The Most Important Email to Promote Your Event
Email marketing for events is all about finding a sweet spot: You don’t want to be too spammy. You don’t want to undercommunicate, either. You want to be the Goldilocks of the inbox, mastering an email approach that’s not too aggressive and not too hands-off, always sending email reminders that hit at the most important points in the event lifecycle.
Striking this balance can feel like a challenge. To start, you may already have a few key emails baked into your strategy: The event announcement, the start of the ticket sale, a thank-you after the event. But there’s one more email that’s crucial for building buzz and driving registration for your event. If you only add one more email to your strategy, make sure it’s this one: The two-weeks-out reminder.
Email attendees 10 to 14 days before the event.
The two-weeks-out reminder is just as important as your event announcement and your day-before reminder. This email goes out roughly 10 to 14 days before your event, and it’s an under-the-radar high performer that you’ll want to include in your next email campaign.
Why send an email two weeks before the event?
Let’s walk through the advantages of the two-weeks-out reminder email.
Your attendees are swimming through a sea of emails every day; their inboxes are flooded with promotions and event invitations. If they see an event announcement months before the big day, they may not be ready to commit to it so far in advance. But if you wait too long to send your first event email, many people will already have other plans.
This is where an email 10 to 14 days before your event provides the perfect Goldilocks solution—it’s not too far in advance, but not too close to the event, either. This middle-ground reminder is the best way to reach people when they’re ready to commit but before they’ve made other plans.
Plan the perfect two-weeks-out reminder email.
The email you send two weeks before an event isn’t just a carbon copy of your first event announcement. Differentiate the two-weeks-out touchpoint by including a few key details. You’ll entice attendees to not only open your email but to also register for your event:
- Include a detailed event schedule. Two weeks out is an ideal time to share a timeline of your event and begin managing attendee expectations.
- Run a ticket giveaway to build buzz. Nothing makes people want to share your event like the excitement of winning a free pair of tickets!
- Offer a promo code. Give your email subscribers an exclusive sale or promo code to jumpstart your registrations in the final two weeks before the event.
- Automate your emails. With a tool like Promoter, you can easily automate all of your event emails and create templates for each email type, including the two-weeks-out reminder. Then, for the next campaign, you can quickly select a template and tweak it to fit your needs.
One last thing: Don’t forget to link to third-party event listings.
In all of your event emails, including the two-weeks-out reminder, include links to your event listings on Facebook and other third-party sites.
These days, attendees aren’t just looking at your website calendar to find event listings. People also rely on Facebook, MeetUp, BandsInTown, and other third-party sites and social channels to discover and organize events. Make it easy for people to RSVP to your events wherever they are—including social media and other sites—by including links to each third-party listing in all of your emails. This small step can help generate even more buzz for your event.
Is the two-weeks-out touchpoint part of your email marketing strategy? Let us know how it goes, and no matter where you’re at in the event management lifecycle, The Events Calendar family of WordPress tools is here to help!