Prompt · Event
In-person workshop invite
Get the RSVP from people who will actually turn up.
- Email type
- Event
- Business
- Creator
- Tone
- Friendly
- Length
- 110-160 words
The event email prompt
Write a plain-text invitation to [THE EVENT], happening [WHERE AND WHEN]. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes. The reader is deciding whether to give up an evening and a journey. Write for that decision. Rules: - 110 to 160 words. - Say what actually happens there in the first two sentences. Not the theme, not the vibe — what people will be doing in the room. - Include the end time as well as the start. Someone weighing up childcare or a train needs both, and leaving the end time out costs more RSVPs than any other omission. - Name [WHO IT SUITS] in one sentence, and be willing to exclude. A room of people who came because it sounded vaguely relevant is worse than a smaller room. - Cover [THE PRACTICALITIES] in one short paragraph. Cost, numbers, whether there is food, whether to bring anything. - One ask, written as an ordinary sentence with the link inside it. - Do not describe the atmosphere. Do not promise networking. - Never invent a number, statistic, capacity or attendee count beyond what I have supplied. - No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case. Write a subject line under 45 characters naming the event and the city or the date. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
What to fill in first
[THE EVENT]- What it is and what happens there, plainly.
[WHERE AND WHEN]- Venue, address, date, start and end time. The end time matters more than people think.
[WHO IT SUITS]- Who should come. Being specific is what stops the wrong people booking and not turning up.
[THE PRACTICALITIES]- Cost, capacity, food, whether to bring anything, how to get there.
When to send it
Three to four weeks out for anything requiring travel, with one reminder a week before and one the day before carrying the practical details again. Physical events fail on logistics far more often than on interest.
What to change first
[WHO IT SUITS]. An in-person event has a fixed capacity and a no-show rate, and both get worse when
the invitation is written to appeal broadly. Naming the person it is for — and implicitly the people
it is not for — fills fewer seats with people who actually arrive, which is the number that matters.
What good output looks like
Subject: Email teardown night, Lisbon, 22nd
Preheader: 7 to 9pm. Bring an email you are unhappy with.
Six of us sit around a table and pull apart real emails on a screen, one at a time, out loud. Everyone brings one of their own. You will leave with specific notes on yours.
Wednesday 22 May, 7 to 9pm, at the studio on Rua da Boavista.
It suits people who send email regularly and have nobody to show it to before it goes out. It is not a talk and there is no slide deck.
Free, twelve places, there is wine and not much food. Bring an email you are unhappy with.
RSVP here.
The prompt writes the words. Bring them here and the studio builds the campaign — branded, dark-mode safe, and ready to import.
Generate your ownIn the studio
A model writes copy. It does not write email.
Production HTML that survives Outlook, dark mode and a Gmail clip is a different job from writing the words. Describe the send once and export it to Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign or MailerLite.