You have several ways to reach out to people, market your fundraising event and make it easy for people to register. You may use more than one way.
Your organization website: It is better to have a website that has a calendar of events and/or announcement banners/pop ups where people can click and register for the event on your own website.
Make sure you add the new attendees to your marketing email list
Make sure you develop different lists for people of different interests like donors, volunteers and so forth
Form websites: you could us registration forms offered free by websites like google forms, 123formbuilder, Jotform and others
Payment websites: some websites allow registration forms and payments at the same time. Many of then charge 5% or more. However, they make it easier for you and your attendees (for example Eventbrite allows attendees to have tickets that you can scan. It also allows you to have people pay with credit card or cash at the door and sign for the transaction)
Email marketing: as said, you need to develop good mailing lists for announcements and events. Google groups is a good one. Mailchimp is another good one.
Do not sent too many emails
Do not send mass emails (otherwise, your email is likely to end up in the spam folders of the recipients). Use the above services instead.
Connect: Your email campaign should tell a story. It introduces the reader to the problem you are trying to solve and explains how your fundraiser event is the solution to the issue.
Educate: Your email must include the where, when, why, and how of your event. Where will the event take place? When will it take place? Why are you hosting this event? And how will attending your event solve your problem?
Make an offer: In your email campaign, make early registration offers to potential guests, such as lower attendance fees or entry into a raffle of some kind. Give your email readers something special they wouldn’t get anywhere else.
Phone calls: this is very important especially in fundraising
You must have a personal touch and make people feel genuinely that you care about them and you appreciate them.
The people making the phone calls must be trained on being so kind, gently persuasive and must also have talking points.
Those phone calls can be also used to ask the big donors to commit to amounts that they can donate publically during the fundraising event. This helps create momentum during the event.
Visitation: this is also important with big donors who are still reluctant to attend or have doubts and concerns. The visit can be used to smooth any issue and address any concern.
Mail: nice personalized postcards or letters with kind words of invitation would make a very nice impression on your donors
Social media
Facebook
Join groups relevant to your fundraising event in order to post event related content to those most likely to be interested
Vary your types of content (links, images, and videos) in order to keep your event advertising fresh
Post at least twice a day on your page and once a day in each group in order to ensure the most people possible see your campaign without pushing viewers away
Set aside funds to be used for paid advertisements on Facebook
Twitter
Use no more than two hashtags per tweet (engagement drops after two
Research your Twitter hashtags using tools like Hashtagify.me and Keyhole in order to ensure your hashtags have reach and popularity.
Tweet no more than three times per day
Use visuals in your tweets (preferably GIFs and images) in order to increase their engagement and likelihood of being spotted
Content marketing
Develop a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy
Write regular blog posts: Blogging is a proven method for informing your your nonprofit followers and potential attendees about your organization from your own perspective
Keep your content relevant: Search engines like Google evaluate the content on your website to make sure that it is relevant with what your headlines promise. Make sure your content marketing strategy for your fundraising event is relevant, whether you are writing blog posts, creating infographics, or creating videos.
Conduct keyword research: Keyword research is important when trying to rank higher on Google’s search lists. Google’s Keyword Planner Tool and KeywordTool.io are easily the most popular keyword research programs.
Link internally (when relevant): If you haven’t noticed yet, some of the links trace back to other blog posts written at Capterra. These internal links are not only helpful to the reader, but the content is high quality and leads to more time spent on your domain. The longer a reader spends on a domain, the more likely they are to convert (in this case, a conversion would be a registration for your event).
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