Why having only one invite might be missing a trick.

Most events have a single invite, and most marketers think this is totally fine. After all, the big details are the same: same time, same place, same idea.?

But thinking of an invite as simply communicating logistics is a mistake, because an invite is an advert - and it’s selling both the event and the brand. Even more crucially, whilst the people who end up coming will receive all the other amazing brand marketing planned, for the audience who don’t attend, your invite provides a key way you can still affect their brand perceptions.

But why does that mean we might want multiple invites? Because as we know so well from social marketing, more tailored adverts are typically more effective than generic ones.

So what does tailoring invites look like? It starts with audience segmentation - what are the different groups, tribes and demographics coming. And then, the question is twofold - the more obvious is what are they looking for from an event like this. This allows us to create the invite that is most likely to get them to come.

But the second question we should ask - is what problem can our brand solve for them?

Because if we can subtly communicate this, then our invite is also working as a stand alone advert. This is even more important for more exclusive audiences who are hard to reach with traditional advertising,?

There is additional power in this approach due to the psychological?principle of Priming - which is the idea that the first information or context we receive on a new subject will strongly affect how we subsequently perceive this. Or in the other words - our invite can affect how our audience perceive our event.?

As an example, imagine if you got one invite to a ‘party’ or to a ‘reception’. Just from the name, you will already enter with preconceptions that will affect your experience. So by segmenting our audience and tailoring our invite, we can actually help provide subtly different experiences to different audiences.?

So next time you need to send some invites, maybe you need to send a few.?