The National Wedding Show uses an array of sales promotion techniques such as price promotion and the ‘win’ and ‘save’ techniques. These are very effective in pulling in sales and encouraging the customer to purchase tickets. Oxford Fashion week do not follow the same method and only use the technique of the charity tie in and the ‘free’ pull factor. I believe that Oxford Fashion Week have a lot less experience in sales promotion, as it is only the third year running they are still developing and discovering what works well in this event industry, for this reason there is little other sales promotion, as they are not able to offer discounts and competitions at these early stages. However, as they grow they will need to offer promotions to achieve the much needed ticket sales. I think the National Wedding Show are now very well established and have the opportunity to offer special discounts and encourage the sales of tickets through competitions and deals as they have their customer fan base set and are aware that the event is likely to reach full capacity each year.

SALES PROMOTION - Oxford Fashion Week

Oxford Fashion Week uses a small ammount of sales promotions; they do not use the ‘win’ or ‘save’ techniques in promotional sales marketing. The only format of the sales promotions tools they do use is the cause related tie in and the ’free’ option. There are several exhibitions such as the photography exhibition and the ‘Oxfords fashionable night out’ which are free to attend. The fact that it is free is not exaggerated or advertised in a very promotional way, it is written into the text and not made a big deal of. The fact that these events are free may be a great pull force for the event but it is not utilizing it to the full potential.

The other form of sales promotion that Oxford Fashion Week is using is the cooperation they have with Macmillan Cancer Care; this is the cause related factor. Macmillan are working with Oxford Fashion Week in one of the catwalk shows and are exhibiting some of their clothes, all the proceeds from this show will go to Macmillan, this is a prime pull aspect of promotion which will encourage visitors to attend as they will be feeling good that they are helping a charity whilst enjoying the show.

SALES PROMOTION - National Wedding Show

The National Wedding Show uses a few promotional sales tools in order to attract the large ammount of customers they get. They use three of the consumer sales promotions techniques, the ‘win’, ‘free’ and ‘save’ pull factors to entice customers. The National Wedding Show use price promotion and competition promotion to encourage sales of their event.

The National Wedding Show promotes the competitions that the retailers will have on the day from win a wedding dress! courtesy of Incognito or to Winning a personalised Bridal Skin & Make-up Wardrobe courtesy of Natio. All the competitions are listed on the website for the brides-to-be to browse through before they attend the event.

The National Wedding Show use ‘free’ promotion by advertising that everyone who buys a ticket will gain FREE access to the champagne bar. They will also get a FREE goody bag, this is a great pull factor as all brides want to feel pampered and enjoy the wedding experience and so having access to the champagne bar is a very attractive offer. The free goody bag will be a good opportunity to attract potential visitors, but it will also be a good marketing tool for the exhibitors as they will be able to put their leaflets and information in the goody bags.

The National Wedding show use the ‘save’ promotional factor, when a group of 4 purchase tickets they will receive a discount. This is appealing to many people as they feel they are getting a great deal. They also use the advanced booking technique, when tickets are purchased in advance, there is a discount from on the day tickets. This is great for the National Wedding Show as people will feel compelled to buy tickets online and save some money, and then even if they end up not going on the day the National Wedding Show has been able to make profit from that customer. Also in having customers buying tickets online, the opportunity for data collection is possible.

SALES PROMOTION

The word promotion, when considered, literally means to move forward or advance. Sales promotion is the communications tools that is used to inform the target market of the benefits of the product, thus advancing sales.
Sales promotion, also called below-the line promotion is An activity designed to boost the sales of a product or service. It may include an advertising campaign, increased PR activity, a free-sample campaign, offering free gifts or trading stamps, arranging demonstrations or exhibitions, setting up competitions with attractive prizes, temporary price reductions, door-to-door calling, telemarketing, personal letters on other methods”.

There are many sales promotional techniques available, such as price promotion, these are offers like 2 for 1, 50% off, ‘reduced’ and ‘sale’. These either offer a discount to the normal price or the customer receives extra for the same price.
Competitions and prizes are another popular for of promotion, this is an incentive for the customer to purchase a ticket or product.

