A Guide to Creating Effective Event Invitations
For most event planners, event invitations are their primary way of inviting prospects to register for events and conferences. But what makes an event invitation effective? And how can you tweak your event invites to get more sign ups? Today’s explore some proven ways.
Electronic Direct Mailers (eDMs)
The simplest, fastest and most cost-effective way to send event invitations is via email. After all, eDMs are relatively affordable to create and can be sent to any number of recipients. (Just be sure not to spam your mailing list.) Plus, you can include all the bells and whistles that technology gives you access to, such as:
Using animation to captivate recipients
Use animated images or videos to capture the attention of prospects. Those extra few seconds they spend looking at your eDM, could mean that they’ll read your marketing copy, take action and register.
Including a clear call-to-action
Even the most attractively designed invitations can fail to deliver results because of this. Be sure to include a clear call-to-action that your recipients can act on – whether that’s registering for your event, calling your event team, submitting a form, or something else.
You may even want to include several call-to-action buttons to increase the chance of recipients clicking. Some good places to place these buttons would be – in the eDM masthead (i.e. banner), at the bottom of the eDM, and/or in a column with all the event details.
Choosing a clear subject title
If you’re lucky, your email will be one of a dozen solicitations that your recipient will receive on any given day. Otherwise, you may be one of hundreds. And your subject title often decides whether a person even bothers to open your email in the first place. Because of this, it’s important to be clear and direct with your subject titles. If you’re sending an event invitation, starting your subject title with “Event Invitation:”, followed by the name of the event – or the key selling point of the event – is often much better than a subject title that tries to be too “smart”. Save the wit, cheekiness, and banter for the eDM’s body copy instead.
Invitation Cards
DMs may be the most popular to send invites, but they don’t have to be the only way. This is especially so when inviting VIP guests to high level (or premium-priced) events.
When sending physical invites, pay attention to the quality and texture of your paper invites – this small but significant detail can make the difference between recipients understanding the premium-nature of your event, or believing they’re being asked to attend “just another seminar”.
In a Nutshell
Remember not to overthink this process. Some marketers spend weeks tweaking every word and visual in their event invitations, only to send them out too close to their event date (leaving their recipients with less time to plan their schedules).
Take these points into consideration and get your event invites out there, into the hands and inboxes of your prospects. And if you need to send a second invite (or a reminder), you can also tweak your messaging and try again.
All the best to filling up your seats and running amazing events!
ADD MORE VALUE TO YOUR EVENTS
