How to create effective email invites (evites)

Excerpted from ConvUrgency.com's Smart Email Marketing Guide

Using email to send event invitations has been one of the driving forces behind email marketing. This is basically because of its sheer effectiveness – it’s proven to have the highest performance and lowest cost when compared to hardcopy and phone calling. This is very logical – how easy is it to scan an email, click ‘register’, and throw in your registration details? It only takes seconds! And for the marketer, it costs a mere fraction of a mailed invitation, or paying for telemarketing.

As I mentioned when talking about subject lines, to get the highest registration rate you’ll want to set expectations right in the subject line. Your subscribers will understand that it’s an invitation before even opening it, and will open it with the intent of seeing the event details (of course, your event will have to be compelling enough to actually make them want to register). This can be accomplished as easily as in the following subject example:

“Exclusive breakfast seminar: The impact of ______ on your business”

If you have room, include any event details within – such as the date or location – in the subject. This can both pre-qualify the openers, and make it more relevant to them if it’s local.

This next tip may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many marketers neglect to do it: include all event details – date, time, location, an abbreviated agenda – in the email. Do not make them click through to a web page to find out the simple specifics of the event, it’s a great way to achieve low registration numbers. If you want to only include a brief description in the email, and a full description on the landing page, that’s fine. But if you leave out event details, you risk frustrating the reader, more likely just losing their interest.

One other quick tip: there are a lot of nice looking ‘Register now’ buttons and graphics available for use, and maybe your designer has created you one. If you use one, make sure you also have an alternative ‘register now’ link in text, in case images are blocked.

Excerpted from ConvUrgency.com's Smart Email Marketing Guide