For fair, festival and rodeo organizers, even a sold-out event can have untapped marketing opportunities. Past ticket buyers may never receive an on-sale email. Interested followers may never join a mailing list. And reaching either group may require someone to manually move audience lists between systems.
Finding time for that work can be difficult alongside the demands of running an event. For teams managing several fairs, one promotional push ends as attention shifts to the next. Smaller or volunteer-led organizations may have limited time to dedicate to audience marketing at all.
A practical starting point is to make audience connections easier to build and maintain: give people a reason to stay in touch, follow up with information that matters to them and simplify the work behind each campaign.
Universal Fairs, Los Fresnos Rodeo and the National Peanut Festival are exploring how AV Digital Marketing can help them build and maintain audience connections. Their goals range from reconnecting with past ticket buyers to growing mailing lists and reducing manual list management. For Universal Fairs, that work now includes a live giveaway for Lights of Noel, offering a practical example of how an event can give new audiences a reason to engage. These examples show how Saffire customers can build on the audience interest their events already generate.
Reconnecting with past ticket buyers
A past ticket buyer already has a connection to your event. When the next fair or festival comes around, you have an opportunity to build on that familiarity.
The challenge is giving them a reason to act. An on-sale announcement, a new attraction or a reminder to plan their next visit can make a message useful. For organizations running multiple events, it also helps to consider which upcoming event will be relevant to which audience.
Universal Fairs is interested in using SMS to reach ticket buyers from previous fairs with information about tickets for upcoming events. Its goal is to make an existing audience connection part of the next event’s marketing.
The team’s seasonal approach helps explain that interest. In a planning conversation about Georgia State Fair, Ami described working across approximately 12 fairs a year, with each typically receiving around five weeks of promotion before attention moves elsewhere. Georgia State Fair has both autumn and spring events, creating another opportunity to reconnect with its audience.
Los Fresnos Rodeo is exploring a different starting point. In a conversation with the marketing team, Travis Milum explained that the organization had relied on social media and local radio advertising, without a dedicated email marketing platform. The team discussed using its past ticket buyer database to send on-sale announcements directly and, over time, tailor messages to different groups, such as repeat attendees or people with particular interests.
The practical starting point is to think about the audience before the channel. What do these people already know about your event? What is new or worth returning for? What would help them make a decision?
Email and SMS can each play a role, depending on people’s communication preferences and permission to contact them. The message should make the next step clear and take people somewhere they can find the information they need.
Giving new audiences a reason to engage
Some people may be interested in your event without being ready to buy. Giving them a reason to engage creates a way to stay in touch while they decide.
Universal Fairs has put that idea into practice with its Lights of Noel giveaway. The campaign offers entrants the chance to win a vehicle pass to the drive-through holiday light show at Birmingham Race Course, with additional entries available for sharing the giveaway with friends and followers.
The prize gives people a clear reason to participate, while sharing helps introduce the event to others. For those who opt in to marketing communications, it also creates an opportunity to keep the connection going with event information, ticket reminders and reasons to plan a visit.
The team’s earlier planning conversations included thank-you messages, possible discounts and future email campaigns. That follow-up is an important part of the opportunity: the giveaway starts the connection, and relevant communication gives people a reason to stay interested.
Even with rodeo performances selling out each year, Los Fresnos Rodeo sees potential in gamified campaigns to grow its mailing list and help sell out further in advance. The team is exploring a kickoff-concert ticket giveaway, followed by on-sale messages to entrants who don’t win.
Both examples connect list building with what comes next: giving interested people a reason to sign up, then following up with information that helps them plan a visit.
Simplifying the work behind audience marketing
Knowing whom you want to reach is only part of preparing a campaign. Your team also needs to get the audience information into a form it can use.
Manual exports and imports add steps between an idea and a message being sent. When those steps are repeated for each campaign, list preparation becomes another task competing for the team’s time.
For Universal Fairs, the appeal of AV Digital Marketing extends beyond SMS. The team is also excited by the prospect of an integrated tool that would remove the need to manually export and import audience lists.
The National Peanut Festival sees a similar opportunity. Although its conversations are at an earlier stage, the team is particularly interested in how an integrated tool could save time and effort by reducing manual exports and imports. Its early goal is to make the work behind audience marketing easier to manage.
For organizers facing a similar challenge, consider what stands between your ticket buyer information and your next campaign. Are there repeated steps your team would like to simplify? Is preparing a list taking time away from deciding what to say to the audience?
A more connected approach to ticketing and marketing is worth exploring where it can make audience information easier to put to use.
Time constraints also shape what support a team needs. At Los Fresnos Rodeo, Travis described balancing his volunteer role with a day job. The marketing team’s proposed approach was to work alongside him on contest setup and the first emails, so he could learn while getting started.
For small or volunteer-led organizations, help turning an idea into a campaign can be as relevant as the tool itself. Choosing a manageable first activity, preparing the materials together and planning the follow-up can give the team a practical way to begin.
Connecting marketing to the purchase experience
The marketing message is one part of the audience’s experience. Once someone clicks, they still need to find event details, understand their ticket options and complete a purchase.
Think about the path from the audience’s perspective. Does the link take them to the event you promoted? Is important information easy to find on a phone? Is the next step obvious?
Saffire brings event websites, ticketing and ecommerce together in a branded experience, allowing visitors to browse event information and purchase tickets without being redirected to a separate ticketing site. Its websites and checkout experiences are designed to work across devices.
That provides useful context for audience marketing: consider both how you bring people back and the experience they find when they arrive. A clear message should lead to a clear path to purchase.
Los Fresnos also raised the question of aligning email design with its website rebrand. That is a useful reminder to consider the whole path: the message someone receives, the event information they see and the place they buy their ticket.
Keep the connection going
The next event gives you a reason to reach out. The relationship you build between events gives people a reason to pay attention.
What could your next audience campaign look like?
Explore how Saffire and AV Digital Marketing can help you reconnect with past ticket buyers, grow your mailing list and simplify campaign preparation. Talk to our team!