Sales promotions give the company the opportunity to develop sales with loyal customers, to develop trial sales with new customers, to counteract competitor activity and to it can even help them to create a database. On the other hand, too much sales promotion can damage a brands image, the balance must be right between sales promotion and maintaining brand image.
The different categories of sales promotion include the ‘win’ factor – consumers can win a prize or contest.
The ‘free’ factor – here consumers get something for nothing, this is a big pull factor that a lot of clients look for.
The ‘save’ factor – consumer have to save something, such an coupons from a newspaper, to gain points or free products, another such example is the ‘Boots card’, points are collected and then the possibility to purchase products with the points is available.
Cause Related – here the consumer believes that when they purchase a cause related item another organisation such as a charity will benefit from the purchase. This ties into events as often an event will have a charity tie in, in which they can use the logo to promote sales of the event itself.

Oxford Fashion Week has decided to use many sponsors, all of whom are local to he oxford area, from the hair stylists to the covering publicists. This is very good for both sponsors and the event, as it keeps it true to the name of the event ‘Oxford’ whilst it promotes the brands through the media coverage. Although this is excellent for the Oxford area, it does not help the event in grounding its roots nationally. National fashion shows such as London Fashion Week use national brands, such as Toni&Guy to sponsor them, this is a household name across the UK and so helps a visitor to recognize the event. A customer from London will not of heard of Mahogany Hairdressing, making it hard for them to recognize and connect with the event. For this reason, Oxford Fashion Week may want to take advantage of well-known, national sponsors. The National Wedding Show do not use sponsors, the reason behind this may be due to the great success of the event in past years, meaning the event does not need the support or money from a sponsor. Although this is a positive in that the company is able to stand alone without the support of another, it also seems that a lot of publicity can be gained from having a sponsor and the name of the event can be spread further a field, increasing awareness and interest in the event.

SPONSORSHIP - Oxford Fashion Week

As Oxford Fashion Week is a local event, it has been able to attract the support of many local sponsors from the Oxfordshire area. The sponsors include;
♥ B4 Magazine – an Oxfordshire quarterly business magazine.
♥ Mahogany Hairdressing WeMahogany's creative team will work in conjunction with the fashion designers to create a stunning, visual week of events.
♥ Lets Brand it – ‘creative thinkers’ – designers for businesses.
♥ Flawless Agency – Modelling agency
♥ http://www.flawless-models.com/flawless_news.php
♥ The regal – venue
♥ Oxford Mail – local press
♥ Models of Diversity – modeling agency
♥ http://www.modelsofdiversity.org/event_oxford.html
♥ Banniere & co – champagne company
♥ O3 gallery – gallery venue
♥ Cherwell valley college – arts college
♥ Oxford university
♥ Oxford entrepenuers - society
♥ http://www.oxfordentrepreneurs.co.uk/
♥ meller merceux gallery –gallery venue
♥ The Living Room – venue cocktail bar

Every one of these sponsors are local to the oxford area and each have a relevant input into the event itself, for example, Mahogany hair are the official hair stylists and will on the day be styling the models hair. Flawless Agency are the agency that Oxford Fashion Week are using to source a majority of their models, The Regal is hosting a couple of the style shows and the Oxford Mail and B4 magazine will both be covering the week.
Each sponsors objectives for sponsoring Oxford Fashion Week will be the brand image and the coverage from the week. They appear to be local business helping out a local project, this will boost the likeability of the companies as they are seen to be supporting a good, local event. The sponsors will also be hoping to widen brand establishment, and perhaps pick up a few new clients at the Oxford Fashion Week events.
This is a good event for these companies to sponsor as it is a growing, up and coming event, it needs the support of the local businesses and with their help the event will grow year by year. For the sponsors names to be associated with this is good publicity and will help with brand reputation.

SPONSORSHIP - National Wedding Show

The National Wedding Show does not have sponsorship. The reason behind this is the fact that they are simply providing and venue, date and organisation for all the other exhibitors to place their stands. They do not need the sponsorship and the exhibitors provide the revenue when they pay for the space.
However, the National Wedding Show ARE sponsors for another event, the best bridal retailer award! This gives them extra coverage, as their name and logo are mentioned amongst the press coverage for the national wedding awards.

SPONSORSHIP

Sponsorship is a promotional technique used by businesses, both large and small, for purely commercial reasons. It is a commercial transaction that the sponsoring organization uses because it believes that the event offers a communication link to its target market that is more effective than other promotional opportunities such as advertising.
Sponsorship is used to generate consumer goodwill, increase sales of their products, increase brand awareness and acceptability, access niche markets and provide opportunities for the entertainment of clients.
Sponsoring events gives businesses another medium that can allow businesses to reach a target market in an effective way that also complements existing promotional mixes. The sponsorship of an event becomes an integral part of the market plan of the business.
Sponsorship can be used as a promotion medium as it gives the company exposure every day.

