Occasion electronic mail advertising: Easy methods to construct pleasure in your subsequent occasion

By Kaleigh Moore November 21, 2023

Occasion electronic mail advertising is a key technique for constructing anticipation in your subsequent occasion—whether or not on-line or offline. This put up explores key occasion electronic mail advertising examples and techniques to assist.

When a survey requested occasion entrepreneurs their handiest technique for getting the phrase out, the outcomes have been attention-grabbing:

The very best technique wasn’t word-of-mouth. It wasn’t social media.

It was electronic mail.

Over 75% of the occasion entrepreneurs polled stated electronic mail advertising was their desire. They reported 45% of their whole occasion ticket gross sales got here from electronic mail advertising campaigns.

That makes occasion advertising easy, proper? Join an electronic mail platform, tie in an occasion advertising platform like Eventbrite, and also you’re good to go.

However simply because one medium is the most efficient doesn’t assure future outcomes.

To make occasion electronic mail advertising be just right for you, you’ll want to study what it’s and how one can use it. You’ll want announcement and drip marketing campaign emails to pump up pleasure nicely earlier than the occasion. And some examples to indicate the way it’s carried out gained’t harm, both.

Let’s dive in.

What’s electronic mail advertising for occasions?

Electronic mail occasion advertising is a newsletter-based technique for constructing urgency and a spotlight for an upcoming get-together. An excellent electronic mail occasion advertising technique has a couple of totally different options:

• Constructing pleasure and anticipation for the occasion, which helps you promote extra tickets
• Saying, with good readability, the important thing particulars—such because the date, the time, and how one can get to your occasion
• Offering hyperlinks and particulars in case your occasion is web-based
• Answering questions concerning the occasion upfront. This creates much less confusion when the day lastly comes

These steps sound intuitive sufficient. However bear in mind: occasion electronic mail advertising might be totally different than your common electronic mail advertising methods.

The standard technique is perhaps to filter new potential clients to your lead magnet. The advantages you possibly can obtain from this technique can construct over time, ad infinitum.

Occasion electronic mail advertising greatest practices

Electronic mail occasion advertising is extra like constructing a marketing campaign round a narrative. It has a starting, a center, and an finish: the occasion itself.

If you wish to do it successfully, you’ll must preserve a couple of greatest practices in thoughts:

Personalization

An occasion ought to really feel extra “actual” than most newsletters. 

Occasions imply assembly folks face-to-face, both on a webcam or in particular person. It’s one factor to get a possible buyer to enroll in a lead magnet. It’s one other factor to get them to decide to attending, say, a convention.

With a very good electronic mail advertising platform, you possibly can incorporate personalization options aplenty:

• Use a platform like AWeber to routinely enter every subscriber’s distinctive first title
• Use subscriber segmentation and tag every consumer with a selected class so you possibly can ship them event-specific content material
• Add code to your web site and have interaction with subscribers based mostly on their specific site-browsing habits

Arrange your marketing campaign accurately from the get-go, and your occasion emails will come throughout as eerily telepathic. 

However there’s nothing unusual happening. You’re simply working towards good personalization habits and skipping these publication subscribers who may not have an interest.

Buyer segmentation

Talking of buyer segmentation: you wouldn’t invite an electronic mail record of cat lovers to an occasion at a dogs-only park, would you?

Not if you happen to wished anybody to indicate up.

With buyer segmentation options, you possibly can tag particular subscribers. Or you possibly can drill down even additional, separating subscribers by the sorts of occasions they could wish to attend.

When you’ve got a far-reaching viewers, for instance, you possibly can tag “NY-Occasions” for subscribers native to the New York space.

Segmentation ensures that you simply don’t waste any time by campaigning to crowds of people that don’t have any intention of ever attending your occasions. 

It’s not sufficient to have a “[CUSTOMER_NAME]” field at first of your electronic mail.

Use buyer segmentation tags to make sure each electronic mail feels related to each group you’re participating. Your objective? Establish particular niches of subscribers who shall be enthusiastic sufficient to order a spot at your occasion.

Making the occasion appear actual

There’s a humorous factor that occurs with on-line interactions. We regularly neglect we’re interacting with different folks. As Psychology At the moment notes, one survey discovered that faculty college students had the best enhance in well-being once they interacted with folks in particular person.

 Merely put, on-line interactions don’t register fairly as “actual” as face-to-face interactions do.

And that may be a tough promote. In any case, you in all probability obtained most of your subscribers from on-line interactions. 

Now, with occasion electronic mail advertising, you’re asking folks to start out seeing you as an actual particular person. You’re asking to alter the context of your relationship, which requires a distinct type of engagement.

Begin by making the occasion appear actual:

• Open loops that may solely shut in particular person. For instance, possibly somebody enters a contest on-line—however they’ll solely gather the prize in particular person. 
• Use compelling visuals. Do you’ve gotten snapshots from a earlier occasion? Embody them. Even when your occasion is totally on-line, embody headshots for each visitor who will seem.
• Share a private story. Does the occasion come out of a private story or realization you had? Share it along with your viewers. In case your occasion is a lecture or internet convention a couple of particular subject, discuss concerning the private circumstances that led to your discovery of that subject.

Easy methods to use electronic mail advertising to spark curiosity in your occasion

Electronic mail advertising is like every other kind of selling. Besides this time, you need greater than a click on. 

You could inspire folks to show up, enroll, and even pay a hefty sum of money simply to get in.

These are massive asks. When you’ve got a younger publication subscriber base, they’re particularly massive asks. You should still be in the midst of constructing familiarity along with your viewers.

To make sure your occasion sparks sufficient curiosity, construct the next methods into your marketing campaign:

Get your announcement in early

Ever discover how Hollywood doesn’t kick off a film marketing campaign with a full film trailer anymore?
It’s normally a sequence of teases. They’ll launch footage from the set years prematurely. Or they’ll hype up a quick “trailer tease” on YouTube.

Lastly, the complete trailers develop into blockbuster occasions themselves: generally they debut throughout halftime of Monday Evening Soccer.

The ultimate trailer. Tune in to Monday Evening Soccer on @ESPN to observe it reside. #TheRiseOfSkywalker pic.twitter.com/QAme0H5j0D

— Star Wars (@starwars) October 19, 2019

The important thing to this technique is beginning early. Plant these seeds of pleasure. Get on peoples’ radar nicely prematurely of the occasion.

Pleasure begins along with your first announcement electronic mail. So now’s the time to start out brainstorming.

Brainstorm your electronic mail topic strains

We’ve obtained a couple of concepts for greatest practices on electronic mail topic strains. Let’s do a quick evaluate:

• Maintain them underneath 45 characters. This ensures folks can learn an entire thought with out clicking. In any other case, your topic strains may fade into ellipses in your recipients’ inboxes.
• Use the “sentence case” in your headers, which retains issues informal. These emails ought to seem like they’re coming from outdated buddies.
• Create a “curiosity hole.” This implies you need to introduce a thriller along with your topic line. If readers wish to remedy it, they’ll really feel compelled to click on the e-mail.

Then write down an inventory of your greatest concepts for announcement topic strains. 

And right here’s the trick: sleep on them. Once you’re contemporary, take a look at them anew. Ask your self which one popped as probably the most compelling.

Chances are high, that’s your winner.

Construct an occasion touchdown web page

True: an occasion just isn’t a static factor. It would come and go. Constructing an internet site can really feel like overkill when you recognize that is only a non permanent marketing campaign.

However you continue to want a centralized hub the place folks can discover key data and join marketing campaign emails.

Inside AWeber, you possibly can construct a selected touchdown web page with buyer tags. This fashion, solely the publication subscribers who is perhaps occasion attendees will get the segmented emails.

You may as well use the touchdown web page as a chance to do a number of the legwork.

Any occasion goes to have Steadily Requested Questions:

When and the place? How are you going to attend? How a lot do tickets price?

You’ll possible repeat this data in social media posts and emails. However having FAQs up on a touchdown web page will make sure the solutions are there for anybody who needs them. 

(Extra on constructing your touchdown pages in a second.)

Start capturing photos from the venue—or use inventory photos

For those who’ve already booked a venue, use that venue’s present photos to make the occasion appear extra “actual.”

It’s one factor to say you’re renting an auditorium. It’s one other factor to indicate an image of 100 empty seats and write the headline: “Three extra days…”

For those who don’t have entry to these footage, you possibly can all the time select inventory footage, together with these related to the occasion’s metropolis, to assist construct anticipation.

Or ask friends for headshots you possibly can embody in your touchdown web page and emails.

Pictures are so vital to our perceptions, they’ll even affect our recollections. The extra visible your marketing campaign will get, the extra “actual” it’ll really feel when the week of the occasion rolls round.

Create periodic reminders

A typical story has a three-act construction:

• An inciting incident, which pulls the story out of its complacency and creates urgency
• A second act of more and more complicated issues and escalating rigidity
• A climax the place the destiny of the story hangs within the steadiness

You don’t have to show your occasion emails right into a novel anytime quickly, true. However you ought to have a free sense of this construction as you construct anticipation in your occasion.

Enter “periodic reminder” emails.

If the announcement electronic mail was your inciting incident, these interval reminders will fill the area of an extended second act. 

And that may be a problem. The thrilling first announcement and the third-act buildup to the occasion are sometimes probably the most thrilling elements of an electronic mail marketing campaign.

