How To Plan Your Event Email Marketing Strategy

A great email marketing strategy is important. It can help your event boost registrations and attendance rates. While it may feel overwhelming, creating an automated event email marketing strategy is your best chance of sharing personalized messaging at scale. 

Plus, it can be easy with CRM tools such as Hubspot or Salesforce. You simply need to create an automated workflow that then takes care of your email marketing activities. But it also does more than that. You can add and remove contacts to your lists, tap into new audiences and manage your email subscriptions. Automation is vital to running marketing campaigns at scale. It also makes  sure no one gets overlooked or double hit. 

What Is a Workflow?

Your marketing automation tool is called a “Workflow”. It is a series of automated actions that are triggered by a person’s behavior or contact details. This is a very human and helpful experience you are giving your contacts. Yet you are doing it at scale. You can use these to achieve different goals for your business, such as lead nurturing or marketing your virtual event!

To understand how to plan your event email workflows, we have put together some helpful tips.

Event Email Marketing Strategy

Segment By Users

Segmenting lists works because it provides an individualized experience via a mass medium.

You can craft content for various users, and send them in batches. This creates a higher chance to increase your email conversion rate. The more tailored something is to someone, the higher their interest. The great thing about CRM softwares now is that they can cater to each segment that you create.

You will need to create contact profiles through your contact list. It is crucial that you segmentize all your contacts. This is so each user is getting different kinds of messaging or calls to actions. For example, your current customers might benefit from learning more about your event updates or promotional offers. However, new audiences would need to know how they would benefit from your event or what to expect. Here are some ways you can segment your users:

1. Demographic Data

You will have different types of people registering. It’s always good to segment according to gender, age, income, hometown etc. This will help you determine your audience and their interests. You will then be able to leverage your event email marketing strategy accordingly. 

Just by segmenting their list by gender, clothing brand Johnny Cupcakes saw a 42% jump in clickthrough rate, 123% more conversions, and a 141% increase in revenue through their email campaign.

Here is how you can segment data:

i) Gender –  Women might want something out of your event that men might not benefit from. For example, during a virtual retail show, products would differ between men and women.

ii) Location – Perhaps your event is a hybrid event. It would help to know where some of your registrations are situated. Your email marketing could then encourage individuals nearby to attend the event in person. 

iii) Job Title – Someone at a managerial level might benefit differently or have different access permissions at your event. Maybe a certain keynote speaker will be more relevant to them. Interns and other employees might have different opportunities. They could benefit from various networking features. You won’t be giving the same pitch to these segments in person, so why would you be doing that over email?

iv) Age – This will help you segment different audiences. Age groups will determine whether the age group comprises millennials, Gen-Z or even baby boomers. How you market your event to each through emails will have to be different. Millennials have very different interests compared to Gen-Z. Sending the same email to all will not benefit one or two groups.  

2. Email Subscribers

You likely have a group of contacts already signed up to your email list. How would you sell your event to them? You can share promotional offers or discount codes as incentive. 

However, these individuals may or may not meet certain criteria for your event. You may have to filter out a few options and see which subscribers might find your event most relevant. There might be some subscribers who have opted to be updated for any virtual events, and some that have not. Your CRM will provide filter options in order for you to find those individuals.

Contact properties can include information such as life cycle stage, job title or contact owner. This can help you send different emails and messaging to those with the title ‘coordinator’ vs. someone with the job title ‘CEO’.

3. Time of Registration

Perhaps you want to know which users signed up farthest back. Earlier registrants will need to be kept engaged in order to keep them interested. Eventually, you will need to convert them from a registrant into an attendee when the event starts. This could be in order to send them reminders, discounts or to keep them engaged. Depending on how you are marketing your event, and how you want to engage with your audience, this is a great way to begin strategizing your event email marketing. You can refine by date of people who filled a registration form within certain days on your CRM software. These are called enrollment triggers You can refine your workflow according to people who may have filled a form in the last 30 days.

4. Type of Industry

The likelihood you have people from various fields attending your event is high. At the time of registration, make sure you have a field that includes their industry type. This will help you send emails more relevant to that line of business. For example, this will make it easier to market your job fair to various industry fields. How might each field benefit from a virtual job fair, how can you leverage that in each marketing email.

Perhaps your existing list has information you can use as well. Company properties can include information like, number of employees, location of the company, company activity etc. You could use these to target specific industries in specific locations.  

5. User Journey 

Sometimes it is important to know what stage your attendees are on at the day of the event. Event platforms such as vFairs have email features where you can segment by certain user types. For instance those logged in and not logged in. You can send reminder emails to those not logged in yet. Or send announcements about certain event activities. 

