ICBA LIVE is the Independent Community Bankers Association's annual conference. I conducted a survey to learn why people attend the conference. It boiled down to four main reasons: team building, industry support, educational sessions, and the exhibit.
To kick off the email campaign, I started with a "choose your own adventure" email that asked the contact to select why they are most interested in attending.
Depending on their selection from the kick-off email, they'd receive a corresponding email that reinforced what interested them the most.
To wrap up the main email campaign, I ended with a plain text email that appeared to come from their member relationship manager.
This often started a personal email exchange with member and relationship manager, who would use the information from the kick-off email selection to sell the conference.