What do you do to create periodic reminders in between? Listed below are a couple of concepts:

• “Unpeel the onion.” Like an excellent thriller author, solely unveil one clue at a time. Create intrigue by presenting photos, prizes, and different components out of your occasion out of context. Maintain your viewers guessing, then slowly reveal what every layer of the onion means to the final word occasion.
• Give away the main points. No have to be coy concerning the logistics of your occasion. As a substitute, permit folks so as to add occasions to their calendar—together with dates, instances, and internet addresses.
• Construct your reminders in sequence. It’s extra enjoyable in case your emails run in a selected order, with every electronic mail increasing on what you wrote within the earlier version. For instance, Canva sends tutorial emails the place every lesson provides mini-skills on prime of the emails that got here earlier than.
• Create a drip marketing campaign. Schedule your “second-act” emails as a drip marketing campaign from the outset, which helps you create a pure chronological timeline that seems like a narrative unfolding.

Collect FAQs and retailer them in your touchdown web page

It’s solely pure: an occasion goes to garner some questions.

When? The place? Who?

For those who deal with your occasion electronic mail advertising marketing campaign as a true-blue marketing campaign, then each marketing campaign wants that touchdown web page. 

That is the “gross sales web page” in your occasion. And like a very good gross sales web page, it ought to anticipate—and reply—each buyer query beforehand.

Begin with Steadily Requested Questions you recognize folks may have. The 5 Ws: who, what, the place, when, and why. 

Clarify what folks can count on to get out of your occasion, even when it’s one thing so simple as a enjoyable night time out.

And as questions are available, don’t neglect to notice these and jot down your solutions. Ideally, your touchdown web page shall be an entire “hub” of any and all data associated to your occasion.

All that’s left for the shopper is to ask themselves by getting into their electronic mail handle. From there, you possibly can tag them to a segmented electronic mail record and get them began in your drip marketing campaign.

Become involved on social media

Occasion electronic mail advertising could also be one of the best ways to get folks to enroll, however you continue to want folks to find your emails within the first place. And social media might be a good way to attract them in.

One technique is to maximise your use of hashtags:

• Create an event-specific hashtag (like #Your-Occasion-Right here-2024) to construct a hashtag “hub.” Anybody who needs to submit their put up, connect a photograph of their invitation, or announce they’re attending can use this hashtag for visibility.
• Use event-adjacent hashtags to get extra eyeballs on your posts. These are significantly efficient when you’ve gotten industry-specific hashtags you should use. Individuals in your {industry}—who could already be in search of occasions—can discover your posts with a easy search.

And preserve at it. Possibly your hashtag posts gained’t draw 500 likes and engagements in a single day. However each new put up retains your occasion on the prime of the search outcomes each time somebody appears for the hashtag.

Social media can be an excellent place to start contests and prizes to create pleasure. You possibly can even use Re-posts on X and different social shares as methods folks can enter, drumming up much more engagement out of your viewers.

Within the instance above, an occasion for Ukraine Help exhibits off how one can create social posts:

• Inspiring, high-contrast visuals to attract the attention
• Important data: who, when, the place, what, and why
• Hashtags like #PossibleWithU assist improve the visibility.

Ideas for constructing urgency when it’s crunch time

Now we enter the third act of your marketing campaign: the climax. 

It’s crunch time.

Your device for constructing urgency right here ought to be to play on shortage. Shortage is easy: the much less of one thing there’s, the extra folks will need it. 

Shortage is a pure match for occasion electronic mail advertising as a result of an occasion is inherently scarce. It solely occurs as soon as. And chances are high, there are all kinds of alternatives to spotlight shortage:

• Chances are you’ll solely have a certain quantity of on-line friends
• There are solely a sure variety of seats or areas
• A venue could have a most capability
• If the occasion is simply taking place as soon as, your viewers may miss it
• A restricted variety of VIP spots

That latter level is vital. Creating “VIP tickets” might be a good way to encourage new sign-ups while you’re nonetheless within the “Drip marketing campaign” part of the general marketing campaign.

For instance, “Withings” watches as soon as created a Cyber Monday sale with the next headline:

“Tomorrow is simply too late.”

It’s an immediate eye-grabber. 

Why is tomorrow too late? If I take motion now, am I one of many fortunate few?

For those who don’t have particular VIP gives, you possibly can construct urgency with distinctive incentives. Possibly time is operating out on a prize contest. Possibly there are solely so many prizes you may give out on the door.

These incentives are significantly helpful if you happen to’re approaching the occasion date and nonetheless don’t have sufficient signups. Some clients may want one last nudge earlier than they decide to your occasion.

