There’s nothing worse than finding out your favorite band was in town the previous night — and you didn’t know about it. An email about the event would’ve been nice, right?
That’s one of the many reasons why, as an event organizer, you must have an email list and look after it.
Email is a fast, simple, and cost-effective way to reach many people and spread the word about your upcoming events to ensure your followers never miss a beat.
Not sure how to start building your list? At Eventbrite, we support event organizers worldwide to get the word out with our built-in email marketing tools and app integrations.
That’s why we’ve teamed up with content expert Emily Wiseheart to develop this how-to guide. Read on to find out how to build an email list with 15 actionable tips. Each of these will help you attract potential customers and retain existing ones — all through email marketing.
We’ll also cover how to create an email list using Eventbrite and use our dynamic features to send event emails quickly, simply, and cost-effectively.
15 tips for email list building
1. Add an email signup form to your website
2. Create a text-to-join campaign
3. Add your registration link to email signatures
4. Create an amazing signup incentive
5. Use Meta to collect signups
6. Create downloadable event brochures
7. Add calls to action to your blogs and landing pages
8. Keep your new signups warm with monthly newsletters
9. Give subscribers a discount for referrals
10. Tag and segment your registrants
11. Add registrants from past events to your email list
12. Set up an interactive events quiz
13. Collect customer details in person at your events
14. Set up members-only events
15. Promote exclusive content on your social channels
Why is email list building important for your events business?
If you’re looking to reach a large number of potential customers, email marketing can help.
Researchers say acquiring new customers costs five times more than retaining current ones. Why? Marketing efforts to source new attendees are costlier than reaching out to previous attendees.
Email list building can also support amazing engagement with your followers.
According to Mailchimp, the average email open rate for the entertainment and events sector is 37.3%. If you send an email invite to 10,000 people promoting your next event, you can expect around 3,400 people to open your email.
If you’re sending out regular email campaigns for your events, getting to know your audience and what they do (and don’t) like is possible. Email marketing software lets you track what people are clicking, what time of day they’re more likely to read your emails, and determine which types of customers are inclined to buy tickets.
Armed with that information, you can create better, more targeted content that will improve your chances of selling out your next big event.
Email marketing is a smart move for any event organizer. Setting up and maintaining email lists can kick-start your ticket sales and target those you know are already interested in your events.
Email lists also let you segment your customer base by the types of events they’ve attended in the past, so you can optimize your marketing and present them with events that’ll intrigue them. You’ve just got to know how to start building your list — and we’ve got many pro tips to help.
How to build an email list for free (or almost)
Starting an email list from scratch may sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. You can deploy several simple and effective methods to start collecting email addresses online and offline — and we’re ready to walk you through them.
Here are the 15 best ways to grow your email list.
1. Add an email signup form to your website
One of the first steps to expanding your email list is to add an email sign-up form to your website.
“If someone has taken the time to find you online, they may be interested in staying informed about your upcoming events,” explains Emily Wiseheart, former Content Manager at online marketing agency Constant Contact.
“Make sure that your sign-up form is somewhere visible and easy to find.”
💡Pro tip: Take this one step further by adding a pop-up sign-up form that appears when visitors browse your site. That way, your visitors won’t miss the opportunity to sign up for your email list.
2. Create a text-to-join campaign
A quick and easy way to collect new email subscribers on the go is to set up a ‘text-to-join’ option. This way, if you’re out in the community, at an event, or meet someone interested in keeping in touch, they can just pull out their phone and join your mailing list in fewer steps.
This approach works by texting a specific keyword to a specific number.
For example, a concert venue may have prospects text ‘MUSICROCKS’ to 123456 to automatically enroll on their email subscriber list.
💡Pro tip: You could even print the keyword and number on a business card to hand to people as you meet them so they can sign up at their convenience.
3. Add your registration link to email signatures
Not everyone who sees your marketing emails will be on your email list. That’s because people may forward your emails to their friends and family.
“If that happens, chances are those friends and family are interested in your content,” says Wiseheart. “Make sure they have the chance to receive more of it!”
💡Pro tip: To make it easy for your email readers to sign up, add a ‘Join Our Mailing List’ button to the footer of your marketing emails.
Also, you and anyone representing your business should add a link to sign up for your email list in your email signature. That way, they can sign up from your email whenever you communicate with prospects.=
Ready to start building your email list?
