Overview
Save The Dates (that act like pre-registration)
Build a save-the-date that doubles as a one-click RSVP. Months before the formal invite goes out, you can see who plans to come. That intent data feeds your venue, sponsor, and wave-one invite plan.
You can send a save-the-date that announces the date and hope guests add it to their calendars.
Or, you can send a save-the-date that basically let’s you track who actually wanted it on their calendar.
When you need this setup
High-stakes, relationship-driven events three to six months out. Annual meetings, portfolio summits, board dinners, and member retreats.
If your event is two weeks away, you don’t need this. If it’s a casual dinner, an ICS attachment is enough.
This setup earns its weight when the event has stakes and you have the runway to use the data.
What guests see and what you get back
On the guest side, it feels like clicking an ICS attachment.
One email, a button labeled Request calendar invite. Then, a confirmation screen, and moments later an email comes back with the calendar invite attached. No landing page, no calendar picker, no questions.
On your side, you get a few things worth the setup:
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Per-guest pre-registration data.
Names, not estimates. You can see exactly who pre-registered the moment they click.
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A real number for venue, sponsor, and speaker conversations.
“Sixty regulars have expressed interest” lands differently than “we’re expecting about a hundred.”
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A wave-one invite signal.
When the formal invite goes out months later, you already know who’s bought in. The pre-registered get the lighter touch. The people who didn’t engage are where the personal outreach earns its keep.
Setting It Up
Section titled “Setting It Up”The whole setup is five steps.
1. Create the formal-invite event (the parent)
Create this one first, even though you won’t send anything from it for months. It’s the event you’ll eventually use for the real invite, and you want save-the-date guests to sync into it from day one.
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Go to Events and Lists. Click Create Event.
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Name it for the real event (like “Gatsby Capital’s AGM 2027”).
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Set placeholder date, time, and location. (You can update them later). Guests won’t see this event until you send the formal invite.
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Open the Advanced tab and enable children. This is what lets you link a save-the-date underneath it.
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Click Create.
2. Create the save-the-date event (the child) and link them
This is the event your guests actually interact with for your Save The Date.
Use the Calendar Invite Only Event template. It’s built for the one-and-done flow, so the RSVP link is already stripped out of confirmation emails and calendar invites.
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Go to Events and Lists. Click Create Event.
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Name it clearly (like “Save the Date: Gatsby Capital’s AGM 2027”).
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Select the Calendar Invite Only Event template.
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Set the actual event date, time, and location. This is what guests will see on their calendars. If the start time isn’t nailed down, use midnight-to-midnight for an all-day hold and push a calendar update later.
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Open the Advanced tab, enable Parent, and select your formal-invite event (“Gatsby Capital’s AGM 2027”). Click Create.
From this point on, anyone who gets added to the save-the-date event syncs upward into the formal-invite event’s guest list automatically. When you send the formal invite months later, the guest universe is already there.
See Event Families for the full picture.
3. Turn on Skip to Survey and strip the RSVP link from downstream messages
Three small toggles in the save-the-date event, all pointing at the same idea: this is a one-touch flow, so nothing downstream should invite guests to come back.
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In the save-the-date event, open the RSVP tool. Find Invite Link Skip to Survey and toggle it on. This is what turns the experience into a single click. Without it, guests land on a full landing page first.
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Go to RSVP » Email Settings » Acceptance Confirmation. Confirm the calendar invite is attached (it should be by default). Change the sender to a real person or a shared address like
ir@yourfirm.com, and add a short line like “Formal invite to follow.” Remove the{rsvpLink}merge tag if it’s still in the body. -
Go to RSVP » Calendar Invite and click Edit. Confirm the organizer. Remove the
{rsvpLink}from the description if it’s still there.
Skip survey questions in this event. Even one breaks the one-click feel. The save-the-date is a hand-raise, not a registration form. Save the questions for the formal invite.
For the full reference on these settings, see Registration Forms, Confirmation Emails, and Calendar Invites.
4. Upload your guests to the save-the-date event
Add guests to the save-the-date event through its Guest List tab, the same way you’d add them to any other event. Because the save-the-date is linked as a child of the formal-invite event, guests appear in the parent’s guest list automatically.