Forms of occasion emails (with examples)

Utilizing story construction, you need to cut up your occasion emails into three main classes:

• The announcement is the inciting incident: you wish to shock folks, pull them out of their lull, and inform them what they’ll get by attending your occasion.
• The drip marketing campaign emails are the lengthy second act: slowly construct urgency, reveal new solutions (equivalent to thriller friends), and remind folks of what’s coming.
• The pleasure emails shall be your massive climax: constructing urgency for the occasion.

Announcement emails

XXIX’s ten-year occasion announcement electronic mail begins with a enjoyable “incitement” sentence: Unsubscribe if you happen to don’t like events.

Properly, all of us like events. Now they’ve our consideration.

Listed below are the keys to this announcement electronic mail’s success:

• A gap sentence that challenges the reader and creates a little bit of a curiosity hole. Don’t inform me I don’t like events!
• It will get the announcement out early by mentioning a key milestone: XXIX turning 10 years outdated. There’s the reply to your “why.” It additionally makes the occasion date slightly simpler to recollect. 
• The e-mail provides particulars immediately so people who find themselves already can begin saving the date and placing the handle of their calendars. Sure, it’s good to create intrigue, however you don’t wish to be mysterious concerning the logistics.

Right here’s one other instance, from TwitchCon:

With the boldness of “you’re going to be there,” this announcement electronic mail will get straight to the purpose:

• It explains why you’d wish to attend TwitchCon in Paris: “Get able to rejoice all of the stuff that makes Twitch particular.” And it solutions one other “W” query by explaining who shall be there.
• It makes use of social proof with particular faces and usernames of standard streamers. This instantly attracts the curiosity of those streamers’ followers.

Drip marketing campaign emails

Bloomreach makes use of particular particulars to attract your curiosity. For those who’re a part of their viewers, there’s a very good likelihood you’ll discover one thing at this occasion you’ll like.

• This electronic mail for Bloomreach re-invites folks by mentioning the particular occasion particulars they need to know. Nevertheless it doesn’t have the large “splash” of a launch electronic mail. As a substitute, it tackles the meat and potatoes of the explanations to attend the occasion, together with particular subjects and audio system.
• Contains primary particulars about when the occasion is, together with an above-the-fold call-to-action for people who find themselves instantly .

Now let’s take a look at the same instance from a 2023 convention from Maze:

Keys to success:

• Discover the time right here, a enjoyable, urgency-building transition to the ultimate leg of the marketing campaign. 
• The e-mail nonetheless highlights what the enjoyable of the occasion is perhaps: “Be a part of on-line on September 19 for X, Y, and Z.”
• The e-mail mentions the DJ leisure whereas discussing particular audio system on the occasion, providing you with extra causes to affix in.
• It finishes off with a powerful name to motion: registering without cost.

Pleasure emails

It is virtually time! ⏰ We’re again tomorrow for G2E 2022.

Comply with alongside on our pages this week, October 10-13, as we share highlights from the present. It’s not too late to register: https://t.co/WolNcdnYIY pic.twitter.com/ZqgBUO69EM

— World Gaming Expo (@G2Eshows) October 9, 2022

Though not an electronic mail, this tweet with an animated “timer” builds urgency and anticipation by letting you watch the seconds tick away.

• Discover the road “it’s not too late to register,” together with a powerful CTA. It might be a tweet, nevertheless it reads like an electronic mail.
• The animation highlights how rapidly time is passing, which builds urgency—even when it’s unconscious.

Sundance’s upcoming 2024 movie pageant makes use of some comparable ideas:

This electronic mail for the Sundance Movie Pageant doesn’t go off-brand with last-minute contests and prizes. Nevertheless it does spotlight {that a} “countdown” is starting:

• The e-mail builds urgency by highlighting that the lodging is promoting “quick.” Even when folks suppose they’ve loads of time left to register, there are different components of logistics you should use to construct shortage.
• The e-mail consists of particular occasion particulars, which is crucial at this stage of occasion advertising emails.
• Lastly, the e-mail features a new provide that may assist nudge individuals who have been on the fence about attending.

Construct an occasion electronic mail advertising marketing campaign

An occasion electronic mail advertising marketing campaign remains to be like different campaigns you’ve tried. It ought to have a selected touchdown web page, populated with all kinds of data. It is best to use buyer segments to personalize your messaging.

What’s totally different? Each occasion is a narrative with a starting, a center, and an finish—a climax that culminates within the occasion itself. For those who can construct urgency as much as the top, you’ll have a profitable marketing campaign.

Nevertheless it all begins with a succesful electronic mail platform. An electronic mail platform that permits for efficient consumer tagging, buyer segmentation, and automatic drip campaigns to assist construct pleasure.
Don’t have an account with AWeber simply but? Join free immediately. In any case, the clock in your subsequent occasion is ticking.