Words are powerful. As an event organiser, you’re constantly crafting copy to persuade readers to buy tickets or register for your event. With the right words, you can also inspire your readers to go above and beyond that — motivating them to sign up for your free guest list, share content with their friends, or fill out a post-event survey.
Copywriting for events sounds simple enough, but there’s a lot that goes into crafting subject lines that get people to open your email and the calls-to-action that bring in registrations. You need to understand your goal, your audience, and the path to conversion.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll focus on how you can apply copywriting principles to better market your events and sell more tickets. Whether you’re interested in creating more professional copy or increasing your event attendance, we have tips and tricks to add to your copywriting arsenal.
Table of contents
Core event copywriting principles
Finding your event’s brand voice and tone
Creating a writing style guide
Event page copywriting that sells
Engaging your audience with at-event copy
Core event copywriting principles
Before you start firing off emails or pulling together advertising copy, it’s important to understand your brand, your audience, and how to best communicate with your audience in a way that appropriately reflects their needs and your mission.
Writing for your audience
Understanding your core proposition and target market
At the root of all effective event copywriting is a deep understanding of the reader. Before you write anything, getting to know your audience is important. Conduct research, dig into past event data from your ticketing or registration reports, study old attendee surveys, and interview potential attendees. How old are they? Where do they live? How do they speak? What are their interests? What keeps them up at night?
As you write, imagine you’re having a conversation with your target reader. And after you’ve crafted your copy, ask yourself if it offers them a compelling way to solve their problems and improve their lives.
Conveying benefits, not features
Conveying benefits to your reader is the single best way to keep them nodding along with you on their journey to a sale. People don’t just buy products — they buy what the product will help them do or be. This same principle is an event copywriting best practice. Don’t just tell people about features like your list of performers, your amazing venue, or the menu for lunch. Tell (and show) them how your event benefits them.
Just think back to how Apple decided to frame the iPod. It wasn’t about the device’s technical features (“Storage for 16G of MP3s), but what the customer could do with it (“1,000 Songs in Your Pocket).
Ask yourself how your event helps attendees and why they should care. The most powerful benefits to convey are emotional benefits. People often buy on emotion and then rationalise their purchasing decision later. When copywriting for your event materials, think about generating that emotional response.
| Feature-driven | We’ve got 20 speakers lined up for our conference |
| Benefit-driven | Get business insights from 20 industry leaders |
| Emotion-driven | Set your strategy with confidence, using exclusive insights from 20 seasoned industry leaders |
| Feature-driven | Our 10k run is set in a beautiful natural landscape |
| Benefit-driven | Enjoy the beauty of our 10k run, set in an all-natural landscape |
| Emotion-driven | Feel energised by the beauty of a stunning natural landscape |
| Feature-driven | We’ve got 5x more mobile charging stations than any other festival |
| Benefit-driven | 5x more charging stations means you’ll never be without your phone at the fest |
| Emotion-driven | Stay connected and share your memories as they happen; 5x more charging stations means you’ll never be without your phone |
Which versions of the copy above resonate with you? Conveying emotional benefits creates a stronger connection with your reader by making them the protagonists of your story. Connect with your audience by telling them how your event will make their lives better in your copy.
Finding your event’s brand voice and tone
Establishing a strong brand for your event helps you differentiate your event and build loyalty with attendees. A strong brand goes beyond a well-designed logo and how your event looks. Creating strong copywriting event guidelines that discuss your brand voice and tone is essential.
A brand voice is the purposeful, consistent expression of a brand through words and writing styles. It’s how you express your event’s personality.
Think about it this way: How would your brand speak if it were a person? Think about whether a formal, buttoned-up voice or something more casual and playful will resonate with your particular audience.
Once you’ve determined the appropriate voice for your event brand, stick to it. This voice can evolve as your event matures, but you shouldn’t speak in completely different voices across your copy. Inconsistency can be jarring and turn your audience off.
The same concept applies to your copy because ultimately, you’re talking to a person. You want your audience to become familiar with your voice and look forward to hearing from you. That connection and trust can foster attendee loyalty and inspire them to advocate on your behalf.
