By Jenny Hamby, the Seminar Marketing Pro?
Certified Guerrilla Marketer and Direct-Response Copywriter

Have you fallen for the myth that your seminar-marketing campaign is a total failure if your response rate is less than 2 percent?

Well, guess what ? it's not uncommon to have a response rate of less than 1% when promoting a seminar. The higher your registration fee and the longer your event lasts, the lower response rate you'll probably get.

The easiest and most economical way to boost your conversion rate is to focus on highly qualified prospects. Here's an example.

For an introductory inventory management seminar, I sent a preliminary brochure to all segments of the client's internal database that we suspected would have an interest in attending the event. The response rate was 1.32%, which soundly beat the client's control.

When marketing the successive classes (there were 7 in all), we sent direct-mail solicitations only to people who had attended one or more of the previous classes or who had requested information about the events. (The class was promoted to other audiences via an organizational catalog, newsletters and press releases.) This was a safe and sound approach, because it made the most sense for prospects to take the courses sequentially; each course built upon the knowledge of the previous seminars.

The response rates on the successive classes were over 80% ? because we focused our efforts on the most qualified prospects. Best of all, the client's mailing costs plummeted to less than $100 per seminar.

To increase your own response rates, start by targeting qualified segments of your internal database, such as people who have attended related seminars in the past. Also consider establishing joint ventures with companies that already have a relationship with your audience, as well as renting mailing lists of people who have attended similar types of events.