trade of encrypted email, allowing you to send messages that nobody else can see, and disappear after a month.
What’s the catch? Is the service hard to use? As with most webmail platforms, ProtonMail is easy to use on any device without any software needed to encrypt your emails. Its inbox interface is as easy to understand at a glance as the other email services on this list, and offers quick color-coded labels to help you further organize which emails deserve the most care and protection.
8. iCloud Mail
Unique Feature: Label senders as VIPs
Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: people who use Mac and want everything on one system.
If you’re a Mac user, you may want to consider using iCloud Mail as your email provider. Their free email account comes with 5GB of storage that you can use to sync your photos, files, or email. It’s important to note that storage is shared between all of your apps and devices — so if you take a lot of photos on your iPhone, you may eat into your email storage allowance for the month. Upgraded plans start at $0.99/month and go up to $9.99/month.
One of the biggest advantages of using iCloud over other email providers on this list is the ease of integration. Apple builds its desktop and iPhone mail apps with all email clients in mind, but it pays special attention to making the experience delightful for iCloud users. 
Some of the pros of iCloud Mail include an easy to use search functionality, easy-to-use rules, and an ability to label senders as VIP. When a contact is marked as VIP, new messages will automatically filter to a separate tab on the left, saving you both time and energy. 
9. GMX Mail
Unique Feature: Alias email addresses
Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: people who need multiple emails with one central inbox.While you may not have heard of GMX Mail, it’s been around for quite a while (since 1997) — and it has a bunch of features that make it worth considering. First off, GMX offers 65GB of storage. That’s a lot of storage for a free email service. In fact, they claim that allows you to keep nearly half a million messages in your Inbox!Another feature worth noting is the ability to send large attachments. While many services have caps for your email attachments, GMX Mail allows you to send files up to 50GB. That’s great if you share a ton of photos, presentations, or other large files from your account. But the feature of GMX Mail that really sets it apart is the ability to set up to 10 alias email addresses all from within one account. This can be useful in many situations — both personally and professionally. On a personal note, you could use one alias for all of your online purchases and logins — to keep marketing emails separate from your personal messages. From a business perspective, multiple email addresses can be useful for managing role based emails such as support@yourdomain.com or sales@yourdomain.com.
10. Mozilla Thunderbird
Unique Feature: Customization features, and the ability to open multiple emails in tabs

Sign up here.
Type of email: Email clients
Who should use it: anyone looking for a simple, but customizable email inbox.
Thunderbird, a free email application from Mozilla, known for Firefox, offers a quick email inbox setup and a simple, easy-to-use user interface.
The app offers customizable features, such as theme settings and app extensions that can improve your email experience. The email app also allows you to open multiple emails in tabs, similarly to how you would open multiple web pages in Firefox browsers.
11. Yandex Mail
Unique Feature: 10 GB of free cloud storage

Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: anyone seeking a free email with additional storage capabilities.
Yandex is a Russian web company that offers a global email tool. With the tool, you can sign up for a free account, link it to your Facebook, Twitter, or Gmail accounts, and personalize your email inbox.

Source: LifeWire
Like many of the other providers on this list, Yandex’s email inbox can be set to filter or prioritize emails so you see messages from real people. It can also recognize keywords in messages and subject lines and organize emails into categorized inboxes. Additionally, users who sign up for Yandex mail get 10 GB of free cloud storage.
Making the Most of Your Email
And with that, you have some of the best options for free email accounts this year. But who knows? Your next email address could be entirely different while giving you just what you need to succeed.
Once you’ve chosen an email provider and launched a new email address specifically for your marketing needs, you should also leverage apps, outside software, and APIs to add to your email strategy.
One powerful tool worth noting is HubSpot’s Free Email tool. The tool allows you to link your email address to the HubSpot CRM, while also allowing you to build email templates and send messages straight from the HubSpot software. Even more beneficial? The software even lets you track basic analytics and collect email subscriber contacts in your CRM — which can then be added to your email marketing lists.
To learn more about our free email tool, click here. 

Think back to the last event you attended.
Was it a conference or trade show? An intimate seminar or startup launch party hosted online? How about a fun, socially-distanced 5K or golf outing?
These events are all very different, but to the brands or organizations who hosted them, they all had a common purpose: to entertain and engage attendees — a.k.a. potential customers.
Event marketing is a highly valuable strategy for all kinds of businesses, from technology and education to non-profit, medicine, and retail.
Not only do events benefit their hosts and sponsors, but they also enrich the lives of their attendees. Events inspire, teach, intrigue, entertain, and bring people together in a way unlike most other marketing efforts.
That’s why we created this guide — to equip you to leverage event marketing for your own business. Keep reading to get started or use the chapter links below to jump ahead.

