Adding Calendar Invites to Emails

Introduction

Marketers often send out invites to webinars, and enabling users to add them to their calendars increases campaign effectiveness.

Invites sent via the calendars directly add the invite to the recipient's calendar; however, when a bulk communication is sent out, the Invites do not directly get added to the users' calendar; instead, an option to add the invite to the calendar is useful.

Create Invite

Ways to create calendar invites include:

Using Links - Users click a link to add it to their preferred calendar.
Using .ics file - Users can import the .ics file to their preferred Calendar.

It is essential to include both methods since not all calendars support them. Here is a matrix of supported invites in different calendars.

Calendar Type	ICS Calendar File	Calendar Link
AOL	✓	X
Apple Calendar	✓	X
Google Calendar	✓	✓
Office 365	✓	✓
Outlook	✓	X
Outlook.com	✓	✓
Yahoo	✓	✓

Create a Link Invite

Create an event in Google Calendar.
Publish event.
Copy the HTML code and add it to your campaign.
This generates a one-click option for the user to create the event in his/her Calendar.

info	Note 1 Alternatively, use different online tools shown here to create links for Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Office 365, and Yahoo! Calendar.

warning

Note 2

For Google Calendar, ensure the invite is created on a public calendar. In case you are working with a private calendar, create another public calendar. Refer here for more information.

Create an ICS Invite

To create a .ics file, use an online tool like iCalendar or iCal Event Maker to generate .ics files.
Attach the .ics file to emails using MoEngage’s Email attachment feature. Read here on how to use the attachment feature.
Add the event link as a hypertext using the link option.
Ensure the invite looks as desired.

Custom HTML Template

If you are using custom HTML template to send emails, you can use the code snippet below to insert a calendar invite link or embed ics file that can be imported by the users.

<div class="default">

<!-- Link for ics download-->

<a href="PATH/TO/.ics/FILE" download">Add to your Calendar</a> 

<hr>

<!-- Link for direct marking-->

<p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #fdfdfd; 
font-size: 18px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0 0 0;">

<a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="EVENT/LINK/">Google</a>

</p>

</div>