Email marketing — How to drive conversions for your event?

An email invitation is an integral part of event marketing. Despite the presence of social media platforms and event listing sites to create and promote events, sending personalized emails to your potential audience and requesting their RSVPs or registrations is still one of the best ways to increase your event’s registration.
In order to make your email marketing campaigns more effective, you need to pay attention to two key metrics — the open rate and click-through rate. On an average, event invitation mailers tend to have:
Given the low conversion rate, a well-designed and well-written email invitation is worth the effort. For your event invitation mailers to actually get opened, consider the following points:
1. Use clever subject lines
To have an event invitation email opened in an inbox, you need to use clever copywriting. Include words such as ‘You’re Invited’ in the subject line. It’s clear, simple, direct, and intriguing.
Also, don’t forget to personalize the invites. According to a study by Campaign Monitor, emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened.
2. Use banners
Pictures drive conversion and what better way to incorporate images in your email than by using banners? Banners add a professional look to the email and helps to communicate more with less, while enhancing the authenticity of the event. You can even incorporate it as your email signature.
3. Call-to-Action
When you are trying to persuade someone to register for the event, make sure to strategically place and highlight CTA (Call-to-Action) buttons in the mailers. Don’t forget to include at least one, and a prominent CTA button. Hyperlink the CTA(s) to the right landing or registration page that has a provision to purchase tickets.
4. Segment your audience
Addressing your target audience in a way that is relevant to them is always better than sending one-size-fits-all mailers. Therefore, before scheduling event invitation campaigns, it’s a good practice to perform demographic profiling and then segregating your audience according to their location and interest.
5. Design and content
Appropriate email templates and content are primary attributes in the email. It lays the foundation for the email campaign and will help decide whether the email will be opened or sent to a spam folder. Also take note of the opening lines. Make the most important details stand out. Highlight the time, location, cost, and other key details such as parking and transportation.
6. Email signature
Email signature must be added at the end of the email with all contact information of the host or the relevant person from the organization. You can even add an image and link it to your event landing page. This makes it easy for the attendees to not only navigate but also find the appropriate contact details.
Don’t forget to test
Before clicking on the ‘send’ button, don’t forget to test the look and feel of your email on different browsers and devices. You can perform the testing manually or leverage open source testing software. Once verified, you are all ready to get going with your email invitations!
Originally published at www.yapsody.com on April 19, 2018.