5 Ways to Sell More Tickets Online with Email Marketing

By now, we all know that email marketing is a key way of engaging with customers and connecting or sharing information. It’s also a fantastic tool to market your next event, and can convince potential attendees to purchasing a ticket.

In fact, More than 75% of B2C companies use email marketing to promote their events and email can generate the highest return on investment for every $1 spend compared to other platforms.

Here are 5 ways you can increase your open rate, engage future attendees and sell more tickets with email marketing.

1. Content is King

One of the best ways to engage attendees is through great content. Whether it’s creating a highlight reel of last year’s event, an interview series with your event speakers, a behind-the-scenes look on how your event is setting up, even funny GIFs, creating original content creates shareable and engaging opportunities for your attendees.

However, we understand that original content can be time-consuming, so feel free to use content that is already out there! Think about using previous videos of speakers, content from your sponsors or relevant articles written about your event’s topics. Adding content to your emails will immediately make your email marketing more engaging and more likely to be opened - it is all about making sure you have some value to add to their day!

2. Distinct Design

Remember, most people are flooded with emails every day and are likely only going to be skimming your email. Ensure that the overall design as well as imagery and other content is eye-catching or “scroll-stopping”. Establishing a distinct look and feel filled with a thought-out colour palette and striking content goes a long way to making your email marketing more engaging for potential attendees. Keep in mind that while HTML emails may look the nicest, they won't generate as much engagement vs a text emails, as both spam filters can block them and people tend to ignore them. You can still design fun text emails with emojis and coloured text.

3. Be Clear and Concise

In many areas of life “less is more”, and this old adage couldn’t be more relevant when it comes to email marketing. First up, your subject lines are your first impression and should always be very specific and succinct, with a sense of urgency. Then for the content of your emails, make sure that your call-to-action and corresponding link or button is clear and bold.

4. Mobile-friendly

For many people, most of our personal comms are done on our phones, whether it’s checking emails, messaging friends or sharing updates on social media. Given this, ensuring that all your emails are mobile-friendly will be crucial. More importantly, you’ll lose subscribers if your emails aren’t optimised for mobile - anyone who opens the email on your phone won’t be able to see the content as you intended. Think about creating responsive email designs that adapt depending on the user's device, including short headers and clear, bold buttons.

5. Data is Queen

If content is king, testing and analysis of your emails is the counterweight that will validate your strategy and shed light on its true effectiveness. Performing regular testing and post-campaign analysis will help you understand what is and isn’t working in your emails, allowing you to optimise and improve them over time. Consider A/B testing - create two different emails and send them out to a small percentage of your total subscriber list. Whichever email performs best (measured by open rate or clicks) can then be used for the remainder of your recipients.

Pay attention to key metrics such as open rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribe rate. Keeping a pulse on these stats can help you make adjustments along the way and ensure you don’t keep making the same mistakes.

For more ideas on how to sell more tickets with a smaller budget, check out our comprehensive marketing guide.

Have more questions? Feel free to speak with a human at Humanitix! In as little as two minutes you can make your event live, delight your guests, and change lives through supporting education projects.