Proven Strategies for Engaging Event Email Marketing

Crafting a compelling email campaign is one of the most effective routes to a sold-out event. It’s a great way to get creative with your content, personalize your messaging to your attendees — and offer exclusive discounts to incentivize ticket sales. In this guide, discover winning email marketing strategies, from snappy subject lines to optimized send times. 

Key takeaways

• Make sure to set clear goals for your email campaigns — such as boosting engagement via open rates and click-through rates, or growing your subscriber list

• Email subject lines should be short, snappy, and intriguing — incentivizing attendees to open with copy that generates a sense of urgency, excitement, or exclusivity

• Email segmentation can be an effective way to achieve personalized messaging and drive conversions

The power of email marketing for event promotion

As an event organizer, email marketing is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. The return on investment (ROI) speaks for itself: according to Omnisend, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $40. It’s no wonder many marketers spend so much time honing their email marketing strategies. 

Compelling email campaigns can help you to boost your ticket sales and build anticipation for your event, while also creating a valuable community. By gathering a group of interested attendees for your events, email allows you to interact directly with your audience, create super-specific targeted campaigns, and boost your ROI — more than any other marketing channel. 

Boosting ticket sales

The end goal of most event marketing campaigns is to sell more tickets — and there are a variety of ways email is uniquely well-equipped to do this. You might want to consider the following to boost your ticket sales with email marketing: 

• Sign-up discount: Email is an effective way to build your community while also growing your sales. You could offer an introductory discount — such as 10% or 20% — to all attendees who sign up to your email list, encouraging them to purchase tickets to your next event. 

• Exclusive access: You might decide to offer subscriber-only early bird discounts, incentivizing your audience to sign up to your email list for discounted tickets. 

• Exclusive extras: Encourage your email subscribers to book tickets by offering them exclusive add-ons to their tickets, such as drinks packages, merchandise, or VIP packages.  

Building anticipation

A powerful event marketing strategy is centered on one thing: building anticipation. Getting people excited about your event is a key driver in selling more tickets, widening your audience, and spreading the word about your brand. Email marketing can play a starring role in helping you to build this anticipation with:

• Teaser email content: Sharing teasers of exciting info — like guest speakers or performers at your event — can be an effective way to create a buzz. You can create teaser video trailers, photos, and graphics to get guests excited for what’s to come (and increase your future open rates!) 

• Countdown emails: Countdown emails are a fun way to remind your audience about your event, while also building anticipation ahead of time, and encouraging a surge of last-minute sales. 

• Exclusive information: Revealing top-secret information about your line-up or program ahead of time to your email audience is a great way to generate a sense of exclusivity, encourage sign-ups, and drum up excitement. 

Crafting your event email marketing strategy

Did you know that, according to Statista, more than 347 billion emails are sent and received each day? That’s a lot of emails — so it’s essential yours stands out in your attendees’ inboxes. A compelling email marketing strategy begins with the basics: your goals, your audience, and your content. 

Defining your goals

How you craft your emails will be driven by your goals — not only the big-picture SMART goals for your event, but on a smaller scale: the goals you have for your emails. These goals may be qualitative (such as increasing brand awareness) or quantitative (such as reaching a specific number of subscribers), but might include: 

• Growing your email subscriber list

• Partnering with a brand or influencer on sponsored email content

• Improving email engagement, such as open rates and click-through rates

• Boosting traffic to your website or blog

• Increasing email conversion rates to sell more tickets

Whatever you decide your goals are, make sure your email strategy helps you to facilitate them. For instance, if your goal is to grow your email list, how will you incentivize people to sign up? This might be through email subscriber discounts or exclusive access to early bird tickets. 

Identifying your target audience

Before crafting your email campaign, it’s important to think about who will be receiving it. You will have identified your target audience early in your event planning, so it’s a good idea to keep them in mind when you’re designing your email strategy. 

You might want to consider: 

• The types of emails or newsletters your target audience may already be subscribed to

• The type of email content they are likely to expect, and what would most delight them

With email marketing, you will also be able to segment your audience depending on their age, location, and interests — so you can fine-tune your messaging and content to appeal to each segment. 

Creating compelling content

The best way to entice people to click? Compelling content. Whether you’re hosting a pop-up event or a weekend festival, there are several strategies you can use to take a creative approach to your email content and design a campaign that really resonates. Here’s some inspiration:

• Video and images: According to HubSpot’s research, emails with multimedia elements — like images and video — have the highest performance. Consider embellishing your email with engaging visual content, such as photos, graphics, and videos or trailers to create excitement.

• Storytelling: Whether this is via compelling copy or visual elements, make sure your email campaign tells an engaging story about your event — focusing on your event’s USP and your origin story. 

• Exciting extras: What can attendees discover about your event via email that they can’t discover elsewhere? Taking this approach can be a great way to think about your email offering, whether this is creating email-subscriber-only discounts or giving exclusive line-up info ahead of time. 

Essential components of effective event emails

The magic recipe for an effective event email: an irresistible subject line, a personalized touch, and a clear CTA. Discover all the ingredients to craft attention-grabbing emails to boost your open rates here (and don’t forget to A/B test each of the different components to find the right formula for your audience — more on this below!)

Attention-grabbing subject lines

The secret to engaging email marketing: snappy subject lines. The best email subject lines are short, intriguing, and communicate exactly what your event is about. Your subject line should be kept to around five to seven words or about 40 characters — this is to ensure it’s fully visible on mobile.

The secret to a great subject line is focusing on your event’s most exciting elements. To do this, use phrasing that introduces a sense of urgency (‘last chance’) or a sense of exclusivity (‘for one night only’). You might also want to use personalized messaging with attendee names to grab attention in a busy inbox. For inspiration, take a look at some subject lines below: 

• Last chance to get tickets for [event name] 

• [X] days left to register for [event name]

• See [influencer/band] live for one night only 

• You’re invited to the exclusive [event name] 

• [Performer] fan? We’ve got your tickets, [attendee name]!

• Don’t miss out: Tickets for [event name] are almost gone!

• [Attendee name], see you at [event name]?

Personalization and segmentation

People love to feel unique — and personalization helps each person on your list to feel seen and appreciated. But how do you achieve personalization at scale? The answer lies in effective segmentation. 

In fact, HubSpot found that the two most effective strategies for email marketing were subscriber segmentation (78%) and message personalization (72%) — and that segmented emails drive 30% more opens and 50% more clicks than unsegmented ones. 

With segmentation, you can split your attendee list into different groups based on: 

• Behavior (such as ticket purchase history, website visits, open rate, and so on)

• Demographic (such as age or gender)

• Location

• Other information, like interests and preferences, collected through audience pre-event and post-event surveys 

By grouping your audience based on shared characteristics or interests, you can deliver content that resonates with different segments (for example, events in a specific city, or offers for previous attendees), leading to higher engagement and conversions. 

Clear Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

What do you want your audience to do once they receive your email? Whether this is buying tickets, entering a competition, or watching a video, this is called a Call-to-Action (CTA) and plays a key part in improving your click-through rate.

A good CTA should be direct and simple, so the best strategy is not to overthink it. The key is to keep it short and with direct action in mind; for this reason, CTAs usually begin with a verb, such as: ‘buy tickets’, ‘discover our blog’, or ‘watch the video’. 

Utilizing automation and analytics in event email marketing

Creating email campaigns can be time-consuming — but email marketing tools can help you save valuable time on automation and analytics. From automating event surveys to tracking key email marketing metrics, discover tips on streamlining your email strategy.

Implementing email automation

Every event organizer’s dream: emails that send themselves. Automating several emails in your workflow can be a great way to save your team time on manual scheduling and maintain a connection with your audience at different stages of their event experience. 

You can set pre-defined rules that will trigger emails to send when attendees make a specific action, such as buying a ticket, or subscribing to your list. You might choose to automate the following emails: 

• Ticket purchase confirmation email

• Email subscriber list confirmation email

• Ticket announcements, such as VIP passes or early bird tickets

• Event surveys, whether pre- or post-event (according to researchers at SurveyMonkey, people are most likely to open and respond to surveys if you send them on a Monday)

• Line-up or event program announcements

• Lead-up emails, scheduled at set times before the event (such as a month before, two weeks before, or a day before)

Monitoring key metrics

Next, it’s time to measure the success of your email campaign. To do this, consider three key metrics: open rate, click-through rate (CTR), and conversion rate. These metrics can provide clear insight into attendee behavior — and what is most resonating with them. 

• Open rate: This is the percentage of people who open your email. It’s calculated by dividing the number of people who opened your email by the number of people who received it (according to Mailchimp, the entertainment and events industry sees an average open rate of 20.51%). 

• Click-through rate: This is the percentage of people who clicked on an element in your email — such as a link to your website or a ticketing platform. Similarly to an open rate, it’s calculated by dividing the number of people who clicked by the number who received the email (the average CTR varies hugely by industry — but, for events and entertainment, it’s 2.36%). 

• Conversion rate: This is the percentage of people who made an action you wanted them to take (such as buying tickets, or visiting your blog). The higher your conversion rate, the more successful your email campaign. 

Once you have these statistics, you’ll be able to track the success of each campaign. Which campaign received the highest open rate, CTR, or conversion? What was it about that email that was most compelling — for instance, did it include a giveaway, a discount offer, or exclusive info? 

Was the subject line super engaging? Did you send it to a specific audience segment? Once you understand the source of your success, you can begin to replicate it. 

