Creating a good email is not an easy task.

For those who don't have a particular knack for writing or marketing, the situation can quickly turn into a headache.

But don't lose sight of your email's objective: as an organizer, you want your guests to tell you whether YES or NO they will attend. Always keep this idea in mind while writing your email.

For your guests to read and respond to your invitation email, it's essential to work thoroughly on the two parts that make up a good email:

1) The form

The form of an email is its appearance. It's an element that is too often overlooked in emailing, but essential: many event organizers make mistakes in the form of their communications rather than the substance. Guests are more likely to click on emails with a polished design than on a body of text with no "soul".

Everything needs to be pleasing to the eye for your participants, so that no irritant (a minor annoyance, something unpleasant) disrupts the person reading your email. The structure of your email should be consistent and make people want to read it all the way through.

With this goal in mind, you can work with your own HTML editor or use Drag & Drop: this lets you customize every detail. You can also use a drag-and-drop editor like the one offered by Digitevent:

bad email vs good email

  • Feel free to insert images, banners from your company, the logo, or any other reassuring graphic element. Also remember to edit the sender name and put your company's name there (this is also a feature available with Digitevent).

  • The spacing of your email is also a detail not to take lightly: avoid the mistake of "wall of text" emails and the opposite, emails that are too spaced out with 2 line breaks after every sentence. Also avoid overly long lists.

  • If you can, try starting your email with a touch of humor, an anecdote about your company's news, or another notable event of the moment (even a GIF or emojis, anything is possible).

  • Furthermore, it's clear that spelling mistakes can be a huge obstacle to your email's credibility (at first) but also to your entire event (later on). Don't forget that your registration email is often the first link between your event and your audience. So don't neglect spelling or grammar, which could tarnish all the work you did beforehand. We recommend writing your email in advance in Google Docs or running it through spell-checking software.

  • Finally, the registration buttons (often at the end of emails, also called Call To Action or CTAs) for your event should have enough contrast so that people can easily read the response options (so avoid blue text on a red background: this tool helps define pleasant contrasts). Try to apply a consistent style (all buttons have square/rounded borders, all use the same font, etc.) so you don't lose your reader among too many different graphic styles. Digitevent's email editor offers a theme feature to naturally generate a pleasant style guide.

  • Test and proofread your email across all web browsers as well as on mobile and tablet to make sure it's responsive.

  • Check with your IT department (in the case of an internal event) that your email is deliverable, and add the domain to the "whitelist" (this is possible with Digitevent) for an excellent deliverability rate.

  • Do you segment the recipients you send your communications to? This lets you address personalized messages to different types of audiences within the same contact database to optimize your click-through rates.
  • Be careful not to send invitations to contacts who have already registered! You need software that can prevent errors and duplicates (in Digitevent, the software automatically detects duplicate emails and avoids them).

2) The substance

Your email shouldn't just be beautiful and pleasing to the eye. In fact, part 1 on form is now a basic prerequisite for good emailing results. The second part, the substance, should be as personalized as possible so your recipients get real value from your emails. The digital content you include in your emails should teach your participants something useful and interesting, and spark their interest.

Your communication campaign strategy must go through a good email sender, to avoid high bounce rates and ensure optimal deliverability.

Your message should align with your objectives. In events, everything has a purpose, even your email invitation campaigns! And don't think only about emailing: promote your event through your communication, social media, and the many other digital tools available to you.

The idea behind your email, in short, is to make people want to click, through impactful body text that's as personalized as possible (for this, we'll use the variables from the contact database).

So what will truly make the difference in your communications is the substance:

  • Is your event email really meaningful?
  • Do you explain what the guest will get out of attending, so your audience feels engaged?
  • Make your readers want to attend events: use action verbs, write with a dynamic tone, and turn negative phrases like "Feel free to stop by!" into positive ones like "Come say hello", for example.
  • Do you briefly explain the program?
  • Are your dates clear and easy to understand in your body text and on your landing page (the page linking to event registration)?

If that's the case, your emailing and your event registration rate should be very (very) good (a good registration rate is 50%).

Conclusion:

For your email to be effective, reassure your contacts through your style guide, make sure to have colleagues proofread your email, and be sure to clearly explain the value of your event for your contacts, as well as its location and date.

A little bonus if it's an internal event: you see your colleagues every day and they're used to opening your emails regularly. So you shouldn't worry about a low open rate.

There you go, you're now ready to send a great corporate event invitation email! Feel free to do it with Digitevent's email sending tool for even more simplicity.