Event RSVP form setup and reminder workflow
How to build an event RSVP page with confirmation and reminder email
Combine a dedicated event landing page, an RSVP form, and a post-submission email sequence into a self-contained registration workflow — all inside SGEN, with no third-party tools required.
This playbook is the standard pattern for running a one-off event registration on an SGEN site. It combines four existing admin features into one ordered sequence.
No new functionality — this is the orchestration layer. Each step points to the per-feature reference doc for the click-by-click detail.
Total time: approximately 90 minutes of focused setup, plus a five-minute end-to-end test before the event date to confirm every piece is still live and collecting responses.
What is this for?
Any event where you need to know who is coming and you want to send at least one message after they register. The pattern is: one dedicated page so the URL can be shared cleanly, one form on that page so responses land in one place, and one or two emails — confirmation immediately, reminder the day before or morning of the event.
Running these pieces in the right order matters. Build the form first so you have a form ID to embed in the page. Build the page second so you have a shareable URL to include in your promotional emails. Configure the email sequences third, because they reference both the form and the page. Test everything in private-browsing last, as the final gate before promoting the page to Publish.
The core value of this setup is that it removes manual follow-up from the equation. The moment someone submits the form, the confirmation email fires automatically. You do not need to monitor submissions and manually reply to each registrant. The reminder is composed in advance and sent as a single manual broadcast the day before — a five-minute task that reaches everyone regardless of how many people registered.
Good use cases
Acme Coffee Roasters monthly cupping session. Acme hosts a 20-seat cupping event on the last Friday of each month. They need to cap attendance, collect first name and email, and send each registrant a reminder the morning of the event with the venue address and what to bring. The RSVP form collects the required fields; the confirmation email fires immediately on submit; the reminder is a manual broadcast sent to the full registrant list on the morning of the event. The admin team checks Forms → Submissions daily to track how many seats remain.
Acme Bakery cake-decorating class. Acme Bakery runs a weekend workshop limited to 12 participants. The RSVP page explains what the class covers — the techniques, what to make, and what to bring — and embeds the registration form at the bottom. After submission, a confirmation email with preparation notes goes out automatically. Two days before the class, the admin team exports the submissions list as CSV and uses it to prepare name tags and ingredient portions for each participant.
Acme Wine Studio harvest dinner. An annual sit-down dinner with 40 seats. The RSVP form collects dietary requirements alongside name and email. The team exports the responses before the event to prepare seating assignments and catering counts. A reminder email goes out two days before with the dress code, start time, and parking details — one send to the full registrant list, not individual replies.
Acme Coffee Roasters wholesale partner briefing. A half-day briefing session for up to 15 wholesale partners. Registration is invite-only: the RSVP page URL is shared only via the partner newsletter, not listed on the public site navigation. The page is Status: Publish but not linked from the homepage, so only recipients of the partner email can find it. This keeps the event off the public listing without requiring a password gate.
Acme Studio new equipment demo day. An open-to-all afternoon demo with no seat cap. The form collects name and email only. A single confirmation email fires with the schedule, a venue map link, and parking notes. Total setup time is under an hour because there is no dietary data to collect, no cap to monitor, and no second email in the sequence.
What NOT to use this for
This playbook builds a single form for a single event date. If you run the same event monthly, create a new form and a new page for each occurrence so that submissions stay separate and the reminder email targets the correct date. Reusing the same form across multiple dates merges all responses into one list, making it impossible to tell which registrants are attending which session.
The Forms feature does not have a payment-collection field. If you need to collect a deposit or full ticket price at registration time, use the Ecommerce area to create a ticket product and use the cart and checkout as the registration mechanism instead.
SGEN forms do not enforce a submission cap automatically. If you need to close registration at 20 seats, you must manually monitor the submissions count and set the page to Draft when the cap is reached. There is no automatic close trigger built into the form.
Create one RSVP setup per session — form, page, and email sequence each. Merging sessions into a single form creates ambiguity in the submissions list and makes it impossible to generate accurate per-session attendee counts.
Create a dedicated page so the RSVP form is the only call to action.
A Draft page returns a 404 to anyone who visits the URL directly, including people who click a shared link from an email or social post.
How this connects to other features
— the RSVP data-collection mechanism. Each form submission creates a row in the submissions list viewable from Forms → Submissions. Field labels in the form builder become column headers in the submissions export CSV.
— the event landing page that hosts the form embed and the event description. Published pages are public; Draft pages are not visible on the public site.