Event email marketing examples and inspiration

Introducing the three superheroes of event campaigns: pre-event promotion, reminders/countdowns, and post-event follow-ups. And, of course, success lies in the timing: according to HubSpot, the best day to send marketing emails is a Tuesday — and the best time is between 9am - 12pm EST, followed by 12pm - 3pm EST. 

The key to a successful event is getting all three emails (and their timing) just right. Discover tips on how to craft each one below (and make sure you're abiding by event email compliance best practices, such as gaining opt-in consent from your recipients).

Pre-event promotion emails

A well-crafted pre-event promotion email — otherwise known as an invitation email – can be a game-changer. It sets the tone for your event and sparks interest among potential attendees, helping to generate a buzz for your event. The key to a successful pre-event promotion email lies in its ability to:

• Generate interest

• Encourage registrations

• Announce the event in an exciting way

• Offer early bird tickets

• Share captivating visuals

• Provide compelling content

Your pre-event promotion email should be designed to pique curiosity and trigger action, so make sure to craft compelling content that really resonates. 

Reminder and countdown emails

Next up: reminder emails. A good reminder email helps you to stay engaged with your audience until the event itself, while also ensuring that everyone who bought a ticket is likely to commit to attending. 

Keep your reminder emails clear and concise — and generate excitement by reminding attendees about the highlights of your event, whether that’s a fun new catering company or a unique line-up they won’t see elsewhere. Make sure to send at least one reminder email and schedule it to go out a few days before the event to maximize attendance. 

Another way to boost attendance before the event is to schedule countdown emails, so attendees with tickets can get excited about the event — and those who haven’t yet purchased can be incentivized to do so. Make sure to include the event date to create a sense of urgency. 

Post-event follow-up emails

The event may be over, but your communication with your audience doesn’t need to end. Post-event follow-up emails are a chance to thank attendees for their participation, share event highlights, gather feedback, and promote future events. 

The key to post-event email is extending the event experience and maintaining your connection with your audience, even after the event has ended. You can enhance your event’s memorability and create a lasting impression by including a highlight reel via email: this might include sharing photos or videos from the event or testimonials from attendees and offering exclusive discounts to your next event. 

Tips for enhancing your event email marketing results

Getting the most out of your marketing means making sure that key pillars are in place. Prioritizing your branding, conducting A/B testing, and designing mobile-friendly emails are all important players in boosting event email success — and, in turn, your ticket sales.

Consistent branding

A strong brand image is vital in email campaign creation. Your event branding should play a key role in your email communications, including your color palette, images (such as graphics and photos), videos, typography and fonts, as well as copy — including tone of voice, language used, and emoji use. 

The idea is that your email campaigns should be instantly recognizable as your event brand. By maintaining consistent branding across your emails and your in-person events, you can create an immersive event experience from start to finish. 

A/B Testing

The best way to increase your ROI: testing your emails. A/B tests are a way to compare different versions of your email to see which one has the highest performance. Many tools, like Mailchimp, offer a number of variables to test — including subject line, content, send time, or ‘from’ name — in isolation or combination. 

Whether you’re experimenting with subject lines or design, utilizing A/B testing is an effective method of understanding what most resonates with your audience. From here, you can optimize your future emails accordingly. 

Mobile-friendly design

Most emails are accessed on the go, whether that’s on a tablet or a mobile. For this reason, it’s essential your emails are mobile-friendly in design, and that they’re easy to read and navigate, so you can maximize your chances of higher engagement and conversions. 

To do this, make sure to preview your email on a mobile setting before scheduling to send — so you can make sure your content, subject line, and design features are mobile-friendly. 

Email is the main pillar of event marketing. Whether you’re creating a food and drink festival or a book launch event, email marketing is an unrivaled way to connect with your existing audience and capture new leads, growing your business in turn. 

It’s also a great way to get creative with your marketing, designing eye-catching campaigns and offering exclusive info and discounts to your subscribers. 

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I create email marketing for an event?

To create an email marketing campaign for an event, start by selecting an email marketing platform, designing appealing campaigns, crafting engaging subject lines, and personalizing content. Once you have your campaigns ready, schedule automated emails, and begin analyzing key metrics to improve your strategy and refine your emails. 

How does email marketing contribute to event promotion?

Email marketing contributes to event promotion by directly engaging potential attendees, generating new leads, incentivizing ticket sales with exclusive discounts, and drumming up excitement for your event with exclusive teaser content — driving a significant portion of sales. 

How can I boost ticket sales using email marketing?

To boost ticket sales using email marketing, offer exclusive incentives like early bird offers and special discounts for signing up to an email list. You can also use highlights from previous events — such as photos or video — and countdowns to create a sense of urgency and exclusivity, thereby encouraging ticket sales.