I read a very well put together email today.
It engaged me immediately from the subject line. It talked to me like a friend and it was personal to my interests. The subject matter was clear and based on well researched facts. The call to action was precise and enticing.
I’ve got twenty-five years of experience of matching peoples’ needs with relevant services and products. Emails as well structured as this one are rare. I’m a hard sell. But as much as I resisted, I found myself drawn to press the button the sender clearly wanted me to press.
Off I went into the next stage of the process. I knew it was for a learning session and I knew that the subject matter was important, not just to me, but to a whole host of people working in combating climate change.
I read through the expertly laid out landing page and got more excited about attending when I read the bulleted list of benefits of attending this session.
Then I hit the Book Now button, wonderfully situated on screen no matter where I scrolled – coloured green (green buttons get the most clicks in case you didn’t know). [Click] went my left mouse button.
And there is where it fell apart.
£199.
I blinked. Surely some mistake. Really?
A whisker off £200 to attend something that should be mandatory viewing for most of the general public.
During my darker years as a profit seeking pawn of the capitalist world I learned that there are only two types of people who purchase based on price. Everyone else has an acceptable range and purchases on emotion. Those two types are firstly, those who are incentivised to purchase based on price (procurement departments etc), and secondly, those who have no choice but to find the cheapest they can find.
Photo by William Gibson on Unsplash
I’m neither of those two. So it was doubly striking that I halted to take a deep breath. Why hadn’t I continued on to purchase these tickets. The content of the seminar was bang on the money in terms of my interests, the speakers were ones I wanted to hear. The location was accessible. And yet here I was swithering.
After pausing to self-reflect, I realised that I wasn’t preoccupied with my own situation. Recent forays into the world of inequality had brought to the fore the imbalanced nature of future struggles with climate change. Those currently suffering inequality are likely to suffer the hardest. It was with those working with individuals and groups suffering inequality that I was pondering upon. £199 may be well beyond their reach, yet the information is pertinent and important for them to know and understand.
It strikes me that during a cost of living crisis, during a period where services are being cut and where budgets are being slashed that we should be making the important information about how we can have a positive effect on our environment even more accessible, not less accessible.
How many individuals can afford to splash out £200 on a seminar. How many grass roots organisations can afford that?
If we can’t get people to these conferences and seminars because of cost limitations then we need to be creative in the ways we make them accessible (affordable and language appropriate).
Otherwise, we may be pricing them out of the solution…
SCCAN offers events and training, from Climate Conversations to blogging, to how to speak to people about climate (including your MP!).
Many of these are offered free or on a sliding pay scale – check them out here.