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Organizing events? Avoid common mistakes. Optimize invitations - timing, urgency, flexibility, varied hooks.
In the previous blog I covered the three basic steps of organising events: inviting, registering, and saying thanks. In this blog, I’ll take a closer look at the invite process.
The invitations for my daughter’s Elsa-themed 👩🏻🦳❄️🤍 3rd birthday party are quite simple. The people I invite are closely related to our family, involved in my daughter’s life, and highly engaged in her well-being. So, a simple ‘what, when, and where’ is more than enough. However, when organizing corporate events, this might not be the case. Nowadays, our inboxes are filled with invitations and reminders. I’ve discovered five common mistakes and how to prevent them!
I have a 1000 words to tell you first
We likely have a lot to convey to our (potential) customer. But do we really? Consider this invite from my friends at Litmus. Basic information first, then kaboom a CTA! Later, they elaborate on their hook and kaboom another CTA!
You’re invited for an event in the year 2067
What’s the best timing to register for a webinar versus a live event? I’ve examined five events of each type and found the following:
| Digital event | Physical event | |
|---|---|---|
| Original invitation | 7 days before event | 2-4 weeks before event |
| Reminder invitation | 1 day after click in invitation, but no registration | 1-2 weeks before event |
This is a process which you can test in an A/B test! Try multiple reminders or, if you want to go crazy, David Dee’s webinar sequencefrom the Email Marketing Show.
If you want, you can wait
No, you cannot wait! Timings are crucial. Add urgency to your invite. Here are some ideas:
- There is limited time to register
- Include a countdown timer
- There are limited number of available spots
- ‘Join (x number) other (job title)’
I don’t wanna come
Although you are giving your (potential) customers different reasons and angles to join your event, there still might be a reason they don’t want to join. The date and time is inconvenient, the topic is not interesting enough or they just went to a similar event. If I don’t want or am not able to join the event, why can’t I let you know?
Give them a subtle way out of the invitation process. Not a smart looking and outstanding button, just a subtle text link below the ‘Join event’ button will do the trick. Do make sure, you’ll leave these people out of your invitation process.
And if you are organizing an online event, which you’ll record. Give people the option to receive only the recording instead of joining the live event.
This is a friendly reminder
The reminder that is nearly the same as the original invitation. If the original invitation didn’t catch their interest, why would the reminder? Offer different hooks to register.
You are organising an event to solve a problem for your (potential) customers. Give them different reasons, the so called hooks, to register. Highlight the problem you’re solving from different angles and you’ll get more people registered.
Wrap up
Do these five things right and you’ll get the most out of your invitation process!
- Right build up towards CTA
- Choose your momentum
- Create a sense of urgency
- Leave people out if they say they are not interested
- Different hooks to catch registrations
Want to know how you can manage these five steps in the Event Module in Dynamics Customer Insights - Journeys (previously Dynamics Marketing)? Or do you want help setting up your own events? Just give me a message on LinkedIn!
Continue the Event story
Why You Need Urgency in Your Event Communications