Event marketing refers to a variety of events. You could organize a small roundtable of seven to 10 guests, partner with another brand to sponsor a 5K, or set up an exhibit at a major trade show — or host one of these online.
You could host a multi-day event that attracts thousands of attendees, sponsors, and speakers … like INBOUND. INBOUND 2020 hosted sessions entirely online and attracted thousands of attendees around the world.
It doesn’t quite matter the size of or platform for your event as long as you’re bringing value to your customers, potential customers, and brand. We’ll talk more about how to build an event marketing strategy below.

Types of Event Marketing
In the meantime, let’s go over some of the different types of event marketing your company could host, sponsor, or attend. Note that all of these events can take place virtually, too.
Conferences
Conferences are large events typically organized and hosted by one major company and sponsored by a long list of smaller brands and businesses. Conferences are valuable for both B2B and B2C brands. These events typically offer the most dynamic agendas, filled with speakers, workshops, and networking opportunities.
Trade Shows and Expositions
Trade shows or expositions (expos) are large events organized around a specific industry or type of product, such as sales technology or medical devices. Trade shows give companies a chance to show off their products and services and typically bring in the highest number of qualified leads. Whereas conferences are open to the public, trade show attendees are typically pre-qualified buyers, company representatives, and salespeople.
Seminars
Seminars (often called webinars when hosted online) are valuable, education-centric events attended by a small number of people. They involve discussions, lectures, and intimate networking opportunities.
Roundtables are similar to seminars, but usually have even fewer attendees of comparable “levels”, such as CEOs, surgeons, or teachers. Both events typically last no more than one day.
Pop-Up Shops
Pop-up shops are temporary retail spaces that give companies the opportunity to sell their products in a controlled environment. They’re typically organized by e-commerce brands that don’t have a full-time brick-and-mortar storefront. Pop-up shops also allow otherwise digital brands to bring their brand to life through a physical, immersive setting for their customers.
Launch Parties and Celebrations
Launch parties or celebrations are small, personal events held at the launch of a new business, upon a big announcement, or to simply celebrate a success or milestone. Some companies put on a yearly party to host and entertain customers or clients. While these types of events shouldn’t be centered on a product or brand, a simple speech or presentation can help align the event with a company and remind attendees why they’re there.
Workshops
Workshops are similar to seminars and roundtables in that they’re focused on sharing knowledge and educating attendees. But unlike seminars and roundtables, they’re typically open to the public. Workshops can be offered both virtually and in-person, and while they aren’t traditionally promotional, they’re usually centered around a topic relevant to the business … which makes a company seem more credible in their field.
Other types of event marketing include job fairs, customer-only conferences, networking sessions, VIP experiences, sponsorships, awards events, and competitions (like 5Ks or golf outings). There are so many possible ways to market your business and products through events because
events work.

In a recent article on the ultimate marketing advice, multiple experts mentioned that events were the best way to connect with your audience and grow your brand. Here’s a direct quote from Kenny Nguyen of ThreeSixtyEight (who spoke at INBOUND):

…businesses will utilize event strategies more than ever before as human experiences will be how companies choose to differentiate themselves, especially those that can’t do so through technologies. The key to any great event strategy is very simple —identify the memory you want attendees to walk away with and work backward.”

Events work because they’re different than every other type of marketing. They’re immersive, entertaining, and memorable. They’re also useful for businesses in any industry

