Take Control of Your Inbox: 6 Email Tips for Event Organizers

As a Marketing and Communications Manager at Axonic, I send (and receive) a ton of email…so I’ve got this inbox productivity thing down to a T.

Here are my top six email management tips to help you manage that overflowing inbox and make email a productive part of your day:

1. Don’t use email

I’m not crazy. Hear me out. One of the reasons everyone hates email so much is because they’re simply using it wrong! Trying to get one tool to perform the job of another is always going to end in frustration. Email is not a project management tool, event planner, CRM system, or sales tool. It is essentially just a long-form communication channel.

Take a look at your inbox now. How many of the emails in there are project follow-ups, document shares, or things that you’re CC’d in because someone thinks you might need to know? If you got rid of all of those, how much email are you left to deal with? I’m betting way less. Feeling motivated to make a change? Try using tools like Basecamp or Slack to share “nice-to-know” information across your team—and watch your inbox clear itself up in no time.

Now that that’s done, follow the tips below to reduce any email back-and-forth. I guarantee you’ll spend less time writing emails, clarifying points, and dealing with follow-ups.

2. Write a call to action in your subject line

It’s a well-known email marketing hack: a call to action in the subject line will significantly increase your email open rate. It’s likely you’re already using this in your event outreach emails, but have you considered using it in other areas? Have a look at these examples:

a. “Feedback needed: Venue ideas for June rugby meet”
b. “Venue info”

Which is more likely to be opened and to get a clear response? Using the first example will let your recipients know immediately what you need from them, even before they open your mail. You’ll be able to cut down the amount of time you spend writing your email because your recipient already knows half the story. All you need to do now is add the venue information and send it off.

This trick can be used in multiple ways:

• “FYI only: Ticket sales update, calendar week 5”
• “URGENT response needed: Final banner design due 06.23.16”
• “Please respond: Tentative budget for Smith wedding”

In comparison to these, vague subject lines seem unprofessional, ineffective, and just kind of ‘meh.’

3. Use your signature for free advertising

The most recent Radicati survey found that professionals send on average 122 emails a day, and we’ve already established that event planners probably send more. Why not make those hundreds of emails work to your advantage?

A great way to promote your latest event is to put a call to action and link to it in your signature. Even if the email you’re sending has nothing to do with the event, it’ll get your promotion in front of just one more set of eyes—and potentially sell another ticket or two.

If you really want to go for it, you can use an email signature manager like Crossware or Black Pearl Mail to make your event CTA stand out, and your signature look great.

4. Avoid using your inbox as a calendar or planner

If you ever find yourself checking your email to figure out when or where your next meeting is, then you probably need to rethink your appointment-making strategy. As soon as you get an event, task, or meeting request via email, try to add it to your planner immediately, then file the email away.

Most email providers like Gmail or Outlook have great inbuilt calendars that help you stay organized with multiple calendars,customizable notifications, and meeting invites. You can attach the original email too, if you need to keep the info on hand.

The Google Calendar app is fantastic at doing this – it will suggest appointments for you if it thinks an email includes one. You can integrate it with your Yahoo or iCloud account too, so it’s not just for Gmail fans.

5. Structure your emails like a meeting

Just as you should in a meeting, try to avoid vague, open-ended ideas. Clear, concise, actionable points are all you need.

• Include only the people who need to know in the To: and CC: fields. For the vast majority of emails, Jeff Bezos’ “two pizza” rule should definitely apply: only email as many people as could be fed with two pizzas.
• Just as you should keep meetings shorter than 30 minutes, you should aim to keep most of your emails under 5 sentences. Keeping the word-count low will help you make your point more concisely, and keep fluff and jargon to a minimum. As a bonus, it will take less time to write and less time to read! Win-win.
• You would never waste the first 10 minutes of a meeting on chit chat about the weather or your weekend, so why waste a sentence or three on unnecessary pleasantries? Sure, it may sound nice, but in the end you’re just wasting your own and your recipient’s time.
• You’re sending this email for a reason, so make that reason clear from the first line. Be direct but polite.

That being said…

6. If you need to send a long email, make it easy to skim

Remember that your recipient is just as pressed for time as you are. If you have to send a long email—say you need to follow up with key points from a meeting—structure it for readability. Great formatting will go a long way toward helping your recipients understand a longer message.

• If you have a lot of points to make, use bullet points. Lists are more easily digestible than dense text (hello Buzzfeed!), and are easier to skim over if you’re pressed for time. If your recipient needs more information about a certain point, they can always ask for one later.
• If you’re emailing a lot of people, “@Name” can be used to draw a particular recipient’s attention to one point, and indicates to the others that they can ignore it.
• If you need to make one point particularly obvious, use text emphasis to get the job done. Making important information like times, dates, and locations bold in the message body will ensure that it stands out.

Just make sure not to go overboard with the formatting, otherwise your message will look confusing and unprofessional.

Now that you’ve got a handle on your own inbox, why not take your email mastery to the next level? Check out this free video on event email marketing strategies from the email automation pros at Emma . They’ll help you grow your audience and drive sales—right up until your event.