How to Create Webinar Emails and Invitations

Emails can be 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 and customize design as well.

New as of 03/06/2023: Virtual Events plan holders are able to pull their virtual event's QR code into their event's email through email token. It will populate as an image within the email for attendees to use. 

This does not apply to invitation or certificate of completion emails

 

We provide 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. 

 

Table of Contents: 

1. Types of Event Emails 

2. Creating Event Emails

3. Designing your Email

4. Testing Your Email 

 

 

Types of Event Emails 

 

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
  • Reminder Emails: Reminders are crucial for optimizing your event’s show-up rate. Reminder emails are sent to everyone who has signed up for your event, and can be edited based on your event. They include: 
    • Invitation Reminder (as of May 1st 2024, these are Enterprise only) 
    • Registration Confirmation 
    • Recording Published Notification
    • Post-Webinar 
    • Certificate of Completion 
    • Webinar Feedback Survey

Webinar Feedback Survey's can be sent to series.  These can be sent to those who have attended a live session, checked in virtually or checked in on-site. 

 

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For Series Survey emails, you can set this to send to only the sessions the attendee attended. In the Webinar Survey section of your Series, check off Only show this question to attendees of specific sessions

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  • 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. General emails can also be sent out to your general audience during a specific time frame, allowing you to shoutout offers or special content to those specific registrants. These can be sent before or after your event.

  • 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 speaker's individual entry link to their session, so it's crucial that you enter each presenter's most current email address into BigMarker


  • 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.
  • Admin Notification Email: Sent specifically to Admins of your channel, these include a transcript of all public chats, Q&As, polls results, and offer downloads after the event has ended.
  • Refund Email: This will be available if the webinar or series has paid registration.
    You’ll have the option to send this email when processing a refund.
  • Cancellation Email: Sent as confirmation that a registration has been cancelled.

 

 

Creating Event Emails

 

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

You will see invitation emails at the top, with the rest of the email suite below. You can easily navigate to the email type you would like to customize and set. When visiting this page, you will notice that some emails are turned ON. You can turn these OFF while designing them as to prevent any emails getting prematurely sent out. 

Tip! We recommend, after creating your event, to go to your emails and turn them OFF to prevent emails getting sent before they are ready. 

To start designing your emails, 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. 

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Note: As of May 1st 2024, Invitation reminders are  only available to Enterprise plans. 


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

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Designing your Email

 

No matter which email you choose, you will customize it within the BigMarker template with the following steps.

Note: 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 the email. 

 

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

Note: Only Invitations, Invitation Reminders, Registration Reminder, Recording Notifications, Post-Webinar, Webinar Feedback, General Emails  and Presenter Reminder emails start off with Recipients. Registration Reminders, Certificate of Completion and Presenter Notifications will not need to select the recipients for the emails. 

 

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Each email's Recipient settings will vary slightly. For example Invitation Reminder emails get sent out to invitees that have not registered while Registration Reminder emails will be sent to those registrants that have registered for your event.

However, each will have 3 dropdown menus to select from, which you can set to specify the time after or before the webinar to send. You can keep these recipient email settings general, or click or send at a specific date & time to switch to a specific date and time. 

Note: General Emails have different Recipient settings. You are able to adjust who receives these emails, such as: Presenters, Registrants, Attendees, Registered but did not attend and Registrants that match certain field values (aka custom registration fields). 

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Once that is sent, you will click Next: Edit Design to move to the design portion of your email.

 

Email Design: BigMarker emails are fully customizable, letting you incorporate your branding, and colors into your virtual event promotion.You can choose a set design template and then customize even more by adjusting the images, colors and settings of: 

  • Logo
  • Background Color 
  • Button & link color 
  • Button Text Color 
  • Show/Hide the View Webinar button on the top/bottom 
  • Show/Hide/Remove/Change Presenter image  

 

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On the right hand side is a live-preview of how your email will look. Everything that is adjusted in the settings will reflect in this image. 

To move to editing your email's content, click Next: Edit Content. 

 

When setting your email's content, there are three sections of customizable components: Email Content, Webinar Details and Footer. 

Note: In the Email Content section, you can convert your email to raw HTML, meaning you can create a fully customizable email from HTML/CSS. When doing this, any email design created will disappear. You can convert this back to BigMarker's email builder, but any design settings will have to be re-set. To learn more about raw HTML for emails, click here

 

Email Content: Within this editor, you will be able to add and edit the subject line, body copy and closing message of your email. Your event’s date, time, description, and registration link are automatically populated in the message. Again, as you edit the changes are reflected in real-time on a preview due right. Additional parts to customize include: 

  • Reply Address (send replies to) 
  • Sub-title 
  • Headline 
  • Webinar Start at time
  • Webinar Requirements 
  • Button Text 
  • Button Link (only available Premier and Enterprise plan holders) 
  • Sender name
  • ICS Files (only available to Enterprise plan holders) 
  • Contact info 

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When customizing the email's content, you will notice that some fields are populated already with Email Tokens. These are variables that pull your event's attributes into your email automatically. At the bottom is a list of all the tokens available to put into your email:

Note: Some of the tokens listed below are for Enterprise plan holders only. If interested, please contact our Events Experts at sales@bigmarker.com

 

Tip! You can create custom email tokens from custom registration fields. Click here to learn more. 

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. 

 

 

Webinar Details: Here is where your webinar's details will show at the bottom of your email's content. Minimal is needed to change here, as it populates your webinar's link, date, duration, webinar ID and About section automatically. You can customize the email tokens here or change the Webinar details text. 

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Footer: This is where you can sign off on your email at the bottom. To be in compliance with local and international data privacy regulations, you must include: your company's contact information, who the email was sent by, the mailing address, Unsubscribe text, a footer logo image, footer link and footer description

 

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Note: If you do not enter in your company's mailing address and who this email is sent by, you cannot move forward with scheduling and sending your email. 

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. 

To move onto the last portion of your email, click Next: Review & Schedule

 

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. Click Save and Schedule to complete the process. 

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Testing 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. 

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Can I view Analytics of my Emails? 

Note: Email Analytics are only available for Enterprise plans. If interested, please contact our Events Experts at sales@bigmarker.com.

Analytics are available ONLY for emails sent after September 23rd, 2022. Any emails sent prior to this will not have an analytics report.

 

View a comprehensive list of analytics for your webinar or series emails, containing delivery rates, bounce rates, click rates and more. These reports get updated in real-time and show the individual email addresses that are sent to the recipient, if it was sent or blocked and more. 

Click the graph icon to open up a slide out window that will give you an overview of the email’s performance. 

 

You can download a report by clicking Download Report at the bottom to get a file with every email campaign's analytics. 

 

In the Statistics tab, view analytics for: 

  • Sent to: the total amount of recipients the email was sent to 
  • Delivery Rate: the percentage of emails delivered 
  • Bounce Rate: the percentage of emails that bounced 
  • Open Rate: The percentage of emails that were opened 
  • Click Rate: The percentage of emails that were clicked open 
  • Unsubscribe Rate: The percentage of emails that were unsubscribed too



In the Activity tab, you are able to view the journey of the email to recipient, with activity logs of if the email was delivered, bounced, opened, clicked and more. You will be able to see the action, the recipient and the date and time for each activity. This makes tracking and troubleshooting your attendee’s emails easier than before. Search or filter emails based on recipient, events (opened, clicked, sent, etc.) and time frame. 

 

In the Suppression tab, you will be able to see any email that experienced difficulty in getting delivered. It will display the same as in the Activity tab, but show if the email was bounced or unsubscribed.