You’re in the end stages of putting together a fantastic event for your company… Now is the time to start thinking about creating a marketing plan to advertise all of your hard work. Here are five tips that will help you ensure a successful email marketing campaign to drive your event’s attendance.
5 Email Marketing Tips To Drive Event Attendance
1. List
It sounds simple, yes, but guaranteeing that your marketing materials are sent to the right group of people will make all the difference in your email campaign’s success. Whether this is an in-person or online event, you still need to think about your email list. Review your entire event and all that it has to offer, and only market to those you know will be interested. Especially if it is an in-person event, you likely won’t include someone from across the country from where your event is being held.
2. Value Proposition
As we all know, our attention spans have drastically decreased over the years, especially when it comes to our email inbox. Providing a solid yet simple statement at the start of your email to explain why someone will benefit from attending your event is essential. This will capture the reader’s attention, but it will also increase their motivation to click through and RSVP for your event.
3. Content
Following your value proposition should be quality detail about the event, including the ever-important 4 Ws: Who, What, When, and Where. Explain who will be in attendance, what will happen at the event, and what they will learn by attending. And finally, be sure to include the location, date, and time of your event clearly and in bold font so readers can easily see it. If your event happens to be virtual, include the proper links for attendance, whether in the email invite or through the RSVP link.
4. Follow-ups and reminders
Tracking your email’s performance will be important in the weeks following the initial send. Get a good idea of who has actually opened your email and taken action and follow-up with those who have not. Email invites are not the most important thing coming through our inbox and will quickly be forgotten. Sending follow-up emails can help to increase your registration levels. You may also want to consider sending reminders that include the number of days until the event, any new agenda items since the initial invite, or teasers of what they will experience on the day of your event.
5. Thank your attendees
Once your event has come to a close, sending a thank you note provides an opportunity to enhance your engagement further. Use this final email as a way of collecting feedback on the event. Ask what the best aspect was, what could be improved, or what your attendees hope to see in the future. You can also take advantage of this final touchpoint and provide event highlights, relevant statistics, or information for similar events you may be held in the future and drive these attendees to your website.
Once you have your email marketing campaigns planned out and scheduled, the next marketing channel you will want to tackle is social media. Learn how to Promote Your Event with Social Media in our next post.
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Do you have a success story to share about your last event email marketing campaign? Feel free to share with us by leaving a comment below, on Facebook or Twitter
