Meetups overlooked by niche publishers?

Using Meetup to help build email lists is an overlooked social media strategy.

The platform is similar to Facebook groups; the difference is that subscribers are super engaged—they’re signing up to attend events or online calls.

Creating a national network

Also unlike Facebook, publishers can get emails from about 60% of participants. At least that was the experience when testing this approach.

For virtual meetings publishers can form a professional network and buy cities at $35 a month per city.  Go to “type” of event and select “online” from the drop down to see what kinds of groups work. There are groups for entrepreneurs, UX designers and so on.

Find the largest cities in the country that are interested in the topic. One test built a list of 1,500 emails of people who were actually willing to attend a meetup on blockchain during the pandemic. Blockchain has sort of fallen victim to the crypto crashes right now, but it shows that a popular topic, such as AI, with an educational and networking component can draw an audience.

The quality of people coming on a call can be much better than a Facebook group—people who wanted to invest in companies, inventors and programmers showing up.

Creating a local MeetUp brand

Local publications, such as a city magazine or local business meedia,  can build their own branded local meetup group. Just forming a group can create ten to 20 sign-ups almost over night.

And of course that means publishers can collect emails.

For large events with a different producer, the media can asks its group to meet somewhere at the event, such as coffee shop  or for a drink afterwards.

Social or happy hours can act like a radio promo to support advertisers,.

Only now, using this Meetup tool, publishers could collecting emails as they go,  all year long.