December 1, 2014 - Mobile is eating the world. And while many festivals have made the shift to mobile apps as a digital guide to provide to their fans, much potential goes untapped as far as leveraging event apps to transform the festival experience.
As Eventbase gears up for Austin’s IMFCON and IFFS, the industry’s signature conferences for music and film festivals, we’re eager to share how organizers can use the event app platform to propel their festival to the another calibre.
1. Build hype & drive ticket sales
The branded app is already relied on as the go-to guide for navigating an event that one already has plans to attend. Less commonplace for organizers: using the app to help drive ticket sales and promote your lineup. In addition to spotlighting your acts, films, and parties, ensure that your app makes it easy to explore the lineup and make it interactive and visually appealing. It’s a powerful way to boost your ongoing marketing efforts.
2. Stay connected with audiences
Favorites and personalized schedules, social sharing, interactive maps - these are all must-haves for helping festival-goers plan and navigate their event experience. To further ensure that attendees are on top of every detail, you can provide valuable and timely content through push messaging or an iBeacon-enabled app.
Alert fans to tickets available in their vicinity. Update attendees with critical event updates. Keeping your attendees informed and in the loop can go a long way in making an event memorable.
3. Continue engaging fans
Every festival has a following. From music fans to film buffs, audiences often look back on their festival experiences to determine if they’ll return the next year. However, this doesn’t limit your reach and engagement after your festival has ended.
After the last act, your event app is one additional marketing channel for driving attendance for the following year, through features such as: social media sharing that allows fans to broadcast their experiences to their networks or Spotify playlists that keep your festival top of mind.
4. Maximize sponsorship value & revenue
Demonstrating sponsorship value is a challenge many festivals contend with. A festival app provides a number of sponsorship opportunities - not only giving sponsors a way to showcase their brands but allowing you to drive sponsorship revenue.
Delivering a festival app that your attendees enjoy using also proves value to your sponsors.
