Communications¶
It’s important to send emails to folks about various events. You can combine some of these emails, but it’s often best to send around 7-10 total emails for the conference.
This section will cover emails sent to attendees. Communications with speakers and sponsors are covered in Speakers and Call for Proposals and Sponsorships sections.
Emails to send¶
- Date Announcement
- Call for Proposals
- Ticket Prices
- CFP reminder (1 week out)
- Announcing Presentations and Speakers
- Auxiliary events (Hike, Writing Day, Reception, Party)
- Welcome
- Thank you
Each email will continue to list additional sponsors added to the conference.
Email content¶
It’s easy to forget a key element while writing an email. Here’s a description of what every type of email should content.
Feel free to adapt those emails to your need: you may want to combine two in one, add more content in some. For example, it’s always a good idea to put a link to your CFP will it’s still open, link and info about ticket sales, your sponsors, and all the little news that will get people excited about the conference.
To help you get a better idea of what you need to write, we’ve put links to previous conferences’ emails.
Date Announcement¶
- “Date Announcement for WTD”: Write a small welcoming message with the date and place of the conference and just enough details to get people excited
- “The Conference”: Make a short description of the conference. Describe the spirit of the event and mention topics from previous WTD conferences. Use the end of this section to give more details about your venue (link to website and location on a map) and schedule.
- “Auxiliary Events”: List auxiliary activities (hike, city tours, social events, etc) that will be held during the conference. Give a short description for each entry.
- “While you’re Waiting”: People should now be excited and will want to know more info that what you’ve provided. Give info on how to reach you and how to get future news (mailing list, Twitter, etc). Don’t forget to ask for sponsors!
- “Get Excited!”: Write a small conclusion: make everyone (programmers, writers, designers, developer advocates, etc) feel welcomed. Don’t forget to mention the CFP: if you have a date already, perfect, if not, “soon” and an invitation to start gathering ideas will do.
Date announcement emails from previous WTD conferences:
Call for Proposals¶
Keep it short and go to the essential: friendly reminder that everyone can do it, link to the CFP, deadline.
CFP emails from previous WTD conferences:
Ticket Prices¶
- “Announcing Ticket Sales”: Write a small introduction which includes when is happening the conference and a link to its website.
- “Tickets”: Describe your price policy and, if relevant, if you have any scholarship tickets.
- “Ticket Sales”: List your different tickets (corporate, independent, student) on normal and early bird prices. Don’t forget to describe our your early bird price works.
- “Conclusion”: Say a few nice words :)
Tickets emails from previous WTD conferences:
CFP reminder (1 week out)¶
Make it small: end of the CFP, where potential speakers can find help and previous examples. It’s also a good place to mention your sponsors.
Call for Proposals reminder emails from previous WTD conferences:
Announcing Presentations and Speakers¶
- “Announcing Presentations and Speakers”: Get people excited!
- “Presentations”: Do a list of talks with speakers name and link to the abstract. You can add a few words at the end about how you selected the talks and if you plan to do lightning talks.
Announcing Presentations and Speakers emails from previous WTD conferences:
Auxiliary Events¶
Depending on what you plan, you will need to give different kind of info:
- Name of the event.
- Need to register or not.
- Need to bring the conference badge or not.
- Cover by ticket price or not.
- Open to family or restricted.
- Where it’s happening. Where and when to meet if you plan to move.
- Things people need to read or bring to the extra event.
- For the party: mention if there is food and/or beverages (alcoholic and soft).
Auxiliary events emails from previous WTD conferences:
Welcome¶
- “Welcome to WTD”: Say hi and make any last minute announcements you need to.
- “How to Enjoy WTD”: List every piece of info people need to know (food during the event, Code of Conduct, auxiliary events and how to register, hashtag for the conference, etc).
- “Get Excited!”: Small conclusion and kind words.
Welcome emails from previous WTD conferences:
Thank you¶
- “Thank you”: Give stats if you have any and thank people for coming.
- “Survey”: Put a link to attendees survey if relevant.
- “Video”: Put a link to talks’ video if they’re already online.
- “How to keep in touch sections”: Make different sections for meetups, WTD’s Slack, WTD’s forum, mailing list, etc.
- “Notes”: Ask people who were attending unrecorded events (unconference) if they have any notes they could share. Tell them how to do it.
- “Conclusion”: Thank people again and invite them to next year conference.
Thank you emails from previous WTD conferences:
How to send email¶
We write up the emails to send and post them on out blog. Generally, it’s best to send a tweet with the blog post, and then wait for an hour or two to send the email. This gives folks time to spot errors so we can fix them before sending the email :)
Process¶
The process is:
- Create a new MailChimp campaign with the email title being the blog post title
- Copy HTML from the blog post
- Remove Post title & Header links from the blog post (Regex is
<a class="headerlink" .+</a>for search & replace) - Paste HTML into MailChimp “Code” editor
- Remember to edit the Preview text in the Design tab
- Send a test email to yourself from MailChimp
- Once everything looks good, hit the big button