Benefits from sponsorship include the increased awareness of the company and its products, opportunity to represent commitment to a particular community or market segment, image building, a mean of product and market differentiations and ability to provide merchandising opportunities.

Once the sponsorship deal is put into place the event has a few obligations to the sponsor, they must deliver all benefits that were promised without prompts from the sponsors, to protect the rights of the sponsor and to be genuinely committed to positive sponsorship outcomes for all stakeholders. They must acknowledge the sponsor at every possible opportunity; they must keep the sponsors up to date on any important decisions involving the sponsors of the event and to warm the sponsor of any potentially unpleasant publicity.
The Sponsor, however, also has an on obligation to provide the cash or payment kind and services in the time requested, to be committed to the sponsorship and to commit to sufficient fund to ensure the sponsorship is a success.

Oxford Fashion Week is very much local to the Oxfordshire area, this makes PR slightly harder to publicize, as it is not a national known event. The press launch that took place at the beginning of the week was limited space and invite only, although this makes the event seem high class and exclusive it is also limiting the publicity the event receives, perhaps jeopardizing the potential publicity of the event. Oxford Fashion Week has seen many articles written in both online and print papers, however, these are all again local to the Oxford area, making it difficult for the event to establish and become nationally known. The National Wedding Show is much larger and a national event, for this reason PR is much more widely used, with the show appearing on TV shows, such as the well known and much loved Gok Wans ‘How to look good naked’ to national papers, such as The Times and in many a bridal magazines. They also release their own press launch pre event, however, the launch is open to the press in all areas of the UK. I feel that Oxford Fashion Week must increase their PR publicity by opening their press launch and encouraging all magazines, papers and fashion channels from all over the UK to the press launch. This will help the event establish itself further within the industry, helping to achieve its objectives.

PR - Oxford Fashion Week

On the 28th February, at the O3 Gallery in Oxford, Oxford Fashion Week will be hosting an exclusive press launch, there is limited availability and the event is strictly invite only. Due to the event being local to Oxford, there appears to be limited press coverage of the event an any national papers or magazines. However the Oxford Mail has run several Oxford Fashion Week articles both online and in print. B4 online have also run several stories on their online news pages. The oxford theatre review.com company have also covered the press release online. Vogue.co.uk released a story on Oxford Fashion Week on the 27th February, this is a very big achievement for Oxford Fashion Week as Vogue is the most prestigious fashion magazine available and so this press release will help to secure the fashion weeks future, along side establishing the event as a serious and professional event.

Thus far, all the press for Oxford Fashion Week has been extremely positive, although the official website does not have any press release information, other than the date of the launch, a simple search in google results in many local to Oxford articles, each one being very positive. Each and every event that takes place from the models workshop ‘for those with aspirations to tread the catwalk’ to a Fashion Industry Networking evening are all PR activities that Oxford Fashion Week will use to tell a story.

Oxford Fashion Week will have the same stakeholders as London fashion week would have, from the producers, to set designers, seating suppliers, caterers, venues, local community in Oxford, the universities, the models, the press, the stylists, the designers, the local Oxfordshire council and even the cleaners at the end of the event. All of these stakeholders will have different levels of interest and power over the week itself and the Oxford Fashion Week company.

PR - National Wedding Show

The National Wedding Show plan to hold a press release in the coming weeks, they must be aware of negative journalism, for this reason at the press release only positive things will be said about the event. The stories that will be told must be relevant to the average attendee of the event as these are the people the National Wedding Show are trying to target. This is not an advertising opportunity, it is simply to express how the day will be and state the facts about the event and lastly only the relevant press should be invited such as wedding magazines and local papers.

