Event Marketing: How to write a better email newsletter

Despite the social media hype, e-mail is still not to be done without in the communication instrument toolbox of trade fair and event planners. Write better and more effective email newsletters using our 7 tips.

A well-maintained email distribution list is worth its weight in gold to trade fair, congress and event organizers. No other sales medium is as strong as email.

The condition: you need to have the required double opt-ins (data protection), your distribution list is updated and personalized and you are able to address certain segments of the newsletter in a targeted manner.

However, the success of your event newsletter and ultimately the conversion of such into trade fair and congress tickets or exhibition stand orders also depends on design and content.

We have 7 tips for you on how to optimize your newsletter.

Tip 1:  Subject line

Whether your e-mail newsletter is opened or not depends on its subject line. Invest sufficient time in creating funny, interesting and personalized subject lines.

Subject lines such as “Today only, dear Mark, get your early-bird ticket for the XY trade fair” create a sense of scarcity and are effective due to the personal address.

If top speakers are speaking at your conference, make sure they take center stage in your e-mails, e.g. “Mr. Kessels, meet Richard Branson at the XY conference”.

By the way, the length of the subject line doesn’t have an effect on the amount of people who open it, as Mailchimp found out. It is only important that the actual message is right at the beginning so that the key info is easily recognizable in the e-mail inbox overview.

Tip 2: Emojis

We are used to Emojis in social media. They’ve also found their way recently into e-mail communication, regardless of whether in B2B or B2C. Emojis can offer a subject line a little more charm and can also visually support the desired message.

Particularly fitting for event newsletters:

Event travel tips

Top Speakers

Industry Heavyweights get together

Save the date

        Time to get your ticket, Mr. Kessels

3: Personalization

You can already see in the subject line which effect personal address has on recipients. However, you should also often mention the recipient’s company name during the e-mail, where possible.

If you have saved information from previous visits, you can of course use this for personalization purposes too. For example, “did you like congress X? Then you will love congress Y!”

Tip 4: Avoid spam indicators

HEY GUYS!!!! SAVE $$$$$ NOW BY SIGNING UP FOR THE XY FAIR!!!!

…or something to that extent have to be included, should you want your e-mail to definitely make it to the spam folder! Seriously though, there are several characteristics and indicators that larger e-mail providers scan to filter out spam.

Here is an overview of spam indicators that you should avoid wherever possible:

overview of spam indicators

Tip 5: Use pictures

Pictures clearly emotionalize your e-mails. Make sure you use the correct pixel measurements so that the e-mail doesn’t get too big. It is similarly sometimes better to not use a large picture, rather several smaller ones.

Make sure you check how your e-mail looks in raw text version and add alternative text tags to the pictures. Some e-mail programs won’t show any pictures.

Regarding creativity, design know no bounds. Do you need some inspiration? Then have a look at this source: https://reallygoodemails.com/. Try also animated GIFs – these can be entertaining and attract your recipient.

Tip 6: Call to action

So, your customer has opened the e-mail because of your great subject line. What now? What should the customer do next? Don’t neglect the fact that the actual goal of the campaign and the newsletter is to generate a call to action (or ‘CTA’).

This CTA should appear directly in the first 20% of the e-mail so that it is immediately clear, also from a mobile device perspective what the customer should do. The CTA should then be reiterated at least 2-3 times later on in the text. The button color also plays a large, so it makes sense to find out the best performance via A/B tests.

 Tip 7: E-mail automatization

All conventional, professional e-mail systems allow you these days to define e-mail flows and automatically send e-mails based on triggers. Such a trigger could be e.g. the customer’s birthday or particular activities that the customer has carried out.

This would therefore make it possible e.g. to send an e-mail automatically after two day to customers that have clicked on a link to your congress newsletter. Or send a voucher code directly for registration.

The technical requirements are there, so why not use them to increase the effectivity of your newsletter.

Bottom Line

E-Mail is still holding its own. Event organizers cannot forgo this strong sales medium. With our 7 tips, you can increase the effectivity of your campaigns – we’d like to wish you every success in doing so!