New Data: When, Where To Send Your Event Invitation Emails

While emails certainly do a lot for driving ticket sales, it's easy to wonder if they could be doing more, and artists frequently vacillate between sending too few emails, and bombarding their market base and over-saturating them. Here we look at new data on how to get it right.

Guest post by Rachel Grate of Eventbrite

You know your emails are effective at driving ticket sales, but you’re not certain whether they could be doing more. On one hand, you don’t want to send too many emails and risk people unsubscribing. On the other, you don’t want to send too few emails and risk sales plateauing.

What’s the right balance between the two? To find out, we partnered with email marketing platform Emma to survey hundreds of U.S. event creators to gather new data on industry benchmarks — so you can compare your own results against the average results.

Here’s what we found worked best across the board for sending out event invitation emails.

Here’s what works best across the board for sending out event invitation emails.

When to send your first email

Your first event invitation email is an exciting moment for many repeat attendees — but not everyone on your list is ready to commit so far in advance. You need to find a timeline that’s early enough to start to build buzz, but not so early that more casual fans aren’t interested.

So where’s the sweet spot? We found that most events (53%) begin their email promotions one to three months in advance:

• 9% send at least six months in advance
• 27% send their first announcement 2-3 months in advance
• 26% wait until a month before their event
• And an astonishing 14% wait until just two weeks before their event

Pro tip: Include an early bird discount in this first send to drive early registrations and offering a price point that’s irresistible to deal seekers.

How often to send event emails

People receive a ton of emails every day and you don’t want to be one of those senders they consider “spammy.” You need to stay top of mind, without being annoying.

According to our survey with Emma, 30% of event creators send four to five emails per event:

• 29% send the most emails in the month leading up to their event
• 43% send an email a week during that period
• 25% of event creators send three emails in total to promote each event
• 22% send six or more emails in total

Pro tip: Mix up promotional and educational content across your sends, so you’re giving people more reasons to attend your event other than “buy tickets now.”

What day and time to send emails

Just like social media promotion, email marketing has its own rhythms and cadences that work best. Across the event creators we surveyed, Tuesday was the most common day of the week for email sends, with the most common time being between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm.

The timing makes sense, as most people who work a full day experience serious decision fatigue by the evening. But just because this is what’s common across the industry doesn’t mean it’ll work best for you. You need to experiment with times and days of the week to find your best combination.

Pro tip: Conduct multiple A/B tests between different days of the week and times of the day to find your perfect send. And don’t forget the time zone your recipient lives in!

Drive better results from your email marketing

Timing of sends is just one of many factors that can make or break email success. Discover the rest in our new guide, An Inside Look at how the Event Industry’s Emails Perform: 2019 Report.

Rachel Grate is a writer for Eventbrite, where she regularly interviews organizers of the country's most popular events, from massive music festivals to small food & drink gatherings. She's a live music lover, a foodie, and a big fan of smiles.