Event & Webinar Reminders

Registration is not attendance

Two hundred people register and sixty turn up. The gap is not interest, it is memory: they signed up three weeks ago and the email reminder went to a tab nobody opened.

A reminder about an event someone registered for is a utility message — the cheaper category, approved readily, because it concerns something the recipient already opted into. Send one the day before and one on the day, to the people who actually registered.

Which kind of message this is

Utility, as long as the message is about the event they registered for. Mentioning your next paid course in the same message makes it marketing, with different pricing and stricter consent rules.

How to set it up

1
Capture registrations with a form
Ask for the WhatsApp number and say you will send reminders there. That sentence is the consent.
2
Tag by event
One tag per event, so a reminder reaches its own attendees and nobody else.
3
Send the day before and the day of
Two reminders is where most of the attendance gain sits. The day-of one should carry the joining link.
4
Follow up afterwards in the open window
Attendees who reply open a 24-hour window, so the recording, the slides and any questions cost nothing to send.

What goes wrong

— Reminding people who did not register. That is promotion, not a reminder, and the category changes with it.
— Four reminders. Past two, you are training people to mute you before the event they were going to attend.
— Putting the joining link only in the first reminder. The one that matters is the one closest to the start.
— Attaching a pitch for the next event. It reclassifies the whole message as marketing, and Meta may re-categorise the template afterwards.

Questions

Are event reminders utility or marketing?

Utility, when they concern an event the recipient registered for. Inviting people who have not registered is marketing, and combining both in one message makes the whole thing marketing.

How many reminders should I send?

Two: the day before and shortly before it starts. That captures most of the attendance improvement. Beyond that you are risking blocks, which cost you reach on every future send.

Can I send the recording afterwards?

To anyone who replied to a reminder, yes, free, inside their 24-hour window. To everyone else it needs a template — and a recording sent to non-attendees is closer to marketing than utility.

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