Benefits of Event Marketing
Event marketing helps companies be successful — we’ve proven this above.
But how do they do that specifically? Why should you invest in this strategy for your business? Here are some distinct benefits of event marketing.
Events marketing generates business.
Companies choose to invest in event marketing because events inherently generate new business and revenue opportunities — 95% of marketers believe that in-person events can have a major impact on achieving their company’s primary business goals.
As an event host, the registration process alone generates a list of people who are already interested in your product, industry, or at least fall in your target demographic. If you’re participating in or sponsoring an event, you can collect leads through an email list, demo offering, or by running a competition.
Event marketing provides one-on-one customer engagement.
Lots of today’s software and e-commerce businesses never get to meet their customers or clients in person. That’s where event marketing is beneficial.
A 2020 Bizzabo study found that 93% of marketers believe in-person events provide attendees with a valuable opportunity to form connections in an increasingly digital world.
Engaging customers and potential customers at events initiates personal interactions. These personal, one-on-one interactions build brand loyalty and help customers humanize your brand. Events also provide a reprieve from the distractions of daily work — meaning you can capture a client’s attention better than over a phone call or in-office pitch. With that attention, you have a chance to sell — or upsell — your products and services.
Event marketing builds brand awareness.
Hosting or participating in events is a key way for companies to establish and grow their brand. 64% of event marketers reported that the primary reason for hosting events is brand awareness for their company or products.
Event marketing allows you to associate a physical identity and aesthetic with an otherwise digital brand. Like with pop-up shops, events provide a truly immersive experience at which consumers and customers can get a real feel for your brand and what it looks like in person.
The best part about using events to build brand awareness? People talk about events. Consumers, customers, media, bystanders, and influencers talk about events in person, on social media, in the press … you name it, making events a fantastic way to educate and alert people of your brand and products.
Event marketing encourages product and industry education.
Regardless of what type of event your company hosts or participates in, there’s most likely an education component. That’s what makes event marketing so successful — they don’t focus solely on a brand or product.
Instead, they focus on educating and entertaining a demographic or industry … and promote products and services on the side. (In fact, this makes for great marketing across the board.)

Event Marketing Plan
Now, let’s talk about how you can implement your next event. Your events should have a marketing plan separate from other efforts you do for your business.
You can cross-promote (i.e. share event information on company social media and vice versa), but it’s wise to detail your event marketing as a standalone campaign strategy.
Here are some questions to help you build your next event marketing strategy.
What are your SMART goals? What’s your budget?
SMART goals stand for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Keeping your goals SMART helps you avoid running with vague goals like “bring in leads.”
SMART goals have a dual purpose: to give you direction when planning and implementing your event and to help you decide whether or not your event was a success (and if it wasn’t, to know how to improve).
An example of a SMART event marketing goal would be to “grow our prospective leads list for our new product by 100 names by the end of the event.”
This goal is specific (prospective leads for only the new product), measurable (100 names), attainable and relevant (assuming the event is relevant and there are more than enough attendees to get 100 names), and timely (by the end of the event).
Note: Don’t limit your event to one single goal. You should also set intangible goals like “strengthen relationships” and “engage prospective customers,” but in terms of creative and fiscal decisions, use your SMART goals to guide you — and to measure on the backend.
Lastly, take some time to define your event marketing budget. This is crucial as it’ll likely be the deciding factor on everything from the venue to the entertainment to the website.
What’s your event’s theme, brand, and schedule?
To market your event, you must know what information and content to market. Before moving further, establish your event’s name, theme, brand, and purpose. Why should people attend? What will they gain? Is your event an offshoot of your company, or is it a standalone brand?
Next, figure out where and when your event will take place. These will likely be the most-asked questions by attendees.
Then, research and outline your event’s schedule, such as keynote speakers, workshop sessions, entertainment portions, and times to gather and network.
You don’t have to secure all of these before you start promoting your event, but you should at least have an idea of who will be there and what you’ll offer for attendees.
Who are you marketing to? How will you reach them?
Define your target audience. Who would benefit most from attending your event? What kinds of people would enjoy your workshops, learn from your speakers, and engage your sponsors?
Establishing your audience will help you target and invest in the proper marketing channels. Social media and your event website are given channels in today’s digitally-saturated market. If your event is local, consider print advertisements. Consider adding your event to an event listing website like Eventful, Hey Event, and 10times to reach more people.
Event marketing with email
Email is another popular and effective way to promote events. 39% of marketers found that email marketing tools were the greatest contributor to event success.
Email information is easy to collect at registration, and attendees check email, so they’ll easily notice updates and confirmations.
Often times, companies will create separate email addresses and newsletters for their events as a way to keep communication and promotion separate from it others marketing efforts.
This also benefits your attendees — they probably don’t want their inboxes flooded.
What’s your content creation and management plan?
Promoting your event involves a lot of information — what, when, where, why, who, and how, for starters. To properly manage all this information, you must establish a viable plan to create and control it.
Because your event details likely won’t be ready all at once, you’ll be tasked with releasing, updating, and changing information for months leading up to the event. Will you do this via newsletter? Who will be in charge of making sure the website is up-to-date? Will you invest in an event app so attendees have this information in their pocket at all times?
What’s your event marketing timeline?
To engage your audience, it’s best to promote your event throughout the weeks and months leading up to it. It helps to outline a promotion timeline so you know when and what to release. A timeline like this also helps pique your attendees’ curiosity as you release new names or information at different times.
It’s also wise to organize a multi-touch promotion. Include a variety (i.e. email, social media, direct mail, phone calls, print ads, and paid ads) to reach the maximum amount of people.
Simply getting the word out there could make a massive difference in your registrations.
How will you promote and market during the event?