You also want to be sure you’re speaking in a way that’s appropriate for your audience’s situation, needs, or feelings at the moment they’re receiving your communication. That’s where tone comes in. While your voice never changes, your tone adjusts depending on when and where you’re addressing your reader.
To help guide your tone, ask yourself these three questions before you start writing:
1. Who are you talking to?
Depending on your specific audience, you may want to dial your formality up or down or adjust your vocabulary. For example, if you target some of your promotions to a less tech-savvy audience, avoid using too much slang or too many complex technological terms in your event copy.
2. Where are you talking to them?
Different channels may call for different tones. If you’re presenting research to your audience in a long-form report, more formal language may be appropriate. If you’re talking to them on their Facebook feed, consider using a lighter, more playful tone.
3. How do they feel at the moment?
Is your reader frustrated, upset, or confused? Say they’re trying to buy tickets to your event, but you’ve already sold out. For the message that breaks the news, you’ll want to use a supportive, helpful, and clear tone. In contrast, an upbeat, lively tone would be appropriate for telling an attendee that they’ve scored a backstage pass to your next concert.
Creating a writing style guide
Style guides outline your brand voice, tone, grammar rules, logo usage, colours — they’re the North Star for your brand’s writing and visual style. A guide like this can help you write consistently across your organisation and your various channels. They’re especially helpful for onboarding new team members or freelancers, or for any marketing or copywriting employee to use as a reference. If you have multiple people working on your event marketing copy, a style guide can help ensure you all stay on the same page.
It’s common to see a company’s overall writing style described in three or four adjectives. For example, Eventbrite’s style is inviting, informative, actionable, and inspiring. MailChimp’s style is clear, useful, friendly, and appropriate.
How do you determine what writing style is right for your organisation and your audience? Lay out the description of your overall style at the beginning of your guide to set the tone. Then, get as granular as you like. Some style guides stay fairly high-level by providing only general rules for writing different types of content such as blog posts or emails. Others are more specific, answering questions like: should you use terminal punctuation in bullet points? When should you use title case instead of sentence case? Is it okay to use contractions in your copy?
Your style guide can also include any specific words you want people to use — or avoid using — in your communications.
Check out MailChimp’s Content Style Guide for inspiration.
Event copywriting in context
In this section, we’ll take a look at how our copywriting principles can be effective when put into practice. We’ve pulled together some real-world event copywriting examples to inspire you as you brainstorm for your next event marketing plan.
Taglines & headlines
When it comes to events, a tagline is often used to convey the value of your event in an inspirational and memorable way. It might appear under your event name on your website, in emails, and on at-event collateral.
Here is how WOMAD, an international arts festival, held in the Wiltshire countryside, showcases its tagline, “The World’s Festival” on its website:
In contrast to taglines, headlines are context-specific and can be used in a variety of formats to let your audience know what they’re about to read. You can use headlines on your event page, website, and email copy.
Here’s an example of how WOMAD uses headlines — in this case, “A world of music” — in the Music section of their site:
Let’s dive into taglines first.
Crafting your event tagline
When you hear “The Happiest Place on Earth,” you probably think of Disneyland. Strong branding and a great tagline have created this long-standing association. The catchy tagline captures the unique value Disneyland has to offer: a child-like sense of happiness and escape. The same concept applies to your event tagline; it should convey the value of your event in a memorable way.
Here are a couple of tips for crafting taglines that are memorable and value-packed:
1. Length
There’s no perfect length for a tagline. Sometimes it’s just a few words, and sometimes it takes a couple of sentences.
Google typically displays up to 160 characters in the search results below the name of the site, so if you don’t want an abridged version of your tagline to appear, you should keep it under that character limit.
2. Methodology
There is no single best way to structure a tagline, so you’ll need to go through a process of writing multiple options and discussing them with your team. If possible, test them out to see which one resonates most with your audience.
Start by identifying your event’s unique selling point. Ask yourself:
- What is the ultimate benefit I want my attendee to gain?
- How will my event make my attendee’s life better?
- Why is my event better than my competitors’ events?
Once you’ve identified your event’s unique selling point, play with your copy to arrive at a tagline. Don’t worry about being too clever — your primary goal is to clearly express the value of your event. If you can inject some of your brand personality too, even better.
