Why Electronic Invites and Tactical Invites Enhance Event Participation

Simply put, the printed word is no longer enough for an event invitation. You must have an electronic campaign. With the surge in technology over the last few decades, electronic communication has taken over nearly every sphere — personal, professional, etc. It is the way that people plan and communicate. You absolutely must have an electronic invite campaign. 

You also have to consider how people plan. It’s all electronic: online calendars, phone alerts, cloud-based alarms and notifications. Electronic invites quickly integrate with the type of technology people use every day, and that makes the people invited to an event far more likely to attend. 

A Multi-Faceted Approach

Your best strategy for maximum interaction and attendance is to use a multi-faceted approach that reaches out to every type of audience. This may include a print invite, a physical ad, a commercial, a billboard or even a gift. But you do not want to stop there. You also need videos, social media invites, email marketing and much more. While printed information can spark interest, electronic communications are typically where people interact and respond. By using them together, you can achieve full-scale success. 

Highlight the Event Experience

Remember, you’re not pitching an event. You’re pitching an experience. That’s what gets people excited and encourages them to interact — whether that means signing up or seeking more information. 

With electronic invites, you can use animation and videos to show highlights from the event and quickly paint a picture of what the recipient can expect. Doing this helps you keep people from drawing inaccurate conclusions or making assumptions. You directly show them what they’ll get out of the event, you sell the dream and you make them interested to learn more. You cannot do all of that with a print invite alone. 

If you have run past events in a similar vein, that’s the perfect content to create an engaging, informative video. Decide on the angle you want to take and how you want to pitch that experience, then use the older footage to hammer home the advantages of the event and the specific details that connect with your audience. For a diverse audience, you can have multiple invites, each with a specific focus. 

Pre-Event Marketing – Advancing in Stages

With your marketing before the event, you don’t want to give everything away in the first email. The key is to give them enough to spark their interest, but you also want to hold back enough that they’ll contact you to learn more. You can break things up in stages, giving your audience tidbits with every piece of marketing material. Keep a specific focus and sell that dream, but always work to make them want more.  

Top Three Takeaways

If it’s time to get started with invites and your marketing campaign, here’s what you need to remember:

  1. Send out E-invites in stages.
  2. Slowly reveal more information to increase awareness and interest.
  3. Less is more. You don’t need to flood your guests with information. 

With this focus and pre-event planning, any event can be an unprecedented success. You just need to understand how to connect with a modern audience and how to get engagement and results.  

Read more from Sullivan Group to learn about how YOU can increase event participation. Contact Sullivan Group today!