Increasing Music Festival Loyalty through Engagement.

The traditional music festival marketing scenario generates ticket sales once a year for an annual event with a simple financial transaction. Festival-goers are often anonymous to organisers and there may be little interaction taking place. How can organisers increase engagement with festival-goers to build a long lasting, valuable and loyal relationship.

The profit margins music festival entities make can be very slim and with increased competition festival-goers can easily pick and choose alternative events. Building loyalty with festival-goers increases the chances of future repeat ticket purchases and incremental revenue. A comprehensive plan of activities and initiatives throughout the year can increase engagement with festival-goers which should lead to genuine long-term loyalty.

Transitional Marketing Activity.
Simple marketing activity targeted at previous festival-goers to drive ticket sales for a forthcoming event are no longer enough to build loyalty. Festival marketing teams will have to fundamentally shift their promotional practices to a year-round engagement calendar. Offering blanket discounts to potential ticket buyers is no longer sufficient; organisers need to focus on exclusivity that elevates the audience's status (gold level member for example). Rather than a single ticket promotion to previous buyers, an engagement plan should produce relevant regular content and activity (newsletters, exclusive offers and small meet up events) which constantly keeps the festival brand in front of them. Generic email marketing campaigns should be replaced by personalisation which is increasingly possible due to more demographic and behavioural data collection, this makes email communications more personal and relevant.

Engagement and Loyalty Initiatives.
Data collection enables organisers to identify their most loyal customers, and they should communicate this status to festival-goers which enhances their feeling of belonging to an exclusive club. Campaigns which target the most loyal members with unique discount codes can enhance that ‘special’ feeling as these are not released to the general public. Whilst these activities can increase loyalty, some festival-goers may remain passive to their status. Organisers can increase active engagement on festival sites with various gamification initiatives. Some festivals have used Augmented Reality (AR) treasure hunts where participants collect digital collectables that can be exchanged for rewards like merchandise, free drinks or VIP upgrades, for example. Post event organisers can send their loyal members exclusive after movie content which can be personalised using Agentic AI tools which use their site scanned data to focus on the stages they attended and most watched artists. Asking the most loyal members for event feedback and suggestions for future events will always make them feel valued.

Financial Impact of Increased Engagement and Loyalty.
An engaged and loyal fan base will almost always boost sales, especially incremental revenue because of increased retention for future events. This is known as the ‘retention multiplier’ where research suggests that just a small increase in customer retention can significantly impact the financial bottom line. This can sometimes be measured as a ‘customer lifetime value’ where historical data indicates that it can be five times cheaper to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one. This makes the importance of engagement and loyalty critical to every music festival's long-term survival and profitability.

For festival organisers planning their next event using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, site planning, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Image by bbolender via Pixabay

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