However if you are using a tool such as Hubspot, you can segment by even more user types. For example those who have clicked on a previous email and those who haven’t. This can be really helpful to create very tailored messages for each different type of contact and encourage them to take action more specifically.

For instance, during your event, someone might have added items to their cart but did not complete their purchase. An email that prompts them to remind them that their cart is full can lead them to complete their purchase.

Create Event Email Drip Campaign

Drip marketing is a communication strategy that sends, or “drips”, a pre-written set of messages to customers or prospects over a certain period of time. Now that you have an idea of how to segment your users, promoting your event will require its own drip email campaign 

You will want to communicate with each user type accordingly. You will have to conduct  thorough research and plan ahead of time. There might be different calls to actions for each user segment and thus different emails that you would have to set up in your workflow. CRMs allow you to send emails on certain times and dates for each segment. You simply have to create a “branch logic” so that as the users divide, the automated emails will be sent to them. 

Some things to remember when running your campaign:

1. Start with pre-launch emails. They build hype for your event and to send details about the event, venue or what to expect.
2. As the event approached send informational emails to help increase registration. The more people know about an event, the more likely they will attend.
3. Different email marketing tools can boost engagement. To spread the word about your event.

Here are some best practices to remember when creating your automated email marketing campaign.

1. Create Interest Around Your Event

You may want to create teasers through a launch campaign. This could reel some people already on your contact list in. Curiosity is key, and well curated content can potentially do that for your audience. You can share some details about the event, what’s coming and what to expect about the event. You could keep it simple, but you could generate more interest through a dynamic approach. 

2. Catchy Email Subject Lines & Vibrant Content

Each audience type will have its own interests. Your email subject lines have to be catchy enough to draw their attention. Something that generates urgency, curiosity and offers. Similarly bright and colorful content with positive language will be more inviting to individuals as well. 

Sample subject line 1 – “Claim your discount code for [event name] now!”

Sample subject line 2 – “Connect with world renowned [author/keynote speaker] [insert name] at [event name]”

Sample subject line 3 – “Get your drink delivered to your door, and enjoy a virtual happy hour!”

3. Mobile Friendly Content

81% of emails are opened on smartphones first. The email marketing landscape is changing. It is important to build campaigns around each customer’s reading preferences. All content should be mobile friendly. If you have made a certain call to action, all buttons and outbound links should be visible to your user. 

4. Encourage Users to Share Your Event

You can have certain users who further share your details about your event. You can simply ask them to include more email addresses during the registration process. As they do that, this user can be segmentized in the workflow. Eventually they could receive a promo code or discount offer. The workflow will also receive a stream of new users. These individuals probably don’t know much about your event and will have an invitation email sent to them.

5. Inform Attendees About Event Details

Depending on when some of your registrations took place, you may want to send updates or reminders. For instance, some people might have already purchased event tickets, and would thus need other details about the event. Some might still need to purchase tickets so they would need to gain information on ticket types and costs.

A lot of the time you need to send reminders and prompts for certain activities or that the event has started!

6. FAQs

Make sure your attendees can have their questions answered about the event. Always include a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)  link in your emails. Attendees can then be directed to your event’s landing page where a list of all event FAQs are provided. 

Some Templates To Get You Started

vFairs has put together some email templates for you to help you in your event email marketing strategy!

Sample 1- Introduction Email Template

Hi [firstname], 

[Your company’s name] is excited to announce that it will be hosting [your event name]! Register for the event now in order and join us for an immersive experience full of important insights, networking opportunities, and some fun and games. Listen to world-renowned experts discuss [topic 1, topic 2, and topic 3]. Network with top companies in [industry], including [exhibitor 1, exhibitor 2, exhibitor 3]!

Register before [date of your registration close]. Stay tuned for more details!  

Click the link below to learn more about the [your event name] today!

See you soon! 🙂 

Sample 2 – Follow Up Email Template

Hi [firstname], 

Have you registered for [your event name] yet? Spots are filling up!

The event has [list benefits or features of the event to the attendee] 

Don’t miss out. This is your chance to attend the event of 2022!

[Add something to look forward to. Such as speakers they’ll hear from, key insights they’ll gain, or influencers they can chat with].

Registration will be accepted until [last date]. After which, all registrations will be closed. 

Learn more about the event [your event landing page]

Sample Emails for Conferences

Sample Emails for Job Fairs

Sample Emails for Trade Shows

Sample Emails For Education Events

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In Conclusion

When it comes to email marketing best practices for event promotion, the more effort you apply into email marketing campaigns the better your email performance. It is important to employ all of the techniques. Remember these tips when putting together your next event promotion.