The secret to running a successful presale campaign | Article | Events Blog | Audience Republic (2024)

You know it, we know it: Presale registration is one of, if not, the most important time in your event marketing campaign.

Whether you're running a festival, concert or tour, presale registrations are your best opportunity to sell out as quickly and as easily as possible.

A great presale campaign will help you leverage your announcement to build up a massive audience you own, which will help you sell the remainder of your general on-sale, while also generating and gauging demand for additional dates.

But, how do you set yourself up for success? What makes a great presale campaign exactly?

We chatted to our customer success team to get their insider tips on how to run a successful presale campaign.

Leverage your lineup announcement to drive people to the presale registration. Ideally, presale should start from the lineup announcement and run between 4 to 7 days for the maximum impact.

You’ll also want to carefully choose the best on-sale date and time based on when your audience is most active online.

You’ve created this awesome campaign to a) create buzz and; b) sell tickets but you should also be considering option c) which is utilizing your presale campaign to build an audience you own.

Grow your database by collecting ticket buyers’ names, email addresses, and phone numbers, as well as incentivising them to follow all your social channels when they register for presale.

This tactic will help you sell the remainder of the general on-sale and gauge demand for the current event. Additionally, you can use the audience you build to drive ticket sales for future concerts, tours and festivals for years and years to come. This negates the need to spend thousands on Facebook Ads to reach the same audience every time you run an event.

You’ve now built your own audience with powerful insights, that you can market to without having to rely on paid advertising and social media. Not to mention, all at a fraction of the cost of traditional promotion methods! Now, who wouldn’t want that?

Social media platforms have made it easier than ever, for fans to connect with each other. Research states that fans are 10x more likely to buy a ticket to an event if they know their friends are going.

Audience Republic's gamified presale campaigns let your audience do your marketing for you, expanding your reach organically. Word of mouth marketing by fans means your message travels further, is more authentic as it’s socially driven and leads to increased sales at a lower cost to you.

What better way to create buzz and make your presale campaign go viral than offering fans some kick-ass prizes?!

Make sure to always add incentives for the top point scorers and runners-up. The key is to make sure that the prizes you select are both thoughtful and relevant for your fans.

Our team’s tip is to have your main prize as a ‘money can't buy’ experience. Think along the lines of flights, accommodation and VIP tickets, a helicopter ride into the festival or side-of-stage viewing.

Runner-up prizes can include perks such as free tickets, upgrades, discounts, merch etc. In essence, each prize should make ticket buyers excited to share the presale link and motivated to earn those points.

Make sure you’re using both email and SMS to send out your ticket links.

The last thing you want is for your fans to think they’ve missed out on access after they’ve gone to the effort to register for presale, simply because they missed an email in their inundated inbox.
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