If your organization is like many of our clients, your conference invitation is a really big deal. You look forward to and plan your conference all year, and it’s a key event where you connect with your members and build education and community.
We’ve worked with a number of organizations to create a conference invitation video, and the strategy has always been a hit and successful in boosting attendance, and therefore revenue.
Our top 6 tips for a great conference invitation video
- Tell your audience exactly what they’ll get at the conference. Identify the key theme, key offerings and, importantly, the benefits they get from attending.
- Clearly convey in your conference invitation when and where the conference is and how to register.
- If possible, include a clickable action button to take them right to the registration page.
- Script your message so your conference invitation covers all the right points concisely. We recently wrote about the pros and cons of scripting. This is a great opportunity for scripting because the conference invitation is a short and sweet message.
- Choose a good spokesperson, someone the attendees will recognize and who can speak clearly and authentically.
- Keep the conference invitation short. 30-90 seconds is best.
The Community Associations Institute’s video conference invitation we filmed and edited exemplifies all of these principles, including using the Vimeo video platform for a direct registration page click at the video’s close.
Thomas M. Skiba, CAI’s Chief Executive Officer, acted as spokesperson—a personable voice that virtually anyone in the target audience will recognize. Many organizations use their top executive for their conference invitation to emphasize the importance of the event to their organization’s mission. He was able to hit all the key points in a succinct way in just a few takes, even without a script. Further, by using video, CAI set the tone for a forward-thinking and contemporary conference; it’s one more thing that told attendees how exciting and fresh the conference would be.
Another smart thing CAI did was to have us film this conference invitation video at the same time as four online training program introduction videos, and material for a video for their related foundation in which he was also going to appear. As a result, the conference invitation video had an extremely low marginal cost, and a very robust return on investment.
As your organization thinks about gaining the maximum crowd and revenue from an upcoming conference, a conference invitation video is a great idea to start planning for now.
