Corporate RSVP Wording Tips and Best Practices

Given that it’s holiday party season, we thought it might be helpful for our event hosts were we to provide some tips on RSVP wording for corporate events. Whether you’re hosting your company’s Holiday Party, inviting clients or prospects to an informational lunch or webinar, or hosting an employee/volunteer appreciation event, it’s important that you select the correct corporate RSVP wording for not just the event type that you’re hosting but also for the range of audiences that will be RSVPing.

While corporate RSVP wording is a broad area depending on which field of business you are in, here are some general corporate RSVP wording tips to get you started:

Part One of Corporate RSVP Wording – What Info Do You Need

The following things need to be included to ensure you are communicating with your guests clearly:

Name, Date, and Time of the Corporate Event

A brief explanation of the title of the event. You can also include a sentence with a brief event description. Be direct and clear with your language.

Attendee Names and Acceptances/Regrets

Much like an RSVP for any event, you need to gather the names of your invitees and their guests (especially for nametags or customized gifts, marketing materials, etc.). You can also use the traditional formal language, “Accepts With Pleasure”/”Declines With Regret”. Or simply, accept or decline, given the occasion. Your corporate RSVP wording depends on how brief you need to be or the event demands. If it’s a less formal event, like a company holiday party or an offsite, then you can feel free to have a little fun with it but you should always be wary of who may be RSVPing to the event.

Food/Lodging Considerations

You can choose to include selections of lodging for a conference, employee offsite, or reward trip, and/or food for any primary or secondary events. Depending on how many sub-events are relevant for your event, this may be too much for a single RSVP. However, gathering the info on guest dining preferences and/or their requests for lodging can also help you gather estimates that will be useful for contacting vendors ahead of time. We should also mention that it’s become more or less expected that guests will have the opportunity to highlight any allergies and/or dietary restrictions. At this point, you may find your card getting a little crowded. While less is always more as you don’t want to overwhelm your guests, the reality is that you need to get the requisite information so do your best to strike the right balance.

Optional Considerations

Again, depending on how much info you need, this might be a place to gather other event-specific information. Qualifying information on potential leads, businesses/companies represented (and contact information), or even an open field for guest suggestions are common. However, you need not make a simple corporate RSVP more complex.

Final Recommendations

When in doubt, choose only essential information when you design your own corporate RSVP. Quite simply, guest names and attendance information are the required pieces of information. But the reality is that there are a lot of other RSVP tools that exist that can enable you collect additional information in a far less intrusive manner. Other fields of info can be useful and important. But if you ask for too much you may lose the efficiency of your RSVP.

Curious how corporate RSVP card wording differs from other events? You can always check out our post on wedding RSVP wording.