5 Ways to Nail Event Email Marketing 

Find out why and how to use event email marketing to engage your audience and drive them to your event effectively in this post.

Event Email Marketing

Image Source: Vecteezy

 

A carefully planned and executed event can benefit your business in countless ways. To host such an event, first, you have to get people in – and that’s the difficult part. Here is where event email marketing comes in to engage your audience from start to finish and convert them into your business’s most loyal fans. 

 

Marketers have lost faith in email marketing, thinking they can’t cut through the noise in crowded inboxes. But that’s hardly the case. Emails are as effective as always, helping brands build trusting and lasting relationships with their leads. Let’s get into details to discover why email marketing is the way to go for your event promotion.

Why Should You Invest in Event Email Marketing?

Many business owners use social media marketing to promote their events, neglecting email marketing. However, a vast majority of consumers still prefer emails as their main communication channel with their favorite brands. People who choose to join your email list are interested in what you have to say. Email marketing allows you to stay in touch with those warm leads and share exciting business news. 

 

When you leverage social media, you get your message out there, hoping the right people will see it. Emails, on the contrary, are a direct way to reach out to your audience and educate them throughout the event lifecycle. You can also tailor your message based on recipient demographics and behavioral data and send targeted emails that meet their specific needs.

5 Practices to Master Event Email Marketing 

Email marketing opens up many opportunities for your event marketing, but the process can be challenging when starting out. Effective event email marketing needs strategic planning and a deep understanding of your audience. In this guide, you will find the best practices to target them successfully and skyrocket your event conversion rate through emails.

All answers lie in your email list

Successful email marketing goes hand in hand with building an email list of people already interested in your product or service. A common mistake among marketing professionals is that they forget to take care of those precious recipients after creating it. Email lists are living databases that you should keep healthy and updated. A carefully curated list must include only those recipients who want to hear your news. 

 

The key to making that happen is to nurture engaged recipients while letting go of those that happened to join your list and then forgot all about it. Let’s review some of the most effective practices for maintaining a healthy contact database:

 

  • Never ever buy email lists. It’s a no-brainer that this practice is against every compliance law. Not only could it damage your brand’s reputation and credibility, but drag you into serious trouble.
  • Set up a double opt-in subscription process instead of a single opt-in so that recipients give their consent to join your email list and receive email marketing messages from you
  • Once in a while (every six months is excellent), clean up your email lists. Verify recipient email addresses, fix the ones with typos, and delete fake ones. Also, make sure to remove inactive accounts. 

Segment your audience and personalize your message

List segmentation enables you to divide your audience into segments and then dispatch different versions of the same email campaigns or even different emails. It’s a bulletproof tactic to ensure your message reaches the right people. Before crafting your event emails, you should identify various audience groups and tweak your message to their needs and expectations. 

 

There are various factors to consider when personalizing your event email campaigns, from a recipient’s personal information to the level of engagement with your brand. For instance, if your event is aimed at industry professionals, you should highlight the presence of high-profile speakers to show them your event is worth their time and trouble. 

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Choose the personalization elements that fit your marketing objectives and customize your emails accordingly. That way, recipients know what they gain from participating without reading unnecessary details they have no interest in. For instance, you can incentivize new leads with testimonial videos from past events. However, past attendees will respond better to early-bird tickets. So, do everything within your power to specify the audience groups you want to aim your event at and create customized email content to add value. 

Build an automated email sequence for your event

Another mistake many event hosts make is sending out invitation emails and, at best, a reminder email a few days before the event. But recipients seem to engage better with a sequence of event emails, especially when you design and dispatch each email based on certain criteria, like their interactions with your email content. 

 

Automated email sequences allow you to set up your email campaigns once, and your workflow takes care of sending them automatically, saving you time and effort. You can use several triggers to set your automation in motion, such as specific recipient actions. For example, recipients that opened your email could receive a different email version from the one that non-openers get. 

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And you don’t need to be an expert to set up this type of automation since most email marketing automation tools help you do so with ease. There are many event email types, but the most essential to include in an automated email series for your event are the following:

 

  1. Event announcement email. Such an email informs recipients about your event and invites them to register. You can use it to raise event awareness while building excitement with the bare minimum details to have them long for more.  
  2. Early bird tickets. The sooner you capture event registrants, the more time you have to plan your event and create engaging content. Early bird booking emails may include discounts to incentivize recipients to take action immediately. 
  3. Registration confirmation email. This email is straightforward, notifying subscribers of their successful registration and providing them with all the transactional information they need.
  4. Teaser email. Most marketers underestimate the value of teaser emails. This is your chance to get people excited about your event. Give them enough to pique their curiosity but leave out enough to keep the mystery alive.
  5. Reminder email. A few days before the event, make sure to dispatch the first reminder email and the second on that day. Provide them with your event’s basic details and value proposition, as well as a summary of what to expect. 
  6. Follow-up email. Your event email marketing doesn’t end with the event. Send an event follow-up email – or even an email series – to thank attendees for their time and maybe offer exclusive gifts as a token of appreciation. But more on that later.

First test, then rest

We talked about email list segmentation and personalizing your event emails. But no matter how carefully you have applied both methods, you should never leave things to chance. Whether hosting a webinar on IVR solutions or participating in a local trade show for home decoration, sending the right email to the right recipients to promote your event can get tricky.  

 

By dispatching unique email versions to different audience segments, you can test the waters based on their reactions. Your email analytics will show you which emails have the highest open and click-through rate, as well as the email elements that you need to improve. You can test components like your email subject lines, CTAs, visuals, design, or even the sending time.

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Based on the lessons learned through A/B testing, you can implement the changes required and watch your engagement rate increase. It might lead to boosting your event ticket sales too. Just remember to test one element at a time in order to understand the patterns, attribute any changes in your subscribers’ behavior, and use those data to perfect your emails.

Never neglect the follow-up

If your event email marketing ends once your event is over, you are just leaving money on the table. Post-event emails enable you to continue the conversation with your attendees while getting valuable insights into your event. With post-event email marketing, the benefits go both ways: your brand keeps event attendees engaged, and your audience receives valuable information even after the event completion. 

 

When you nurture your event participants, you motivate them to advocate for past and future events. So, engage them with valuable content to urge them to share their experience with their connections. Also, make sure to include surveys in your follow-up emails to ask them for feedback. This type of initiative shows them that your brand isn’t just about selling; you actually care about solving their problems and understanding their preferences. 

 

Here are some ideas on the elements that you could incorporate into your post-event email:

  • Thank you note to show them you appreciate the time they spent on your event
  • Event updates like statistics and any news related to your event
  • Surveys to gather their feedback and check where there is room for improvement
  • Downloadable material, such as your event presentation in the form of slides
  • Early access to registration or even exclusive discounts for upcoming events

 

Final Words

No matter the type of event you want to host, you need to showcase its value to lure people in. Once that is done, you should keep engaging your audience throughout the entire journey. These event email marketing best practices will get you well on your way to creating awesome content that will drive attendance and visibility for your event. 

 

But even if your event turns out to be an absolute success, make sure to monitor key event performance metrics and ask your attendees to provide feedback. The more data you gather, the more you can tailor your event email marketing to gauge even greater success and host memorable events for your audience.