You don’t need to upload them to the formal-invite event yourself. The Family link handles it.
5. Build the campaign and rename the RSVP button
Compose the save-the-date as a normal campaign in the save-the-date event. Keep it short. The calendar invite is the payload, not the email body.
The one detail worth getting right is the button label. It’s tempting to use “Add to Calendar,” but most implementations of that phrase open a calendar picker, which isn’t what this button does. Something closer to the action works better. “Request calendar invite” or “Send me the calendar invite” both signal what’s actually about to happen.
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In the save-the-date event, go to Campaigns. Click New Campaign.
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Compose your save-the-date email.
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Insert the
{rsvpLink}merge tag via the + menu in the editor. -
Change the button text from “RSVP” to something like Request calendar invite or Send me the calendar invite.
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Send a test to yourself. Click through to confirm the one-click flow works end to end.
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Send to your guest list.
For more on writing campaigns, see Campaigns.
After Setup
Section titled “After Setup” Reading the intent data
The save-the-date event’s guest list already shows you who pre-registered. Anyone with an Accepted status raised their hand.
For a fuller view, open your formal-invite event (the parent). Everyone who pre-registered is already synced in from the Family link. Open Columns » Add Fields » Other Events/Lists, pick the save-the-date event, and add its RSVP column. You now have a single guest list showing your full universe, with a column you can sort on to separate the hand-raisers from everyone else.
Sending the formal invite later
Send it from the formal-invite event you created up front, not by repurposing the save-the-date. Build the landing page, configure the real RSVP, write the campaign. All the normal invitation setup. See Sending Event Invitations for the standard workflow.
Use the save-the-date RSVP column on the guest list to split your work in two: the people who pre-registered get the lighter touch (a polished blast, maybe a short personal note), and the people who didn’t are where the partner texts, handwritten cards, and personal outreach earn their keep.
Why not just repurpose the save-the-date event? It’s already sent confirmation emails and calendar invites to its accepted guests. Confirmation emails fire automatically only once per guest per event, so resetting statuses and re-sending wouldn’t generate a new calendar invite. The separate formal-invite event is the only way to send a real calendar invite to the same person twice.
Avoid renaming the save-the-date event into the formal invite as a shortcut. Pushing a calendar update from a renamed event before the real invite lands reads as presumptuous and confuses guests about whether they’ve already RSVPed.
What guests will see on their calendar
Guests end up with two entries on their calendar: the save-the-date hold, and the real event once they accept the formal invite. The save-the-date sits with a clear title, so they’ll know which to delete, and that delete is one click.
The alternative is one calendar entry that morphs from save-the-date to real event, which costs you the first impression of your formal invite. The one-click cleanup is the better tradeoff.
Common Questions
Section titled “Common Questions” Will guests get a calendar invite if I manually mark them as Accepted?
Yes (if you want). Confirmation emails (and the calendar invite attached to them) fire automatically when the guest acts through the registration page. Manually changing RSVP status on the guest list will give you the option to send the confirmation email.
Does the save-the-date RSVP carry over to the formal-invite event?
The guest bubbles up via the Family link. They appear on the formal-invite event’s guest list the moment you upload them to the save-the-date event. The RSVP status doesn’t carry, since they’re different commitments and you’ll want to ask for the real one separately.
You can see both columns side by side on the formal-invite event’s guest list if you like.
What if I never created the formal-invite event up front?
No worries. Select your guests in the Save the Date event, and use the “Add to Event” option to add them to your main event.
The “create the parent first” recommendation is about avoiding having to manually add guests to the event where you send your formal invite; it’s not a hard requirement.
Do I have to use Event Families?
No. You can keep the save-the-date standalone and use its own guest list as the pre-registration record. When you build the formal-invite event later, you’d add the guests to your main event yourself.
Families just save you that step. The save-the-date guest list pre-populates the formal-invite event automatically, and you can pull the save-the-date RSVP column onto the formal-invite guest list for wave-one planning.
Can I include an ICS attachment as a fallback?
Technically yes, in practice it works against you.
Guests pick whichever calendar option shows up first, usually the ICS preview at the top of the email, and you get no signal back. The whole point of this setup is the data on the back end, so committing to the RSVP/Request button is what makes it pay off.