Up Your Event Marketing Game with Strategic Personalized Event Invites

Feb 20, 2023 Shruti Shah

What's one of the worst fears that grips event planners before every event? Low attendance. If attendance is low, it can be embarrassing for stakeholders.   
One of the most common reasons for poor footfall at an event is poorly designed and planned invitations.   
So, let's see how we can set the right tone from the very beginning.   

Event Invitations 
Despite multiple options to invite guests through SMS, social media, etc., personalized email invitations remain unbeatable.  

However, you need to understand that in the digital era, a tsunami influx of email invitations to events, webinars, and workshops filling up inboxes is irksome for most people who could be prospective attendees. Low open rates or click-throughs, and a compulsive temptation to unsubscribe make designing appealing event invitation emails, especially with click-triggering headlines, foremost requisite for event planning.  

Also, emails with personalized subject lines generate 50% higher open rates, as reported by Yes Lifecycle Marketing. 
 

Why Do Email Invitations Rule Event Marketing Campaigns? 
Emails are easier to create, send, and collect responses. Unlike personal invites, emails can give detailed insights about attendee reactions like who opened, who clicked the CTA, how many unsubscribed, how many registered, how many replied RSVP, and who navigated through the website. Marketing campaign strategists can compile all this information and turn it into actionable insights with a bank of analytic tools to further improve or augment engagement strategies. 
In brief, an email invitation is the very first sneak peek into your event!  

How to Harness the Potential of Personalized Event Invitations  
Don't you feel overjoyed when you receive customized offers from your favorite coffee place or apparel brand? They do it based on your buying history and pattern. The strategy for designing event invites is very similar. Here are some experience-curated ideas to spark your imagination so that you can design an email invite that converts. 

1. Use Data to Build Connections - Personalization is not just about addressing invitees by name, but more about how creatively you design the email to make the receiver feel like it’s one-to-one communication. You can use information gathered from their previous event attendance, location, interests, and social media profiles to make the invite more engaging. People love attention and your invite, from subject line to CTA, must make them feel special.  

2. Nail It with Design - The event invitation design has a significant impact on its success, so don't forget to add email designing expenses to your event budget. You can take professional agency help the first few times in case you’re not sure, and they can guide you on how to create designs that speak for your brand identity. Once you know what works for your target audience, you can do it on your own using various tools and software. Choose to build an in-house creative team or pick a subscription and access premium designing dashboards to create unique designs. The ROI will make it all worth it! Creating a unique design that stands out from the rest will increase the chances of registration.  

3. Personalize Everything You Can - From subject line to content, personalize every email element on the invite to entice the recipient and increase the chances of people going through your entire invitation. Based on the invitee specifics like demography, geographical location, etc., the message must be tailored to their interests and preferences and convey the value of attending the event. Inherently, invitation content must address all probable questions like who is the host, what is the schedule, what topics would be covered, who are the speakers, etc.  

4. Precise Call to Action – The more creative, personalized, and interactive the CTA, the more traction and convincing power it has. The call to action should be prominently displayed with clear instructions about how to RSVP and attend the event, such as a link to the registration page or a phone number to call. An ambiguous CTA can deflect your lead funnel. CTAs should be meaningful and should not be used as clickbait, which is very unprofessional, frowned upon, and creates mistrust for the brand.  

5. Follow-Up With Drip Campaigns - A well-planned timeline for sending out invites, including event reveals, reminders, or key takeaways is an effective way to maximize invitee interest. The usual drip campaign for events goes like this 

• Teaser or save the date (optional)   
• First invitation 
• Follow-up emails with event snippets 
• Final reminder
• Post-event follow-up  

To avoid pushing their patience, segment your drip campaigns so that people who have already registered do not receive all subsequent emails, but they do receive reminders.  

6. Use Additional Marketing Channels - Emails are the most popular medium, but it doesn’t cover 100% of the target audience. Some of the attendees can also be drawn from other channels. Create a matrix of your target invitees' preferences in terms of emails, social media, text messaging, and other channels, based on data analytics, and tap into the strengths each channel offers for that particular group. For example, younger audiences may be more receptive to social media invites, while older audiences may prefer email or traditional mail. This way you can introduce more people, apart from your subscribers, to your brand and land them on your registration page. 

Framing the right email strategy for creating stellar event invitations can be a dynamic marketing tool that sets the tone of your event lifecycle. Not only does it help to bring your guests to the event, but also helps in establishing long-term brand identity, while working as a user-generated data pool for deeper and insightful analysis.  

Stay tuned to our Latest Blog to learn how to write a balanced and perfect email for your event invite.