A stakeholder is A person, group, or organization that has direct or indirect stake in an organization because it can affect or be affected by the organization's actions, objectives, and policies.
There are many stakeholders involved in the National Wedding show, these are:
Public - the local community
Internal – employees, management and company unions
Commercial – Suppliers to the show such as beverage supplier, lighting technicians, platform suppliers for the catwalk etc. The exhibitors and distributors, competition such as other wedding fairs, and customers.
Media – the newspapers, magazine journalists, TV and the Radio.
Government –Members of Parliament, specialist committees such as exhibition standards agency and the local council to the area where the ExCel is situated.
Financial – Shareholders, these are the people whom have invested either time or money into the event and wish to see a return. Banks or financial institutions that may have anything to do with the funding of the exhibition are all stakeholders of the National Wedding Show.
These stakeholders, however, will all have different levels of interest and power within the event, from constructing a stakeholder map, one can see how much interest and how much power the listed stakeholders have.

LEVEL OF INTEREST
Local Community (Public)low(level of interest)/low (level of power)
Distributors (Commercial) low/low
Employees of the company (Internal)High (level of interest)/low (level of power)
Suppliers (Commercial)High/low
Exhibitors (Commercial)High/low
Competition (Commercial)High/low
Customers (Commercial)High/low
MP’s (Government)Low(level of interest) / High (level of power)
Shareholders (Financial)Low/High
Financial Institutions (Financial) Low/High
Management of the company (Internal)High (level of interest) / High (level of power)
Wedding Unions (Internal)High/High
Specialist Committees (Government)High/High

The National Wedding Show have gained press coverage in many bridal and wedding magazines in the run up to and after the event took place. The event, that has just passed, has managed to secure itself eleven articles in wedding and bridal magazines, this is a large ammount of different prints considering the niche markets of weddings. Prior to the event, the National Wedding Show featured in the broadsheet news paper , The Times, this is significant as when looking at the target audience of the National Wedding Show, the target audience are in the ABC1 category, 77% of the ABC1 category read the times. Aswell as features in the times, the National Wedding Show saw press coverage in The Metro, this is a local newspaper to London, which is available for free on the London Tubes. This is good press coverage as the event is taking place in London, thus prompting the travellers around London to attend.

The National Wedding Show was also featured on the TV show 'How To Look Good Naked' This is great as it targets the female market, who are most likely to attend and be encouraged to go from the program.

PR MARKETING

The result of what you do, how you go about doing it, what you say and what others think and say about you is Public Relations, it is all about reputation.
‘Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.’

‘Publics’ is any bodies the company come into contact with outside of the organisation. ‘Relations’ is a ‘significant association between or among things; a connection’.

PR takes form in many different forms with differing companies using it in dissimilar ways for a multiple of reasons. The following titles are recognized under the heading of PR; including public information, investor relations, public affairs, corporate communication, marketing or customer relations. The Public Relations team of any company should strive to have the ‘story’ of the company made known by its public. Via investigation and feedback from customers, the PR team of the company will need to evaluate the feedback, discover what negatives or problems or concerns they have and report them to the management of the company, often with a suggested solution into solving these issues.

PR often has an impact on the success of any business, as PR is a feature of most companies marketing mix. From targeting an audience through different and more targeted channels PR can educate the target audience.
Purposely, PR is a one off form of marketing in terms of supposed integrity. The media coverage it generates is seen as self-governing and the communications conveyed are therefore viewed as being largely free of the negativity that is frequently connected with marketing communications. This is equally significant for both positive and negative PR.

There are a few likely objective behind PR such as to Promote understanding of the company or its products, to help confirm the publics perception of the company, to encourage belief and support and loyalty of the company, the PR may be in place to make unknowing potential consumers, aware of the company or product. PR may also try to dispel negative public opinions of the company and prejudice towards them or it may try to clear up a misunderstanding that the company has been involved in.

There are 9 categories that fall under the Public Relations title, these are;
Publicity –news articles that are often positive
Media management – this is the association with reporters
Corporate image – trying to advertise the company as a positive image in itself
Research and counselling – feedback, monitoring and evaluation of research
Internal marketing – helping to ensure there is a happy work environment for the staff and keeping them on side.
Shareholder relations – shareholders and stakeholders –financial reports must be carried out and publicised to the relevant stakeholders
Lobbying – arrangements with Government
Crisis management – having a ‘back-up’ plan and damage control planned is vital
Community relations – keeping the local community happy and on side with the company.

The PR marketing will normally happen before, throughout and after the event takes place. There will usually be a pre-event press release, the event itself is a form of PR and often a post-event press release will take place stating the success of the event.

