Virtual Event Email Templates that Engage and Convert

By:

Ashley Levesque

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Ever hosted a virtual event that felt like throwing a party where too few guests showed up? You're not alone. Many marketers pour time and resources into planning great virtual experiences only to end up with low signups and patchy attendance. 

Even worse, if you don’t have the right follow-up, attendees who do engage during your event may lose interest in the aftermath, forgetting your key insights and offers.

Without effective communication matched to each event phase, you’ll miss major opportunities to nurture your leads, connect with your customers, and deliver strong ROI.

The standard one-size-fits-all email blast won’t work, though. Attendees want comms that speak to them personally and address their unique needs.

Banzai’s latest research shows that companies who send customized email reminders more than triple webinar and virtual event attendance rates (from 9% to an impressive 35%).*

Our virtual event email templates are designed to cut through the digital noise, engage your audience, and build long-term connections with your audience. We’ll share templates tailored to every stage in the event lifecycle, from irresistible invites to effective pre-event nudges and conversion-centered follow-up. 

By tailoring each template to your attendees, you're not just sending out a message; you're creating an experience — one that begins at the first "save the date" and continues well beyond the "thank you for attending."

* Banzai Webinar Statistics Report, 2024

🔥Ready to Boost Your Virtual Event ROI? 

Maximize attendance, engagement, and follow-up with proven email strategies.

📥Download the Full Template Pack

Building Your Virtual Event Email Strategy

Truly effective virtual event email strategies are multifaceted and personalized. With attention-grabbing messages tailored to every stage of the event, you’ll guide your audience seamlessly from initial interest to post-event loyalty.

Understanding the attendee journey and matching the right communications to the right moments is key.

Banzai offers virtual event solutions that help you drive attendance through emails — and engage your audience once they get there

Different Types of Virtual Event Emails

Let's break down the key types of emails you'll need to send to drive signups, attendance, and long-term impact.

Invitation emails: A great event invite message is a core part of your strategy for attracting attendees to virtual events. These emails spark interest and drive registrations by clearly communicating the value and using compelling calls to action. This might be a save-the-date announcement, a formal invitation, or an early-bird signup offer.

Confirmation emails: Sending a confirmation message welcomes new registrants, locks in their spot, shares key event access details, and pumps up even more excitement with extra insights, countdowns, or special content offers. 

Reminder emails: These communications notify busy registrants that the event is approaching and their seat is reserved, remind them of all the value they’ll get from the event, and create a sense of excitement. 

Post-event follow-up emails: Immediate follow-up messages generally thank attendees for attending and tap into momentum and interest while it’s fresh. They often include CTAs, special offers, slide decks, or event replay materials. With advanced virtual events tools like Demio, you can segment your audience based on who was most engaged during the session so you can do targeted follow-up and nurture the most promising leads.

Post-event no-show emails: These aim to re-engage registrants who didn’t attend by sharing what they missed and offering value through recordings or replays, special offers, or invites to future events.

Extra offers emails: Sending your attendees more content and offers after some time has passed keeps you top of mind. These could be virtual event swag bags, insider podcast episodes, discounts on subscriptions, or first access to products pre-launch.

6 Virtual Event Email Marketing Best Practices

Every event message type has its own goals and personality. But there are essential email best practices you can use to support your virtual event marketing strategies

These six proven techniques will help you create event emails that inspire opens, boost engagement, and drive attendance.

  1. Use compelling subject lines

Grab your reader’s attention in their crowded inbox by using action words in your subject lines and highlighting exclusivity, and urgency. For a cloud computing summit, that might look like: “Only 50 Spots Left — Register Now or Miss Out on $5K in AWS Credits“

  1. Clearly frame the value

Focus your copy and content on communicating the specific value and key takeaways for event attendees — rather than using generic brand messaging. For example, you could tease readers with a clear, quantifiable benefit like “Discover the 5 Secrets to Doubling Your Sales Next Quarter"

  1. Keep things personal

Use first names and individualize information based on past event attendance and company roles to make every email feel tailored and one-to-one.

  1. Optimize for different devices 

Research shows that ~55% of emails are opened on mobile. With that in mind, make sure your templates render well across devices with easy-click buttons, short paragraphs, and bold fonts.

  1. Make your CTAs clear and effective 

Every email should have a clear, clickable call-to-action button with action-driving language, so readers understand exactly what to do next. 

  1. Surprise and delight your audience

Stand out by getting creative and giving unexpected treats —  from insider sneak peeks at the event to discount codes, gated downloads, and more.

Craft virtual event emails that stand out — and get opened. Source.

12 Proven Templates for Impactful Virtual Event Emails

Crafting the right outreach email for each moment is key to virtual event success. Use these customizable templates to guide you.

Invitation email templates that draw a crowd

Great invitation emails act as the handshake before the meeting, setting the tone for your event and sparking interest in what’s to come.

Here are three invite email templates crafted for maximum impact: 

1. Save-the-Date Email Template

Send this 6-8 weeks before your event to announce your event and get it on your audience’s radar. 

2. Early Bird Email Template

You’ll generally want to send this 4-5 weeks before your event, following the save-the-date mail. It’s a good idea to encourage early registrations by offering a discount or bonus and emphasizing the limited time to act.

