Why we built Add to Calendar
The Behind-The-Scenes Scoop from Ideation to Launch
One of the things that Mailmodo takes pride in is the fact that we strive to give value to founders and marketers. The Growth Chat is Mailmodo’s podcast where experienced marketers from across the world share their learnings, stories, and insights to inspire and help marketers grow their businesses. As we conducted these monthly webinars, one of the hurdles we faced was lesser attendee turnout despite 250+ registrations every event. This got us thinking.
Why was this happening?
On analysis, we realized that event registrations only gets us to the users’ inbox, not to their calendar — which has become the holy grail through which people show up to meetings, events, and more. If it’s not on the user’s calendar, time isn’t blocked out, and the notifications at the start of the event don’t show up on the user’s desktop or mobile. Out of sight, out of mind.
The DIY Solution to our problem
So, we brainstormed on ways to get the event onto the user’s calendar without multiple redirects or ics file downloads. So using an AMP email form, we set up a workflow using a Google API and Pipedream where users can add the event to the calendar in one click, without leaving the inbox. We rolled this out in our next set of events and saw an immediate uptick in attendees.
The leap of faith
Soon our customers noticed it and we set it up for them as well. Even they started seeing positive results! Now that we had the proof of concept, we knew we had to build a DIY widget version of this in our product. Our product team took a leap of faith and built a product feature to solve the same pain point for our customers.
When the ‘Add to Calendar’ widget was released as an interactive widget, all marketers had to do was create a template, add the widget, link your Google Calendar event to the widget, and voilà! Not only does it enable one-click registration, but since it’s added to the calendar, it also boosts event attendance.
We tested the Add to Calendar widget for our events and saw a higher submission rate.
Internally, within Mailmodo, the team started using the widget in their newsletters, event invitations, and product update emails. It caught the eye of Naomi West, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Parcel who tweeted about it.
Recently, in the Email Automation Masterclass — Jen Capstraw, Founder of Women of Email mentioned how she found the experience seamless.
What started out as an internal project for Mailmodo, is now a fully functional, easy-to-use, and highly impactful widget available for our customers to get higher webinar registrations, boost event attendance and create a delightful email experience.
Hosting an upcoming event? Try out ‘Add to Calendar’ on your own. Sign up here.
