How To Get The Most Out Of Electronic Invitations

Opting to use electronic invitations over the old-school paper and ink version is commonplace in the corporate event industry. As well as offering your guests a far more convenient way to RSVP, electronic invitations also allow you to orchestrate a seamless, every-piece-of-information-is-accounted-for RSVP process. What many planners aren’t aware of however, is that their digital invitations are so much more than merely an invite. In fact, the benefits of utilising the 21st century’s answer to unreliable snail mail are numerous. We like to think of electronic invitations as an opportunity: to improve your events, offer your guests a superior experience and elevate your entire event offering as a whole. If you’re ready to harness the full power of your invitations, read on.

Electronic invitations enable you to create an instant database of your attendees

Being able to access an exhaustive, accurate depository of information is the first step toward a streamlined RSVP process. Because they’re trackable, you’re also able to monitor which guests receive their invites, which guests open them, and which guests respond. This ability isn’t only for curiosity’s sake; your delivery, open, accept and decline rates also indicate what’s working and what’s not. Some simple A/B testing will shed light on the aspects that are hindering your RSVP process. Changing the time of sending, the subject line and wording of your invitations often vastly improves your acceptance rate. If you’re faced with an inordinate amount of bounced emails though, the problem is either due to the fact that your email list is outdated, or that your electronic invitation software isn’t whitelisted (in which case you should drop everything you’re doing and switch to a vendor who does make use of one).

Make sure you’re asking the right questions of the right people

Using online invitations that allow you to customise form fields (among other crucial factors like design and copy) is only really beneficial if you’re asking the right questions. You hold the key to data that spans far wider than the obligatory dietary requirements and demographic information – but if you want them to share this precious info with you, you’ll need to dig a little deeper. How do you do this? By customising not just the questions you want answers to – but by segmenting your guest list. This logic is based on the fact that each portion of your guest list has a different relationship to your brand, as well as unique requirements from the event itself. For example, your guests might include existing customers, sales prospects, and staff.

Customise your entire communication process for different segments of your guest list

Successfully catering to the varying requirements of your guests relies on providing them with a tailor-made channel of communication. The electronic invitations you send to a VIP will vary wildly from the invite you send to a staff member. By customising not only your invitations – and the questions asked therein – but their itinerary, access code, post-event survey and any subsequent event content, you’re able to give your guests a unique experience that resonates. In other words, conduct a strategic event marketing strategy.

Capitalising on the full power of electronic invitations relies on using all-encompassing guest list management software.

In order to really put your electronic invitations to work – and the data they’ve enabled you to collect – you’ll need to use guest list management software. By using an all-in-one solution, you’ll be able to analyse the data, update your guest lists and database in real-time, conduct a seamless RSVP and registration process, and pull reports. It’s that much harder to analyse information that’s stored separately – but if you’ve got an integrated tool at your disposal, putting this invaluable data to work is simple.  

Want to get the most out of your electronic invites? Find out more about our Event Management Software today.