No matter what type of event you are planning to execute, one of the best ways to increase the number of attendees is through email marketing.
Email is used by half of the world’s population. Also, it’s proven to be a useful tool for event creators. Eventbrite has recently published some surprising stats supporting this statement.
- 78% of event presenters agree that email marketing is their most commanding marketing tactic.
- 26% of recipients open their event emails, and 4.95% click on the links.
- 45% of event tickets can be sold using event emails.
Now, we know that email marketing is a powerful tool to convey event messages to attendees. Without any delay, we’ll see how to get your message across the audience despite the significant frequency and volume of emails people receive.
1. Pre-Event Email Campaigns to Generate Interest among Audience
Pre-launch event emails can create hype among the audience and boost ticket sales. It works perfectly if you want your engaged mailing list members to book their seats early. This is unusually spot-on if your event comes with limited spaces.
Event presenters can begin with this launch campaign by offering informational content regarding the event that is about to take place. It lets people know what’s coming for them and what to expect from it. A general pre-event campaign consists of a handful of emails that generate interest to join the event. For instance, it looks like this:
- The email with an event announcement message.
- First teaser consisting of a written interview from a speaker.
- Second teaser with video footage from your last event.
- Behind the scenes (video/images) of your event.
- A personal invitation from the high-profile speaker who’ll be addressing the attendees at the event. Check out this event launch campaign by Litmus.
Litmus instills suspense in the minds of the subscribers by not revealing the history-making announcement that’s about to take place in the “The Email Design Conference.”
2.Come Up With Exclusive Offers in Your Invitation Email
After a successful launch of your event emails, you can giveaway exclusive offers to encourage people to attend your event. The offers could be something like:
- Early bird tickets priced below your standard tickets.
- Free promotional merchandise such as “Buy a ticket and get your first drink free.”
- Some discount codes with an expiration date to build a sense of urgency.
If you didn’t know, 83% of the audience would make an unplanned purchase based on discounts. The human brain is intensely affected by promotions and a limited-time offer, so you can certainly use this trick for marketing your event.
According to Billetto, an event ticket sales cycle based on different offers typically looks like this:
Now take a look at this event promotion with an early bird offer.
This email from Circles speaks about an early bird offer where the ticket price increases otherwise to $357.
3.Encourage Your Subscribers to Invite Others
Why not entice your attendees to bring their friends along? Emails that encourage your recipients to invite their friends and family will improve the awareness about your event.
This word-of-mouth or referral program can work best by including social media share links in your dedicated event email.
Two ways to use email as a tool for spreading the word about your event:
- Group Tickets: Releasing group tickets or “Tell a friend” offer helps sell more tickets. You can give a special group rate for people who get three or more people to sign up. This way, people will be motivated to spread the word and invite someone they know, thereby giving you free publicity in the process.
- Running Competitions: Tap into the competitive nature of humans. Kick-off regular competitions such as:
- Share this event with friends
- Tag a friend on social media
- Caption a photo
You can also vote for particular topics to speak on
Whenever people engage with your competitions
Doing this gives your even a chance to exposed by their friends on social media, and helps you reach a new profile.
Tough Mudder employed this trend with a referral program and grew into a $100 Million organization.
Here, people are invited to get two friends and earn a free race once they sign up. Now, as a promoter, you get to race for free and also two new buddies to team up with.
4. Allow People to Ask Questions about Your Program
No matter how often you inform people about event details, they’ll still come to you with explicit questions as the event approaches. Therefore, in addition to providing accurate information about the event, offer an FAQ or contact form, and encourage them to reply to your emails with their questions. To extend the reach, you can also post on social media inviting questions.
If you’re planning to develop your event FAQs for your ticket sales page, here’s a sample of 10 questions to make a note of:
- What fees will I be charged for this event?
- Can I buy tickets offline? How?
- How will I get my event ticket if I buy it online?
- Is there any parking facility, and what is the charge?
- What are the different types of payment you accept?
- Do you offer refunds?
- What if the event gets postponed or canceled?
- Are pets allowed?
- Do you offer senior citizens, military, or other discounts?
- Is there an age limit? Do you require any ID to enter the event?
HallyuPopFest designed FAQ templates for their event. They have multiple events on different dates, and the company released a FAQ for every occasion.
A list of FAQs is a great way to provide information about ID requirements, parking details, who to contact, and more.
So, without any second thought, come up with the FAQ contents for both your email and event page. If not, provide them an option to contact you for any queries.
Need help with your event email marketing campaign?
Book a free call to learn how our team of contest experts can help you increase books for your event today.
5. Send Reminder Emails to Instill a Sense of Urgency
Build anticipation among attendees by continually reminding them about the event. By sending reminder emails, we can show our concern, and also build stronger relations with our audience.
It could be a countdown message or merely a reminder to save the event in the calendar, but make sure it brings a sense of urgency among recipients.
Consider the above example from Sumo Group. Without scrolling down, it’s evident that it is a reminder email about their workshop. The sentences used are short and well structured, with bold and eye-catching CTAs for interested attendees to reserve their slot.
In short, we can say that reminder emails are the real keys to your event success. So, go ahead and try out some event reminders and witness the increment in the number of registrants.
6.Thank the Attendees for Making the Event Happen
Event creators invest a lot of time to plan, organize, and promote any event. They send several marketing emails at different phases of promotion. But then again, what about the after-event activity? Similar to the promotional email, you should also send them a thank you note for making the event a huge success. It’s an excellent way to engage your attendees post-event.
CSS Conference appreciates its event participants by sending this well-crafted thank you email. Here, the attendees are also provided with the link to view the photos and the fun facts from the day.
Other ideas that can be included in the thank you email are:
- Questionnaire: Get some feedback about your event by setting up a survey or questionnaire. The feedback helps you improvise the next one.
- Post-event news: Use this to update your attendees with the outcome of an event. It could be the money raised for a charity or as simple as reporting the number of people attended it.
- Slideshare: Create slides of speakers which can then be made available for download. This would be helpful if the talk was educational.
- Your Next Event:Begin with promoting your upcoming event as soon as the last one finishes.
Take Away
Email marketing tactics highlighted in this article can give your event the right boost it requires in less time. But remember to put more effort into your campaign to reap the better outcome.
About the Author 
Emily Johnson is a marketing consultant with 10+ years of experience in the execution of marketing strategies. She is interested in writing and helps SMBs and large firms with her rich experience. Currently, she heads the marketing department at Blue Mail Media, a renowned B2B data solution company based out of Irving, Texas. Connect with her on Twitter.
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