— two emails in this recipe: the confirmation email fires automatically on form submission; the reminder is a manual broadcast sent the day before. Both are configured in the Email area of the admin.
— if you add an event banner image to the landing page, upload it to Media first before selecting it in the page editor. Recommended dimensions: 1200 × 480 pixels, WebP format.
— optional. If you want a sitewide promotional bar announcing event registration across every page of the site, use a Custom Code snippet placed in the Body Start position. Flip the snippet to Inactive when registration closes.
— after the event, review traffic to the event page URL during the registration window to identify which promotional channels drove the most registrations.
Before you start
Suggested setup timeline working back from event date:
- You are signed in to SGEN as an Administrator.
- You have the following decided before opening any admin form: event name, date, time, venue address, seat cap (or "unlimited"), and the copy for both the confirmation and reminder emails. Drafting copy in a text document before opening the admin is significantly faster than writing inside the admin editor.
- You have at least one email address available for test submissions. Do not use your own admin email — the confirmation email triggers on every submission and will arrive in your inbox each time you test.
- The event landing page URL will be the slug you assign in the page Settings sidebar. Decide the slug before creating the page — it appears in every promotional email you send. Changing the slug after the URL is distributed breaks every link using the old slug.
- If the event requires dietary or accessibility information, finalize the field labels before building the form. Changing field labels after responses have arrived creates misaligned column headers in the submissions export CSV.
Where to go
The recipe touches four admin areas in this order:
- Forms → Add New — create the RSVP form with all required fields (15 minutes)
- Pages → Add New — create the event landing page and embed the form shortcode (20 minutes)
- Email → Add New — write and activate the confirmation email (15 minutes)
- Email → Add New — write the reminder email and save it as Draft (10 minutes)
Steps — Build the event RSVP and reminder workflow
1. Create the RSVP form
Open Forms → Add New. Give the form an internal title that includes the event name and date, for example "Cupping Session — June 27 2026 RSVP". This title is admin-only; visitors never see it on the public page.
Add the following fields using the form builder's Add Field controls:
- First Name — Text field, set as Required.
- Last Name — Text field, set as Required.
- Email Address — Email field, set as Required. This is where the confirmation and reminder emails deliver.
- Number of guests — Number field, optional. Captures party size for catering planning.
- Dietary requirements or notes — Textarea field, optional. Eliminates individual follow-up before the event.
- How did you hear about this event? — Select or Short Text field, optional. Tracks which channel drove registrations.
In the Confirmation Message field below the builder, write what visitors see immediately after submitting. Keep it short: "Thank you — you are registered. Check your inbox for a confirmation email."
Set form Status to Publish when all fields are configured. Note the form ID from the browser URL bar after saving — for example /sg-admin/forms/edit/12 — you will embed this form as [form id=12] on the event page.
2. Create the event landing page
Open Pages → Add New. Set the page title to the event name, for example "Cupping Session — June 27". In the Settings sidebar, set the Slug to a clean lowercase path: cupping-session-june-27. This becomes the public URL.
Write the page body in four parts:
- Event headline — the page title styled as H1. Keep it identical to the page Title field so the browser tab and visible heading match.
- Date, time, and full venue address — two or three lines in bold. Make this impossible to miss. Include the full street address, not just the venue name, because some attendees will copy-paste it into a maps app directly from the page.
- What to expect — three to five sentences describing what attendees will do. Be specific: what they will make, taste, or learn; what to bring; whether experience is required. Vague descriptions produce uncertain registrations. Specific descriptions produce confident registrations.
- RSVP form embed — insert
[form id=12]at the end of the body. The shortcode expands to the full live form on the public page.
Set page Status to Publish when the content is ready. After saving, open the page URL in a private-browsing tab and confirm the form renders with all fields visible before distributing the URL.
3. Create the confirmation email
Open Email → Add New. This email fires immediately when a visitor submits the RSVP form. It is the artefact the registrant will search for on the day of the event, so the date, time, and full address must be present and easy to find at a glance.
Set the Email Title to an internal-only name that identifies the event and the email's role, for example "Cupping Session June 27 — Confirmation".
Set the Subject Line to something clear and findable in an inbox search: "You are registered — Cupping Session, June 27". Registrants will search for this email by event name, so including the date in the subject makes it reliably findable in a crowded inbox weeks later.
In the Send to field, select the form you created in step 1. SGEN fires this email automatically to the email address the visitor entered in the form whenever they submit.
Write the body in three short sections:
- A one-sentence confirmation greeting using
[first_name]. - The event details on separate lines: date, time, full address.