4. Create an amazing signup incentive
Everybody loves getting a freebie, right? Offering an email signup incentive is an attractive way to convince people to complete your opt-in email form.
Not sure what sort of incentives to offer? Here are some of our favorites:
- Send an exclusive discount code for tickets
- Announce new events and line-ups to email sign-ups first
- Offer early-bird access to tickets to your next event
💡Pro tip: If you’re keen to offer discount codes or early-bird tickets, partnering with Eventbrite can save time and energy. Our dynamic dashboard generates unique access or discount codes that you can send to email subscribers.
Here’s how it’s done:
5. Use Meta to collect signups
Social media channels — particularly Facebook — are a great way to engage prospects and collect email addresses.
First and foremost, make sure you add a link to sign up to your email list on your Facebook page. Like on your website, this link should be easy to locate. Next, you can set up a Facebook Leads Ad.
“This is a type of ad that appears to a set audience of prospects that you determine on Facebook and collects signups,” explains Wiseheart.
“To make it easy, when Facebook users click on your ad, they’re presented with a sign-up form that’s pre-filled with contact information that they’ve publicly shared on Facebook.”
Want to see it done in real-time? Here’s how to set up a Leads Ad on Facebook:
These ads aren’t free but are great for any size business, as you can set the budget and duration for how long they will run.
💡Pro tip: Don’t waste time duplicating ad campaigns for both Instagram and Facebook. Use Meta Ads Manager. It lets you run one ad simultaneously across both Facebook and Instagram — enabling you to reach your target audience on two platforms without creating two campaigns.
6. Create downloadable event brochures
Create event brochures or event guides for your upcoming events, and then lock them behind a content capture form. That way, users must complete your email signup form to get access. You’ve just got to include some sort of teaser (like a hint at who’s headlining your next festival) that’ll entice them to sign up.
Just make sure you include a consent box on your signup form that clearly explains how submitting the form will add them to your subscribers’ list so you don’t get any confused or annoyed emails from leads down the road.
💡Pro tip: To make your downloadable events brochure high quality, use a freemium design app like Canva.
7. Add calls to action to your blogs and landing pages
You’ve already got people trolling through your website who are obviously interested in looking at content about your events. Don’t let those potential customers slip away!
It’s worth taking a look at your web analytics to see which pages on your site have the highest volumes of traffic. You can then focus your intent on these pages by creating unique and custom calls to action (CTAs) that read naturally and organically at the bottom of relevant blogs or landing pages.
💡Pro tip: A/B test your CTA on different pages by having unique wording for each one. You can then track the analytics to see which CTAs score more signups and which ones are getting ignored.
8. Keep your new signups warm with monthly newsletters
We’ve already talked about the fact that email marketing engagement rates are good — but don’t take your subscriber list for granted.
The average unsubscribe rate in the events sector is 0.24%. While this isn’t a significant figure, you’ve got to give subscribers a reason to stick around.
That starts by building a sense of customer loyalty with original welcome emails or automated email newsletters updating new registrants on your upcoming events and what makes them worth attending.
That’s one of the reasons Bollywood Dreams founder DJ Prashant decided to partner with Eventbrite as an effective way to keep leads warm.
“Eventbrite plays a central role in my marketing by being the place where I collect client info, such as emails,” says DJ Prashant.
“I also use the newsletter feature to announce my new events and reach out to my clients.”
Eventbrite even sends push notifications to your followers whenever you publish a new event, creating another opportunity to keep leads warm without doing any extra work.
💡Pro tip: Are you familiar with the phrase ‘too much of a good thing?’ One of the reasons people unsubscribe from emails is due to email fatigue. That’s why it’s important to strike a comfortable email frequency so that you’re not constantly spamming them with promotional emails.
There’s no right or wrong frequency because the number of emails you should send each month will depend on your audience and what they’re looking for from your newsletters.
This is where A/B testing can be helpful. Try out different send dates and intervals between sends, then look at your open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates to assess the best time and frequency to send emails.
9. Give subscribers a discount for referrals
Referral programs are another great way to build your email list. This is an easy way to enhance your reach by leveraging the contacts you already have.
For example, you could create a loyalty program where you send customers a 10% discount every time they refer a friend to sign up by adding their email address to your list. If you’re trying to create unique discount codes for your referral scheme, Eventbrite can help you do that in no time.
