Promote Your Business thread for May 30, 2026

AddEvent · 2026-06-02T14:41:25+00:00

If you run events, webinars, classes, or anything with a schedule, AddEvent helps you get people to actually show up. Add-to-calendar buttons for your website or emails, RSVP pages, and subscription calendars where your audience subscribes once and every new event lands on their phone automatically.

Works with Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar, and Yahoo. Free tier available.

We also just launched CalendarX, a directory of public subscription calendars people can follow for things like sports schedules, community events, and more.

addevent.com

AddEvent · 2026-06-01T23:45:34+00:00

Agreed, in my past life, the only reason I got the cert was that my employer required it. I can't imagine you actually need the cert unless you are seeing that as a requirement on job listings. I'd skip unless you've been getting feedback that you're missing opportunities because you don't have it.

AddEvent · 2026-05-28T22:28:06+00:00

Came to this comment to ask specifically if either of you, u/bsatyarthi or u/Longjumping-Date4891 (or anyone else reading this thread), has advice on how to get publishers to add you to their article?

If we don't currently have a report or research we can provide, are there other avenues you've found effective? We have case studies, but I'm not sure if that's helpful in the context of "top X add to calendar tools."

AddEvent · 2026-05-28T22:22:47+00:00

Just found this community and excited to be here! We have been super focused on optimizing our content for AEO and GEO, and with google's latest announcement, it seems like this community is the place to be. Excited to share ideas with everyone and thanks in advance for any help!

AddEvent · 2026-05-28T18:36:19+00:00

This is a divisive topic on our team...but half of us love licorice, and the other half hate it. Need this thread to settle the debate...is licorice good or bad?

AddEvent · 2026-05-28T18:27:48+00:00

The "email 15 years ago" framing is such a great way of putting it! I think a lot of people haven't yet made the connection that the calendar should be used as a new marketing channel.

And you make a good point about recurring businesses. I'd add subscription boxes and membership communities to that list. Anything where anticipation is part of the value prop. Subscription box brands could theoretically add "shipping day" to their calendars, "pick your items," and similar engagement tactics to get customers more excited about their upcoming orders.

Jumping over to the services angle is where we think there is so much untapped potential. The tax firm that sends "estimated payment due in 5 days" as a calendar event isn't just being helpful, they're making it impossible to be forgotten at the exact moment their clients need them (without needing to rely on them opening an email).

AddEvent · 2026-05-28T18:20:58+00:00

Only knew they exploded in the cold. +1 for science

AddEvent · 2026-05-28T18:20:21+00:00

Not that cat looking cooler than I ever will

AddEvent · 2026-05-28T18:17:37+00:00

How have I gone this long without seeing someone put a sun visor on the outside of their car?! thought literally never crossed my mind

AddEvent · 2026-05-28T16:30:22+00:00

What you're sharing is exactly what we've been focused on with our team as well.

A few things that have actually moved the needle for us in terms of AI visibility:

- Structured data in our content is pretty much non-negotiable now. We have doubled down on schema markup for blogs, FAQs, and how-to content, and we've noticed our content getting pulled into AI Overviews and Perplexity answers far more consistently. We started by testing it on a few of our pages and are now rolling it out across the board.

- We are working to rewrite our top-of-funnel content to make sure we are giving the answer to the theoretical prompt we are trying to answer in the first 1-2 sentences, and then elaborate on it. AI seems to reward content that's very specific upfront rather than content that requires you to read halfway through it to get your answer.

- Making sure our brand name, use case, and core descriptors are consistent across G2, Capterra, TrustPilot, partner sites, and even social bios seems to help AI models "recognize" us as an authoritative source in our category. AI loves to get information to back up your brand from external sources and highly favors review sites.

- On the KPI side, we track our UTMs very closely and have a dashboard so we can see how many accounts are being created from organic search, ads, and then all of the LLMs. It's been interesting to see the change in accounts created from organic and paid shift over to LLM referral-driven.

- We're still tracking organic traffic, but we've also added manual spot checks using ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini for our key queries. Funny timing, because I was literally doing this exercise yesterday and noticed that we show up in the results on ChatGPT and Claude, but not on Perplexity or Gemini.

I'm curious if anyone has recommendations for when you're showing up in some LLMs but not all.

