Whether you are organizing an exhibition, webinar, or corporate conference, the success of every event mostly depends on the number of attendees who attend it.
Reaching out to the right people through different types of promotional methods is truly challenging for every event organizer. However, with the right guidance and strategy, it is easy for them to achieve.
When it comes to promoting an event, various methods are available but email marketing for events is one of the most trending and effective methods that modern event organizers are following currently. Why?
Well, a recent report on email marketing revealed that:
- According to 78% of event organizers, email marketing is one of the most useful marketing methods.
- More than 75% of marketers have observed a significant rise in email engagement after adopting email marketing.
Before enlightening you about the nitty-gritty of email marketing for events, let us enlighten you about the concept of event marketing.
What is email marketing for events?
Email marketing for events signifies the process in which emails are sent to people to promote events. This is not only an effective online event promotion method but also a way of staying in touch with the target audiences or subscribers for event organizers.
So when was the last time you opened your mailbox? How many emails caught your attention and forced you to open them?
You may receive thousands of emails in a day but only a few of them encourage you to open them. That’s the power of a good email marketing strategy. There are an endless number of advantages of having a good email marketing strategy. Let us find them in our next segment.
Advantages of email marketing for events
Here are the advantages of adopting email marketing for your events.
Email marketing allows event organizers to:
- Capture the right audiences for their events.
- Keep in touch with them.
- Easily share event updates including registration and ticket availability.
- Retain attendees.
- Gain their opinion and feedback on their event.
- Engage target audiences through emails.
Types of email marketing
The area of email marketing is vast as there are different types of email marketing methods for events through which you can stay in touch with your audiences.
1. Pre-event emails
Pre-event emails are especially related to the event announcement. It is one of the easiest ways of letting your audiences know about the schedule and other related details of your upcoming event through emails.
2. Registration-related emails
The completion of the registration process means you already have a list of attendees who showed interest in attending your event. Now it is important for you as an event organizer to keep registered attendees excited about your event. Mainly two types of emails are sent after the registration process.
Registration confirmation mails
This type of email is generally sent to attendees when they successfully complete the registration process. Through this email, an attendee gets all the necessary details including the date, time, venue, map, meeting link (if virtual), etc. of your event along with his or her attendance confirmation.
Pro tip: You can automate the entire registration process along with the automatic confirmation emails with the Registration addon of WP Event Manager. It is one of the best WordPress event management plugins available in the market. Click here. to find out more.
Event reminders
Event reminder emails are one of the smartest ways of staying in contact with your registered attendees and keeping them updated about the event date. How often should these emails be sent completely depends on far or near your event date is.
3. Post event emails
Email marketing is a constant process that goes on even after your event. Post-event emails give you the opportunity to collect feedback from your attendees to know what they liked and disliked about your event.
You can utilize the concept of post-event emails in the following ways:
- Take attendee feedback.
- Introduce the next event to your attendees.
- Offer rewards to your attendees.
- Share various links of your brand or event with them.
Make sure you include the call to action button, various links of your brand’s social media channels etc in your post-event emails.
How to do email marketing for an event?
a. Make an announcement
Start your event marketing emails with event announcements. Having a categorized email list is extremely helpful for you in this regard but it also works if you maintain a single list of subscribers.
You can simply send an event invitation along with essential event details. Make sure you use personalized emails as they impress recipients and also make them feel important.
Cover the following things in your event announcement:
- Invitation.
- Event date.
- Time.
- Venue details.
- Map route.
- Speakers information.
- Links if virtual.
In addition to the above-mentioned email, don’t forget to tell your audiences to stay glued to your website for more updates on the event
b. Create interest
You can keep your audience’s spirits high with a series of event-related emails. After the announcement event, you can share additional event details through emails at this stage.
For instance, you can add the following details:
- Registration opening and closing dates.
- Ticket details along with its duration.
- How to collect tickets.
- Accommodation.
- Transportation details.
- Speakers’ information and more such important updates.
