You're Invited 💌 New Ways to Send Online Invitations

Create quick slick pages for Zoom events or anything else

You’re invited! That phrase always feels welcoming. In this Wonder Tools post, I’m sharing my favorite new and classic ways to send online invites.

🎁 In today’s post 👇

📲 A better way to send Zoom invites … Create a landing page for any event in a minute … 💌 5 ways to send classic digital invites

Catch up with September posts

🕰 How and why to track your time
📧 Improve email with these apps and plug-ins
📦 Sites that make shipping and receiving packages easier and better
🧹 Clean up your computer to start fresh this fall
🎈 Sites and apps to enjoy with your kids

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Use Lu.ma for Zoom Events

Luma lets you set up a quick free landing page for any event. It has a bunch of benefits:

1. A prettier invite. Sending someone to a Zoom registration page (like this one) is like sending them a phone book page. Luma provides a more elegant face for your event, including a spot for a big image, a video if you have one, and a nice event description.

2. Ask questions. Luma lets you pose quick questions to give you a fuller picture of who’s attending. Try to avoid more than 3 questions to prevent people from finishing their RSVP.

3. Reminders Luma sends automatic reminders for you. Given that only 40% of people who RSVP for free virtual events show up, reminders are crucial for boosting participation.

4. Feedback Lu.ma pings attendees immediately afterwards in a way that yields useful, quick feedback without being annoying.

5. Event Metrics. If you connect your Luma and Zoom accounts, Luma’s analytics page gives you a visual snapshot of who attended and for how long.

6. Sell Tickets — or don’t. If you want, you can use it to collect ticket fees and to gather event feedback afterwards. I use it for almost every event I host on Zoom. I mostly create free events, but it’s easy to charge if you want.

7. Host your events on whatever platform you want, or in person. I use Lu.ma mostly for Zoom events, but you can use it to host sessions on Google Meet, Twitter Spaces, or wherever you want. If you’re planning an outdoor gathering, you can use it for real-world events too.

8. Follow-up on events. Lu.ma now lets you stay in touch with attendees with newsletters or post-event online discussions. That’s useful if you’re building a community around repeated events. You can even use Lu.ma to sell digital products like PDFs, images, or how-to guides, though Gumroad may be a better option for that.

   Here’s a Lu.ma event example — a summit we’re hosting on the Journalism Creator Ecosystem. We’re using it as a save-the-date while we finalize event details.

Send Classic Web Invites

Here are a few alternatives to Luma if you like old-style looks, seasonal templates, or sending invites by text.

💦 Splashthat lets you make big, fancy event pages for big, fancy events, at big, fancy prices. The “basic” plan costs $12.5k a year. BUT it also has a free plan for the rest of us, which actually works just fine for individuals and small events. Here’s an example of a slick Splash invite page and another simpler example.

🖋 Evite dates all the way back to 1998. The classic service still works well. And it’s fun sometimes to hark back to the early Web days, right? Plus there’s a handy “What to Bring” feature that lets people pick what to share at your event.

🥣 Punchbowl is another oldie and goodie. One nice feature: send invites via text.

📨 PaperlessPost I like for its slightly fancier online invites. Some are pricey. But hundreds of templates are free if you’re inviting fewer than 50 people. And you can create and text flyer-style invites from your phone.

💌 Canva Invitations are nice if you’re going to print and send on paper.

What’s your favorite approach for sending invites?

p.s. Wearing my educator hat, I’m excited to start working next week with a terrific new group of journalism innovators from around the world.

Jeremy Caplan @jeremycaplan

👏Thrilled to announce that 20 global journalism innovators are joining our Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program @newmarkjschool this fall! Meet them here 👇 bit.ly/NewmarkEJCP

October 6th 2021

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