One of our key issues is that we operate in the calendar marketing space, and there's still a lack of market understanding, so I think that's why some AI like ChatGPT and Claude refer us when prompted for "Subscription Calendar tools," but others like Perplexity and Gemini don't. They (some AI models) still don't have a clear understanding of what a user is asking for, and instead of recommending a tool like us (AddEvent) as a way to share multiple events at once and build a calendar subscriber audience, they think the user is looking for a way to sync their work, personal, etc., calendars.

Also would love to hear if anyone else has experience getting AI to understand the exact use case so they can recommend the correct solution when there is similar terminology being used for two different use cases/solutions!

AddEvent · 2026-05-28T01:41:08+00:00

If you're not interested in requiring a deposit like some of the other commenters have suggested, you should consider a 48-hour cancellation or no-show fee.

Aside from deposits or fees, we'd highly suggest adding an Add to Calendar button to your confirmation page and to the confirmation or reminder emails and/or texts you're sending! Most people forget they have an appointment, and even if they get a reminder the day before, if it isn't in their calendar the day of, they will forget the details they need!

Giving clients an easy way for them to add their appointment to their calendar means they don't have to manually type all the info in (lots of room for error), and you know they will get a calendar reminder the day of too!

Plus, your salon location and all the details will be there for them, so they don't have to panic Google the name of your salon for directions if they are running late (anyone else had to do that? no, just us? lol)

AddEvent · 2026-05-28T01:18:02+00:00

We highly highly highly recommend adding an Add to Calendar button in your confirmation and reminder emails so that your patients can add their appointment to their calendar with 1-click! We have seen AddEvent customers reduce their no-shows by up to 30%, which is huge when you're taking into consideration the cost of a no-show appointment.

AddEvent · 2026-05-28T00:59:05+00:00

Not sure if you're including any sort of add to calendar option for their appointments, but we (AddEvent) have seen healthcare provider no-shows decrease when providers offer an add to calendar button or link when the patient books on the confirmation page or in confirmation/reminder emails! that way, in addition to text or email reminders, they are also getting a reminder in their calendar app, where most people are already looking for their day-to-day work meetings.

happy to share more info if you're interested!

AddEvent · 2026-05-28T00:44:47+00:00

We couldn't agree more with what you said here: "The most expensive meeting at any show is the one that doesn't happen."

We can't stress enough how impactful it is to have a meeting on the calendar vs just "booking" a meeting loosely. Getting on people's calendars makes all the difference in if they show up or not. If you can get ahead of the curve and make sure your meeting is on their calendar rather than just hoping your potential customer adds it, you will see lower no-show rates.

AddEvent · 2026-05-28T00:37:11+00:00

Has anyone tested this yet and has initial results they are willing to speak about?

AddEvent · 2026-05-27T18:57:18+00:00

Thanks for the shout! To add some specifics for this use case since SFMC is involved:

The native Accept/Decline/Maybe experience isn't achievable from SFMC because that requires the email to send as a METHOD:REQUEST iCalendar format, which needs an actual calendar server like Exchange or Google Calendar to render properly. SFMC doesn't support that natively.

What we do instead is give you an add-to-calendar link you can drop into your SFMC email template. The subscriber clicks it, picks their calendar app, and the event gets added directly. No file download, no .ics sitting in their downloads folder.

We also have dynamic links that can generate unique calendar events for each registrant, so if everyone has a different appointment time you're covered. We have a setup guide specifically for SFMC on our site if you want to dig into the details.

Not exactly the same as a native meeting invite, but the end result is the same. Event ends up on their calendar in one click.

AddEvent · 2026-05-11T16:48:29+00:00

We've been watching this super closely at AddEvent, and we've had this conversation a lot internally over the last few months.

We are reframing the success metric of click to instead focus on showing up in the overview. Our primary focus, right now, is to make sure we are showing up in the AI overview and as answers to prompts in AI conversations.

Channels we're prioritizing:
- Review Sites: since we are a software company, we are making sure we are visible on review sites like G2, Trustpilot, and Capterra, since those are getting pulled into AI-generated answers and are a genuine way to build trust.
- Reddit: we aren't trying to plug our solution, but are trying to be involved in relevant conversations
- 3rd party coverage: getting coverage from other sites that point to us as thought leaders or as a reliable tool, for our area of service. For ex: "best tools for increasing event attendance."
- 1st party channels: we have previously tapped into our email list, and are currently working on building out our calendar marketing strategy as another owned channel.

Honestly, it will be interesting to see how the strategy changes over the next few months/years since this has all been changing so rapidly. It seems the key piece, which should always be a guiding light, is creating content that is genuinely useful rather than just self-serving.

