Mastering the art of email marketing is an essential strategy for event organizers looking to boost ticket sales. Personalized communication not only helps create a strong bond between events and attendees, but also ensures that the right message reaches the right audience at the right time, without interference from shifting social media algorithms.
And as Hyperculture Marketing CEO David Puckett attests, the ROI is bonkers: “Your average ROI for a solid email marketing platform is 40x what you’re paying monthly for a subscription. It is the best return on investment you can get for any type of performance-based marketing channel.”
Here, we explore five key actions event organizers can take to leverage email marketing to drive ticket sales and create unforgettable experiences.
Grouping recipients based on factors like past event attendance, average spend on tickets, musical preferences and geographic location allows for the creation of highly personalized and relevant email content.
That personalization instills a sense of exclusivity and connection, making attendees more likely to purchase tickets.
“Knowing your 2022 buyers verses your 2021 buyers, premium versus GA, it’s really important to understand all that stuff so that when you’re pushing out content through email or SMS, you’re putting the right message in front of that user,” says Jesse Lawrence, Founder of TicketIQ and CEO and Co-Founder of FanIQ.
“Blasting out a generic ‘tickets are on sale’ is much less effective than a more curated, ‘Hey, premium buyer, limited amount of premium tickets available for 2023, we want you to know first.’ If I’m a payment plan buyer, I’m much more likely to convert if you tell me that payment plans are only available for the next 24 hours. Segmentation is critical.”
Using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system like Audience Republic is pivotal for event organizers looking to optimize their email marketing strategy. A CRM allows you to segment your audience based on preferences and behaviors, enabling personalized and targeted communication and ad campaigns.
By tracking interactions and engagement, a CRM facilitates the creation of tailored content and timely follow-ups, fostering stronger relationships with your audience. Moreover, it streamlines data management, ensuring efficient communication and seamless coordination throughout the event lifecycle.
“The best way to use a CRM is centralizing all of that customer data so that you can use it more effectively,” says Chris Woods, Director of Sales at Audience Republic.
“If you get ticketing sales data and your email and SMS databases into one system, you can start to build segments and you can reach people more directly based on that profile. Centralizing that data means you can work faster and you can hit the audience that’s going to be more interested in buying tickets or merch, or whatever the product might be.”
Data is a powerful ally when it comes to mastering email marketing. By closely monitoring email performance metrics like open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates, organizers can gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t.
A/B testing can help fine-tune email content, subject lines and timing to ensure maximum impact.
Event organizers can also leverage data to understand attendee preferences and adapt their email marketing strategies accordingly, driving ticket sales through a more personalized and data-driven approach.
“Once you get a lot of opt-ins, once people are really digesting your emails, there’s some really high-performance tactics and segmentations you can do,” says Sparrow Founder and SaveLive VP of Marketing, Data & Technology Mike Mauer.
“To give one example, for one of my venues, we hire photographers. And we’ve been hiring photographers for a long time to cover shows, and we’d post on socials as recaps, people would engage, they would like it.
“[Then] we started sending email recaps to people, knowing that they would get a 50-60% open rate. And then within the actual email, we could cross sell other shows, and the ROI on that was really, really high, because it was highly targeted. Everybody wants a recap of the show that they just went to within the last day or two.”
"Data is a powerful ally when it comes to mastering email marketing."
Rewarding your mailing list is crucial as it cultivates a sense of loyalty and engagement among subscribers.
By offering exclusive incentives such as discounts, special promotions or freebies, you create a value proposition that encourages continued interaction and brand affinity. This strategy fosters a positive relationship with your audience, leading to increased open rates, click-through rates and, ultimately, higher conversion rates.
Moreover, it helps build a strong, loyal community around your event.
“A lot of our artists have, say, 10 years’ worth of fans on [their] email list, often more. And that's a pretty powerful database to be able to harness,” says Harry White, Managing Director at Future Classic.
“We've been trying to consistently reward that email fan base at every point along the way and have been quite disciplined about making sure that they've got the first of any information, whether that's a song release, a tour announce, whether it's leaking something a day or two before or merch drops.
“I think just being quite specific about making sure that the email list constantly gets [that information] first, because I think as soon as that drops off, fans go, ‘Why have I subscribed to this?’ But I think if it's providing utility, a lot of people stick around.”
People have signed up to your mailing list because they want to hear from you. They want to hear about your event or venue; they want to hear information on presales; they want information on line-ups, and on practical tips such as transport and access control.
So don’t be afraid to use it! But beware – while one of the major aims is to get people to buy tickets, if every email is nothing more than a sales pitch you will lose your audience.
“If you're curating an email that has events or discounts or special announcements that resonate with the audience you're sending it to, then… you will get conversion there,” says Carson Vickrey, Marketing Director at Marauder. “But again, it's just dependent on hitting the audience with something that's beneficial to them. Not just spamming people's inbox. That's [how] you're gonna make people angry.”
Your email is also an opportunity to provide value to your audience by educating them about artists playing your venue or event, or about new genres.
“We're always continuously educating our audience,” adds Christine Osazuwa, Chief Strategy Officer at Shoobs. “And I think that's really important for context, because people want to know what's new, what's interesting, what's hot and things like that. So we try to provide that additional context.”
To learn more about how you could be maximizing your email marketing and selling more tickets to your event, speak to our team today.
