This post is not easy, and extreme personal circumstances necessitate.
We again need your help. Do we continue Inbox Expo, Festival of Email and Deliverability Summit in 2022? Or should we focus solely on the emailexpert platform and offering our professional services directly? We would prefer the former but need to know that a community exists that wants that too.
A long winded post follows, however there is essentially two ways you can help us. Purchase a ticket for the Inbox Expo 14-24 December, alternately please make a payment to the Inbox Expo Appeal
It has been an incredibly difficult 2 years since we decided to launch the first Inbox Expo. Like others the global pandemic has posed an incredible number of challenges professionally and personally.
That said, it has been an amazing ride and all the thanks and gratitude from the community has been truly heartwarming.
Nely and I want to be clear we have loved every moment of building the Inbox Expo and the related events and communities.
We have been happy to freelance as business advisors, email experts, web developers and marketing support for various orgs to enable us to put on the events that we would like and have them supported and promoted effectively.
In 2021 we will have had not one but two physical in person events, one coming up in over a week. With the generous support of our sponsors the lions share of expenses for the event have been covered. The physical space and events for the day are all booked and paid for.
However to stream the events we have planned from Valencia allowing everyone to view online comes with significant additional expenses (in excess of $6000 for the team and equipment) and there is the same again in ancillary fee’s and expenses related to getting the event ready to stream online.
At this time all those expenses are being borne by the organisation, which we are comfortable with and ensures we can deliver the best event ever.
However we have had significant personal emergencies present themselves and we have no way to meet our private needs at this time.
We can find our own way as professionals with experience, but it would mean de-prioritising our community and events work at emailexpert.
Something we very much wished to grow in 2022. Over 1200 individuals attended our events last year with no payment. Thousands more have viewed the content we shared publicly at no charge. Connections have been made, jobs found, new careers launched and valuable business deals landed through the community.
We are now asking you to vote with your wallets, do we continue doing what we are doing? Will you help make it possible to pay ourselves a reasonable fee for our time and effort?
How much are we looking to raise?
We are looking to raise around $9000 in ‘votes’ from you and others. If everyone who attended one of our events free in the past year made just a one time donation of $9 we would meet our target!
Our secondary target is $1250 in recurring monthly payments. We can meet 50 people made a recurring payment of $25, over the course of a year that would still be less than what others charge for one time access to online events.
Why do you ask for money?
We ask as we urgently wish to travel internationally. If it were not for our event in just over a week we would already have left. An emergency has left parents seriously ill in hospital and now it really is a crunch time for us. As we said earlier, we can find our own way as professionals with experience, but it would mean seriously de-prioritising our community and events work moving forward. This Inbox Expo Winter Edition could potentially be the last event we do for a year or more, so we earnestly hope you have found value in what we have been building and will help us continue the journey to grow it.
What are the options for Inbox Expo?
Do we proceed as planned with 4 or more hybrid events next year, continuing offer generous discounts for the content and events, offering speakers a platform without a pay to play element?
Or do we decide it was a fun experiment and focus again primarily on professional services. If you want us to continue to work on building this community and feel it is worth the time and investment on our parts then we would be grateful for a payment.
What do I get?
- Our thanks and the ability for us to continue with online and hybrid events with gusto.
- The company can provide you a receipt or invoice. Payment can be made by individuals or companies.
- For recurring monthly/annual donations we can provide free online event access and more.
- For any significant company donations we can provide complimentary branding opportunities at events
