Understanding your audience, their interests and ticket-buying preferences is crucial to the success of your event. Marketing your Slipknot concert to Andrea Bocelli fans is, for example, likely to yield an ROI as brutal as the masked metallers’ mosh pit.
This is where the power of audience segmentation comes in.
By understanding distinct audience segments, organizers can tailor marketing messages and event experiences to resonate deeply with each group's unique preferences and interests.
This personalized approach boosts engagement, ticket sales and audience satisfaction, ultimately driving the success and profitability of the event. Additionally, segmentation allows for efficient resource allocation, ensuring marketing budgets are spent effectively by focusing on the most promising segments.
Here are five key best practices – and one you should avoid – for successfully segmenting your audience.
Before diving into segmentation, gather comprehensive data about your audience demographics, preferences, behaviors and psychographics. Utilize analytics from previous events, identify top fans through gamified campaigns, uncover listening habits, ticket sales data, and past event feedback to build detailed audience personas. A key way of gathering your ticket sales data in one place quickly and easily is to work with a CRM like Audience Republic.
In short, the better you understand your audience, the more effective your segmentation strategy will be.
“I think it's really important to segment your audience so that you're hitting the right fans at the right time,” offers Chris Woods, Director of Sales at Audience Republic. “And you want to make sure that the message that you're sending them is going to appeal. You want to protect that database and keep them as a customer for longer and make sure they're not unsubscribing from future announcements. So being able to very quickly see what fans within your database are going to be interested in buying tickets is really important. And you do that all through segmentation.”
Identify meaningful criteria for segmentation that align with your event goals and target audience. Common segmentation factors include age, gender, location, interests, past attendance and purchasing behavior. Consider unique characteristics specific to your event niche. For example, a music festival might segment by music genre preferences or camping habits.
“I try to segment as far down the funnel as I can get,” offers Force Media Management MD Randy Nichols. “To give an example: Underoath did a livestreaming series during the pandemic. And they played their three biggest records start to finish, and we did a merch line and a vinyl reissue for each of those records.
“We found that fans were significantly outweighing buying vinyl to buying tickets to the livestream. But we were already producing a livestream and spending money on it, so we had to figure out how we were going to drive fans in.
“So what we did is, to anyone who bought all three pieces of vinyl, we offered them a 50% discount on tickets to the first week's livestream, or a smaller discount to buy all three weeks of the livestream.
“And our thinking was, once fans saw week one of this livestream, they would be blown away and buy the following two weeks. So it was worth a deep discount to bring them in.
“So I was able to segment fans who bought all three albums, but did not buy a ticket to the livestream. And through that segmentation, I then significantly increased sales.”
Utilize advanced analytics tools to analyze and interpret audience data effectively. Look for patterns, trends, and correlations to inform segmentation decisions. By leveraging data insights, you can refine your segmentation strategy over time, optimizing for improved audience targeting and engagement.
“We spend a lot of time trying to make sure that we do segment our audiences, especially as we look at the VIP customer data,” says Felix Carrasco, Senior Vice President, Merchandise, at WMX. “[If] we know there is a fan that is spending a premium to see their artist in a specific city, then you're able to start geotargeting and marketing to core audiences in specific markets.
“And it's about engaging with them outside of just asking them to transact. So we'll use the top listener data from Spotify and we'll use the top purchasers and we will gift them products or we will send them out elements where it engages within the fan community... to kind of keep the buzz going around a lot of our artists.”
Segmentation allows you to tailor your marketing messages, promotional offers, and event experiences to resonate with each audience segment. Craft personalized email campaigns, social media content, and onsite activations that speak directly to the interests and preferences of different audience groups. Personalization enhances audience satisfaction and strengthens brand loyalty.
“Having your segmentation for that direct hand-to-hand selling is critical,” says Jesse Lawrence, Founder and CEO of FanIQ and TicketIQ. “So knowing your 2022 buyers versus your 2021 buyers, Premium versus GA. I think it's really important to understand all that stuff so when you're pushing out content through email or SMS, you're putting the right message in front of that user.
“Blasting out a generic, ‘tickets are on sale’, is much less effective than a more curated, ‘Hey, Premium buyer, [there’s a] limited amount of Premium tickets available for 2023. We want you to know first.’”
Continuous evaluation and refinement are essential for optimizing audience segmentation efforts. A/B test different segmentation strategies to measure their effectiveness in driving ticket sales, engagement, and audience satisfaction. Ask for feedback from your audience and analyze post-event data to identify areas that can be improved. Then shape your segmentation approach based on these insights to ensure ongoing relevance and success.
“If you're putting on events, you really want to understand a lot more about your audience – their demographic information, what time of day they open their messages," says Matt Jones, Music Partnerships Manager at Audience Republic. "When do they actually look at the content you’re sending them? How can you actually tailor your message where it's going to be really effective? This is where A/B testing can be so powerful – you can send messages at different times of the day, use different types of headers, different styles of messaging, and measure how each variation performs. As a result you can really hone in on how your audience prefers to receive messages and what kind of messaging they respond to better, which in turn will make your marketing so much more powerful. Test, test, and keep on testing!”
While segmenting audiences is crucial for effective targeting, it's equally vital not to get overly granular. Creating too many narrow segments risks excluding potential attendees who may fall outside these categories but still align with your target audience. Your Iron Maiden fan may, for example, also want information on the upcoming Disney show because their child would like to go.
“I think you can segment too fine and really miss out on some people who might be a casual fan and interested,” says Jenny Oppenheimer of SaveLive. “I think what you don't want to do is get so granular that you're sending an email to 10 people. I think it's important to leave some of the outliers in there. The artists might be all of different genres, but the audience isn't.”
To learn how Audience Republic can help you segment your audience to maximize the impact of your event marketing, speak to our team today.
Audience Republic has helped promote over 200,000 events globally. Our unique CRM and marketing platform has been specifically built for the events industry.
Capturing data insights from streaming platforms, ticketing providers, and gamified campaigns, Audience Republic offers the tools to continuously grow, segment and target your audience.
With custom fields, dynamic tagging and native filters built for event data, our CRM is the most efficient way to build powerful segments based on fan insights.
Combined with industry leading email marketing, SMS, paid advertising integrations and automation capabilities, event marketers can be confident in their ability to message to find and reach the people most likely to purchase tickets.
