The New Event Marketing Benchmarks

Events: The Critical Recruitment Tactic for Grad Schools

The way schools used to rely on physical, in-person recruitment events has dramatically changed over the past few years, but has been especially impacted since the start of the pandemic. Grad school fairs are no longer the mass-recruitment lead source they once were, and schools have moved to hosting their own information sessions and open houses. 

The biggest change in the last year is the predominance of virtual events as a result of the pandemic, which means we now have more data on virtual admissions-related events than ever before to analyze and identify the new benchmarks. This is extremely important now that the average prospective student has been forced (along with the rest of the world) to adopt virtual experiences as part of their research process in considering various education opportunities. Before the pandemic, virtual events typically achieved 25-40% attendance rates out of registrants, but as you will see in the data below, more students are signing up and attending recruitment events than ever before.

What We're Tracking

Event Emails

• Invitation emails promoting program-specific info sessions
• Invitation emails promoting broad grad school events (open houses, admissions webinars, etc.)
• Invitation emails promoting industry/thought leadership events
• Triggered confirmation emails to registrants

Event Digital Advertising

• Facebook event ads
• Paid search event ads
• Display event ads

Event Landing Pages

• Single-event landing pages with one registration form
• Multi-event landing pages with multiple registration forms
• Website CTAs linking to event landing pages

Event Invitation Email Benchmarks

The following tables represents data from over 280 event-related invitation emails, where the primary purpose was promoting a recruitment event of some sort, hosted by the institution (not general grad fairs) either for a specific program, a general admissions event, or an industry event with thought leaders speaking on a relevant topic.

Comparison of Event Invitation Emails

Summary Analysis: All event invitation emails hold a very strong Open Rate across the board. When it comes to Click Rate, it's no surprise to see those drop on emails 2 and 3, but email 4 actually produces the highest click engagement, which is a strong indicator of how important this email is in the series (and likely representative of the last-minute nature of prospects to sign up for events).

The Impact of Primary CTA Quantity

Summary Analysis: For primary calls-to-action, there is not a significant difference in impact on email opens or click-through engagement related to the quantity of primary CTAs used within the email.

The Impact of Secondary CTA Quantity

Summary Analysis: For secondary calls-to-action, there is a significant increase in click-through engagement achieved when using 3 or more secondary CTAs.

How Many Invitation Emails Should You Send?

Summary Analysis: Sending 4 invitation emails (of varying style) achieves the peak performance when it comes to total submissions, total RSVPs, and total attendees for an event. After 4, additional emails see diminishing returns.

Metrics That Matter for Event Invite Emails:

• Keep the main thing the main thing, but offer 5+ options. 93% of event invitation emails provided at least 2 different ways to click through to register for the event.

• Secondary CTAs are critical. Event invitation emails that offer 3+ secondary calls-to-action generate the highest click rate, nearly 60% higher than the average.

• 4 Invitations is the sweet spot. Schools that sent out 4 event emails achieved, on average, the highest total engagement, and the 4th email achieves 65% higher click rates than the average. Additionally, open rates did not fall off and stayed very steady between 34-40% across all invitations.

• The rule of 3x3 applies. Sending 3+ invitation emails with at least 3 different CTA styles will generate more than 2x the RSVPs and 3x the attendees than anything less than that amount of emails or CTAs.

• Variety works the best. For schools that sent out multiple invitation emails (which is recommended), it was common to include more CTAs in the first two messages of the flow, and nearly all schools varied the length of each email, so no two invitations were the same. 

Smart Marketing: How to Use This Data for Event Invitation Email Strategy

For any school promoting events via email, regardless of size or type of program...

• Make sure to include other content offers for prospects who aren’t interested/able to attend the event.
• Craft an email communications strategy that allows for at least 3, if not 4 event emails leading up to the event (or multiple events relatively near each other).
• Vary CTA styles from text links, to button-style links, to image links, to P.S. lines, etc.

Triggered Event ‘Thank You’ Email Benchmarks

The following table represents data from over 95 event-related ‘Thank You’ trigger emails, where the primary purpose was post-registration confirmation and follow-up communications with related content and conversion opportunities.

Metrics That Matter for Event TY Trigger Emails:

• Take advantage of high open rates. ‘Thank You’ trigger emails to event registrants achieve an unbelievably high open rate of over 75%, which is above average compared to all types of TY trigger emails. And nearly 25% of those openers are clicking through on links in these emails, which is a click-to-open rate you won’t see in other types of emails!
• Provide 2-3 other content offers. The average event TY trigger email has 2.5 secondary calls-to-action, which is how schools are successfully getting registrants engaging with other related content before they actually attend the event. 
  

Event Digital Advertising Benchmarks

The following table compares paid digital ads promoting events for over 130 different ad campaigns across Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google (search and display ad campaigns).

**NOTE: New contacts generated per ad does not represent total submissions on event landing pages from digital ads that were retargeted to existing prospect audiences; this data only represents brand new contacts whose first conversion came from that ad campaign.

Metrics That Matter for Event-related Digital Ads:

• Pound-per-pound, paid social is the better bet. Looking at bottom-of-the-funnel conversions, paid social media ads that promote events are more effective at generating new contacts at a lower cost-per-acquisition compared to paid search or display ads promoting events.
• General events are easier to promote than program-specific events. Overall, general admissions events, such as open houses, and multi-program info sessions achieved an 87% higher click-through-rate compared to program-specific event ads.

Smart Marketing: How to Use This Data for Event-Related Digital Ad Strategy

Event Landing Page Benchmarks

The following table represents the findings from analyzing 135 separate event landing pages, including single-event landing pages and multi-event landing pages that enable prospects to view several different events on one page with multiple registration form options within the page.

Metrics That Matter for Event Landing Pages:

• Event-specific landing pages convert the best. With a 12% submission rate, event landing pages that promote a single event are the most effective vs. multi-event landing pages, and also result in 88% more attendees per event compared to the benchmark averages.
• Boost results with website CTAs. Schools that added one or more calls-to-action on their website pages (banners, pop-ups, etc.) that directed to event landing pages received, on average, 32% more landing page views + 3x more submissions and RSVPs to their events vs. the overall benchmark averages.
• Secondary offers on event pages account for 9-13% more conversions. 4 out of the 43 (9.3%) average submissions on event landing pages are for secondary content offers other than the event itself. For multi-event landing pages, that number jumps to 66.2 out of 502 (13.1%).
• Virtual events are here to stay. 98% of all recruitment events in 2020 were virtual events, and the average show rate of 50% is an all-time high for web-based events targeted to prospective students (previously 40% was considered “excellent” for virtual event attendance). While in-person events are still very effective, the healthy show rate for virtual events demonstrates the willingness of prospects to attend them as part of their student journey.

Smart Marketing: How to Use This Data for Event Landing Page Strategy