Consider WOMAD’s tagline “The World’s Festival” as a great event copywriting example. It’s short, yet still manages to convey its eclectic and inclusive ethos in just three words.
Writing attention-grabbing event headlines
You can use headlines in a variety of ways. They can help you introduce an email, set up a blog post, or describe a session in your at-event program.
“On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.” Brian Clark Founder, Copyblogger
Here are four guiding principles that will help you craft attention-grabbing headlines for your event copy:
1. Relevance
This is a guiding principle for pretty much any copywriting for events that you do. Your headline has to appeal directly to your target reader and use the language they use.
Spend time talking to your audience or reading what they read and write. Check out comments sections, social media, or forums so you can see exactly what kind of language they use. Then mirror their use of language, tone of voice, and idioms to build instant rapport and trust.
While you want your copy to be intriguing, never trick people with a misleading headline. You might get more clicks once or twice, but you’ll lose trust and credibility overall.
2. Value
Think about why someone would spend even a minute of their precious time on your content. Readers will click on something because they expect to get something in return for their time.
Maybe it’s a great anecdote, something that inspires them, or the opportunity to learn something new. Maybe they expect it will make them laugh and they’ll want to share it with their friends. Whatever the value is, convey it in your headline.
Don’t be coy. Headlines are there to do one job, and that’s to sell what comes after.
3. Brevity
Shorter headlines are faster to read, but they’re also better suited to the digital world. Google will only display 50-60 characters in their search result headlines and most email clients will only display between 30 and 50 characters of a subject line, depending on screen size.
So if you want people to see the whole headline, and not have an algorithm edit it for you, keep your headlines to around 50-60 characters, including spaces.
That’s not a lot of real estate to play with when you consider that you still need to show relevance to your audience and promise them value. This is why writing great headlines takes time, which leads us to the final guiding principle.
4. Iteration
Your first headline will almost definitely not be your best. In fact, your first five might not be your best.
Many successful publications will write out 20-25 different variations of a headline. Legendary copywriter David Ogilvy once rewrote the headline for a car advertisement 104 times!
You may not go that far, but if the headline is such a crucial element to the success of your event, email, or blog post, shouldn’t you spend more than five minutes on it? The more options you write, the more likely you are to end up with a winner.
Event page copywriting that sells
Some of the most crucial copywriting for your event that you’ll do is your website copy. The words you choose will not only influence your audience to buy tickets, but they’ll also be a big part of which Google searches your page shows up as a result.
Event copywriting best practices for search
To sell tickets, you need to get people to your event page first. That’s why it’s important to consider search engine optimisation (SEO) as you’re crafting your event page. Smart SEO strategies help your event show up high in results when people search for things online.
If your event is hosted on Eventbrite, you’re already one step ahead of the competition. Eventbrite listings have built-in features that take care of critical SEO elements for you. Eventbrite also has extremely strong ranking authority, which means that Google trusts pages on eventbrite.com.au. Thanks to our ranking authority, your event page is more likely to show up at the top of event-goers’ search results.
Whether you’re on Eventbrite or not, you may have a separate event website in addition to your ticketing page. This other site may require a bit more SEO work than an Eventbrite page, but there are steps you can take to make your event easily searchable.
Here are tips for setting up a search-friendly event website from our Eventbrite SEO expert (and former copywriter):
When it comes to copywriting for SEO, it all starts with a keyword. Your primary goal is to make sure people can find your specific event if they were to start with a Google search. If you’re hosting a 5K run in San Francisco in June called the “SF Fog Run,” your first goal is to show up in search results for “SF Fog Run.”
Your secondary goal is to capture demand when people are searching for topics related to your event. Beyond your event title, you might consider topic-level keywords like “5Ks in San Francisco” or “running events in June.” Keep in mind that ranking for topics can prove challenging, depending on the competitiveness of your event category. For example, you might have a harder time ranking for “5K races” or “how to train for a 5K”.
Now that you know which keywords you want to focus on, let’s continue with the SF Fog Run event example, and fill in the important SEO elements accordingly.