3. Official Invitation Email

Send your official invite several weeks before the event, with rich details including the speakers, agenda, and what attendees will gain by joining.

Confirmation email templates to generate buzz

With Demio’s virtual event software, you’ll get ready-made templates you can tailor to send the perfect registration emails to your attendees

4. Template Confirming Registration

A great confirmation email reassures attendees that they’re in and builds anticipation for what’s ahead.

Reminder email templates to build anticipation

Great reminder emails nudge attendees to attend the upcoming event with the right mix of urgency, excitement, and value. 

It’s a good idea to send reminder emails at different stages pre-event. 

Banzai’s virtual events tool Demio sends out branded, customizable, automated notifications for you 24 hours before, 1 hour before, and 15 minutes before — it just takes a click of a button!

Simplify your event countdown with Demio’s reminder options

Here are three powerful templates you can use to remind attendees that your event is unmissable.  

5. Speaker Announcement Reminder Email Template

Generate buzz and keep your event top-of-mind by announcing key speakers or sessions in your reminder emails

Pro tip: 

Social proof is one of the best ways of driving new event signups and buzz. 

Add a section to your email templates making it easy for registrants to invite friends — here’s some copy you can use: 

“Share your excitement on social media and invite your network to join the experience! Click the links below to spread the word:

Share on Twitter: [Pre-populated Tweet Link]

Share on LinkedIn: [Pre-populated Post Link]

Share on Facebook: [Event Page Link]

Let's build an amazing community together for [Event Name]! 🌐👥”

To get even better results, use our Boost add-on to turn registrants into your promotion ambassadors, pre-building social sharing content they can share and incentivizing them to spread the word.

Boost provides easy ways to share event content on socials at the click of a button — turning your attendees into your marketing team!

6. One-Week Countdown Email Template

Send out a message a week before the event to make sure it’s on attendees' calendars, reinforce the value of attending, and create a sense of anticipation.

7. 1-Hour Before Email Template

Send this final nudge to attendees an hour before the event, reminding them the event will start soon and ensuring they have everything they need to join seamlessly.

Templates for post-event emails that continue the conversation

Great follow-up emails maintain the momentum, providing extra value, nurturing leads, and encouraging further engagement.

8. Thank You Email Template

Within 24 hours after the event, send an email showing appreciation to attendees and reinforcing the value they gained by participating.

Remember: Demio’s virtual events tools make it easy to segment your event audience based on who attended and even who focused or engaged most. That means that in a single click, you can send specialized follow-ups to different audience segments, like making sure that only attendees get certain messages.

9. Survey Email Template

1-2 days after the event, send a quick survey to gather feedback you can use to improve future events and show attendees how much you value their opinions.

No show email templates to re-engage your audience

Post-event no show emails are an opportunity to win back those who missed out, offering them a second chance to connect and catch up

10.  Email Template for No Shows

Extra resources email templates for lasting impact

Sending additional resources and offers a week or so after an event provides continuous value, ramping up the path to conversion and deepening engagement.

11.  Book a Demo Email

A few days after the event, once attendees have had a chance to digest the information presented, you may want to send your most interested participants a conversions-focused demo email.

12.  Lead Magnet Email

Virtual events are also a fantastic way to grow your email list, letting you send relevant resources to attendees who’ve opted in.

Leveraging Virtual Event Email Marketing for Success

The Demio analytics dashboard shows attendee engagement insights you can use to target your follow-up emails to the most active participants

Being strategic about your email strategy can deliver major impact for your virtual events. Personalizing your templates and aligning them to each stage of the attendee journey boosts signups, attendance, engagement, reach, and overall ROI. 

But running and promoting effective virtual events demands time and marketing resources, even before we get onto the post-event lead nurturing. 

Banzai’s virtual event marketing solutions help you to boost acquisition, engagement, and analytics.

With Banzai’s tool Demio, you’ll be able to: 

  • Automate customized registration confirmations and reminder emails
  • Segment your audience based on attendance and engagement for targeted follow-up campaigns
  • Gain powerful data on registrations, attendance, drop-offs, focus time, and more
  • See who engaged most via chat, Q&A, downloads, etc., and score leads in real time
  • Boost virtual event engagement with interactive tools like chat, Q&A, polls, and more
  • Expand your reach with live, on-demand, and automated events

You can also turbocharge your promotion with Boost, which equips (and incentivizes) attendees to easily share events via email and social, generating word-of-mouth buzz, driving signups, and giving you new contacts. 

With Banzai's solutions, you can promote and deliver wildly successful virtual events that cultivate your pipeline, build your brand, and engage your audiences.

🔥Ready to Boost Your Virtual Event ROI? 

Maximize attendance, engagement, and follow-up with proven email strategies.

📥Download the Full Template Pack!

Frequently asked questions about virtual event email templates

How can I measure the success of my virtual event email campaigns?

To measure the success of your virtual event email campaigns, focus on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as open rate, click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and email bounce rate. 

You can also use Banzai’s tools, such as Demio, for powerful virtual event data showing signups,  attendance, drop-offs and giving you insights into focus time and which attendees are engaging most with your content, downloads, and chats, enabling you to prioritize leads effectively and improve your events — and promotions.

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