With your event approaching in a month or so, it’s time to kick your email marketing into high gear. We’ve witnessed plenty of event organizers miss out on this final push to bring in those last-minute RSVP’s. To remedy this, a highly recommended tactic for any type of event is a well-thought-out email marketing campaign before your event happens. 

Combined with our MailChimp integration and other event ticketing features, here are 5 must-send emails before your event happens: 

1. “Hype Up Your Sponsors” Email

Onboarding sponsors for your events are a definite boost to your overall event marketing strategy. Your guests associating your event with a well-known brand should be leveraged to the max. Send out an email with your official sponsors listed to add more credibility to your event. It can be targeted towards your old event attendees who might just buy a ticket because their favourite food chain is part of your event. Our ticket customization feature lets you feature your sponsors and upcoming events on the e-ticket itself too. 

2. “Bring Your Friends To…” Email 

• “20% Off For You and Your Friends”
• “Use This Offer To Bring Your Friends”
• “Limited Time Group Discount”

Emails with these subject lines have a good open rate because you’re offering your guests a chance to bring in people with whom they’d want to experience the event. Throwing in a group discount also triggers their ticket-buying behaviour immediately. 

3. “Seal The Deal” Email

So your event marketing campaign worked and potential ticket buyers ended up on your event page but they dropped halfway and couldn’t make a decision. With our Facebook Pixel Tracking, know where exactly your potential attendees dropped off in their buying cycle. Analyse that data and send them a personalised email that compels them to buy a ticket. This email is your chance to prove that you consider every attendee important. 

4. “Are You Ready?” Email 

A reminder mail is a must-send email as it’s important to stay in their minds throughout the journey. There should never be a drop in maintaining a connection from the ticket buying phase till the event attending phase. With a creative reminder mail, it’s time to hype them into the spirit of your event. 

5. “Know Before You Go” Email 

These type of emails is a must send 2-3 days before your event takes place. It could be anything and everything from things to bring along, dress code, directions to get there, check-in time, and other vital information that makes their event experience better. The only thing left to their imagination should be how grand your event is going to be. 

Even after your event is done and dusted, don’t let your email marketing trail go cold. Whether your event received luke-warm reactions or rave reviews from your guests, you should follow certain post-event protocols.

Read more on Best Practises For Post-Event Follow-Ups that will elevate your brand recognition.

The post 5 Must-Send Emails Before Your Event Happens appeared first on Yapsody.

PERSONALIZED EMAILS

Since we’re talking about maintaining a personal relationship with your customers, emails can work wonders. Apparently, personalized emails improve click through rates by 14%, which is huge if you’re familiar with the significance of numbers in marketing.

Design your email in a friendly tone and include a catchy call-to-action. Always include individual names of your customers to give it the extra personal touch, which genuinely shows that you are considerate about your audience.

There are many tools that help you craft your emails to suit your requirements and optimize your mailing list. If you’re an event presenter, hosting an event using Yapsody will help you on that front because we have a MailChimp integration tool that lets you import your contacts in order to send newsletters and invites.

TARGETED EMAILS BASED ON DEMOGRAPHICS

Instead of sending out a mass email to all the people who constitute your target audience, you might want to segment them based on your customers’ demographics because segmented emails get 50% more clicks as compared to mail blasts. The reason is simple – there are different reasons why different people belong to your target audience. Some of them may like you because your content looks relevant to them, while a different set of people might like your promotional gigs. You could separate out your customers based on quite a few factors, namely

• Gender
• Location
• Age
• Education level
• Purchase history
• Social media usage

Create mailing lists with people having similar attributes and send specially crafted emails to each one of them.

While most marketers usually collect relevant data during the signup process, recently they’ve discovered that third party apps like Facebook can also give them access to their customers’ details. When a person who’s interested gives his consent while entering your Facebook contest, you can actually gain access to his Open Graph data. Segmenting your customers couldn’t have been easier!

CATCHY CALL-TO-ACTION

When you include Call-To-Action (CTA) buttons in your email, make sure they’re clear and catchy, but not gaudy at the same time. You have to send out a clear message of what exactly the person will be discovering or doing by clicking on that button, and you have to make it visually catchy. Around 41% marketers have ranked CTA optimizations as extremely valuable, so you know this is some serious business.

CLEAR SUBJECT LINES

It is very difficult to strike the right balance between crisp and descriptive while coming up with a subject line. Your subject line has to fulfill many requirements in just 8-10 words, like

• It should be relevant and specific
• You should be clearly identifying yourself
• There should be an urgency of time depicted
• It should include your CTA

Some good examples for subject lines for contest invitation emails could be:

1. Our Sweepstakes is ON! Enter before Christmas to win $150!
2. Want to Win $150 for Christmas Shopping? Enter Our Sweepstakes NOW!
3. Show us Your Love by Voting and We’ll Show Ours by Giving You $150!

NEWSLETTERS

If you are an event presenter, you may be sending out regular newsletters to your subscribers and customers. You could simply have a section dedicated to your contest in one of your newsletters, or you could have an entire newsletter only for your contest. Include enticing contest images and a very brief description that interests them and intrigues them enough to click on that CTA button and participate right then.

INCLUDE AS A SIGNATURE

This is a new and different way to use email signatures for promoting your contest. Office workers spend 28% of their time reading and sending emails, which gives you enough time to make an impact through a regular mail. Simply include a very brief sentence about your Facebook contest and a catchy link or button in your signature, and ask your team to do the same. You can use a trackable link to keep a track of the number of clicks you get through these signatures.

ASK NICHE BLOGGERS TO PROMOTE YOU

Firstly, be aware of the people who influence your target audience. Next, reach out to them through promotional emails and request them to mention your contest in the content they put up. If you really want this to work, you have to make sure that your approach answers the basic what, where, why, when, why, and how that might prop up in their minds regarding your contest. Use Technorati or Klout to find out who are the key influencers in your industry. You can incentivize the promotion by giving them free coupons or gift cards in return for writing about your contest.

FOLLOW UP EMAILS FOR THE NEXT CONTEST

Once your contest is over and you’ve chosen your winner, it’s not the end. In fact, it’s quite like the beginning (remember what the snitch said in Harry Potter? “I open at the close…”).

Follow up on your entrants by sending them thank you emails or details about the next contest. You can also give them an advantage in the next contest because they participated in the previous one. The idea is to keep them engaged with your brand and updated with your latest on-goings. A happy customer is the one who can relate to your brand and feel connected.

IN CONCLUSION

Email marketing, I repeat, is an extremely effective tool and you can get tons of entrants by using it wisely. Just make use of the above tips and you’ll be good to go!

The post How to Promote your Facebook Contest using Email Marketing? appeared first on Yapsody.