Occasion electronic mail advertising and marketing: Methods to construct pleasure to your subsequent occasion

By Kaleigh Moore November 21, 2023

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

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

The most effective technique wasn’t word-of-mouth. It wasn’t social media.

It was electronic mail.

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

That makes occasion advertising and marketing easy, proper? Join an electronic mail platform, tie in an occasion advertising and marketing 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 and marketing give you the results you want, it’s worthwhile to study what it’s and how you can use it. You’ll want announcement and drip marketing campaign emails to pump up pleasure properly earlier than the occasion. And some examples to point out the way it’s accomplished gained’t damage, both.

Let’s dive in.

What’s electronic mail advertising and marketing for occasions?

E-mail occasion advertising and marketing is a newsletter-based technique for constructing urgency and a focus for an upcoming get-together. A superb electronic mail occasion advertising and marketing technique has a number of completely different options:

• Constructing pleasure and anticipation for the occasion, which helps you promote extra tickets
• Asserting, with excellent readability, the important thing particulars—such because the date, the time, and how you 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 keep in mind: occasion electronic mail advertising and marketing may be completely different than your normal electronic mail advertising and marketing methods.

The everyday technique may be to filter new potential prospects to your lead magnet. The advantages you’ll be able to obtain from this technique can construct over time, for ever and ever.

Occasion electronic mail advertising and marketing greatest practices

E-mail occasion advertising and marketing 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 have to maintain a number of greatest practices in thoughts:

Personalization

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

Occasions imply assembly individuals 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 and marketing platform, you’ll be able to incorporate personalization options aplenty:

• Use a platform like AWeber to routinely enter every subscriber’s distinctive first title
• Use subscriber segmentation and tag every person with a particular class so you’ll be able to ship them event-specific content material
• Add code to your web site and have interaction with subscribers primarily based 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 occurring. You’re simply working towards good personalization habits and skipping these publication subscribers who won’t have an interest.

Buyer segmentation

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

Not should you needed anybody to point out up.

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

In case you have a far-reaching viewers, for instance, you’ll be able to tag “NY-Occasions” for subscribers native to the New York space.

Segmentation ensures that you just 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 firstly of your electronic mail.

Use buyer segmentation tags to make sure each electronic mail feels related to each group you’re participating. Your purpose? Determine particular niches of subscribers who will probably 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 frequently neglect we’re interacting with different individuals. As Psychology As we speak notes, one survey discovered that faculty college students had the best enhance in well-being after they interacted with individuals 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 received most of your subscribers from on-line interactions. 

Now, with occasion electronic mail advertising and marketing, you’re asking individuals to start out seeing you as an actual particular person. You’re asking to vary 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 will solely gather the prize in particular person. 
• Use compelling visuals. Do you might have snapshots from a earlier occasion? Embody them. Even when your occasion is totally on-line, embrace 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 together with your viewers. In case your occasion is a lecture or net convention a few particular matter, speak concerning the private circumstances that led to your discovery of that matter.

Methods to use electronic mail advertising and marketing to spark curiosity in your occasion

E-mail advertising and marketing is like some other sort of selling. Besides this time, you need greater than a click on. 

It’s essential encourage individuals to show up, enroll, and even pay a hefty sum of money simply to get in.

These are large asks. In case you have a younger publication subscriber base, they’re particularly large asks. You should still be in the midst of constructing familiarity together 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 collection of teases. They’ll launch photos from the set years upfront. Or they’ll hype up a short “trailer tease” on YouTube.

Lastly, the total trailers turn 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 look at it stay. #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 properly upfront of the occasion.

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

Brainstorm your electronic mail topic strains

We’ve received a number of concepts for greatest practices on electronic mail topic strains. Let’s do a short overview:

• Preserve them underneath 45 characters. This ensures individuals 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” to your headers, which retains issues informal. These emails ought to appear like they’re coming from outdated pals.
• Create a “curiosity hole.” This implies you must introduce a thriller together 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, have a look at them anew. Ask your self which one popped as probably the most compelling.

Likelihood is, that’s your winner.

Construct an occasion touchdown web page

True: an occasion is just not a static factor. It should come and go. Constructing a web site can really feel like overkill when you already know that is only a short-term marketing campaign.

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

Inside AWeber, you’ll be able to construct a particular touchdown web page with buyer tags. This manner, solely the publication subscribers who may be occasion attendees will get the segmented emails.

You may as well use the touchdown web page as a possibility to do a few of the legwork.

