With all of the promotion channels event marketers have to choose from, email is still one of the most effective ways to get the word out about your event. But here’s the catch: these emails don’t mean anything unless your guests actually click, open, and read them.
If you do them right, email comms are a crucial component of your overall event promotion strategy to drive event attendance and engagement leading up to the big day.
Here are 5 foolproof tips for crafting event emails that will get people excited about your event, drive engagement, and ultimately get them in the door:
An engaging subject line is the first step to getting people to click on your email. But it doesn’t stop there — you need consistent, engaging copy throughout the body of your email and design that complements the content of the email.
Make sure you’re being thoughtful about the language you use (hint: these 8 best practices for writing emails to drive better event attendance will help you get started), and that the branding, colors, fonts, and copy on your event page are consistent with every single email you send.
About 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices. That’s huge. If the design of your email looks beautiful on desktop but your invitees have to pinch and zoom to view it on mobile, you’ve already lost them. The takeaway? Always double check what your event email looks like on mobile.
Remember that your event emails shouldn’t live in a silo, and should always be part of a larger strategy. An effective event email strategy follows a lifecycle: the invite email, the reminder email, and finally, the follow-up email. This basic framework is not a one-event-fits-all — you should always customize your communication strategy and supplement based on your event’s needs (e.g. the event type, promotional cycle length, and more).
For example, sending a more personal, plain text reminder email from your CEO or founder the week of your event might be more effective in making guests feel personally connected to your brand leading up to the event. Also consider sending a day-of email so your guests have all the need-to-know details (like directions to the venue, entrances, what to bring, etc).
If you want more ideas for your email sequence, check out this mock event communications timeline.
Knowing which types of emails are most effective is important, but you can dig even deeper. Consider what time of day you should send your emails (and don’t be afraid to experiment to see which times work best!).
But I’ll let you in on a secret: the best times to send event email are at 6:00 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. The absolute worst time to send invitations is after 5:00 p.m. Trust me. If you’re worried about getting your emails out at the right time, consider scheduling emails ahead of time that way you can set it and forget it.
Bonus tip: People purchase the most tickets between the hours of 12PM and 1PM. Send out your email promotions during this time of the day to drive ticket sales.
They key to getting people to click your emails is making it relevant to them (in other words: personalization). Segmenting your audience can help with that. You’re probably already gathering lots of great info about your attendees, but be sure to leverage it for your email performance, too.
For example, if you ask attendees for their job title in your RSVP form, you can target the VP or C-suite level and use different language in an email than you would for, say, Junior-level attendees.
There's more to a successful promotion strategy than just emails. See all our tips for driving engagement in this all-in-one guide to event promotion.
Ben Hindman is co-founder and CEO of Splash, the country's fastest-growing event marketing platform that helps businesses and brands more effectively market through their events. An event planner turned tech entrepreneur, events are in Ben’s DNA. Prior to starting Splash, Ben was the Director of Events at Thrillist, where he produced large-scale events from concerts to mystery fly-aways.