Make sure you frame up the email in a way that could hold the interest of your audience.
c. Send event reminders
Email reminders for events offer a great way to ensure that the event date is saved in the mind of your attendees and it also reduces the chance of missing it for them.
As the event date comes closer, event reminders play a pivotal role in keeping the audience excited about it.
You can cover the following in your event reminders:
- Anchor’s profile.
- Brand highlights.
- Sponsors.
- Benefits they will get.
- Mention rewards for them if any.
- Food menu details.
- The process through which they can enter the event premises and more.
It is also a good idea to add the ticket purchasing links and registrations to these emails to make them understand that not much time is left to sign up.
d. Embrace automation
In this digital era, automation is everywhere including in the event email marketing industry. Yes, you read that right, you can send automated emails to your potential attendees and save a lot of time in the long run that you can spend on other important event activities.
Here are some of the most prominent advantages of email marketing automation for events:
- Saves time.
- Simplifies the process and keeps you stress-free.
- Helps you gain more attendees to your events.
- Sends a series of emails to your audiences without your manual efforts.
How to get the email automation facility?
The answer to this question is using the right tools. Well, you may find a lot of email automation tools available for you on the internet but not all of them have equal capacities.
We recommend WP Event Manager in this regard. It is the no.1 event management plugin that automates the entire process of event planning including email marketing through its premium add-ons.
It offers some of the major CRM integrations that easily automate the email marketing process.
They not only automate the email marketing system for events but also help you send personalized emails to your attendees.
Discover the plugin now!
e. Solve queries
Make your email marketing efforts successful by answering common queries of your attendees in them. Such emails do much more than just filling up space on the recipients’ inboxes.
You can cover the following things in your emails:
- Your contact form.
- Ask them about their common queries.
- Keep an eye on your social media profiles and pick up the most commonly asked questions over there and try to answer such queries through your follow up emails.
Remember one thing people will read your emails only if they find it useful and thats why you need to ensure that your emails offer the information that they are looking for.
f. Ask for feedback
Feedbacks play a crucial role in improving your next events. It also helps create your event content just the way your attendees want. You can ask for feedback in your post event emails or simply attach a feedback form with it.
Email marketing for events best practices
So how do you write an email for an upcoming event?
To make your email marketing efforts successful, use the following email marketing techniques that are considered as the best practices of email marketing for events.
- Categorize your audiences: Whether you have a huge list of audiences or small, dividing them into various categories help you create attractive emails.
- Sending the same emails to all the audiences you have lacks creativity and loses the charm. Targeted emails are certainly more effective than the common ones.
- Create an impressive subject line: The subject line is the first thing that catches recipients’ attention. That is why it needs to be valuable enough for the recipient to open it.Try adding questions to your subject line.
- Add a sense of curiosity.
- Make it relevant and interesting.
Use responsive designs: Make sure that your email has responsive designs as most of the time, we check our mails on mobile devices on a regular basis.
No matter how impressive your content is if it is not properly readable or visible then its of no use.
- Create a clean design.
- Avoid to much images as it can make your email clumsy.
- Use contrasting designs.
- Ensure that the images you add are of high resolution.
- Personalize your emails: Personalizing your email content is one of most effective ways of making your attendees feel valuable. For example if you add the name of the recipient in the email, it shows that the email is for that particular person and not a result of regular emails.
- Test your email: Testing your email marketing campaign is a good idea to understand if it is an impressive one for your audience. This is because you may not get what you want in the first attempt. Tryout multiple emails to finalize the best one.
Start your event email marketing journey with WP Event Manager
For a result driven email marketing campaign, you need a great email marketing strategy along with the support of the right tool. Use WP Event Manager to put a full stop to all your event management related worries including email marketing.
It comes with various CRMs that automate your email marketing process and also sync attendee data to help you know your attendees and about their likes and dislikes.
Check out WP Event Manager’s marketing addon and their features to pick up the most suitable one for your business.