Event copywriting guidelines for SEO
1. Title tag:
This is the title of your page as well as the headline of your Google listing. It is very important that this element contains your target keyword(s). In our case, that would be the primary keyword “SF Fog Run” with our secondary stretch keyword “5K,” making the title “SF Fog Run 5K.” That should hopefully be enough to get your page in the running (pun intended) for a first page ranking for “SF Fog Run” and potentially “SF 5Ks,” depending on the popularity of your event.
2. Meta description:
This is the description that will appear in the Google search results below the title tag. While this description doesn’t have ranking implications (meaning you don’t necessarily need to include your keyword), it can encourage people to click on your listing. In other words, think of your organic Google listing as an advertisement, and make a compelling pitch!
For our 5K example, we might try something like “Looking for a healthy, fun, and FREE activity? Sign up for the SF Fog Run on June 19 and enjoy an exhilarating run through San Francisco. Step up to the challenge & register today!” Note that this includes the date, the city, the name of the event, a selling point or two, and even a playful pun. In general, you’ll want to keep your meta description under 160 characters to avoid the copy getting truncated in search results.
3. H1:
Now that your titles and descriptions are ready to go, it’s time to seal the deal with a great headline. For the H1 (the headline of the page), try finding a way to include your keywords once again. You can even use the same language as your title tag.
4. Body Copy:
To create high-ranking copy, remember this simple rule: make it original and make it useful. Writing original copy that isn’t borrowed from another source is something that both site visitors and Google appreciate. If Google thinks your page is a duplicate of another, it may exclude your page from its search results. If you have an Eventbrite page, you may want to consider using slightly different language on your event website so Google doesn’t mistakenly hide it.
As for useful copy, ask yourself this question: “If I Googled my own event, would my page answer everything I need to know about it?” If not, what’s missing?
Writing for conversion
Now that you’ve led people to your page, it’s time to convert them from site visitors to ticket buyers.
We asked Joanna Wiebe, the original “conversion copywriter” and founder of the popular blog Copy Hackers, for her take on writing event website copy that sells:
If you were to lay out the world’s greatest “high-selling event page,” where would you start? What key elements would you include?
I’d start by thinking about where the prospect is at, which means identifying my “one reader” (as part of the Rule of One: one reader, one offer, one big idea, and one promise). How aware of this event is my one reader? What messages have they seen about my event before landing on this ticket or registration page, and what messages did they see immediately before landing on the page? The answers to those questions drive what goes on the page. The copy has to move the reader from where they are to where they need to be to buy a ticket to the event, and it can’t do that without answers to those questions.
So you kick off the top 10% of the page by matching where the prospect is at. And you take the remaining 90% of the page to convince the reader that your event is the cure to what ails them. Only when you get to the close should you start using persuasive elements like scarcity, urgency, incentives, or even social proof.
Do you see any key differences between selling an experience (like an event) as opposed to a consumer product?
They’re both selling the prospect a better, happier version of themselves. But while consumer products try to position their products as experiences, events actually are experiences. This ought to give events a leg up against consumer products, but does it?
The closer a prospect gets to considering attending an event, the more that event may become comparable to other equally expensive things — especially vacations. An event that is not a vacation — and 99.9% of events are not vacations — needs to come across on the page as better than a vacation. Hotels, food, friends — those are the stuff of vacations and events alike. So let’s say your event is a conference. How do you make your event hotel, your event food, your event networking, and your event activities sound better than the prospect would have planned for their own vacation? And then add the cherry on top: you don’t have to take vacation days for the event, and your boss pays for it.
Aside from your core messaging, let’s talk about other content you can include on your event page. Keep reading for ways to inspire page visitors to hit that “buy now” button before a distraction comes along.
Here’s an example of an event page on Eventbrite.
Giving page visitors the info they need
According to Eventbrite research on event-goer buying patterns, the top two places people bounce to after visiting your event page are YouTube and Google Images. Why? Because they’re looking for videos and photos that will show them what to expect from your event.
Event-goers use these sources to validate that your event will be worthwhile, that they will feel comfortable and enjoy it, and that it’s worth putting their reputation on the line by inviting friends. As you write your event page copy, include information to ease their concerns. Let them know the dress code, whether food and drinks will be served, and the number of attendees you expect.
