Given the dozens of email providers and hundreds of different settings within each one’s spam filters, there is always a risk a calendar invite will not make it to a member’s inbox (we expect a 2 - 5% failure rate).

The more calendar invites that you send for large communities, the more likely that email filters choose to put those invites into spam.

In this help article, we share how to make sure your members know about upcoming events, both by sharing events across multiple channels (right from within Virtually) and recommending some quick actions to your members.

The best way to ensure that members know about upcoming events is to notify members about events through multiple mediums besides calendar invites.

This is an email that lists out upcoming events which can be accompanied by other announcements.

Google allows members to subscribe directly to Google calendar. Any events added to this calendar will get added to their own calendar view.

You can read a full run down on how to share calendars with your members here.

Of course, if you choose to have members subscribe to your calendar, be sure to follow the best practices laid out in this help article.

Virtually’s native circle integration allows you to cross-post events into a Circle event space. This provides a secondary method for your community members to discover events.

You can learn more about our Circle integration and how to leverage Circle events here. Or simply watch this video:

Calendar sharing is a Virtually feature that is currently in beta. With calendar sharing, you can directly share a link with your members for them to access events that are relevant to their member profile and tags within Virtually.

After logging in with their email address, members will be able to view all upcoming events specifically relevant to them.

You can learn more about our calendar sharing feature here or watch the video below:

If you don’t have access to calendar sharing and would like access, simply send us an email at hello@tryvirtually.com

We recommend that you ask your members to check their spam folders regularly when your program starts.

Another way to preemptively prevent emails from ending up in spam is by adding the email from which calendar invites are getting sent as a contact into your email provider.

This email is the one associated with your google calendar integration. You can determine which email that is by logging into Virtually, heading to Settings --> Integrations --> and viewing your Google Calendar integration: