For many organizations, corporate events form a key part of the overall marketing strategy. Since the advent of email, it’s no longer necessary to spend money on fancy paper invitations and the associated postage. However, that doesn’t mean that style and etiquette are thrown out the window with a slightly less formal medium. Whether your target audience is potential employees, business partners or customers, crafting an effective email invitation is an art. Here are some best practices to help you create compelling copy for email invitations:
Know Your Audience
As with any form of marketing communications, successful email marketing requires a solid understanding of the target audience and what’s important to them, consideration of their frame of mind when they are likely to be engaging with your message and a high value proposition designed to generate the desired response.
Watch Your Address
Your email address sends a message out about you, whether you realize it or not. A generic email address like linda@gmail.com is less impactful, or professional, than an address tied to an organization, like linda@stratcommunications.com. Here are some additional important considerations when considering the best email address to convey your professionalism.
Subject
The subject is obviously the first thing your recipients will see when they get your invitation. Aside from making it past your potential guests’ spam filters, what are some best practices? Campaign Monitor offers some ideas on best practices for an effective event invitation email. They’re good tips, but we think something is missing: something important. A compelling subject line. You don’t need to tell the whole story in your subject line. You just need to make your audience want to open the email and find out more. If you don’t, they’ll never see the brilliant content you’ve created in the body of your email!
Body
Even if you’re lucky enough to pass the spam filters and get an intended recipient to click on your email because of your compelling subject line, you still need to engage them with the content. Attention spans are short, and getting increasingly shorter. Don’t make your audience dig through paragraph after paragraph to get to the salient information. Let them know what they need to know with as little effort as possible while still maintaining professionalism and coherent writing.
Tone and Voice
Much will depend on your target audience, your relationship with them and your overall communication practices/brand. Consistency is important, so your email messages should have the same tone/style as your other communications. If you tend to take a playful, fun approach with your audiences through other communication channels, you should do the same here — even if you’re promoting a formal event. If your communications tend to be more formal and business-like, that should remain consistent in all communications.
Direct marketing certainly hasn’t gone away. In fact, we have written previously about the continued success of this marketing channel. However, to save time and money — and to more easily locate appropriate contact information — email is often preferable, or can be used as an add-on channel to better engage with your audience. Keep in mind these basic tips about creating compelling email invitations to help attract guests to your next event.
Recommended Reading:
The Everything Guide to Customer Engagement
Tags: Customer Communication, digital marketing best practices, direct mail, direct mail marketing, Direct Marketing, email invitations, email marketing, email marketing best practices