- A cancellation instruction with your email address.
Set Status to Active so the email fires automatically on every submission.
After saving, immediately run a test submission to confirm the email fires and the [first_name] substitution works before the URL goes live.
4. Create the reminder email
Open Email → Add New again. This is a separate email — a manual broadcast sent the day before the event to all registrants at once. Unlike the confirmation email, it is not automatic. You compose it in advance and keep it in Draft status. On the day before the event, open Email → Broadcasts, select this email, confirm the recipient list, and click Send.
Set the Subject Line to create anticipation: "See you tomorrow — Cupping Session, June 27 at 6 PM".
In the Send to field, select the contact segment built from form submissions. If a dedicated segment does not exist, export the submissions list as CSV from Forms → Submissions and import the addresses as a manual recipient list before sending.
Write the reminder body to include:
- A short opener acknowledging tomorrow's event.
- The full event details on separate lines: date, time, full address.
- Practical day-of notes: parking, public transport, what to bring or wear.
- A contact detail for last-minute questions: email or phone number.
Keep Status as Draft until the day before the event. Sending the reminder too early (more than 48 hours before) reduces open rates and dilutes the "tomorrow" urgency that makes event reminders effective.
5. Run the end-to-end test in private-browsing
Before sharing the event URL with anyone, run a complete test in a fresh private-browsing window — not just a new tab, but a full private window that carries no admin session or cached data.
Work through this sequence in order:
- Navigate to the event page URL. Confirm the page title, date, time, full venue address, and descriptive copy are all correct.
- Confirm the RSVP form renders below the content with all fields visible.
- Fill in the form with your test name and a test email address you can access. Click Submit.
- Confirm the success confirmation message appears immediately after submission.
- Check the test inbox within two minutes. The confirmation email should arrive with the correct subject line and the
[first_name]field populated with the name you entered. - Open Forms → Submissions in the admin. Find the form and confirm the test submission row appears with all field values populated correctly.
- Delete the test submission from the submissions list so it does not inflate the registration count before the event opens.
If the confirmation email does not arrive: open Email and confirm Status is Active and the Send to field targets the correct form ID. If the form does not appear on the page: confirm the form Status is Publish and the shortcode uses the correct form ID.
6. Monitor registrations and close when full
Once the event page is live and the URL is in circulation, check Forms → Submissions at least once a day during the registration window. The total submission count at the top of the submissions list shows current registrations.
When registrations reach the seat cap, choose one of two closure approaches:
- Set the page to Draft if you want no further URL access at all. The page disappears from the public site immediately and returns a 404 to anyone with the old link.
- Replace the form with a "closed" message if you want the page to remain accessible. Edit the page body, remove
[form id=12], and replace it with a plain paragraph: "Registration is now closed. We hope to see you at a future event." Keep Status as Publish.
On the day before the event, open Email → Broadcasts, select the reminder email saved in step 4, confirm the recipient count matches your expected registration number, and click Send.
What success looks like
At the end of setup, every component should be in the following state before the URL is shared: Specific checks to run before going live:
- Navigate to the event page URL in a private-browsing window and confirm the form renders.
- Submit the form with a test email address and confirm the success message appears.
- Confirm the confirmation email arrives within two minutes with
[first_name]populated correctly. - Confirm the event date, time, and full address in the email match the event page exactly. Discrepancies here cause attendee confusion and support requests on event day.
- Delete the test submission from Forms → Submissions before promoting the URL.
What to do if it does not work
Confirm the shortcode is exactly [form id=12] with no extra spaces or curly braces, and that the form's Status is Publish. A Draft form renders nothing on the public page even when the shortcode is correct.
Open Email and confirm Status is Active and the Send to field targets the correct form ID. Check the test inbox's spam folder before concluding the email failed to send.
The form was edited after responses arrived — a field was removed or its type changed. Finalize the form structure before publishing it to prevent this for future events.
This is expected behaviour. Draft pages are not accessible on the public site. If you need the URL to remain live while closing the form, replace the form shortcode with a "closed" message and keep Status as Publish.
First confirm the submission exists in Forms → Submissions. If the row is there, the trigger fired — ask the registrant to check their spam folder. If the row is missing, the form submit did not complete — test again in a fresh private-browsing window.
The segment may not include all form respondents. Export the submissions list as CSV from Forms → Submissions and import the addresses as a manual list before sending the broadcast.
This happens when visitors click the submit button multiple times while the form is processing. Check Forms → Submissions, identify duplicates, and delete all but the first submission per person.