Press Release
This must be supported by robust media relationships – the journalists ought to be on your side, helping you to promote the event.
The PR story must be newsworthy - the people need to be interested in a topic in order to read about it.
The story should not be advertising.
The public story must fit the editorial style of the newspaper or magazine, for example, one would not invite a journalist for a specialist Mountain biking to the launch of a fashion week.

The National Wedding Show uses web, radio, outdoor and print advertising whereas Oxford Fashion week only use web and print/outdoor advertising. Each form of advertising has its benefits and I believe that the National Wedding Show advertise more effectively using all the tools available to them. I think that Oxford Fashion Week should spend more of their budget in 2012 on the advertising plans, they need to adopt more forms of advertising in order to spread their name further and let the brand grow to its full potential.

ADVERTISING - Oxford Fashion Week

Oxford Fashion Week have been very conservative with their advertising technique during the 2011 shows. The main source of advertising is through outdoor and web marketing. Neither of these medias have been proven, by statistics to be the most successful, for that reason, one would presume that the decision to chose these forms of advertising was down to the funding allowance for advertising.
♥ Outdoors – the only form of outdoor advertising was in the form of posters scattered around Oxford in the venues hosting the shows, the universities and in other public areas such as bars and shopping centres. This is not the most enticing form of advertising, however, it will raise awareness of the event and enthuse curiosity into the public, of the event.
♥ Web – this is the only other form of advertising, although this has been done very well through facebook.
In order to attract the attention of the and involve the local community of Oxfordshire, Oxford Fashion Week 2011 opened a public competition in which the winner would win the title of ‘The face of OFW11’. 49 faces were posted on facebook, the faces with the highest ammount of ‘likes’, along with 9 other criterion checks were then considered. The vote was finally made and EMMA APPLETON from WITNEY was the final winner.

This is a great form of advertising as aswell as trying to sell out the shows the attendees feel as though they have involvement in the process, particularly so when Emma Appleton appeared on almost every catwalk. Oxford Fashion Week also uses the presence of twitter, Flckr and a blog, these all attract fans and followers of the event. This is great publicity, particularly when the public begin discussing the event on their own pages, spreading the Oxford Fashion Week name further a field.

ADVERTISING - National Wedding Show

The national wedding show have used advertising in a big way, this has majorly helped the event establish itself as a brand and made the event a success year on year. They consider advertising to be the most important form of marketing and attracting their customers. The National Wedding Show publish adverts in:
♥ Print – newspapers (both local and national), specialist wedding magazines and on leaflets.
♥ Outdoor – tube stations (all over London) TV – How to Look Good Naked
♥ Web – Official website, facebook, Twitter & the official blog and
♥ Radio – kiss fm

The National Wedding Show chose to advertise in print in specialist wedding magazines, this is a direct link to the target audience and is an ideal way advertise to them. I noticed that as the event grew closer the adverts grew in size, they went from being on half a page, to a full page and finally a double page advert close to the event. The National Wedding Show only advertised in the traditional wedding magazines, when looking through several different types of magazines, such a traditional Asian wedding magazines, there was not an advert for the National Wedding Show.

They also choose to advertise in the newspapers, both broadsheet and tabloid papers such as the Times and Metro. The Times is an ideal paper to advertise in as 77% of the ABC1 class read The Times, targeting the ABC1 class that attend the show. The Metro is also a great paper to advertise in as it is a local paper to London, where the event is being held. This will encourage inhabitants of London to go, or to atl least make them aware of the event.
The exhibitors at the event are all sent paper leaflets and brochures of the event for them to hand out to their customers, this is a form of print marketing, however it is not always as effective as the other forms of print marketing as some of the exhibitors may travel a long distance to exhibit, and it is unlikely that their customers will aswell.

The National Wedding Show placed posters all around the London Underground Station. They were on the walls of a majority of tube station next to the escalators and stairs. This form of publicity is effective in that the people who live in London are unlikely not to notice it as it is on almost every wall, raising awareness of the event.

The internet, in the form of the website has been used as advertising. This is for attendees who are already aware and know about the event and are choosing to look at the details.
The National Wedding Show also have an official blog, this is a good idea as it is a new form of advertising. Around 70% of adults in GB have high speed internet connection, this proves that online advertising is on the rise. Facebook and twitter are great forms of advertising, they are fresh and new, precisely up to date, hassle free and are also a very good way of collecting data. The National Wedding Show posts regular updates on its facebook page keeping that form of advertising up to date.

