Event Sponsorship

Q:I have been assigned the responsibility of planning an upcoming boat ride/dinner that my company is sponsoring. We will have cocktail napkins with our logo, as well as signage displayed. I am looking for ideas on further promotions that we could do and ways of contacting the attendees prior to the event. Direct mail or phone call? Should we do a prize raffle? What kind of giveaway? Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

A:As far as the raffle or give-away, make it something that would appeal to the types of people at your affair..something your clients or customers "must have." The direct mail question: I would do both. Send a letter first then follow-up within a week with a phone call asking if they received the letter. This way, you can present your offer again. P.S. If you send direct mail, since this is a "social event", make sure the piece looks like an invitation, not a sales letter. Use high quality and first-class mail to make the piece look appealing. I just attended one of these functions, so I'll tell you how mine was. I do see you are asking for ideas for the future, but if you ever want to do a boat ride event again, this might be helpful. 1. I was notified by direct mail of this event. 2. The food included vegetable trays, meatballs, and cheese platters. Wine was liberally served. 3. The give-away was a free bottle of wine which everybody got (about fifty people). We were told in the direct mail piece that we were getting it. 5. Sales that night for items priced from $15.00-$20.00 were in the thousands- from 50 people. 6. We all had a great time and it was good PR for the firm. I'd do it again. If you use direct mail and a raffle consider sending the cocktail napkins as part of the mailing. You could have some numbered and use them both as an invitation and for the client to enter the raffle. Getting a cocktail napkin in the mail will get most people's attention and, if they get it at work, the underlying message is that you are promising them a good time. Just out of curiosity, no offense intended, do you put all these circles in your tag line on purpose? If so, are they supposed to represent some design I'm not seeing? Using Taglines is a great way for making your name known, promoting your business or web site and so on, but there has long been a debate on how long they should be. I have seen many with designs in them that are cute or attention grabbing but have not yet seen this circle pattern so it has made me curious and I decided to ask for once....