Any occasion goes to have Regularly Requested Questions:

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

You’ll doubtless repeat this info 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 desires them. 

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

Start capturing photos from the venue—or use inventory photos

In the event you’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 point out an image of 100 empty seats and write the headline: “Three extra days…”

In the event you don’t have entry to these photos, you’ll be able to at all times select inventory photos, together with these related to the occasion’s metropolis, to assist construct anticipation.

Or ask visitors for headshots you’ll be able to embrace in your touchdown web page and emails.

Images are so essential to our perceptions, they will even affect our recollections. The extra visible your marketing campaign will get, the extra “actual” it should 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 pressure
• 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 to your occasion.

Enter “periodic reminder” emails.

If the announcement electronic mail was your inciting incident, these interval reminders will fill the area of a protracted 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 components of an electronic mail marketing campaign.

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

• “Unpeel the onion.” Like an amazing thriller author, solely unveil one clue at a time. Create intrigue by presenting photos, prizes, and different parts out of your occasion out of context. Preserve your viewers guessing, then slowly reveal what every layer of the onion means to the last word occasion.
• Give away the small print. No must be coy concerning the logistics of your occasion. As an alternative, enable individuals so as to add occasions to their calendar—together with dates, occasions, and net addresses.
• Construct your reminders in sequence. It’s extra enjoyable in case your emails run in a particular order, with every electronic mail increasing on what you wrote within the earlier version. For instance, Canva sends educational emails the place every lesson provides mini-skills on high 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?

In the event you deal with your occasion electronic mail advertising and marketing marketing campaign as a true-blue marketing campaign, then each marketing campaign wants that touchdown web page. 

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

Begin with Regularly Requested Questions you already know individuals could have. The 5 Ws: who, what, the place, when, and why. 

Clarify what individuals 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 will probably be an entire “hub” of any and all info associated to your occasion.

All that’s left for the shopper is to ask themselves by coming into their electronic mail deal with. From there, you’ll be able to tag them to a segmented electronic mail listing and get them began in your drip marketing campaign.

Get entangled on social media

Occasion electronic mail advertising and marketing could also be one of the simplest ways to get individuals to enroll, however you continue to want individuals to find your emails within the first place. And social media may be an effective 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 desires to submit their submit, 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 notably efficient when you might have industry-specific hashtags you need to use. Individuals in your {industry}—who might already be in search of occasions—can discover your posts with a easy search.

And maintain at it. Possibly your hashtag posts gained’t draw 500 likes and engagements in a single day. However each new submit retains your occasion on the high of the search outcomes at any time when somebody seems for the hashtag.

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

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

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

Suggestions 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 must be to play on shortage. Shortage is straightforward: the much less of one thing there’s, the extra individuals will need it. 

Shortage is a pure match for occasion electronic mail advertising and marketing 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 visitors
• There are solely a sure variety of seats or areas
• A venue might have a most capability
• If the occasion is barely occurring as soon as, your viewers might miss it
• A restricted variety of VIP spots

That latter level is essential. Creating “VIP tickets” may be an effective way to encourage new sign-ups if you’re nonetheless within the “Drip marketing campaign” section of the general marketing campaign.

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

“Tomorrow is just too late.”

It’s an on the spot eye-grabber. 

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

In the event you don’t have particular VIP gives, you’ll be able to construct urgency with distinctive incentives. Possibly time is working out on a prize contest. Possibly there are solely so many prizes you can provide out on the door.

These incentives are notably helpful should you’re approaching the occasion date and nonetheless don’t have sufficient signups. Some prospects could want one remaining nudge earlier than they decide to your occasion.

Sorts of occasion emails (with examples)

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

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

Announcement emails

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

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

Listed here 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 a bit simpler to recollect. 
• The e-mail offers particulars immediately so people who find themselves already can begin saving the date and placing the deal with 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 have a good time all of the stuff that makes Twitch particular.” And it solutions one other “W” query by explaining who will probably be there.
• It makes use of social proof with particular faces and usernames of well-liked streamers. This instantly attracts the curiosity of those streamers’ followers.

Drip marketing campaign emails

Bloomreach makes use of particular particulars to attract your curiosity. In the event you’re a part of their viewers, there’s a very good probability you’ll discover one thing at this occasion you’ll like.

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

Now let’s have a look at an identical 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 may be: “Be 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 robust name to motion: registering without cost.

Pleasure emails

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

Observe 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 robust 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 rules:

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

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

Construct an occasion electronic mail advertising and marketing marketing campaign

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

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

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