Beyond your copy, keep people on your page by embedding photos and video clips that answer all of their questions. Take well-lit, professional photos of your space that capture the ambiance. If you’re hosting a musical act, make sure to include video clips or sound bites of performances. The more confident potential attendees feel about the experience they’re considering, the more likely they’ll complete the purchase.
Event pages are also a smart place to leverage social proof. “If you’ve run the event before, let the testimonials and stories of past attendees shape your site,” says Joanna Wiebe of Copy Hackers. “There are no sure-fire tricks in copywriting, but starting your page with a story goes a long way in nearly every case I’ve seen.”
“When people are looking for things to do, they want to consume as much information as possible around an event. They want to feel confident that they know what to expect, and that they’re choosing the experience that best matches how they want to spend their time and money.”
Tamara Mendelsohn, CMO at Eventbrite
We’ve talked about how to drive new visitors to your page through SEO, and how to use copy to drive sales once people are on your page. Next, let’s explore how to communicate with your audience in another place: their inboxes.
Creating effective emails
Chances are, you use email a lot for your planning, promotion, and post-event follow-up. Email is a direct line to your audience, and if used the right way, it can be a primary driver of your ticket sales. After all, a staggering 91% of people check their email every day, and 66% of online consumers have made a purchase because of an email.
Eventbrite’s research has shown that event-related emails generate open rates between 25 and 40%, and click-through rates between 25 and 40% — well above marketing email standards. Email is an extremely popular marketing channel, so you have to compete for attention in event-goers’ cluttered inboxes. While there are tons of email marketing strategies you can use to get a leg up on the competition (you’d be amazed at what a simple change in formatting can do), we’re going to focus on copy techniques here.
The two biggest influencers of whether or not your email gets opened are the first two lines of copy your attendees see: the name of the sender and the subject line.
Name of sender
As you’re writing event email copy, don’t neglect the name recipients see in their inbox. It’s a smart idea to send your emails from a recognisable source such as your organisation’s email alias, especially if it’s the first time you’re reaching out to an individual or group. To avoid getting your email trashed before it’s opened, let your reader know you’re a trusted source at a glance.
You may also want to test various sender names against each other to see which senders perform best. For example, you could send one version from your company name, and another from your name, your boss’s name, or the name of a popular speaker at your event. Once you’ve found a sender name that works, stick to it. Consistency breeds familiarity and trust.
Subject lines
According to MailChimp, the best email subject lines are 50 characters or less, so you’ll have to be selective in your word choice. There are many theories about subject lines, but in general, you want to be descriptive and provide the reader with a reason to open your message. Here are a few pro tips to consider when crafting your next email subject line:
1. Be specific
You want to let your reader know what to expect when they click. Are you sending a “Save the Date” for your beer festival? Your subject line could simply read: “Save the Date for Adelaide Brewfest on 10/20.”
2. Create a sense of urgency
Subject lines that create a sense of urgency or exclusivity can boost open rates by 22%. While you don’t want to come off as pushy (or get caught in a spam filter), urgency is a powerful tool for driving sales. A message like “Heads up: Tickets for Melbourne Brewfest are almost gone!” can be just the motivation last-minute ticket buyers need.
3. Make it personal
Personalising a subject line with the recipient’s name or city can increase open rates by 20%. You can use email marketing software to automatically personalise or localise your subject lines, or you use smart copy strategies to make your emails more personal. By segmenting out your email groups by geographies or attendee personas, you can craft targeted copy that mentions that group’s city or specific pain points.
4. Test, test, and test some more
Find out which copy resonates the most with your audience by A/B testing your subject lines. Look at your email data to see which formats inspired the most opens and clicks, and then use what you’ve learned in future emails. The more you experiment, the more you’ll learn!
Body copy
Keep promotional emails for events brief. Place essential information about your event such as the date, location, and a link to buy tickets at the top of the email. The less your reader has to scroll to find the important points, the better.
Use the body of the email to tell your reader the emotional benefits of attending your event. For example, “Dog training experts will take the stage,” can be re-framed to focus on the reader’s emotional benefit: “Solve your most frustrating training challenges with expert advice.”
