Ask live events marketers why they do what they do, and you’ll hear answers like these:
“We always launch presales on Monday mornings. That’s when engagement is highest.”
“Thursday emails work best for us.”
“SMS is too expensive - we stick to email.”
Confident. Definitive. Based on... what, exactly? That’s what we’ve always done. That’s what the previous marketing director did. That’s industry best practice.
Often nobody has actually tested it. Nobody verified it with data. These assumptions get passed down like inherited wisdom, and without true ticket sales attribution, there’s no way to challenge them.
So many live events organizations run on inherited assumptions. The untested beliefs that nobody questions because “that’s just how we do things here.”
Maybe it’s the belief that Tuesday mornings are the best time to send emails. Maybe it’s the conviction that your audience doesn’t respond to SMS. Maybe it’s the tradition of launching presales on Monday mornings because that’s when “engagement is highest.”
Nobody’s ever tested whether any of this actually works. And without attribution, there’s no way to find out.
That’s not to say gut feel doesn’t have a place in live events marketing - it absolutely does. Experienced marketers develop instincts about their audiences. The problem isn’t having gut feel. The problem is operating entirely on gut feel without ever measuring whether your instincts are actually right. Attribution doesn’t replace gut feel - it validates it, challenges it, and makes it better.
When live events organizations connect their marketing platforms (including email & SMS) to their ticketing systems and can see which campaigns actually sell tickets, the assumptions start falling apart.
Suddenly you discover that Tuesday mornings, while they get high email open rates, aren’t actually converting to ticket sales. Nobody knew this because it wasn’t measured. You were celebrating Tuesday’s “good engagement” without knowing that a different send time could have driven more actual ticket purchases.
You find out that your Monday morning presale tradition is costing you sales. People are overwhelmed on Monday mornings. They’re not in buying mode. They’re catching up from the weekend. Your opens are high, your clicks are high, but your conversions to ticket sales are terrible. But you kept doing it because “that’s when we always launch.”
You realize that SMS, which you avoided because it’s “too expensive,” converts at rates that make the cost per ticket sale significantly lower than paid ads. You were optimizing for channel cost instead of ticket sales generated, leaving revenue on the table because nobody measured ticket sales conversions.
The biggest change when marketers move from assumptions to attribution is the language they use. Before attribution, it’s “we think email is working” and “we believe SMS could help” and “this campaign seemed to drive sales.” After attribution, it’s “email drove $470,000 in ticket sales last month” and “SMS to past electronic music attendees generated $124,000 with a 15% conversion rate” and “that campaign drove 3,270 ticket sales worth $186,500.”
The shift from “think” and “seemed” to concrete numbers changes everything. You’re not defending marketing decisions anymore - you’re reporting measurable results.
Without attribution, every budget conversation is defensive. Your director asks why you need $50,000 for marketing this year. You say email is an important channel for reaching your audience, SMS helps drive urgency, you saw good engagement last quarter. They hear vague justifications, no hard numbers, marketing as an expense that needs to be justified.
With attribution, the same conversation is completely different. Your director asks why you need $50,000 for marketing. You say last quarter, email drove $1.8 million in ticket sales and SMS drove $950,000. You’re spending $125,000 per quarter and generating $2.75 million in attributed revenue. Your marketing is driving 22x ROI.
You’re no longer justifying an expense. You’re proving an investment.
The live events organizations that make the switch from assumptions to attribution tell us the same thing: they can’t believe they operated blind for so long.
One festival generated $50,000 by sending a single SMS to drive upsells from GA to premium tickets. They were over the moon. Now it's part of every campaign they run.
Without attribution, you’re optimizing for the wrong things. You’re celebrating high open rates when you should be measuring ticket sales. You’re investing in channels based on cost when you should be measuring ticket sales.
With attribution, you optimize for what actually matters: ticket sales. You double down on campaigns that get tickets sold. You cut campaigns that don’t. You test new approaches and measure whether they work.
You stop operating on “we’ve always done it this way” and start operating on “this is what actually sells tickets for our festival, with our audience, for our events.”
That’s not just better marketing. That’s a completely different way of making decisions.
Ticket sales attribution doesn’t just give you better reporting. It changes how you think about marketing.
You move from defending marketing as an expense to proving it as a ticket sales driver. You move from inherited assumptions to tested evidence. You move from “this seemed to work” to “this drove $470,000 in ticket sales.”
Most importantly, you stop leaving money on the table. Every assumption you’re operating on that hasn’t been tested with data is costing you something. You just don’t know how much until you can actually measure which campaigns sell tickets.
The live events organizations making the switch tell us they can’t go back. Once you can see which marketing decisions drive ticket sales and which don’t, operating blind stops being an option.
Part 1 of a 4 part series: Marketing Attribution for Ticket Sales.
Up next → “Why Most Events Can’t Track Which Campaigns Sell Tickets”