Marketing your event shouldn’t stop when your event begins. Dedicate some resources to promoting your event as it’s happening. Attendees may learn something new about what’s offered, and those who didn’t register will be curious about what they’re missing.
Most companies use social media to engage people while their event is happening. 73% of businesses use social media to promote specific events and features during the event, 55% use it to post photos, and 35% use it to amplify product announcements.
Consider taking Facebook or Instagram Live Video or Live Tweeting during your event.

How will you measure your event success?
In the midst of a bustling event, it’s easy to take a look around and feel good about your attendance and engagement. But is that the best way to evaluate whether your event was a success? Probably not.
Like every other marketing investment, it’s wise to set some key performance indicators (KPIs) against which to measure your event and evaluate its performance.
Here are a few common KPIs for event marketing.
Registrations and check-ins
Not everyone who registers for your event will attend. Compare your registrations to your actual attendance and consider reaching out to a few who registered but didn’t check-in. Take a look at your registration data to see when the most and fewest tickets were purchased and what kinds of tickets were purchased, if you offered a variety of ticket packages or options.
Revenue and cost-to-revenue ratio
How much money did your event bring in? If your event required a paid ticket, gross revenue is an important measure of success. How does that amount compare to what you spent on the event? This comparison will help you better understand the value of your event and the resources offered. Events are expensive, but they’re not worth going in debt for.
Attendee satisfaction
Did your attendees enjoy your event? What did they participate in and enjoy the most? “Satisfaction” may seem like an obscure metric, but understanding the opinions and perspective of your event attendees can help you better understand where your event was a success … and where you could improve. Consider building a survey to ask your attendees about their experience, takeaways, and to calculate a Net Promoter Score (NPS) for your event.
Here’s a direct quote from another expert who provided some marketing advice in a recent piece of ours, Mike Piddock of Glisser spoke at INBOUND:

“Events need to be assessed with hard metrics, rather than just ‘gut-feel’ opinions and feedback forms to rate the coffee.Measure attendee engagement, rather than simply counting who registered and who showed up, as this isa great proxy for the effectiveness of the event.”

Social media mentions/engagement
How often was your event discussed on social media? What was the general consensus around the event? Did your attendees share content that engaged non-attendees? (It’s highly likely — a 2016 study found that 98% of consumers create digital content at events, and this number has likely risen today.) In today’s digital world, social media is a great measure of event success and reach. Take a look at your event mentions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. Consider using a hashtag so you can easily track posts.
Lead acquisition and customer conversion
Acquiring leads and converting customers is one of the main benefits of event marketing, so it’d make sense to measure these as KPIs of your event. Make note of how many qualified leads you gain from your event, and then track how many of those leads are converted into paying customers. This can help reveal the direct ROI of your event and see which tactics worked for lead collection and conversion.
Get Started with Event Marketing
Organizing and implementing an event is a daunting task. But approach it with a “snackable” strategy, and you’ll be planning your first event in no time.
Whether you’re aiming to entertain new clients, build your contact list, or raise money for your non-profit, event marketing may be the solution for you — and most fun for your customers.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

With the rise of marketing software and paid advertising, it’s no secret that social media platforms aren’t only a place for mutual connection and sharing among strangers — they’ve also grown into a place where companies can build a brand. 
Marketing campaigns on social media can expose companies to expansive audience members that could turn into leads. 
In fact, LinkedIn, a social media platform for professional engagement, has 303 million monthly active users.
Attracting an engaged audience on LinkedIn requires you to craft compelling content. But, if you don’t post your content at the right time, most of your followers will never see your updates. So how do you figure out the optimal time to post for your specific audience?

