Holiday Party Invitations and Event Follow-up
Online invitations make holiday party planning more efficient for both you and your guests.
From creating and sending your holiday party invitations to following up before and after the event, CorpNote has you covered.
This step-by-step checklist will help you:
- Create your Event and Assemble your Invitation List
- Send your Invitations
- View Responses
- Send Reminders
- Follow-Up After your Event
Create your Event and Assemble your Invitation List
Create your event in CorpNote's Invitation Manager and preview your event RSVP form.
- If you have more than two questions you need to ask your guests, or want more flexibility in how you ask your questions, you can create an online survey to be used as part of the invitation.
- We recommend setting an RSVP cut-off date to encourage early responses. At any time, you can extend the RSVP date to a later date if you need to.
For your invitation/guest list, you are not required to use CorpNote's address book, but there are many benefits if you do. Our address book enables you to more efficiently keep track of your invitation list, send your invitations to larger guest lists, and more easily send reminder and follow-up emails. It also makes the personalization of your invitations easier because you can automatically include a person's first name in the greeting line of your invitation.
Send your Invitations
To send an eCard invitation, select from one of our eCard designs in the 'invitations' or 'Season's Greetings' category or choose from your uploaded images.
To send a holiday-themed email newsletter or announcement, or if you want more design flexibility, select a design from our email layout library or create your own custom email layout.
Compose your message and then select the event for which you want your guests to RSVP and follow the on-screen instructions for designating where your RSVP button will appear. This will insert a button that enables guests to RSVP, and ensures that your eCard recipients will be automatically added to your "invitation list."
No matter how many individual invitations you send for an event, as long as you select that specific event for the invitation, CorpNote will automatically consolidate your invitation list for you. The invitation list will show you how many people have viewed your invitation and whether they responded.
From your consolidated invitation list, you can re-send the invitation at any time to people who have not viewed the invitation or responded. Your invitation list will also be updated to show who you sent a reminder to and when.
Tip: Prior to sending the invitation to your list, send the invitation to yourself and any other people that need to approve the invitation before it is sent. You can then easily use the 'create template' or 'copy card' feature to send this "approved" invitation to your guests.View Responses
When your invitation has responses, you will see them in the invitation manager or when you view your email tracking report from the sent emails area. You will also be notified by email if you selected that option when you set up your event.
To see a full list of your responses, choose 'View Responses' from the drop down menu next to an event. This is your list of everyone who has responded to your invitation.
The response summary will provide the total number of people who responded and the consolidated answers for any questions you asked with the invitation.
If someone calls or emails you directly to respond, or you need to change a response, you can do so from this screen. To edit a response for a person listed in your Responses report, click the edit icon to edit a response or click the trash icon to delete a response. To add a response, click on the 'Add Response' tab.
If someone should accidentally respond twice, you can delete their RSVP in the same way. If you want to check for duplicate responses, we recommend exporting your guest list as a .csv file and sorting by last name or email address to find the duplicates.
Send Reminders
Sending a reminder a few days before an event can increase your attendance.
Choose 'View Responses' from the drop down menu next to an event. In the Response Summary section, you will see the option to send an email. From the drop down menu, select 'people who responded yes.' You can then click a button to send a new eCard, a new email or use template. Regardless of which button you choose, you can edit the message for your reminder email.
After you preview your email, click the button to address and send the email. You will see the selected recipients in the address list who are the 'people who responded yes'.
"These reminder emails are designated as "follow up" emails and they will appear in your Saved or Sent Emails bin. They will have the 'follow up created' date as well as auto generated comments so you know the day you created the follow up, when it was sent and to whom.
Follow-Up After your Event
Thank you notes are always a nice touch after a party to let people know you appreciated their coming to your event. You could use a photo from the party as your eCard design or choose one of our thank you eCards or email layouts.
To send a Thank You eCard, or any type of follow-up message after an event, choose 'View Responses' from the drop down menu next to an event and follow the same instructions that we provided above for how to send an event reminder.
Tip: Consider including an online survey when you send your follow-up eCard after an event. You can ask your guests questions about their satisfaction with the facility or ideas they have for next year's party. Surveys are included with your CorpNote membership and they can be very helpful for future party planning.
