Harnessing the power of gamified campaigns can be a game-changer for audience engagement, growth and ticket sales.
By strategically integrating gamification into your ticket selling strategy you can expand your audience, have meaningful interactions, capture data and ultimately, drive conversions.
Silverchair drummer and solo artist Ben Gillies has successfully used Audience Republic’s Campaigns tool to turbocharge his mailing list, building it from a few thousand names to “in the tens of thousands”.
A gamified campaign is a marketing strategy that incorporates elements of gameplay and competition to engage and incentivize audiences. It typically involves using game mechanics such as points, competitions or rewards to encourage participation and drive specific actions or behaviors, such as signing up for a presale or wait list.
Gamified campaigns can be shared across various platforms, including social media, email, websites and SMS, to achieve objectives such as increasing brand awareness, driving customer engagement, or boosting ticket sales.
Before you start utilizing a gamified campaign, it’s worth asking yourself a few questions:
1. What is My Objective?
Begin by defining specific goals for your gamified campaign. Are you aiming to increase social media followers, boost email subscriptions, or publicize presales? Clarifying your objectives allows for targeted strategies and effective measurement of success. Whether it's enhancing brand awareness or driving ticket conversions, align your gamification efforts with your overarching marketing goals.
2. Who is My Audience?
Understanding your audience is paramount to crafting engaging gamified experiences. What prizes can you offer that will resonate with your audience and encourage them to engage more with your campaign?
“I was able to give away a really cool prize and my niche really wouldn’t pass that by,” says Michael Karagiannis, Founder of LALA Festival and Club Meraki. “It was really encouraging them to push their friends to sign up as well, and through that I saw about a 67% increase in sign-ups.”
There are a number of different ways you can use gamified campaigns.
Implement gamified mechanics to incentivize fans to share presale announcements with their networks. With Audience Republic’s Campaign tool, fans can earn points when they share your presale link on socials, invite their friends and follow you. This not only expands your reach exponentially, but also cultivates a sense of community among new and existing fans as excitement builds around your event. Utilize social sharing features and personalized referral links to track and reward successful referrals effectively.
Encourage fans to register their interest in upcoming events before tickets even go on sale. Use incentives such as exclusive signed merchandise, artist meet-and-greets, VIP upgrades or drinks packages to entice early registrations. By gauging interest levels in advance, organizers can make informed decisions regarding venue capacity, number of shows, marketing strategies and event logistics, ensuring a seamless and successful experience for attendees.
By gauging interest levels in advance, organizers can make informed decisions regarding venue capacity, number of shows, marketing strategies and event logistics, ensuring a seamless and successful experience for attendees.
Launch interactive competitions or challenges that encourage fans to actively engage with your brand on social media or share your content with their community. Fans can win points by linking accounts (such as Spotify), and sharing your content to socials and/or their friends. If their friends register/take part in the competition, the person who referred them also gets more points. The person with the most points can win coveted prizes, such as exclusive experiences, artist meet-and-greets, a bar tab or VIP upgrades.
Create a waitlist for sold-out events and incentivize fans to join by offering perks such as priority access to future events, exclusive merchandise, or backstage passes. Use gamified elements like loyalty points to reward waitlist members based on their level of engagement, such as social sharing, referrals, or participation in community activities. Allocate tickets to waitlist members based on their engagement level, ensuring that the most dedicated fans are rewarded for their loyalty.
Read More Event Marketing Metrics That Matter: Inside Audience Republic’s Gamified Campaigns Analytics
Once you have identified the objective, audience and type of gamified campaign you’d like to run, the next step is ensuring you’ve customized the point scoring to align with your overarching goals.
If one of your objectives is to increase the follower count on a specific channel, such as Instagram, or drive followers to a new channel you’re launching, such as TikTok, then consider weighting the points in favor of that specific channel.
A recent customer example we loved was FiveFour Entertainment, who boosted their Instagram following by 2175 people and saw an 85% uplift in campaign registrations by simply increasing their offering to 30 points for following their Instagram and 100 points for sharing with a friend.
If your goal is to capture data from your fans and their friends, then consider weighting the points in favor of sharing the campaign. This rewards your fans with points for sharing your event, captures the data of the friends it’s shared with, and offers those friends point incentives to pass the word on again.
If you want to bolster the information within your database to improve your segments, tags or lists, then consider weighting the points in favor of activities like linking their Spotify accounts. This data can then be used to understand what artists or genres your audience are listening to, which not only helps with targeting, but in putting together line-ups or bills that will resonate with your audience.
If your objective is to grow and gather your email or SMS opt-ins, then consider gearing your points in favor of subscribing to these channels. By doing this, you can ensure you build an engaged list of fans to whom you can communicate future events and promotions.
To learn more about Audience Republic’s Campaigns, and how you can best utilize them to sell more tickets and grow your audience, speak to a friendly member of our team now. A customer service manager will be happy to provide tips and assist you in setting up your campaigns.
