The success of a business lies in numerous aspects – the business idea, entrepreneur’s creativity and talents, personal network, market trends and shifts, and many more. Once you’ve secured all these factors and are ready to present your business to the public, the business opening is another challenge that you must overcome.
Your business opening day is an extremely important day of your life since this is when all your business pieces come together and it will predict the future success of your business. When arranging and managing your opening day, sending out invitations can be made easier and more convenient through electronic invites made by greenvelope.com.
What Are Electronic Invitations?
Basically, an electronic invitation, or e-invitation, is a paperless invitation to an event sent through the web or internet. Although it can look informal for some people, event owners and organizers consider this option to adapt to the technological environment. And today, it’s time to shed some light on how electronic invitations can affect your business endeavor through analyzing its advantages.
Inviting your guests electronically might not seem like a good option to mark the start of your business, but here are some of the top 10 benefits of doing so:
1. Lower Overall Costs
Believe it or not, utilizing digital invitations conceives lower costs and expenses, which can help you save more money in the long run. A big misconception that most people have is that transforming digitally is more expensive than simply relying on the conventional ways, but it’s a case-to-case basis. In the case of making electronic invitations and sending them out to people, it’s definitely more affordable than the costs of paper invitations.
In paper invitations, you can make do-it-yourself (DIY) invitations. You can save up from professional invitation making services, but you’ll have to buy the materials yourself. There are increased possibilities of errors, meaning you can waste more materials, and get invitations that are less professionally made.
Also, another option is to have it written or printed by hiring service providers. Whichever option you’d choose over the other, take note of the following elements:
- Choice of paper, color, weight, quality, inserts, and amount of invitations
- Invitation design, canvassing, printing, and approval process
- Shipping and postal service costs
With electronic invitations, you won’t have to spend for the costs of materials and shipping, since they’re edited digitally by a team of professionals in digital design. Also, you won’t have to send these invitations yourself, since most digital invitation services already cover delivery to your guests.
When it comes to promoting your business opening event to the public, you’ll have to spend less on electronic invitations as well. If you’re going to promote your business physically, you’ll need plenty of resources for property rental, design, and maintenance and some displays for the store. Moreover, you need to pay for advertisements in tangible platforms such as newspapers, radio, and television, which isn’t too advisable for emerging businesses.
2. Quick and Reliable
Along with less costs and expenses with using electronic invitations, it’s also less time-consuming to do since you won’t have to make each piece of invitation and use up the materials for every guest. Once one piece of digital invitation is made, it will take less time to edit the name of the guests and to send the invitations.
Moreover, electronic invitations are more reliable than paper ones, in a way that you can avoid more mistakes in using them. For instance, you’re not sure that the physical invitation was sent to your guests unless they give you a thumbs-up. Mix-ups can happen in postal offices, and some invitations may even be delivered to the wrong people.
On the other hand, as long as you know your guests’ email addresses and social media accounts, you are rest assured that they will receive your invitation. You can also add response features on your electronic invitation to confirm that the right people have received their invitations.
3. More Information Available
Creating paper invitations are often two-dimensional and less engaging compared to the more appealing option of making them digitally. When you do it on paper, you can only put text and images to show information regarding your event. By sending electronic invitations, you can make your information more valuable and meaningful to your guests in various ways.
For instance, you can put clickable links on the texts in your invitations. If guests aren’t well-informed about your business, your website and story will be one click away thanks to the hyperlinks. You can also add maps and directions for the event’s venue, so it’s more convenient to find the event’s location.
If possible, you can add organizational features on your online invitations where your guests can easily sync the event details into their calendars. Making your invitations as informative as possible will have a positive impact on your business image because it gives customers easy access to relevant information they need to get to know your business better.
4. More Communication Opportunities
Effective communication is crucial in every business, and the best way to establish that your business is able to communicate competitively is to start with electronic invitations. Right before your business opening day, there should already be a platform where potential customers and investors can have effective communication with your business.
If you use traditional invitations like written and printed ones, you have limited communication options for you and your guests. Things like knowing if the intended recipients got your invitation or not, and tallying the response rate for your invitation are much harder to do with printed versions.
On the other hand, if you use an online platform to send out your invitations, you can check up on them from time to time. You have the opportunity to encourage them to attend and change their minds, send reminders and notifications, do RSVP follow-ups, work on potential updates, make adjustments to your event, and more.