It’s also a low-effort marketing activity because you don’t have to put in much work to get to your target audience. All you need to do is set up a referral link and track contacts who make a referral to send them a discount code.
But in terms of chasing down new contacts, your customers will do all the work for you as part of your referral program.
💡Pro tip: Before you launch your referrals scheme, create a concise and clear terms and conditions page for the program.
Make sure you include a description of each referral reward and how and when it will be distributed. You might also want to include a rewards cap each month or contact details that customers can use if they have questions about their referrals or the referral program.
10. Tag and segment your registrants
In 2023, nearly 65% of marketing emails included a personalized subject line. Personalizing emails is easy if you tag the email addresses in your contacts list.
Tagging enables you to divide contacts based on their interests, where they live, their age, or even which events they’ve attended in the past. As a result, you’ll be able to promote the right events to the right people (thus keeping your unsubscribe rates and bounce rates down).
💡Pro tip: Make sure you create a new tag for each event that you run. That will optimize your email marketing strategy by helping you create curated and very specific segments for each event type so that you’re only emailing customers about the events you know they’ll love.
11. Add registrants from past events to your email list
If you’re not already using former event registrants to promote future events, you’re missing out!
These people are perfect prospects as they have shown interest in your events in the past, and you probably already have their information, especially if you use event management technology like Eventbrite to plan your events.
To ensure you never miss out on reaching past customers, add a signup option to your checkout. After all, your customers will be absolutely buzzing about your new event while it’s fresh in their minds, so this is an easy opportunity to capture their contact details.
💡Pro tip: To streamline this collection process, integrate your event management technology with your email marketing software.
This will enable you to pull the emails these people used to register for past events into your email marketing platform, where you can reach out to them directly to promote your next event.
According to Jordan St. Pierre, founder of Something Dope Events, sending out your mailshots via a major event management platform also lends more credibility to your emails.
“When we do email blasts, we’re doing them through Eventbrite. They don’t go to junk. They’ve already got a ticket, so it’s not in their spam,” he explains.
“That email coming from Eventbrite hits differently than it does coming from our website.”
That’s probably why emails sent through Eventbrite have a 59% higher open rate than the industry average.
12. Set up an interactive events quiz
Gamification is a powerful tool for finding potential subscribers for your email list.
Everybody loves a good quiz — so why not create your own events quiz? Compile a short list of relevant (and funny) questions that will help match your potential customers to the perfect event for them.
Alternatively, you could include special offers or coupon codes for your next event for quiz takers. For example, if you create a personality quiz that tells a subscriber they have a rock’ n’ roll personality, give them the chance to enter a giveaway to win tickets to your upcoming rock concert.
💡Pro tip: Great freemium tools like SurveyMonkey make it easy to quickly design and post a cool quiz. You can then put your survey on a landing page on your website so that users can check out more of your content after taking the quiz.
13. Collect customer details in person at your events
Collecting email list subscribers online is more common than in person, but you should also consider capturing new names for your contact list during events. You’ll catch event guests while they’re having a great time at your event — when they’re more inclined to sign up.
If your event venue has WiFi, create a signup station with a fixed tablet and signage, or appoint a floating event staff member to manually register signups on a device. But even if you’re operating outside, you can collect email addresses in the old-fashioned way: with a clipboard and a pen.
💡Pro tip: An effective email marketing campaign strikes while the iron’s hot. That’s why it’s critical you send a welcome email to your new subscribers ASAP to confirm they’re on your email list. This ensures your event is still on their minds when they get your first email — making them more inclined to stick with you and read future emails.
14. Set up members-only event
Who doesn’t love feeling special? Creating members-only events adds a sense of exclusivity to signing up to your email list and makes people feel like part of a community of like-minded individuals.
A simple hybrid event or a mini virtual event with some exclusive content can go a long way toward incentivizing email registrations. It’s also worth doubling members-only events and content with early access codes or discount codes to drive registrations for future larger events.
According to Adele Tetangco, a co-founder of In Todo, establishing that sense of community has helped her team create a larger and more powerful vendor base, allowing her to create the best experiences for eventgoers.
“Managing vendor relations is always going to be one of the most difficult pieces,” she says. That’s why In Todo hosts exclusive vendor events like pizza parties and socials to build a strong sense of community amongst artisans.