Include visual content like past event photos or headshots of your speakers if you have them. Just don’t hide your call to action (CTA). Put your CTA at the very top and bottom of your email to make it as fast and easy as possible for attendees to find and click.
Calls to action (CTAs)
A CTA is a prompt for your reader to take an action. They often appear as succinct lines of copy or brightly coloured buttons. Your content should always include a CTA — whether it’s asking the reader to learn more about your organisation, check out a speaker lineup, or buy tickets to your event.
Effective CTAs are:
- Action-oriented: Leading with a verb is a smart move
- Singular: Multiple CTAs can create confusion; even if you include multiple buttons, stick to one message
- Clear: Your reader should know exactly what to expect when they click
Writing shareable social copy
Social media is one of your biggest allies when it comes to affordable event promotion. There are few places you can get your event in front of so many people for little to no cost.
The most commonly used platforms are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, but there are new social networks popping up all the time.
Once you’ve decided which social channel(s) to focus on, use these 10 pro copy tips from Eventbrite’s social media expert:
1. Keep it short and simple!
Studies show that shorter tweets generally have higher engagement. On Facebook and Instagram, try to keep the text short enough that readers don’t have to expand the post to read your whole message.
Pro tip: On Instagram, keep your caption short, and then put all your hashtags as the first comment.
2. Hook readers right away
People have short attention spans, and they’re likely skimming through busy feeds. Catch their attention with your first few words.
3. Use pronouns
Words like “we,” “ours,” “you,” and “yours” can make your posts feel more personal and targeted.
4. Keep it casual
You certainly want to be professional — and some events may warrant higher levels of formality — but in general, people are looking for casual, conversational content on social media. One way to sound more conversational is to use contractions (for example, “you’re” instead of “you are”).
5. Think about ways to save characters
Use an ampersand (&) instead of “and.” Use “2” instead of “two” and “4” instead of “four.” But before you use “2” instead of “to”/”too,” or “4” instead of “for” ask yourself if this is something that would annoy your audience.
6. Proofread
Comb your social post for typos before you post them. Better yet, ask a coworker to lend a second set of eyes to catch anything you may have missed.
7. Re-read
This is different than proofreading for errors or typos. Re-read your post, ideally out loud, before publishing to make sure it sounds the way you intended. This helps you to determine if your copy is clear or could be misinterpreted by your readers.
8. Have a clear CTA
Make sure it’s easy for people to take action. If you’re asking them to buy tickets, include a clearly labelled link to the ticketing page.
9. Include a photo
Posts with photos have statistically higher engagement rates (313% higher on Twitter) and will better catch people’s attention in crowded feeds.
10. Use relevant hashtags — in moderation
Hashtags can be a great way to get your content in front of new and relevant audiences (or just to add some fun commentary to your post). #But #nobody #wants #to #read #a #post #where #every #word #is #hashtagged.
Event hashtags
Hashtags are great for spreading the word about your event and collecting content from attendees after it’s all said and done. You can even use hashtags during your event to engage sponsors or start a conversation between guests and speakers.
To craft an effective event hashtag, make it:
- Relevant and descriptive: including your event name and the year is a common strategy
- Unique: #SocialMediaConference might be relevant and descriptive, but it’s not unique, so chances are people will be using it for conferences other than yours
- Short: the shorter the hashtag, the easier it is for people to remember and use it
- Easy to understand: abbreviations and acronyms are great for keeping hashtags short, but make sure the hashtag isn’t too complicated for people to decipher
Pro tip: Do a thorough search across platforms for the hashtag you want to use to ensure it isn’t already being used for a different purpose and doesn’t surface any inappropriate content.
Here are some examples of great event hashtags:
#CollisionConf for tech event Collision conference: The lengthy word “conference” has been shortened to “conf.” The result is a catchier, shorter hashtag.
#LIBfestival for the Lightning in a Bottle festival: This is a good example of shortening a long event name (instead of using #lightninginabottlefestival).
#BottleRock for the BottleRock music, food, wine, and beer festival: BottleRock created a great example of keeping your hashtag short and sweet. #BottleRock is unique enough that it doesn’t need additional words like “napa” or “festival” in a hashtag.