Even after your opening event, you can still send out thank you notes to them and update them about your future events, granted that they still choose to subscribe to your newsletter. Being open to communication is just one of the best marketing strategies to mark the credibility of your business.
5. Tell Your Story Better
While it may sound cheesy and personal, business storytelling is a strong skill and strategy that when used effectively, will yield positive results for your business. In unimaginable ways, you can actually tell your story better with online, paperless invitations than two-dimensional, tangible invitations.
Through sending an electronic invitation, you can add and control more visual elements than in a paper invitation. You can use this strategy to incorporate your business story through visual elements, like creating a short clip.
Thanks to this medium, you can start opening up your success story in building your business right before its opening day. Thus, the way you tell your story through your invitation will highly predict if your guests are engaged enough to attend your business opening.
6. More Extensive Reach and Public Access
According to the Internet World Statistics, about 59% of the global population has access to the internet. For the past several years, the development and utilization of the internet has been one of the best inventions of mankind. It made everything a lot easier, including business marketing and promotion.
It’s not just about the ease and convenience of promoting your business, but using electronic invitations for your business opening event that allows you to reach more people at once. If you want to spread the word about your business, one of the best ways to do so is through online invitations.
With the help of an online platform to send out your invitations, you will have a strong, centralized system to keep everything organized. As you reach more people through an electronic invitation, the higher the chances that people will be interested in your business, especially if you’ve delivered essential information effectively.
7. Easier Event Registration
No matter how small or big an event is, the registration process during the event day will either be challenging and chaotic, depending on how you manage it.
Electronic invitation services hit two birds with one stone. Some services and companies offer an online RSVP system that is helpful for event registrations. An online RSVP system allows you to manage and track your RSVPs, filter who will attend or not, and assists you in updating headcount before the event starts.
While you can still do it manually, an online RSVP system is extremely convenient, reliable, effective, and saves you more time than doing the manual tracking and registration process.
8. Unique Designs and Templates
Online invitation platforms and services have abundant designs and templates that you can choose from. You will find that making invitations online does not mean creating generic and ordinary designs than what you can do with paper invitations. In fact, it’s the opposite, because you can pick from a wide array of designs and templates to find one which you think is perfect for your brand image. For instance, if you focus on the food and cuisine business, there’s definitely more than one design for you.
Having beautiful and engaging invitation designs will greatly reflect on how your entire business puts value into physical and web design. You’re more likely to encourage people to check out your business if the invitations already show effort and good taste. Also, the right choice of design will influence your startup brand identity which will serve as the people’s first impression about your business.
Poorly designed websites can negatively affect your target customers’ impression of your business. Admit it or not – you don’t find poorly designed websites interesting, right? The same goes for business opening invitations.
9. Set Your Business As Digitally Competitive
Digital transformation is important in every business. Generally, it can give you more advantage if you use technology when you establish your business. By using electronic invitations to reach out to potential guests, and using online marketing to introduce your company to a wider audience, you’re making the most use of the technology available to everyone today. This, in turn, can serve as baby steps to eventually grow your venture.
When people see how effective your online invitations are, it will set you on the benchmark as being a digitally competitive business. This means that you’re more likely to use technology not just for your startup event, but also for the rest of your business operations.
Moreover, keep in mind that market trends continue to emerge and fluctuate. By being digitally competitive, you can adapt to these changes and set up your business with digital capabilities and value. Take note that you’ve only started with electronic invites, and through constant use of technology, your business can continue to use the same technology or discover new ones that make business processes a lot easier.
10. Improve Social Media Marketing Connections
A startup event is a great opportunity to start, or even widen, your social media marketing connections. There are various social media platforms that consumers use every single day, and posting public invitations and notices about your soon to open business can help you reach more people.
Using social media in your business opening event can be done through sending out electronic invitations and RSVPs. Once guests respond positively to your invitation, you can add features such as hashtag campaigns, links to relevant accounts, additional information about your event, future business plans, and many more. Anything that you can think of that will expand your connections with more valuable people, you can do online.
If you want to go the extra mile, you can also invite industry influencers as your RSVPs. However, do make sure that these influencers post content related to your business umbrella, so you don’t invite random influencers for clout.
Key Takeaways
Business startup is the mark of your journey, and you must make sure that everything works well according to your plan. During the planning phase, it’s important to choose the right people to invite to your event. By sending them electronic invitations, you’ll have these advantages for your business that will guide you through your entrepreneurial adventure.