The truth is, there is no right answer. But you can use some research to make assumptions about the best times to post based on your audience. In the next section, we’ll go over the based time to post on the platform based on your industry or business goals.
The Best Time to Post on LinkedIn
Thinking about your audience’s behavior is key. It’s best to conduct some market research to learn more about how your audience uses the internet, or refer to your buyer persona if you’ve collected that information. If your ideal customer is someone who is a working professional, it’s safe to assume that during business hours, they won’t have time to check their social media feeds.
However, there are pockets throughout their day where professionals tend to check social media, like lunch hours and while heading to and from work. From there, based on your time zone, you can estimate when you’re expected to reach the most customers.
Also, think about the majority of LinkedIn’s audience: working professionals, higher education students, and college graduates. Typically, their web behavior would reflect being busy during regular business hours.
During the time periods above, people are usually getting ready for work, just starting their day, or taking an afternoon break.
But let’s say you want to post according to your industry. We’ll talk about how to come to the decision to post based on your business type, next. 

Maybe you’re a higher education student thinking about the best time to reach out to thought leaders, or a marketer for a B2B company.
There isn’t a set answer here either, but fortunately, doing some research about the type of audience you’re trying to capture based on your industry can lead you to make an informed decision.
You can infer when your posts will earn the most engagement based on the behavior of competitors in your industry, as well as audience members. 

Software and Media Companies — It’s suspected that audiences of media companies tend to check their social media feeds in the morning, like some would read a newspaper. They’re likely to find success posting in the morning between Monday-Friday, while software companies are suggested to find similar success posting outside of work hours.

Healthcare and Higher Education — Mid-morning, so around 10 a.m., to early afternoon, close to 2 p.m., are suggested for the best engagement. Higher education also seems to follow suit.

B2B Businesses — For B2Bs, analyzing web behavior is the best indicator. Their audiences are most likely other professionals, so it’s best to catch them before they start working, during lunch hours, and during commutes.

B2C Businesses — Similarly to B2Bs, these companies are likely to find success among audiences when posting outside of business hours, or during lunch breaks.

If you post content to LinkedIn when the majority of your audience isn’t online, you most likely won’t receive the amount of views and engagement you were hoping for.
So remember, if you want to build a brand on LinkedIn, it’s crucial to find out when your specific audience prefers to surf the site. You’ll have a better idea of how to nail the timing of your posts almost every single time you want to update your followers on the platform.
How often should you post on LinkedIn?
Our research has found you don’t want to publish more than five times a week on LinkedIn — and you’ll find highest engagement for your first two posts. As a result, we’d suggest anywhere between two to five times a week, depending on your industry, audience, and the type of content you’re hoping to publish on the platform.
However, quantity shouldn’t win over quality. When it comes to posting, you’ll want to ensure you’re thoughtful, strategic, and helpful with every piece of content you post on LinkedIn.
If you post lower-quality content simply to hit the five-pieces mark, you’ll end up damaging your engagement metrics on the platform and LinkedIn will display your content less often to your followers. As is the case with all social platforms, the algorithm prioritizes good content. 
If you choose to publish five posts per week on LinkedIn, consider how you might vary the type of content. For instance, perhaps on Monday you publish a video, Tuesday you publish a thought leadership article, Wednesday you share a blog post, and Thursday you write a compelling status and ask followers’ to provide feedback in the comments section.
As you grow your LinkedIn strategy, you can iterate on this over time as you figure out which types of content perform best on your own business page.
Ultimately, a LinkedIn strategy is a long game. Test out these tactics, but try some experiments for yourself, as well — your audience is unique, and you might uncover your own powerful insights regarding LinkedIn content as you continue to post high-quality content while taking the time to engage with other industry-relevant posts, as well. 

There’s a long-established idea that creativity is somehow rooted in chaos: that structure and organization are somehow the enemy of great ideas.
If it wasn’t already time to reassess that idea — then, surely, that time is now.
2020, after all, saw creative teams around the world removed (often without warning) from their offices, and scattered to home offices and kitchen tables.
Most of us moved from a world of anytime, face—to—face communication to a world of video calls, email, and chat apps.
And this has only amplified an idea many already believed to be true: that great creative teams need not only great ideas — but also great processes, communication, and project management in order to succeed.
In the midst of all that chaos, the team at Project.co just released the State of Project Management report, designed to find out how creative teams manage their projects as we move into 2021.
The survey sought to gauge what teams do well, and what they feel could be improved. It explored which tools and systems they use, and how their processes impact their efficiency and productivity.

The research suggests:

People almost unanimously believe that there is room for improvement in the way they manage projects.
Most people struggle to have visibility of what others on their team are working on, and many take a dim view of communication within their business — despite acknowledging its mission-critical importance.
An alarmingly high number of people openly admit regularly missing deadlines — and even forgetting tasks they have due.