Finally, the company also used radio to advertise the show. I only heard the advert once but it was on kiss fm at around 11am on a Sunday morning, 2 weeks before the even took place. The Kiss network reaches more than 2 million listeners weekly, this is excellent figures for the National Wedding Show.Kiss has more 15-34 listeners than any other commercial radio brand within the regions that they broadcast. This is ideal as the average age of bride is 29 year old. This shows that having the radio advert on kiss was a good choice as this is again, tapping into the ideal target audience.

ADVERTISING

Advertising is ‘The non-personal communication of information, usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature, about products (goods and services) or ideas by identified sponsors through various media.’
(Bovee & Arens 1994)

There are two theories about advertising, the strong and the weak theory. The strong theory is Basis is that advertising can persuade someone to buy a product or service that they have never previously purchased. Advertising increases sales
And that through continued advertising a long-run purchase behaviour can be generated. The weak theory basis is that adverts are not effective in persuading people to buy, as the adverts do not differentiate one product from another. The weak theory believes that adverts simply reinforce consumers decisions to be brand loyal and remind them of past purchases.

The effectiveness of advertising can be measured by monitoring a rise and fluctuating in sales, depending on the advertising situation.

When advertising a product or service, one has to choose from the many medium available what type of advertising media to use, for example, radio, TV, the web, the press or outdoor advertising. This is not an easy task as each media brings its own advantages and disadvantages.

From looking at a graph such as the awareness of media graph(above) ,one can see that most noticeable form of media was TV, followed by Newspaper/ magazines. It is very expensive to advertise on TV and the practicality of TV advertising does not include the advertising of events, the two events I am looking at are both situated in areas around England for a number of days, it would be very expensive ad advert for the whole of England when someone living in Newcastle is unlikely to attend Oxford Fashion Week simply because they saw the TV advert. Newspapers and magazines, on the other hand are far less expensive and can be targeted at the right audience if the advert is placed in the correct market segments. Posters are the next best advertising and the web the least. For this reasons one would expect the majority of advertising to be carried out via the medium of TV, print or outdoors. 57% say they have “checked things out on the internet after just hearing about them on the radio” these statistics are shows that radio can also be an effective form of advertising, particularly for an event.
The area that the event is in will have a local radio station. It would be good advertising to have an advert on that radio station to encourage the local community to attend the event.
Advertising across multiple media is more effective than only advertising on a single media. Even though advertising on radio is effective, radio advertising works best as part of a mix.
During advertisements on the TV or radio there is always the risk of ‘clutter’ jeopardising the effectiveness of the advert, this is when distractions divert the consumers attention, Advertising clutter across media is at an all-time high and now has reached daunting proportions. Some observe that a more cluttered environment reduces advertising viewing and it impairs advertising memories, this makes both the TV and radio media weaker advertising tools.

Outdoor advertising can also be successful Outdoor advertising deliver immediate results for advertisers. 29% say outdoor advertising caused them to visit a retail store within a week. This would have the same affect for an event which proves that outdoor advertising, such as posters in stations and billboards are farley effective forms of advertising media.

Oxford Fashion Week sent no newsletters or direct emails to any of their clientele, this is a very easy marketing tool that can be easily used and them not utilizing this puts them at a disadvantage, a sign up to newsletter option on the website is such a good way of collecting data from clients and registering their interests in the event. I believe that Oxford Fashion Week should keep their customers and potential clients updated via the direct mail tool. The National Wedding Show, on the other hand attempted to use direct mail, however, this was not effective as just one email was sent. Neither the National Wedding Show nor Oxford Fashion Week are making the most of a very easy, cheap and potentially very beneficial form of marketing – direct mail and newsletters.

DIRECT EMAIL - Oxford Fashion Week

Oxford Fashion Week has no direct email or newsletter sign up section, there is a section stating the email addresses of the different departments of the event but that is all the email marketing options available. Oxford Fashion Week is a very new event and would be able to grow and develop in the years to come with the aid of audience profiling. Not having this option is damaging to the event as it is a simple and low cost, yet effective way of gathering the information. Not having e-newsletters available for customers may also be damaging in that it will not keep the event fresh in their minds, they may forget about the event and subsequently not purchase tickets or attend. An objective for the years to come may be the introduction of direct mail.

