If you have an event coming up, email is one of the best tools you’ve got. It reaches people who already know you, it’s cheap, and it works at every stage, from announcing the event to following up afterwards.

The beauty of email marketing is that it can be used through every stage of planning and organizing your event. Here are some examples.

10 Emails to Promote Your Event

Here are the emails worth sending:

  1. Alert your subscribers about a future event.
  2. Converse with your mailing list to gather ideas for new and upcoming events.
  3. Send an email to sell exclusive early bird tickets.
  4. Keep your list up to date about new event announcements.
  5. Keep speakers, vendors, and bands up to date with important information.
  6. Remind ticket holders about the event a couple of weeks, and a few days, before the big day.
  7. Use email to promote sponsors and ambassadors.
  8. Round up what happened at the event, including links for anyone who wants to learn more.
  9. Follow up with attendees after the event to thank people and to gather feedback.
  10. Pre-sell tickets for next year’s event.

Ticket confirmations and joining instructions count too. They’re usually sent automatically by your ticketing platform, so check they look right and include a calendar invite, since that small detail does a lot to get people to actually turn up.

Here are six tips for making all of this work.

1. Use a Targeted List Where Possible

Your event emails should go to the people most likely to care. That keeps clicks up and stops people unsubscribing because the emails aren’t relevant to them.

For example, if you’re running a small event in London, you might want to exclude subscribers from the US in your promotional emails. That’s unless you’re throwing a huge event that people want to fly across an ocean for. Excluding subscribers based on geolocation data is easily done with most email service providers.

As another example, if you’re sending out, say, 15 messages promoting your event, if a group of subscribers haven’t interacted at all with your first 5-7 messages, consider whether it’s worth sending them the rest of your emails. It might be best to exclude them from all but the most important of your promotional messages.

In short: Always consider whether each of your promotions should be targeted at your entire list, or rather at a smaller segment of your list.

2. Clearly State Your Value Proposition

Make sure your reader knows why they should even attend your event. What are they going to get from turning up? What pain-points will be solved? How will your event help them achieve their goals?

For example, is the aim to make new contacts, learn something new, make more profit, relax, have fun, build influence? Figure out how to sell this value proposition in the fewest words possible so you can use this message throughout your promotions.

Even a free event asks people to spend something valuable: their time. So make it clear what they will receive in exchange for attending the event.

In short: Regularly let people know what benefit(s) they will receive from attending your events.

3. Key Information Should Be Easy to Access

Aside from the date, time, and place of the event, include plenty of other details that show what attendees will enjoy during the event. This sounds blindingly obvious, but there are far too many event organizers that unknowingly hide important information away.

Key information should not be more than a couple of clicks away. To help with this, tweak the email template you will be using to promote your event. It should include links in the header or footer to the most important information. For example: Buy Tickets, Event Schedule, Speakers, Directions, Contact. These links should point directly to the relevant information, not simply your home page.

In other words, think about what lack of information might stop someone from purchasing a ticket while looking at this email. Then include easy access to that information. Reducing friction like this, at every step of the buyer journey, is key to getting enough attendees to your event.

In short: Each email must provide access to key information within a maximum of two clicks.

4. Make Your Email Template Mobile Friendly

A large share of your readers will open your emails on a phone, and for many lists it’s most of them. Your ESP’s reports will show you the split for your own list. Either way, your template needs to work well on mobile. If you’re using a template provided by your email service provider, you likely don’t need to worry about this. Alternatively, we’ve listed 25 high quality responsive HTML email templates you might want to check out.

Whatever template you use, always send yourself a test email and check the message on both desktop and mobile. You should be looking out for any problems with appearance, how fast or slow the message loads, whether the message has been clipped, if the text seems too small, etc.

If your message doesn’t load properly and quickly, readers will likely close your email and move on. That’s not a great way to get people to attend your event.

In short: Always check that your emails load fast and display correctly on both desktop and mobile devices.

5. Use a Clear and Bold Call To Action (CTA)

Make sure that your CTA actually gets your readers to take action (ideally reserving a ticket). Most people skim emails rather than reading every word, so the CTA needs to stand out.

This is where good layouting comes in. A good headline that gets across your value proposition. A nice image. And deliberate positioning, color, size, and text of your CTA button. All of this works together to get your readers to hit that “Buy Now” or “Learn More” CTA.

One excellent way of making sure you’re using the right CTA is to use A/B testing. Most email service providers offer this feature, and if you have a good number of subscribers (at least a couple thousand), you’ll be able to get a good idea of which CTA works best for your audience. Judge the test on clicks or ticket sales rather than opens, since Apple Mail inflates open rates. This works by sending a small percentage of your list one CTA, and another small percentage of your list a different CTA. You can then keep an eye on which CTA performs best, before sending your message to the rest of your list.

Check your email service provider’s help documents for more information on A/B testing.

In short: Test your call to action to ensure it’s as effective as possible.

6. Time Your Messages Carefully

Finally, think about the timing of your messages. You’ll want to schedule your email campaigns so they arrive in your readers’ inboxes at the most convenient time. Often, this is just before they check for any incoming new messages. This ensures that your message will be near the top of their inbox.

If you’re targeting people when they are at work, perhaps sending the email at 9:15am will work for you. Or if you want to catch people before or after work, maybe 8am or 5:30pm might be best. Or maybe you want to contact people over the weekend when they’re less busy.

If you’re not sure, look at when your own readers usually click, and test a couple of options. Send times that work for one audience often don’t for another, so your own data beats any general rule.

In short: Schedule your messages around when your readers actually engage.

Using Email Marketing For Events

Email is useful at every stage of running an event. It’s a medium that can be used during every stage from planning and organization, to gathering post-event feedback. Target the right people, make the value and key details obvious, test your calls to action, and time things carefully, and it’ll do a lot of the work of filling the room for you.