Lessons Learned: When you're doing something "different", education is key

One of the lessons I've learned (and still learning) is that if your solution is "different", most people won't get it. And as the creator, that can be extremely frustrating - because you see the problem + your solution so clearly - so why is it so hard for everyone else to see through your eyes?

This morning, I got slapped right in the face with a perfect example of this, as I was doing my normal "market research" around the internet.

It was an article, written by Litmus (the market leader in email testing) on "How to Create an “Add to Calendar” Link for Your Emails" (here's the link: https://www.litmus.com/blog/how-to-create-an-add-to-calendar-link-for-your-emails/). It's a full 25+ minute read, with some fairly simple to follow instructions (although probably not simple to implement) to turn your email in a simple "invitation" sender.

Well, this is one of the functions of Calendar Snack - to easily create a CTA Link for your email marketing campaign from a single event. As I was reading it (and shaking my head in the process), I realized there is a significant education "gap" in the market. There is nothing wrong with the approach they are taking, in fact, since they have no idea Calendar Snack or our platform 31Events exists, this is a logical approach to ensure someone can add your event to their calendar.

But we have (31Events) have been thinking about this problem for the past 6+ years, and have created an elegant solution that no one knows about. That literally takes less than 5 minutes to create a CTA link for any Email Service Provider that leverages personalization merge codes.

We have solved (for the most part) the technical problem, but have done a crap job of solving the education problem. In 2023, that is our challenge, to educate a very large market on how the calendar can be used within marketing campaigns to "Get it on the Calendar First" - with the very first click within an email marketing campaign - all without having to understand anything other than "Copy-n-Paste".

And for those that have gotten this far, here's my less than 5-minute instructions for sending calendar invitations within your email marketing campaigns:

1. Create the meeting/event on your own calendar (Google Calendar, Outlook Online or Outlook Desktop)
2. Add one single invitee to this meeting/event - create@calendarsnack.com
3. Save and Send
4. Within a few seconds, you will receive a notification email back, click on the link to the Event you just created
5. On that page, click the "Grab-n-Go" for your Email Service provider (we have 4 pre-built (there is a customization option, but that would take more time to explain)
6. Paste that link within your email campaign (behind a button, graphic, text, whatever)
7. Send that email campaign to a test list
8. Click on the CTA within the received email
9. Get the Calendar Invite

I have done lots of email campaigns in my career, and the only real difference between a standard campaign (along with testing) and using our CTA link, is the creation of a calendar meeting/event.