Offering themed virtual parties is a great way to boost bookings and engagement at your direct sales parties. Once you decide on your theme, the next step is to create an awesome invitation for the party guests. Here are a few tips for ensuring your invitation gets people to your party.
The reason theme parties are so much more effective than online product parties is because they are interesting and relevant to your guests and hostesses. Offering a theme leaves people interested at the prospect of online parties, instead of feeling spammed by another consultant just trying to get more bookings.
Which one do you think is more likely to result in a willing party hostess? A generic question or a theme party that suits her interests? It’s probably safe to say there’s a pretty clear winner, right?
Choosing the theme is easy when you focus on your hostess’ interests. There are dozens of done-for-you themes that will make life super easy for you.
The next thing you’ll want to do is focus on creating a stellar invitation that will ensure your hostess gets as many of her guests to the party as possible.
Here are 3 tips for creating a high converting invitation:
1. Create an Invitation that Suits the Theme
The main difference between you and all the other consultants who sell your product is that you offer super cool and unique theme parties! It’s important to showcase that to potential party guests before the party ever even starts.
Before any guests are invited to a party, you want to give your hostess an invitation she can send her guests that suits the theme of your party. By doing so, you’ll catch the attention of her guests and show them how fun the party will be before they even join the group.
The first line of the invitation is a great opportunity to introduce the theme. For example, let’s say your hostess chose to do a “Friends” theme. After the greeting (Hey <Name>) the first line of your invitation could be:
“Could I BE any
By starting with a one-liner that suits the theme of your party, your hostess is connecting with her party guests over a common theme before she actually extends the invitation.
From there the invitation can become a bit more personal. For example:
“Do you remember “The One Where Ross and Rachel Take a Break? It was my favorite episode of Friends!
Or
“Could I BE any more excited about this?” Was Chandler not the best character on Friends?!
Now that you’ve caught their attention, the invitation can launch into the actual details of the party.
2. Include the Important Party Details
With a themed starter sentence that your guests can relate to, you’re now ready to include the actual details of the party.
The things you’ll want to make sure you include are:
- Date
- Time
- Where (on Facebook? Or Instagram? Or Sqweee? etc.)
- What they can expect (Games, Prizes, Trivia, Special Offers, etc.)
- What their next step is
To continue with our example, you could write something like:
“I know you love the show as much as I do and that’s why I had to invite you to the exclusive Friends theme <insert your company name> party I’m having! It’s happening on <insert date and time> in a private Facebook group. There will be trivia, games and prizes. It’s going to be a blast! I’ll send you the link to the group soon, so you can join us. See you then!
Some people prefer to ask their guests if they’d like to join the party before indicating what their next step is. As long as all the information is made available you can go with whichever format you or your hostess prefer.
Pro Tip: Using words like “exclusive” or “private” is a great way to encourage guests to attend because you’re showing them that the party is only for a select group of people, not everyone on the hostesses friends list (no pun intended).
3. Avoid Common Pitfalls
- Be sure to have your hostess message her guests – this is important because as your business grows you will have more and more guests who don’t know you. Most people will be much more willing to attend a party when the invitation comes from someone they know than they will be if you send the invite.
- When your hostess is inviting people to her party, it’s important that she only invites the people she would if she were having the party in her home. No matter how awesome the invitation is, messaging someone out of the blue to attend a party is going to come across as “The one that was spammy” (to continue with the Friends references).
- Don’t invite guests too soon. Our party scripts come with pre-party content you can use to get your guests engaged for a few days while they wait for the party to start. If you invite guests and add them to your party too soon, you’re likely to lose their interest before the party even starts.
- A general rule of thumb is for your hostess to send her invites 5-7 days before the party and start adding people into your group and sharing pre-party posts 3-4 days before the party starts.
Pro Tip: Keep in mind that pre-party engagement has a lot to do with working around Facebook’s algorithms. The more your guests engage with that content leading up to the party, the better your chances are of having Facebook show them more of your actual party content and thus your products. You want to make sure you avoid any big gaps in pre-party posts.
- Make everything you want your hostess to do as easy as possible. In the case of invitations, give her something she can copy and paste to each of her guests and the only thing she has to do is put in their name. Creating a hostess coaching program is an effective way to increase your sales and engagement even more!
Now we’re ready to bring it all together! Our example invitation would look something like this:
Hey Suzy! Do you remember that episode of Friends, “The One Where Ross and Rachel Take a Break?” It was my favorite episode! I know you love the show as much as I do and that’s why I had to invite you to the exclusive Friends theme Tupperware party I’m having! It’s happening on Friday, October 31st in a private Facebook group. There will be Friends trivia, games and prizes. It’s going to be a blast! Keep an eye out for the link to the group soon, so you can join us. I can’t wait to see you there!
Creating an invitation may take some extra time and thought when you first start doing them, but after a couple, you’ll get the hang of it! Don’t be afraid to change them up from hostess to hostess even when the theme is the same to make sure every party has a unique feel.
Want done-for-you invitations to go with your Go Party Scripts themes? They’re included in all of our Pro Package scripts. Check out Go Scripts Pro here!