A Growth Tool brings people to your events from outside your member area. Visitors add your event or calendar to their own calendar app, for example Apple, Google or Outlook, and the tool counts their sign-ups. Use it when you want to fill an event and see how many people a channel brings in.
If Events is off in your workspace, switch it on under Settings > Features.
This article looks at Growth Tools from the event side. How each type is set up and designed is covered in the Growth Tools articles.
Who can work with Growth Tools?
The list under Growth Tools on the Events header needs View Events. Creating and duplicating a tool needs Create Events, editing it and adding events or calendars needs Update Events, and deleting it needs Delete Events. These are the same permissions as for events, so whoever plans your events can promote them too.
One event or a whole calendar?
Every tool has a Method on its Setup tab, and this is the decision that matters most for events.
Add event promotes specific events. Pick them under Events. A visitor who signs up can save the event in Apple, Google, Office 365, Outlook, Outlook.com or Yahoo. Choose it for a launch call, a workshop or any date that stands on its own.
Subscribe to Calendar promotes a calendar. Pick one or more under Calendars. With two or more calendars, User can deselect calendars lets visitors leave out the ones they do not want. Visitors subscribe in the same calendar apps. Yahoo has no direct subscribe link, so there the visitor gets the feed address to add by hand.
When you add an event or a calendar, the tool offers to replace its title and description with the event or calendar details. Say yes when the tool promotes exactly one thing; you save typing and the text matches the event. On a Button the pop-up keeps its own headline, so change that text by hand.
Which type fits which channel?
Click New Growth Tool and choose a type in Choose Growth Tool Type:
- Landingpage is a page of its own with a link and a QR code. Use it on flyers, slides and social profiles.
- Button, Box and Banner sit on a website you control.
With Collect Contact Information on the Form tab, the tool asks for a name and an email address first. It is on by default for Landingpage and off for Button, Box and Banner.
You can run several tools for the same event, one per channel. Since each tool has its own numbers, you then see which channel brought the most sign-ups.
Name each tool after the event and the channel, for example "Spring workshop, newsletter". The list shows tools by name, so you find the right one again quickly.
Who can sign up?
A Growth Tool is public. Anyone with the link can sign up, members and people who are not members yet. A new email address becomes a member. With Add event, that member gets access to the promoted event. With Subscribe to Calendar, the member gets access to the chosen calendars and a calendar feed with them.
With Subscribe to Calendar, an address that already has an account gets a confirmation email instead, and the calendars are added only after the person clicks the link in it. The link is valid for 7 days. With Add event, an address that already has an account gets no access through the tool. Google, Office 365, Outlook.com and Yahoo still save the event, while Apple and Outlook open the start page of your site instead, because they would subscribe to the personal feed of that account. Promote only events and calendars that are meant for that audience.
Without Collect Contact Information, the tool knows no email address. Each sign-up then creates a new member with a placeholder address that cannot receive email. Switch it on when you want to reach these people later.
The picker lists every event and calendar of your business, so check that the event you promote is published and not cancelled before you share the tool.
Growth Tool or public subscribe page?
A calendar can also have a public subscribe page, which you switch on in the calendar itself. It needs no sign-up, so it collects no names and counts no opt-ins. A Growth Tool counts sign-ups. Use the public page when reach matters most and a Growth Tool when you want to count sign-ups per channel.
How do you see what a tool brings in?
The Growth Tools list shows Impressions, Opt-Ins and Conversion for every tool. Impressions count each IP address once when it opens a Landingpage, and Opt-Ins count each IP address once. A Button, Box or Banner records no views, so its impressions only come from sign-ups and its conversion says little. Conversion is opt-ins divided by impressions, so compare landing pages that promote the same event to find the channel that works.
When the event is over, switch the tool off with Deactivate in the three-dot menu of its row. A landing page then tells visitors that it is no longer active, and a button, box or banner disappears from your website.