Conference Email Marketing

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Conference Organizers Menu

Below you will find a guide for conference organizers who are looking to create and manage email campaigns. Please find best practices and helpful resources that will help you create and deliver impactful email communications to build awareness and effectively reach your audience.

To maximize the number of recipients who receive your email, contact sponsoring Societies, Regions, and Sections where the event is taking place to see if they can share the information with their members.

  • Sponsoring societies, Regions, and Sections may be able to share the information through email newsletters, social media, and website pages
  • Utilize the IEEE Roster to find the appropriate contacts 

Best practices - email marketing

Please find the best practices for composing marketing emails below. Feel free to adapt any of these suggestions so that they align with your conference goals.

When is it appropriate to send an email blast?

Examples of Important Calls to Action (CTA) you may want to send an email about:

  • Call for Submissions (Papers, Challenges, Tutorials, Sessions, etc.)
    • Submission Portal Opening
    • Deadline Approaching - One Month Away
    • Last Chance - One Week Left
  • Registration
    • Registration Announcement
    • Early Bird Discounts
    • One Month Away
    • Last Chance to Register
    • Promotions or Deals 
  • Learn More about the Program
    • Program Announcement
    • Speaker Announcement
    • Updates to the program, speakers, new events, etc.

Subject line

  • Be clear and concise (roughly 6-10 words)
  • When appropriate, create a sense of urgency
    • Highlight upcoming deadlines
    • What are you looking for people to do? - This is called your Call to Action (CTA)
      • Examples of common Calls to Action (CTA): Submit a proposal, Register to attend, Save the date, etc.

Email content

  •  Aim to keep the email content to 500 words or less
    • To keep content short focus on three main things
      • What is the main action you want people to take?
        • Register, Submit a paper, etc.
    • What message are you trying to convey?
    • Drive people to the conference website with important links
  • Consider including a conference banner on the top of the email that includes important information including the conference name, dates, location, logo
  • Be sure to include a point of contact in your email
    • What email address can people reach out to with questions? 

Explicit opt-In

You must allow individuals to actively confirm their consent by taking affirmative action, such as ticking an unchecked opt-in box. Such a checkbox must not be pre-selected or pre-ticked by default, and the individual must actively select it themselves.

  • Separate Consent and Terms & Conditions
  • You must ensure that an individual’s consent is specific to the purpose of sending marketing communications. Consent should not be bundled up as a non-negotiable part of the terms and conditions of a service or the IEEE privacy policy

You must provide an option to opt-out in every subsequent marketing email to the individual. This may be done by including language at the bottom of the marketing communication that instructs individuals on how they can opt-out. For example:

  • If you do not wish to receive further marketing emails from us, please click here.

In addition, the opt-out must be simple and as easy as giving consent.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union (EU) regulation regarding personal data. The aim of GDPR is to protect individual privacy and empower individuals so that they have greater control over how individuals or organizations that offer goods or services to EU citizens no matter where they live in the world, use, and share their data. All emails must be GDPR compliant, and you must have consent to contact the individual.

Learn more about GDPR

Helpful resources