How should festival and event organisers use data to drive and optimise their marketing campaigns

It may be a cliche, but data really is king when it comes to driving any successful marketing campaign. And the same rings true when promoting live events. Data can give you valuable insights on your fans, help you reach new audiences, and ensure your campaigns are running efficiently and are optimised to maximise their potential. 

But what are the best practices when it comes to using data? Here are just some of the ways you can use it to drive your festival or event’s marketing campaign.

‍Use different analytics platforms

‍Different analytics platforms offer different insights and will help you better understand your audience. If you rely on just one platform, then you’re limiting yourself to only a fraction of the complete picture. 

Google Analytics is the first place to start to measure things like traffic, attribution channels, audience location and demographics. 

But we’d also recommend looking into behavioral analytics platforms such as Amplitude and heatmap tool Hotjar. Both will give you further insights into how people are interacting with your website, for example retention and conversion rates of specific actions, and how users navigate your website. These insights are gold dust when it comes to optimising your site and checkout funnels to maximse conversion rates. 

‍Work with a ticketing provider that offers detailed insights and marketing actions

‍Whichever ticketing provider you decide to go with, you need to make sure it can offer you detailed insights on conversions while also giving you the keys to monitor these in real time. These can include things like sales by item, channel and location, as well as metrics including conversion rates, average order value and the average number of tickets per order.

What’s more, check if your provider will also do any marketing actions based on these insights. For example, at Event Genius we offer our clients automated emails including on-sale, abandon basket and abandon browse emails. We’re also able to target fans of similar genres, as well as those who follow artists that appear on an event’s lineup.

And if you want to take things one step further, going cashless and using a cashless payments system like egPay will give you a suite of data and analytics relating to customer spend and their behaviours on site. This data can be incredibly valuable when it comes to reviewing and optimising your operations at upcoming editions, such as product selection and trader locations.  

‍Segment your users and target them with specific marketing campaigns

‍Not all of your fans are the same. This is particularly true of events that offer a varied experience, such as a range of genres. Using a blanket marketing approach would therefore be a mistake. It’s much better practice to segment your target audience, whether that be by their favourite genres, demographic or location. You can also segment your users based on their actions, for example those who signed up for a pre-sale and didn’t purchase, or those who have purchased tickets but no accommodation.

Coming up with specific campaigns for each group allows you to create impactful conversations with your fans, and will certainly increase engagement and conversion rates.

‍Use this data to optimise your website, checkout funnel and marketing campaigns

‍Maximising your website and marketing campaigns requires constant optimisation based on data insights. For example, if you are seeing a lot of traffic to your store but a lower than expected conversion rate, that’s a sign to evaluate your pricing. Similarly if an email campaign has a high open rate but a low click through rate, that shows the content you’re sending your fans isn’t what they’re looking for, at least at that specific time. Constantly ask what is driving the trends you see in your data and how you can react to it. 

‍Keep and eye on product popularity and customer payment methods

‍If you are selling a range of products, for example General Admission, VIP and specific party tickets, or accommodation and travel options, it is imperative that you keep a close eye on how each individual product is performing. 

Moreover, if you offer fans the opportunity to pay via a number of payment methods, such as payment plans or our Pay with Friends solution, we recommend monitoring the take-up of each, especially if you only offer them on certain products. 

Analysing these will allow you to be nimble and adapt to any changes in buying patterns, while also informing you of where to focus your marketing efforts. For example if you notice a specific party isn’t selling as well as you hoped, or similarly travel and accommodation options aren’t shifting and you need to make a call on whether to release the rooms you reserved. 

You could also make the decision to introduce or expand other payment methods to certain products, or optimise the payment schedule by reducing upfront payments and increasing the amount of installments. 

‍Let your marketing channels help you focus your campaigns

‍66.7% of all digital advertising spend in the UK was made on either Google or Facebook in 2019. And one of – if not the main – reason for that is their ability to precisely target users. Both platforms store huge amounts of data, and luckily for advertisers, you can use that data to your own advantage. But to successfully do so you must first understand your target audience and who you want to target, which is why segmenting your audience is so important. 

‍If you’d like to hear more about how we use data at Event Genius and how you can take advantage of that to optimise your festival or event’s marketing campaign, you can get in touch with us by clicking here.