Now your big day is finally creeping up. You’re nearly done with your email promotions, and your Facebook ads have run their course. It’s time to start thinking about copy at your event.
Engaging your audience with at-event copy
At-event copy includes materials like signage, schedules, and handouts. In general, at-event copy is more functional than pre- and post-event copy, which is designed to provoke action. For example, the copy you write before or after your event may ask the reader to register for your event, download content, or take a survey. Your at-event copy is much more focused on helping attendees navigate their surroundings.
Here is advice for crafting crisp at-event copy from Eventbrite’s social media expert:
At-event copy tends to fall into three major buckets: logistical copy, brand-building copy, and instructive/demonstrative copy. Here’s how we think about each set of copy needs:
1. Logistical:
Logistical copy, such as on-site signage, should be fail-proof. Imagine walking into your event’s entrance for the first time. Would you know where to go next? And once you get there, would you know what you’re supposed to do?
Assume that people are always going to have questions. If you don’t anticipate those questions and answer them quickly, you’ll have a confusing, frustrating attendee experience on your hands.
Some questions that attendees may have are:
- How do I access the Wi-Fi?
- Where are the restrooms?
- Where is the nearest public transportation?
- Does this event have food options that fit my dietary restrictions?
And remember, there are many formats you can use to communicate with attendees beyond traditional at-event signage. Consider options such as monitors, floor decals, event apps, notebooks with tip-in pages, swag, lanyards, and badges.
2. Brand-Building:
In this type of copy, your messaging should reinforce the purpose of your gathering. This is where you deliver on the benefit you promised attendees in pre-event communications.
Let’s say you used the event tagline in your promotions: “The only conference in Manchester bringing senior digital decision-makers ground-breaking insights.” Think about how you can weave that message into your at-event materials: Do you include it in a notebook that you leave on every attendee’s chair? Do you print a custom coffee sleeve that says, “Fuel up for a morning of ground-breaking insights”?
The more consistent you can be with your messaging across all of your at-event collateral and swag, the more you deliver on your brand promise.
3. Instructive:
Instructive or demonstrative copy talks about your company, brand, or product. Collateral should be easily digestible and concise. In other words, if you didn’t know anything about a company, you should be able to pick up a one-pager or postcard and understand what the company does and how it can help you within a few sentences.
Overall, keep your at-event communication simple and consistent. When it comes to on-site branding, quality wins over quantity.
Writing effective post-event surveys
After your event, send an email thanking attendees, and ask what they thought about your event.
Post-event surveys are a great way to know what worked and what didn’t. Use simple, multiple-choice questions for the best results. For example, instead of asking, “Which session at Unicorn Con did you enjoy the most?” ask participants to rate various sessions on a scale of one to 10. Getting feedback straight from the source is key to improving your events, year after year.
Tools to help
Here are some handy tools to help you put your copywriting know-how to work.
This free app helps make your copy bold and clear by scoring your copy’s reading grade level, highlighting overly complex sentences, and calling out common errors.
The free blog post headline analyser will score your overall headline quality and rate its ability to result in social shares, increased traffic, and SEO value.
Grammarly is a writing-enhancement platform that proofreads for adherence to more than 250 grammar rules.
A simple tool that shows you which words in a title should be capitalised (and which shouldn’t).
Free CTA templates from Hubspot:
Stuck on your calls to action? Get a wealth of examples here.
Resource sites:
Loaded with actionable short posts, theoretical posts, audio interviews, and videos, the copy blog by Copy Hackers will teach you to write copy that converts.
Lots of great foundational advice can be found for the beginner here, with more advanced topics and techniques also covered to take you all the way through to being a confident copywriting expert.
The ultimate test of good copy
The true test of all of the copywriting you do for events is whether or not attendees buy tickets or register. If you take the time to understand your audience’s needs and communication style and develop your brand tone of voice accordingly, chances are you’re going to draw in the attendees you’re looking for.
Crafting excellent copy takes time and practice, and the more diligent you are about testing your copy and listening to your attendees, the more effective your event writing will become.
Ready to start selling tickets for your next event? Eventbrite has all of the tools and technology you need to sell tickets online.