Email overwhelmingly dominates as a communication tool, both between teams and with clients — although this isn’t to everyone’s liking.

About the Survey
Project.co’s State of Project Management is a comprehensive report designed to assess the way in which creative teams manage their projects and communication.
It asks a range of questions to evaluate how the project management landscape looks. This is the first report, but it will be released annually and, over time, will trace the changes in the industry.
The findings of this report were gathered by surveying 437 unique respondents, from a range of industries, niches and countries, in December 2020.
The Key Findings
The Power of Task Clarity
It emerged that having a clear list of tasks to methodically work through is a key driver of well-being and performance.
95% of people feel that having a list of tasks to do each day is good for their mental health, and 96% of people feel that it makes them more efficient and productive.
Out of those who don’t create a daily to—do list, 90% say they either ‘occasionally’ or ‘regularly’ miss or forget tasks.

A Problem with Cross Team Visibility

An old metaphor for coordination is that the left hand needs to know what the right hand is doing.
In business terms, this means it’s important for people to know what others in their team are working on — avoiding re—work, duplication, and facilitating the input of creative solutions and diverse perspectives from across teams.
This is validated by the fact that 94% of people feel that having a good view of what their teammates are working on improves productivity and efficiency in a business.
However, this is where it gets interesting: less than half (42%) of people say they find it easy to understand what other members of their team are working on at any given time.
Needless to say, this is a particularly big missed opportunity in view of the current situation, where greater cross—team understanding and collaboration can clearly help foster a great sense of employee engagement and mitigate many of the challenges that arise from remote working.
Communication with Clients
When it comes to communicating with clients, email rules the roost. 67% of people say they mainly communicate with clients using email, which overshadows phone calls (8%) project management software (9%), online meetings (8%) and face-to-face meetings (5%).
But that doesn’t necessarily work for everyone. Less than half of people say email is their preferred way to deal with businesses as customers, with 25% saying they prefer to use project management software.
Email is less than ideal because of its siloed, disconnected nature — this often leads to lost/misplaced assets, inconsistent sharing of information, and a frustrating experience for the client.
Room for Improvement
What’s clear throughout the data is the extent to which people feel things could, and should, be better.
92% of people say they believe collaboration with their teammates could be improved.
And this filters down to day—to—day deliverables: just 16% of people say they ‘always’ hit their deadlines.
This lays bare the fact that, despite organization, communication, efficiency, and reliability being paramount in the creative industry — late delivery, shabby communication, and poor levels of organization are still a major factor, and no doubt holding back countless businesses from hitting their full potential.
Time Tracking & Project Profitability
For many creative teams, time is money — and that’s often literally the case, with billing completed on a per—hour basis for many agencies.
So the actual intelligence and data around time spent on projects is clearly really important — or at least it should be.
Remarkably, in the survey, it emerged that 15% of businesses which actually bill clients according to time spent on projects don’t actually track that time at all.
Where businesses DO track time spent on projects, only 13% believe it’s tracked ‘extremely accurately’ with 35% saying it’s not tracked very accurately at all.
And the data, even when collected, is being underutilized: 60% of people who DO track time spent on projects say they don’t retrospectively use this data to identify efficiency in their projects.

To Sum Up

When evaluating this data, it seems that there’s, essentially, good and bad news.
The bad news is that the data depicts a creative industry experiencing a real pinch around basic issues of organization, task and time management, communication, and operational efficiency. There’s little doubt that these ‘basics’ are undermining amazing creative work across a range of industries and niches, and selling businesses short.
The good news, though, is that people really seem to ‘get’ that these are problems. Issues are clearly on the radar, having been identified, and there seems to be a demonstrable commitment to resolving them.
In many ways, there’s no better time to take stock of this. If necessity is the mother of invention, it could well be that current world events are the driving force behind a new era of investment in systems, processes, and technology that make creative projects work better for the teams involved, and, of course, the clients.
By investing in software that allows teams greater visibility over work, lets them create their own task lists, communicate centrally in one place and track time/project profitability, businesses can finally take control over the smooth running of their projects.
In turn, they’ll be able to offer a healthier, more efficient experience for their employees — while effortlessly delivering a customer service experience that matches the quality of their creative work.
You can check out the full report — with plenty more data points — and get a downloadable version by visiting Project.co’s State of Project Management page.