DIRECT EMAIL - National Wedding Show

When registering to receive the National Wedding Show newsletters it simply asks for your name and email. This is no way to create a data base, It could be useful in creating forecasts, fine tuning objectives and on improving the event.

Although this company have not taken full advantage of having the customers intent on registering it is to source priceless customer information, this is not a bad thing for the customer themselves as it is simple to use and is not time consuming.

Since registering for the news updates around six weeks prior to the London event, I have received one email. The email was very basic, the only information in the email was displayed in the form of the poster, consisting of an image of a bride with the titles of shows and events on the days such as ‘250+ exhibitors`. The date of the event, the phone number and link to both the National Wedding Show ‘homepage’ and ‘buy tickets’ page were also present in the email. The heading of the email was ‘Only 4 weeks till the UK's largest wedding show - save money by booking in advance’. I did not find this subject title very motivating and did not feel the need to buy a ticket simply from seeing the email.

Because the picture on the email was so large, it took almost 7 seconds for the email to effectively load as the only information was featured in the picture.

I believe the objective of the email was to encourage sales and attendees at the event. The brand image was the main feature of the email which I believed to be a positive and one is able to see straight away who it was from however the information on the email was limited and the subject heading not motivating in the least and it the email did not motivate me to attend the event.

The exhibitors are however encouraged to send mail shots to their customers encouraging them to attend the event.

DIRECT EMAIL

Direct mail is the promotion of products or services via email Email marketing, if done effectively, can be a great balance for both the National Wedding Show and Oxford Fashion Week. Having said that, it must be done fittingly.

‘Econsultancy, a leading source of independent advice and insight on digital marketing and e-commerce, recently conducted its annual Email Marketing Industry Census. Its results state that 61% of respondents report an average ROI from their (email) campaigns of around 300%, while a further 30% declare it to be above 500%.’

There are, however, rules to getting the email marketing right;
1) It must be relevant. Market to the mistaken addressees and you jeopardize opt-outs and unrecoverable lost contacts for future promotions.
2) Be careful of how frequent you send out emails. Over-mailing your email subscribers can turn even the most engaged receiver off. USE ASOS EXAMPLE!!! Some recipients prefer to be contacted no more than once a month, whereas others are so engaged with your brand that they are content to receive updates daily.
3) Be cautious when using graphics. Images should complement your message content, not detract from it. Make sure your use of graphics supports everything from your brand through to your call-to-action effectively. Remember that excessive images can slow message loading.
4) Try to include personalized touches within the email. Try to add a name or other relevant customer information.
Email marketing has the potential to deliver a larger ROI than any other marketing discipline, but to achieve this, the needs of the customer have to come above all else. Both the National Wedding Show and Oxford Fashion Week have a great opportunity to utilize this marketing tool to benefit them selves.

Search Engine Optimization is an important tool on the web as very few people are likely to look past the first few links on a search engine, for this reason the National Wedding Show have optimized their website to a very high standard and are at the top of every search engine. This is a very useful tool to have as it will increase website hits, therefore increasing ticket sales. Oxford Fashion Week also has a good level of optimization, however, with the word ‘Oxford’ in the title a very large ammount of results appear, for this reason Oxford Fashion Week must keep up to date with their website, making sure that it is at the top of every search engine as often as possible, especially outside the UK as Oxford is a very well known tourist city, this is a very good opportunity to promote the event through the web.

SEO - Oxford Fashion Week

Google.co.uk ‘Oxford’ was not on the first five pages
Google.co.uk ‘Oxford Fashion’ came up as the first link on the first page
Google.co.uk ‘Fashion Week’ was not on the first five pages

Google.com ‘Oxford’ was not on the first five pages
Google.com ‘Oxford Fashion’ came up as the first link on the first page
Google.com ‘Fashion Week’ was not on the first five pages

Yahoo.com ‘Oxford’ was not on the first five pages Yahoo.com ‘Oxford Fashion’ came up as the first link on the first page
Yahoo.com ‘Fashion Week’ came up as the eight link on the first page

These statistics show that the Oxford Fashion Week have effective search engine optimization however it perhaps needs to be slightly more advanced in the wider searches. On all google.com, google.co.uk and yahoo.com the link to the national wedding show when typing in ‘oxford fashion’ were all the top link. As Over 80% of search engine users will not look past the first page of results this is extremely positive, however it was the only search that produced the link on the first page of every search engine.