Building Momentum Before Your Event

Outreach leading up to an event is a great way to get your guests energized about attending and giving to your organization. Providing sneak peaks and event highlights prior to the event is particularly useful if there is a little something extra required of your audience at the event.

Bradley Angle’s Empowerment Lunch included a now signature activity, Pass the Purse. They began the event by passing around a designer purse stuffed with exciting goodies. As the purse makes its way from table to table, guests add to it: gift cards, cash and any other prize-worthy goodies they had in their own bags. Then before the end of the event, they auction off the purse with all its added goods to the highest bidder.

Pass the Purse was a popular activity at last year’s Empowerment Lunch, so this year Bradley Angle included reminders on each of their pre-event communications so guests could come prepared. Guests brought shirts, jewelry, hundreds of dollars worth of gift cards and discount certificates, along with cold hard cash to contribute to the purse. When it was time to auction the purse, there was so much energy in the room that the first bidder to win the purse donated it back to be auctioned off again!

This is an example of effective pre-event communication with your guests. In the case of Bradley Angle, it was important for them to give their audience a heads up to make Pass the Purse more successful. But with any event, every communication you have with your supporters is a chance to build relationships and enthusiasm and set expectations for the day of the event.