💡Pro tip: Increase email signups by creating FOMO (fear of missing out) on your social media accounts and flaunting members-only events with powerful images and videos.
15. Promote exclusive content on your social channels
A great way to get people to sign up for your email list is to tease followers with your exclusive content.
Create posts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, TikTok, LinkedIn, and anywhere else your target audience gathers. Include screenshots of your email newsletters, downloadable content, or special offers. In other words, make sure everyone knows what they’re missing out on.
Include lots of photos and videos of your members-only events to show followers what they could get if they sign up. Follow this with a link to your email registration form with a CTA that encourages followers to sign up so they don’t miss out.
For example: “This could have been you last night. Want to score an invite to our next exclusive event? Sign up for our weekly newsletter to make sure you never miss a beat.”
💡Pro tip: Social media users can be pretty lazy, so you have to make things simple. Combine your social media posts with lead generation ads (like Meta’s in-built Leads Ads). That way, your followers don’t have to hunt for your signup form.
Why try Eventbrite’s software for event email campaigns?
Your email lists are only as good as the email marketing software you use. After all, you won’t have an engaged email list if you can’t schedule regular emails, testing, or use reporting tools to assess your subscriber’s open rates and click-through rates.
That’s where a platform like Eventbrite offers a huge lifeline.
With Eventbrite, everything is built right into your wider event marketing dashboard. That means you can control your social media marketing, email marketing, and web marketing tools all in one place — supported by reporting tools that measure email engagement rates.
There are also a range of features that can help you kick-start the creative process to make better content and boost conversion rates. For example, Eventbrite has AI tools that help you auto-populate email templates with engaging copy when you’re struggling to find the words.
But if you’re already using other email marketing platforms, you can plug them into your Eventbrite account to use them alongside your events dashboard. For example, our Mailchimp integration lets you seamlessly pull attendee data between accounts to send slick, automated email campaigns that keep your leads warm.
That integration was partly what attracted Mike Lee, co-owner of the Laugh Out Lounge, to switch from Ticketleap to Eventbrite.
“I started building my email blast list, for example, and saw that Eventbrite integrates with Mailchimp, so I could literally import all of my contacts right into Eventbrite,” he said.
“I’m not starting at ground zero again. Plus, you offered 6,000 emails a day vs. the 2,000 I was getting directly with Mailchimp.” Now, you can send up to 10,000 emails every day.
Eventbrite offers transparent pricing plans with various email capabilities:
- Free: Host an unlimited number of events for up to 25 tickets and send up to 250 emails daily.
- Flex: Starts from $9.99 per event for up to 100 tickets (increasing based on ticket volume) and lets you send up to 250 emails per day.
- Pro: Starts from $29.99 per month for up to 250 tickets and lets you send up to 10,000 emails per day.
In addition to those three plans, you can also register for Eventbrite’s Premium plan for big or complex events. This plan offers bespoke pricing based on your event needs.
Try the best email marketing for events.
How to create an email list using Eventbrite
After you’ve signed up, creating an email list is super straightforward. All you have to do is follow these steps:
1. Go to ‘Manage my Events.’
2. Go to your Marketing workspace.
3. Click ‘Email campaigns.’
4. Click ‘Subscriber Lists.’
5. Click ‘New list.’
6. Name your list. Then, click ‘Continue.’
7. Click ‘Manage Subscribers.’
8. Add email addresses and names to your subscriber list.
You can either import attendees from past events, upload a CSV with a list of people, or manually ‘Add Subscriber’ on a one-by-one basis.
From there, you can also edit your subscriber list by deleting individuals or reviewing your auto-generated lists. It’s worth noting that Eventbrite automatically splits your recipients into one of three categories:
- Subscribers
- Unsubscribed users
- Purchasers
But you can create any category you like. Once your list is set up, sending email updates to your subscribers is a simple process.
Here’s how it’s done:
Grow your list to grow your events
The best way to grow your list is by making sure signing up for it is easy and hard to say “no” to. By offering valuable content and an incentive for joining, your list will be full of relevant and interested prospects who are ready to hear about your events.
And if you need a hand getting the word out and managing your email lists, Eventbrite is here to support you every step of the way.
By utilizing our powerful in-built marketing tools, you can build email lists, segment, and send out personalized offers. You can even bring in other services that you know and love, like Mailchimp, to create slick email campaigns that are sure to wow your subscribers.
