It’s no secret that when it comes to promoting telesummits and virtual events, emails convert the best. While social media will create buzz and ALOT of clicks, email messages to an opt-in list is by far the best way to convert prospects into profits.

Although many telesummit and virtual event hosts (erronously) rely solely on speakers to promote their virtual event, most are saddened that their speakers produced very few sign-ups.

In my experience, up to 30% of those who sign up for virtual events come from emails that speakers sent to their lists. And there’s a reason why conversion rates are so low. It has everything to do with low open and clickthrough rates.

According to a report released in June 2011 on email marketing by Harte-Hanks, a company that compiles statistics on direct marketing, email open rates average 17% with only 3% of those actually clicking on links in the email.

Let’s do the math…

If a speaker has 5,000 on her email list, only 850 people (17%) will actually open the email (and what “open” really means is up for debate). Of that, only 26 people (or 3%) will click on the link that will take them to your telesummit, video summit or virtual event information page.

Eek! That doesn’t sound like alot, huh?

So, if you’re calculating your total promotional reach based solely on speaker email lists, whatever the total number, make sure you do the actual calculation to arrive at the real number. So:

• If Speaker A has 5,000, Speaker B has 10,000, Speaker C has 3,000 and you have 1,000, your total reach via email marketing is 19,000.
• Because you know that not all 19,000 will click on the link, you rightly identify that 3,230 will open their email.
• Then, you rightly calculate that of the 3,230 people who open the email, just 97 people (3%) will click on the link that will take them to your telesummit information page.

Can you see now why you have to:

• Have an interesting subject line in the email message so that more than 17% will open it up?
• Use the right language in your email copy so that your target market is captivated enough to read through to the end?
• Offer just one link in your email message so the reader takes the action you want them to take (which is to go to your sales page)?

So, don’t blame speakers if your conversion is low.

First, you must use a diversified marketing approach to get people to your telesummit or virtual event information page (get my program, Virtual Event Marketing Blueprint if you need help).

Second, you need to fully understand how many will actually open, then clickthrough on links sent in email messages.