In this blog, we’ll go through the ways you can personalise emails and how personalisation can help you to create a stronger connection with your ticket buyers.

Personalisation

Personalisation of emails is becoming increasingly important, as people want to be addressed as individuals rather than with a simple; ‘Dear reader’. By applying personalisation, you can create a more intimate connection with your ticket buyers. MailChimp makes reaching out to your visitors a whole lot easier.

How do I personalise my Direct Mailing?

Put yourself in the shoes of the person receiving the email

We’ve mentioned it before, and we’ll repeat it; put yourself in your ticket buyers' shoes. When trying to personalise, it’s important to know who your ticket buyers are and what they like. The better you can put yourself in their shoes, the more effectively you’ll be able to build bonds with them.

Subject lines

Creating a personal connection with your ticket buyers starts with a powerful subject line. It’s more appealing to your ticket buyers to be addressed with ‘Hey {name}, we have something fun for you’ in the subject line, rather than ‘Dear ticket buyer, we have something fun for you’.

According to a Dutch national email study, personalising subject lines isn’t a common practice, but does lead to a 10% increase of the CTOR (the click to open rate); which is reason enough to personalise the subject line.

You can easily do personalise your emails by using MailChimp. Once you start a new email campaign (through Campaigns) you’ll see this screen:

If you click on ‘Add Recipients’, you’ll be able to add new recipients to your email and start personalising your greeting right away. First, choose your mailing list. Once that’s done, the ‘Personalize the “To” field’ option will appear, which makes sure that ‘andy@eventix.io’ turns into ‘Andy Greenwood’ or ‘Andy’, depending on the Merge tag you select.

Greeting

Always greet the recipient personally; it’s nicer to receive an email addressed to your name rather than a bland and impersonal ‘Dear ticket buyer’.

Within the Eventix Dashboard, it’s easy to export a list of your ticket buyers for your Direct Mailing. You export the first name, last name, email address, and whether or not they would like to be kept up to date (newsletter etc.).

Using MailChimp, it is easy to add a greeting to a textbox, which you have dragged and dropped when you’re designing your email (through Templates).

The next step is to decide how you would like to address the recipients; this can be done by using Merge Tags.

You can take this a step further when it comes to the greeting: Depending on the situation, you can choose either first, last or full name. Alternatively, if you are hosting a corporate event, you can choose to use the company name as a greeting rather than an individual. For example, see the image below:

GIF’s

The use of GIF’s certainly adds a lot of personality to your mailing and also has other advantages. GIF’s add humour, draw attention and, as the age-old saying goes, images say more than a thousand words. Just make sure you don’t go overboard with GIF’s, as there is a very fine line between a smile and an annoyance.

Use your branding

Using your branding provokes a sense of familiarity in your ticket buyers. Take the example of Netflix; with their signature colour palette and distinctive tone of voice. If they were to change their style radically, they would certainly lose customers as a direct result (in fact Netflix lost 800,000 subscribers in one quarter in 2011 after doing just that). As you can see, we develop certain expectations of brands.

Make sure your fonts, colours and imagery all support one another. An easy but effective step is to add your logo to your emails. A logo in your email gives it some authority and is an easy way to advertise your logo, as repetition ensures that your ticket buyers are more likely to remember an image or logo.

Adding images and designing emails is easy using MailChimp. If you go to ‘Templates’ in MailChimp, you get two options: Content and Design. Select ‘Content’ and drag the content that you would like to add into the preview of the email.

Once you’ve done this, you can drag the image into the box or upload an image by clicking on 'Browse'.

Choose a tone of voice

Decide what kind of tone of voice you would like to use and stick to it. It’s important that your ticket buyers recognise you and know what you stand for. Choose a tone of voice that matches your event. So, if you’re organising a Halloween party, there is no sense in using a formal tone, instead, opt for something more playful or spooky. Likewise; if you’re organising a corporate event, then a formal tone is more advisable.

Congratulate your ticket buyers

If you have collected the date of birth in the visitor information when selling your tickets, you will be able to use that knowledge to your benefit! Don’t be afraid to send your ticket buyers some congratulations, most people like a little attention on their birthday after all. If you combine the message with a little present - such as a discount code, or a spot on the guestlist - the ticket buyer will likely be quite flattered and come to your event (with their friends).