How to promote an in-store event so people show up

The short answer

Invite the customers you already have first, at the till and by email about three weeks out, and give them a reason that only works on the day, such as the designer in the store or a class where they make something. Post the event on your Google Business Profile and as a Facebook event, and ask the brand you're featuring to send it to its own list. Send a reminder two or three days before. Put the date in their calendar as well, with an alert, so their own phone reminds them on the day.

What gives people a reason to come?

In trunk show tips first published in the gift trade magazine Gifts & Decorative Accessories, Becky Tyre describes a trunk show as “a retail event with a focus on a single vendor or artist.” She recommends keeping it short, with three to four hours “ideal for most trunk shows in gift stores,” and suggests a gift with purchase in place of a discount. “A trunk show is not a ‘sale,’” she writes.

Put your reason in the first line of every invitation. For workshops and launches, Shopify's guide to retail event marketing suggests an event page that sets out when and where it happens and “all the benefits of attending it, like improving a skill, getting a discount code, meeting an influencer, and more.”

Who should you invite first?

Start with the people who already shop with you. Shopify's retail events guide suggests handing flyers to regulars when they come in, since “There are higher chances they will attend because they're warm to your brand and an existing customer.” Tyre's tips add personal invitations to your best customers.

Your sales records narrow the email list. Shopify's event marketing guide says to email a workshop invitation to “customers who usually shop for products you'll use in the workshop,” and to send a launch to people who have bought a related product again and again.

Jewelers in a 2003 JCK roundup also picked up the phone once the invitations were out. “People are busy and need to be reminded,” Marion Halfacre of Traditional Jewelers told the magazine.

When should invitations and reminders go out?

When	What to send	Where the advice comes from
As soon as the date is set	A Google Business Profile event post, a Facebook event and an event page on your site	Google, Tyre, Shopify
Three weeks before	An email invitation to your list	Tyre
For several weeks before	Bag stuffers and flyers at the till, with the date	Tyre, Shopify
Two or three days before	A reminder email	Tyre
Afterwards	A thank-you note to everyone who came	JCK

The day itself needs a nudge too. A shop owner on Shopify's community forum who sells workshop places asked for automatic reminder emails on the day of each event, with the time, date, location and description pulled from the product listing. Plan that reminder even if you end up sending it by hand. Our guide on whether reminders reduce no-shows covers the research.

Where do locals look for it?

Your Google Business Profile. An Event post takes a title, start and end dates and times, and an optional button. Leave out the times and Google shows the event “as lasting 24 hours on the event dates.” Posts appear on your profile in Search and Maps.
Facebook. Tyre's tips call for a Facebook event page for each event, and Shopify's guide says to spell out why people should attend next to the date and place.
Your window. A sign with the date, up from the day you announce it.
The shops next door. Jane Hamill, writing on Retail Minded, tells designers to visit nearby businesses before a show and “ask them nicely to send their customers over.”

What should you ask the brand for?

Hamill's advice to designers is to treat the store as a partner and promote the show themselves. Her list covers window signage, a postcard the store hands out beforehand, an incentive only for the show, and “an email invitation to the event that will go to your current contacts and the store's list,” with two reminders after it.

The JCK roundup passes on questions that a jewelers' buying group, the Independent Jewelers Organization, tells members to put to vendors: “Is co-op money available for ads? Will the designer or just representatives be present for the trunk show?” Settle both before you print anything.

How do you get the date onto their calendar?

Shopify's retail events guide suggests sending email invitations “including an iCal or Google Calendar invite,” and says this “increases your attendance rates, as the event is on their calendar.” A calendar file attached to an email gives each customer a copy of the event. Microsoft describes an imported calendar file as a snapshot that won't pick up later changes, so if the workshop moves from 6 to 7, every copy still says 6. Our guide to “Add to calendar” buttons and subscriptions compares the options. If you plan to send calendar invitations from your own address, read our guide to Google's known-senders setting first.

Where TheyCal fits

We make TheyCal, and it puts your shop's events into your customers' own calendars. Customers follow the shop once, from a QR code at the till or a link in your emails, and choose which kinds of events they get, so someone who only wants to hear about sales can leave the workshops off. People on Google or Outlook connect that calendar, and we add your events to it and update them when you change one. Everyone else gets a private calendar link for Apple Calendar and other apps. Links in an event, like your RSVP page, are click-tracked, so you can see who tapped through.

TheyCal's Followers page for a shop, with its join link, a Copy button and a QR code to download — Every business gets a join link and a QR code to print for the till.

Two other features suit a shop. A welcome series can put an offer in each new follower's calendar the day after they follow. For birthday treats, you add each customer's birthday on their page or from a spreadsheet, and the treat lands on their calendar at the same point every year.

Common questions

How far ahead should we announce it?

Tyre's tips put the email invitation three weeks before, with a reminder two or three days out. Book the designer well before that. Jewelers in the JCK roundup said designers should be booked “as early as the summer before, if possible.”

Should it be invitation-only?

It can be both. One jeweler in the JCK roundup mailed 6,000 postcards inviting the store's best customers to a private showing the day before the show opened to the public.

Should we offer a discount?

Tyre suggests a gift with purchase in its place. Hamill tells designers the incentive “doesn't have to be a discount on your line,” and gives a gift with purchase or free shipping as examples.

How do we find out what brought people in?

Ask at the till how each person heard about the event, and compare the RSVP list with who came. If the RSVP link is a tracked link, its clicks show who looked.