How to Create Webinar Emails on BigMarker

New as of 05/26/2022: You can now pull a presenter's first name and last name from email tokens. 

The BigMarker virtual event solution comes with a suite of automated event-level emails. These emails are sent by default from the BigMarker platform, although you can change the send date and time within the email editor. You can create new messages or delete pre-existing messages as desired. All emails can be customized with your branding, colors, and unique copy within the BigMarker platform. 

What kinds of event emails can I send through BigMarker? 

Below are the automated event-level emails included in our email suite: 

• Invitation Email: Invitation email templates automatically include the title, date, description, and registration link to your webinar or online event. In addition to the initial invitation, invitation reminders are sent to recipients who did not register at the following time intervals: one day after the first invite is sent, one month before the event, and one day before the event.

• Registration Confirmation Email: Immediately upon sign up and payment (if applicable), registrants receive a confirmation email listing the date and time of the event, logistical details, and a link to BigMarker’s system requirements. 

• Registration Reminder Email: Reminders are crucial for optimizing your event’s show-up rate. two registration reminder emails are sent to everyone who has signed up for your event, coming one day and 30 minutes before its scheduled start time. 
• Follow Up Email: Sent to all registrants following the event, this can include a feedback survey, a link to the event replay, and a general thank you message, as well as any necessary call to action, offers or trials.
• Presenter Notification and Reminder Email: Presenters are automatically sent a confirmation email when they are added to a session as a speaker. Then, because nobody wants a speaker accidentally skipping their session, two reminder emails are sent to all slated presenters. These are sent one day and one hour before the event as a whole begins, regardless of when each individual speaker is scheduled to present. NOTE: These emails include the speaker’s individual entry link to their session, so it’s crucial that you enter each presenter’s most current email address to the BigMarker platform.
• General Email: These emails are separate from invitation, confirmation and reminder emails. Create entirely custom emails acting as offers or announcements that can be sent to your general audience, or filter to certain individuals based on custom registration fields. These can be sent before or after your event.

How do I create event emails?

Now that you know the types of emails you can send, let’s see how they look. Below, we’ll walk through the buildout of an event email on BigMarker. 

To create an event-level email, you’ll proceed from your BigMarker series dashboard to the Emails and Invitations tab.

Under Reminders and Notifications, you’ll see a list of the different types of automated emails available, which are pre-scheduled to send before your event. To activate or deactivate any of these messages, toggle them on or off. 

To customize and send an automated email from a pre-existing template, select your desired email type in the list below and click Edit. 

This will open a template, which you will edit and customize for your event’s needs in the next steps. 

You can also create additional emails of each type by pressing the blue Add New Emails button, then selecting your desired email category in the pop up that appears. 

Note: For On-Demand recordings, you will receive a “Recording is ready” email after it has been processed. You can turn off these recording emails on the Edit tab, toggling off Admin Recording Notification Email

How do I design and send my virtual event email?

No matter which email you choose, you will customize it within the BigMarker template with the following steps. Note that because you are sending your email to pre-existing segments of your event contact list, you will not need to manually upload a list of contacts to receive this email. 

Recipients: First, you'll schedule your email using the prompt below. 

For General Emails, you have the ability to select who receives them. You can choose from Presenters, Registrants, Attendees, Registered but did not attend, and now Registrants who registered with custom registration fields.

When using Registrants matches certain field values, it will populate a list of contacts to send to registrants that have answered specific answers to the custom registration field. Select the custom registration field for this email using the top dropdown menu. Then, select the answers you’d like that are associated with the custom registration field in the bottom dropdown menu.

Email Content: Your event’s date, time, description, and registration link are automatically populated in the message. Within the editor, you can also add or edit your subject line, body copy, and a closing message. To personalize your email, you can also add tokens that pull in your invitees’ names, as well as your webinar’s title and other attributes (find a list of tokens in the Series Detail tab).

You can convert your email to be customized fully with HTML (learn more here) and also send a calendar request with your emails as well (learn more here).

As you edit, changes are reflected in real-time on a preview due right. 

Tokens that can be included in your email: 

(Note: For Registration Confirmation emails, you are able to modify the call-to-action button text and link of the registration emails that are sent before and after your event. You can do this in the Button text and Button text (after webinar) fields.) 

Next, navigate to the Footer tab, then enter your company's contact information. Ensure that Unsubscribe text is showing and you've included a link to your company website under Footer Logo Link, in compliance with local and international data privacy regulations. You can add a Footer description, which goes underneath the Unsubscribe text, as well as a logo if desired.

For your email's content and footer, you are able to save your settings as the default for the channel's email. To do so, check off Set this email content as my channel's default email or Set this footer as my channel's default email footer under the footer section. 

Email Design: BigMarker emails are fully customizable, letting you incorporate your branding, and colors into your virtual event promotion. Here, I’ve added the BigMarker logo and colors to my event email. Click Review and Schedule to continue. 

Review and Schedule: You will proceed to a confirmation page, which will confirm that you've entered all the required information or prompt to add any missing content. 

Test Your Email: Once you're ready to send, you can send yourself a test message by clicking Send A Test at the bottom of the above page, then entering your email in the pop-up that appears. Click Save and Schedule, just right of Send a Test, to complete the process.