Imagine getting an SMS alert at 10 AM on a Tuesday morning promoting a heavy metal show when your entire Spotify history is folk. Or receiving an email pushing a $250 VIP table package when you have only ever bought $20 general admission tickets. Your immediate reaction is to unsubscribe from the mailing list. It isn’t targeted to you, so it just feels like spam.
Yet event promoters still make this exact mistake when they are in a rush to fill a room. They send the same exact message to their entire database for every single show. This generalized marketing strategy doesn’t work, it wastes your time and actively destroys the value of your fan list. Stop treating your audience like they’re all the same. By tagging fans by music genre, attendance frequency, and past level spend, you can send hyper-targeted messages that double conversion rates while keeping your audience engaged.
Cost of hitting “send to all”
When you send irrelevant announcements to your entire contact list, fans quickly realize that your messages aren’t tailored to their interests and this leads to three major problems:
- An increase in unsubscribe rates: Every time you send an irrelevant email, you are permanently losing valuable contacts you have worked so hard to acquire.
- Triggering spam filters: Email providers track how your fans are interacting with your message, so if click rates are low this will signal that your messages are unwanted. Therefore filtering your emails to their spam folders which leaves them unread.
- Low expectations: When fans expect your emails to be irrelevant to them, they just won’t open them anymore even if you are sending an email about a show they would have loved to attend.
Relevance is the key to maintaining a responsive fan base. If fans know that what you’re sending them is relevant to their taste, open and click rates will increase incredibly.
How to group your fans for higher event ticket sales
- Music Genre and Event Style:
- Not every fan wants to be at every show you host. A fan who bought tickets to an acoustic singer songwriter set is not going to show up to a rap artists show. By tagging buyers by genre you can make sure that every announcement lands in front of the right customers. So now when a fan receives a text that is specifically tailored to their taste, the purchase decision becomes an easy yes.
- Attendance frequency
- Differentiate between your casual, one time attendees, and your regulars who show up to almost every event you host. First time buyers will always need some sort of incentive to buy a ticket. A welcome offer or first purchase discount can help them make their decision a little quicker. Frequent customers also deserve some sort of perk like priority access and early presale codes to reward them for their loyalty. Reach out to your most active fans first and watch sales increase immediately.
- Past level spend
- Your fans have different spending habits, making sure you are catering to those who are willing to spend more will increase your revenue. Fans who always buy the VIP packages or early entry passes deserve to be the first group of people who receive premium upsell offers. If you are offering premiums to fans who only ever buy the basic general admission tickets, you are not going to see sales jump as those fans are not willing to spend more.
Why hyper targeting works
When you match the right offer to the right fan, marketing stops feeling like annoying spam and starts to feel like a real personal recommendation. Using the fan’s name in the message makes the fan feel recognized and incentivized to purchase tickets. The message is relevant to their taste and the direct mobile link makes the buying process even easier. By shrinking your send volume to only interested fans, you reduce unsubscribe rates, cut your messaging costs, and double your conversion rates.
AdmitONE gives venue operators and promoters total control over their fan data without requiring hours of manual work. You can automatically track buyer behaviour at checkout and seamlessly tag fans by event genre, purchase history, and visit frequency.