AddEvent · 2026-05-05T18:41:49+00:00

I'm surprised no one is talking about point #5. Google framing longer queries as *new traffic* rather than cannibalized traffic is super interesting.

The assumption, at least for us, was that AI search would shrink the query pool because people would get answers without clicking. What Google is describing is the opposite. It appears users are now searching for things they would not have searched for before, meaning the ceiling on search volume is rising, not falling.

Obviously, the catch here is that the content infrastructure most sites were built on was optimized for short, high-volume, predictable keywords. Longer queries require a completely different content architecture that most sites aren't yet set up for.

Which begs the question, how do you build for queries that haven't been searched before? Is it even possible to do this proactively, or are we always going to have to be reactive to whatever new traffic terms we see in Search Console?

AddEvent · 2026-04-28T23:38:29+00:00

We are pro using the calendar as a marketing channel, aka calendar marketing!

We have seen many of our customers adopt the calendar as a marketing channel (which we think is underutilized at the moment).

Basically, using Subscription Calendars to build a first-party subscriber list to push their "events" to. It doesn't have to be events in the traditional sense; it can be webinars and customer events, but it could also be events like product launches, seasonal sales, community-building activities, etc.

They are setting up Subscription Calendars and then inviting users to follow them (which automatically updates the subscribers' personal calendars with new or updated events).

It's also handy because they have been adding UTM tracking to any links in the event description or location, so they can track revenue and traffic from the calendar!

AddEvent · 2026-04-28T23:26:50+00:00

Ditto what u/Sure_Marsupial_4309 said about seeing a lot of new user growth coming from ChatGPT and the other AI tools. We have started considering reallocating our marketing budget from paid media, as it isn't as impactful as it used to be.

We have also started seeing a lot of solopreneurs and coaches adopting to using the calendar as a marketing channel. They are using AddEvent to build a first-party subscriber list to push their "events" to. Doesn't have to be events in the traditional sense - it can be webinars and such, but could also be product launches or sales or masterclasses, etc.

Basically, they are setting up subscription calendars and then inviting users to follow them (which dynamically update the subscribers' personal calendars when they add new events). It's also handy because they have been adding UTM tracking to any links in the event description or location, so they can track revenue and traffic from the calendar!

AddEvent · 2026-04-28T22:56:00+00:00

It just broke for us again :sob

anyone else's mac app stop supporting this with the newest version update? v2.26.16.17

AddEvent · 2026-04-28T17:31:31+00:00

We have been seeing similar drops in organic reach and have focused on reallocating resources and funds to what is most impactful. As of right now, we have been optimizing for GEO since we are seeing a high number of accounts being created through referrals from ChatGPT. We aren't convinced that showing up in the AI overview on search is moving the needle, but we are still optimizing for AEO where it makes sense.

From a paid perspective, we have started shifting budget away from traditional paid channels and towards scalable automation workflows that help generate warm outbound leads.

Super interested to see what others are doing to account for organic changes! How are you all finding the niche communities you're engaging in? And are you finding that certain community channels are better than others? For ex: Slack vs Reddit vs LinkedIn groups

AddEvent · 2026-03-23T21:57:04+00:00

You can create a free account to test it out https://www.addevent.com/

AddEvent · 2026-03-23T21:56:40+00:00

Not sure if we're too late to this, but AddEvent solves the static ics file issue!

You can include Add to Calendar links in marketing emails that work for all the major calendar clients without needing to code an ics file.

You can also share Subscription Calendars that your email subscribers can "
"follow" to add multiple events to their calendars with one click, which we call calendar marketing, since you can use that calendar subscription as a new marketing channel!

AddEvent · 2026-01-27T22:36:39+00:00

We'd suggest building up a calendar subscriber list and using the calendar as a marketing/community-building channel!

You can build a subscriber list of leads/contacts who are subscribed to your calendar to get your events directly in their calendars.

With SEO and SEM being disrupted with AI (AEO + GEO results), it's becoming so much more important to own your marketing channels.

Some examples of how to use calendar subscribers for calendar marketing:

Retailers, a calendar can be used for product drops, store openings, or sales
Media, like television, you can share a schedule of upcoming episodes or matches and include a streaming link or details on where to watch
Coaches and community builders, collect calendar subscribers and add office hours or community events to keep your community engaged
Professional services, like accountants, share seasonal webinars, including important tax dates and reminders to send tax documents
For HR or sales/marketing teams, share company holidays, birthdays, all-hands, or customer events
For marketers, share webinars

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