While the content of your invitation emails is the responsibility of your copywriter, we’re here to advise the best practices from designing to deliverability. After all, you’ve already spent so much time organizing your event, why not up your RSVP rate?
1. Avoid sending the entire email as an image, or putting important details in your images within the invitation.
Different clients render email images differently, some block all the images altogether. While it is important that your invitation contains graphic visuals, we would advise that you do not put important information in your image.
Images in your email can contain a place holder text which can be used as a kind reminder advising to “click here if the image is not loading properly”.
2. Avoiding the spam folder
Robotic or generic email subject lines are more likely to end up in the spam folder. This is particularly the case if your invitation email address is not already known to the inbox of the guest.
Certain keywords are particularly known to be triggered as spam, avoid these when possible. Avoiding too long email subjects or using all capital letters can trigger spam filters.
Using an IP address with a high reputation also helps your emails avoid the spam inbox. Verifying your domain can also help the guest inbox recognize the email address you are sending from if you plan to use one of your regular corporate email addresses.
For more tips and pointers on how to avoid spam filters feel free to check out this article.
3. Avoid using custom fonts
Special fonts help stay on brand and certainly can be more visually attractive, but when the recipient doesn’t have the font pack for the font used, the custom font will not be displayed and instead email clients display their default font. To avoid this, stick to so-called safe web fonts which are supported in most popular email clients. Below are some of these recommended and most common font types that most devices and email providers can display without any issues:
Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, Georgia, Tahoma, Lucida, Trebuchet and Times.
4. Mobile friendly is key
In our technological era, most people read and receive their emails on their smartphones. Large emails often have a tendency not to load properly on mobile devices as it exceeds the screen size.
Making sure your email fits on a smartphone screen is essential to guests seeing the email properly. Although each screen size may differ between devices, 570-600px width is generally the limit for optimizing mobile display of emails. Please note that there is generally no limit on the length.
Keep the size of the images as small as possible to guarantee a fast loading speed. Especially on mobile phones, users spent less time reading and browsing through each email. Displaying your email correctly within the first second significantly improves the overall experience.
5. Avoid email spoofing
Email spoofing is a method often used to change the sender email to be an email address other than the actual one being sent.
This is where most spam filters are likely to filter out your email and send the invitation directly to the spam folder. It is always recommended that event planners use original sender email or whitelabel the domain to use the company address as the sender. For more information please feel free to check out this and this article regarding email spoofing.
6. Use event management software
Event management software helps streamline the event management process, particularly around event invitations. Dashboards and sent/received reports help ensure the highest possible RSVP and event attendance. Emails can be sent in bulk, and reminders are kept track of through an event management software.
Central Pacific offers professional email invitation design and servicing, helping event planners visualize their email design into HTML emails while making sure emails can be successfully sent to the guests. CP also provides consultation service to advise a perfect invitation process for each event. Contact us and we can help to solve your tech issues.
Comments