Subtext client Apartment Therapy recently facilitated their month-long Small/Cool event in New York City, targeting the design and decor community and used Subtext to spread the word.
Small/Cool NYC is an interactive event, where 12 designers bring 12 of the biggest design trends to life within a 120-square-foot event space. Located in the heart of Soho, it's attendees have the opportunity to shop for different designs and interact directly with its designers.
We caught up with Hollis Miller, Email & Acquisition Manager at Apartment Therapy, who shared that the Small/Cool NYC event is their first foray into SMS and that it's been a great experience thus far.
Why texting? For the team, it was important to keep attendees in the know as each event weekend approached in order to build excitement and maintain consistent engagement. As such, it was a no-brainer why they chose SMS as their main communication channel.
Target Acquired
The first step of the campaign was to encourage their readership to sign up for the event across the various weekend date(s) they wanted to attend.
Hollis shared the team's acquisition strategy for this campaign: "We acquired subscribers through the Substack embeds onsite, our Eventbrite invitations (which required a phone number), and through a sweeps, we ran ahead of the event. We definitely saw the most subscribers come from the sweeps and through Eventbrite."
Execution! Execution! Execution!
Once the lists were acquired, it was time to set the campaign in motion. The team wanted to create a tailored experience for their subscribers. To accomplish this, they used Subtext to create multiple communication streams for subscribers, depending on which event they were attending.
Per Hollis, the results spoke for themselves: "We're really happy with the engagement we've seen from our audience so far! We're hoping to convert some of these subscribers after the event is over to our Apartment Therapy weekly SMS -- we're promoting that in our final broadcasts to them."
Takeaways
The team at Apartment Therapy utilized a mix of platform engagement features that helped optimize their reach:
- Batch uploads: Large contact lists acquired from multiple mediums were seamlessly added to each of the appropriate campaign(s) leading up to the event/
- Auto-reply: Utilizing the auto-replies function enabled them to conveniently respond to subscribers with more information, promptly and at scale.
- Scheduled texts: Scheduling texts ahead of time allowed them to reach their attendees before opening and after the closing of each event with consistent updates and thank you notes!
- Cross-campaign promotion: We've said it time and again--if you run multiple Subtext campaigns, leverage your existing audience! The team plans to convert subscribers, both old and new, into their upcoming Apartment Therapy weekly SMS campaign.
We can't wait to see what they come up with next! Want to generate buzz around your next event? Schedule a demo with the Subtext team.