It’s always fun to catch up with friends from your high school days. And when the time for your class reunion comes around, you want as many of your classmates as possible to show up for a fun event. If you want to boost attendance, here are seven tips to promote your high school reunion event.
Design eye-catching flyers
Graphics are the centerpiece of any promotional effort. Whether you plan to mail, hang, post, or upload, a well-designed flyer is essential to make your high school reunion event look fun for everyone — so it has to be good!
Your high school reunion flyer is a representation of your event. If you send a boring, text-only flyer that just says, “You are invited,” what does that say about your event? It’ll tell people it’s going to be boring…
Instead, make your flyers look as fun as the event will be with high school reunion flyer templates from websites like PosterMyWall. You can browse hundreds of designs to choose the one that best fits your event. Then, use the easy drag-and-drop editor to customize the information, and you’re ready to distribute!
You can use your flyers in all sorts of ways. Upload them to your website, mail them to classmates, send them in an email, or post them to social media to make sure every classmate knows about your high school reunion event.
Create a website
There’s only so much information you can include in a flyer or social media post. Once your classmates get your flyer or read about your event on social media, they need somewhere to go to get more information. A dedicated website for your class reunion event is the perfect place to share everything your classmates need to know to show up.
With a website, you have essentially unlimited space to include every minute detail about the event. You can mention the big details on the front page — like the date, time, location, and activities. But you can also answer common questions attendees might ask, like who else is coming, what kind of food will be there, what’s the dress code, etc.
Depending on the platform (and your web design skills), you can even let classmates RSVP right through the website to make it an easy one-stop-shop for everything related to your class reunion.
Get social on social media
Social media is made for class reunions. Around 90% of the entire U.S. population is active on some form of social media! That means there’s a good chance all (or at least a grand majority) of your classmates will be reachable through social media, making it a great place to promote your event.
First, it’s always a good idea to make a Facebook event page. Think of it like a website landing page but on social media. Everyone can go to your event page to learn more about your class reunion, RSVP, and even interact with other invitees.
Once your event page is set up, get to posting! Post plenty of content to your various social media platforms to promote your class reunion event. This is where your flyers come in handy. Bonus points if you tag some of your other classmates in the posts.
You can also look up your classmates’ pages and like and comment on their posts to rekindle the relationship. Once you catch up a bit, personally invite them to the class reunion. It’s called social media for a reason!
Start an email campaign
Everyone has an email address — almost literally! According to research, 93.6% of Americans aged 25-44 use email to communicate. That means all you have to do to get in touch with almost everyone invited to your class reunion is to get their email addresses.
Send regular emails to everyone invited leading up to the day of the event. It typically takes more than one message for people to remember. By sending a weekly or bi-weekly email for a few months before the event, you can make sure your class reunion event stays top of mind.
Running an email campaign is similar to designing flyers. They’re a representation of your event, so you want them to look good! You can use your flyers as the design or build your email layouts from scratch. Either way, make sure they’re good!
Keep expenses down
One of the main reasons people don’t attend their class reunions is because of cost. Many classmates might have moved away or started families. It’s not cheap to travel across the country with a group!
If you want people to show up to your class reunion, do what you can to keep costs down. For example, see if you can get a discount on a block of rooms at a hotel.
The less expensive it is to attend, the more people you can expect at your class reunion.
Be strategic with your event date
There are certain times of year when people travel back to their hometown, like the holidays, homecoming weekend, or Thanksgiving. By scheduling your class reunion event around these dates, you’ll be able to get more people to attend.
It’s not easy to justify plane tickets and hotel costs just for a class reunion. But if they’re going to be in town anyway, it essentially makes the cost of going to the reunion free! Your attendance rates will jump through the roof.
Encourage attendees to find other classmates
Everyone has friends from high school they still keep in touch with. Why not tap into that network to get more people to attend your class reunion event?
You can even turn finding classmates into a competition. For example, offer the person who helps find the most classmates free entry into the reunion. You’ll get everyone on the hunt for other classmates all in exchange for the cost of a dinner and some drinks!
Make this class reunion the best event ever
Class reunions are a fun way to catch up with your classmates from the past. But they’re only fun if everyone shows up! When you’re ready to promote your class reunion event, be sure to design plenty of eye-catching flyers, build a website, reach out on social media, send plenty of emails, reduce expenses where possible, choose the right date, and encourage attendees to reach out to other classmates.
With all your promotional strategies working full force, you’ll have the entire graduating class attending your class reunion event!