The Art of Inviting
Invitations are a powerful tool — all on their own, they change an event by priming your guests to prepare or behave in a certain way. Think of invitations not only as a sales tool, but as part of how you design your party. A great producer is like a great conductor and the audience is the largest section in their orchestra, well crafted invitations help them play and keep them all on the same page.
The days of Facebook events getting people’s attention are over. Selecting an invitation service that will get your guests’ attention is increasingly essential. Passing around a generic link for a party is fine for fully public events, but that URL could end up anywhere. For any event with a curated guest list (private or semi-private) Secret Party is the utility of choice. It has options like sending each guest a custom event-link with limited-uses and a select number of +1s.
The complex privacy settings on Secret Party mean you can invite thousands of people who were all either directly selected by the hosts or their network of friends — leaving even large events looking to grow their attendance feeling intimate, safer, and off the public radar.
When it comes to writing the text for your invitation, a good description should give people an idea of what they are attending by including a rough flow of happenings so there’s less guesswork in determining what the event will be like to attend.
For example:
We’ll serve champagne during the welcome hour, after which dinner will be served, following dinner we’ll play cards.
Or
Please arrive promptly, as we’ll be starting the film screening at 8:00pm, after the movie, the director will speak and answer questions.
Or
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Please feel free to arrive whenever you are ready, we’ll be dancing all night.
etc.
An invitation helps create meaning by telling the story of why the gathering is taking place. Events with a purpose or story inspire more excitement, so if you’re marking a particular occasion or gathering with a clear intention, sharing that on the invitation is valuable.
Try to keep your event description clear and concise so someone can take it in quickly. It’s tempting to write a lot of fluffy flavor text, but what you really want is to give someone the information they need in an easy to digest way, with a bit of flavor to help them understand the vibe. Do not waste your attendee’s time: treat their attention as precious when you write to them.
Format your invitation for clarity.
Resist the temptation to replace your logistical framework with flavor text. Humans love to feel prepared, help them. You can impart a lot of style while also giving answers to the questions a new guest will have when they open your message.
If it’s not already known, your invitation is a great place to say whether the event is happening indoors or outdoors, if there are any relevant gear suggestions like whether they should bring a water bottle, hiking shoes, or dress in a certain way. I love including a style guide using an image-board service, like Pinterest, to visually convey the dress code and get people inspired. When doing this, be realistic in the tone you’re setting (not merely aspirational) and try to have diversity in the images you select for your dress code. Absent visual references, people understand terms like casual dress, semi-formal, formal, and black tie.
If you’re sending invitations via a digital service, like Secret Party, remember the internet is untethered from geography, and be sure to mention what region or city your event is happening in if the address is not visible to everyone viewing the page.
Consider including an accessibility footnote section at the bottom of your invite page where you list insights such as whether the venue is ADA accessible, if there are gender-neutral restrooms, whether or not there is ample seating, a smoking section, information on dietary accommodations for events serving food, if there is any covid mitigation policy in place, and so-forth. If you have spoken presenters as part of your event, this is a great place to mention whether or not you have sign-language interpreters.
When you answer key questions, you recapture the interest of people who would skip an event that isn’t giving them the information they need to determine their interest up front, and you save yourself the time of answering questions for people who would write and ask. An excellent invitation should be many things, but cryptic isn’t generally one of them.
The way you invite people, the tone you set, and the details you provide will change the outcome of your event in dramatic ways, design your invitations with care.
