Case Study: How to Create Event Email Campaigns and Automate Contact Collection

Company

In addition to website development, 7days2go is building a community for startups and businesses from around the world. Every year the company invites everyone to participate in Here2Start Fest, a great event for entrepreneurs willing to start a business in the Netherlands.

Task

7days2go was needed help with the development and support of the email channel. Their team was busy with other tasks and couldn't cope with the complicated email service they were using at that moment.

Our main job was to boost attendance at the upcoming Here2Start Fest via the email channel:

• attract participants and sell tickets;
• automate campaigns and contact base management;
• collect registrations of new attendants;
• provide informational support throughout the event.

We also had to teach 7days2go marketers to work in the our system and automate their marketing strategies.

Our team took on the project 2.5 weeks before the event and had to act quickly due to little time left.

Solution

Invitation

At first, we created for 7days2go an account in the our system, with the corresponding sender name and address.

For event invitations, we imported the contact base from their previous ESP.

Two emails - an event invitation email and a reminder with a countdown timer - were created based on the website style: we slightly improved the old event email design.

The workflow for this series looked as follows:

The results showed that the open rate for the second reminder email was increased by 33.8%, and the click rate by 22.2%, compared to the first email.

Earlier, we had integrated with ticket service Eventbrite via Zapier for email gathering of those who already purchased tickets and would participate in the event.

Every time a purchase was made at Eventbrite, we received one of the following events:

• Here2Start_Launch (free program);
• Here2Start_Day_Program (paid program).

Based on the received event, contacts were added to corresponding segments Bought a ticket Launch and Bought a ticket Day Program.

The Day Before the Event

In campaigns for event participants, it’s better to put the name of the event in the “From” field. So we added the new sender's name and address - Here2Start.nl.

Next, we prepared "How to get to the venue" email and sent it the day before the event to all contacts with tickets.

It contained the following important information:

• how to find the event location;
• how to get in touch;
• what speakers would participate;
• how much time is left before the start of the event.

On the Day of the Event

To collect contacts of all event participants (partners, volunteers, sponsors), we integrated the account in our service with the client’s Hubspot CRM via Zapier.

On the event day, we sent all the participants the invitation email to join the Here2Start community.

People who attended the day program received the email at 5 pm, and people who attended the evening program received it at 8.30 pm.

A CTA "Join Us Now" forwards to the TypeForm registration form designed as an interactive survey with the following questions:

1. Your name.
2. Your email address.
3. If you are already running a company, what’s its name?
4. We want to hear about your cool ideas! Please share your phone number.
5. What is your role in the community?
   ✓Entrepreneur;
   ✓Student;
   ✓Partner;
   ✓Alumnus (Holland Alumni Network);
   ✓Sponsor;
   ✓Other.
6. How can you support international entrepreneurs based in the Netherlands? (Any contribution matters, from ideas to products and services).

We set up an auto-transfer of new contacts from TypeForm to our service via Zapier.

After the Event

To greet new community members, we created the workflow with the welcome email that was sent in response to contact confirmation.

The email contained a greeting, an invitation to the social network, as well as an offer to join the upcoming event:

Results

During the 3 weeks of our cooperation, we provided the Here2Start Fest event with email support, namely:

1. Created for the client an account in the our system and integrated it with the ticket service Eventbrite via Zapier.
2. Sent invitations to the existing contact base, 50% of which attended the event.
3. Sent invitation reminder to contacts who did not open the first email, which raised the open rate by 33% and the click rate by 22%.
4. Provided attendants with teaser email for event with detailed information.
5. Thanked the attendants for participation and asked to subscribe to the newsletter, having involved 50% of the participants.
6. Automatically collected 12% of new registrations due to integration with TypeForm via Zapier.
7. Welcomed new subscribers and invited them to the next event.

Even with a small contact base, you can increase the number of subscribers and automate registrations from email. Great things start small, so maybe it’s time to start?

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