You announced the throwdown on Facebook. I turned it into three emails. Nobody asked me to and there is nothing attached to it.
Everything factual in here came straight from that post: the Fellow, the $15 entry, the raffle, Sydney on the griddle, Voyager, the DJ. I never confirmed any of it with you, so read it once before it goes anywhere.
One email is an announcement. Three is a campaign, and the difference is usually most of the attendance.
Click any send to open it full screen ↗
Each one assumes the reader never opened the one before it, so the date and the address repeat every time. What changes is the opening line, because the question in someone’s head changes: what is this, then am I giving up a Friday, then what am I doing tonight.
The prize opens the first email, not the competition. A throwdown is the draw for maybe a tenth of your list. An espresso machine somebody is walking out with is the draw for the rest.
The second email leads with smashburgers and wine. By then they know what the event is. The question has become whether to give up a Friday night, and food and a DJ answer that better than a bracket does.
The day-of has one button and it is directions. A calendar add at 3pm on the day is useless. That email is built to be read in about five seconds on a phone while somebody decides what to do tonight.
Competing and the raffle are kept quiet. They are paid actions for small audiences. If they shouted, they would pull attention from the free thing the other 95% of your list is actually deciding about.
Only the first email links to the shop. Most of your list will not come out on a Friday, so the announcement ends with somewhere else for them to go. The other two do not repeat it on purpose, because a second ask on a day-of email just splits the one thing you want.
The raffle is the best mechanic you have. “You have to be there to win” turns a $10 ticket into a firmer commitment to show up than any calendar reminder. That is why it gets its own block.
One trade you should know about. Your date and address live inside the maroon artwork rather than as text, which is what lets them use your display type. The cost is that anyone reading with images turned off sees nothing there, so I put the full date, time and street address into the image’s alt text as a backstop. If you would rather be safe than styled, that block can be rebuilt as plain text in about ten minutes.
| Send | Button appears at | Full height |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Announce | 559px | 3,532px |
| 2 · Reminder | 703px | 1,663px |
| 3 · Day-of | 702px | 1,242px |
The main button is visible without scrolling on every one. A phone screen runs out around 740px once the mail app takes its share. All three land under that.
They get shorter as the date gets closer. By the third email somebody can tell at a glance that it is quick, which is what you want on a Friday afternoon.
Rendered and read at phone and desktop width, with images switched off, and every link clicked. Images are all under 400KB so they load on a phone on data.
The unsubscribe links use Klaviyo’s tags and resolve on send. Notes in the download cover what to do if you rebuild it in the drag-and-drop editor instead.
It is yours, free, and I will not follow up about it. Everything is in one download: the three emails, every image, and a page of setup notes written for Klaviyo.
Both buttons point at your real signup and raffle pages, so it is ready to send as is. Two links in the footer are Klaviyo unsubscribe tags and resolve on their own.
If anything in here is wrong, or you want a hand getting it set up, my email is at the bottom.