Delivering value for festival sponsors through digital audience engagement.

The sponsorship landscape has evolved significantly. The era of simply exchanging monetary support or in-kind products for brand awareness is over. Today, sponsors require clear, demonstrable proof of value for their investment. This could manifest as increased positive consumer perception, enhanced community goodwill, or lead generation to feed sales pipelines.

While ticket sales offer a basic level of information gathering for event organisers, interaction remains limited. Furthermore, privacy regulations often restrict data sharing with sponsors unless specific permissions are granted upfront and opted into. Event apps can encourage engagement, but many are constrained in their potential.

Audience Engagement Platforms (AEPs), a new generation of attraction management software, could be the key to fostering long-term music festival fan engagement. These highly customisable, yet simple-to-operate, Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms offer next-level interaction. They come with dashboards that allow organisers to upload and push various content, including sponsored material, to visitors who have downloaded the corresponding mobile app – before, during, and after the event. No technical expertise is needed; simply input the content and it appears instantly on the app. This enables organisers to understand what resonates with audiences, leading to better curation and enhanced future experiences.

Extending Fan Engagement Beyond the Event

Many music festivals already utilise technology, with apps providing advance information, helping attendees navigate schedules, and offering helpful tips. However, their lifespan is typically limited to the duration of the event, with fan engagement ceasing once the music stops. AEPs offer a way to continue this engagement, potentially generating ongoing revenue even after the festival concludes.

Digital Wallets and Early Engagement

When a ticket is purchased, either online or from a vendor, the purchaser’s details can be logged directly into their festival mobile app wallet (if configured correctly). This immediately captures information such as purchase date, name, and email address. Longer-term engagement can begin with a link to download a free app, offering news, insights, and exclusive content about the upcoming event, subject to notification permissions.

Personalised and Curated Content

AEPs empower organisers to create content that genuinely resonates with audiences and encourages interaction. This can start even before the event, gauging interests to understand preferences. Tailored content can then be served to maintain engagement. Because the content is relevant, the likelihood of continued interaction is significantly higher than sending generic messages to everyone. This fosters a more personalised digital interaction, ultimately improving the overall destination experience. Content can be multimedia (text, images, video, audio) and scheduled to reach ticket holders in stages, keeping them engaged. For festivals introducing new or emerging artists, this provides an excellent way to familiarise audiences with the music before they arrive.

Deeper Insights and Post-Event Engagement

Using the platform’s tracking technology, such as GPS and beaconing, an AEP can identify which artists a festival-goer watched. Post-event, this allows for the delivery of additional, exclusive content like interviews or shout-outs directly to those fans.

On-Site Engagement and Valuable Data

On-site, organisers can establish specific geo-fenced boundaries, allowing entrance only to certain fans. These geo-fenced areas, including sponsored zones and the broader event site, can monitor dwell time, footfall, and engagement with specific artists, stages, and activations.

• Beacon technology can trigger additional content and interactions, such as offers, discounts, merchandise promotions, or sponsor messaging.
• Heat mapping technology complements this by illustrating dwell times and audience flow, highlighting which acts garnered the most attention.
• Geo-fencing and beacon technology also assist festival-goers in navigating the site to pre-planned performances.

This comprehensive data is translated into insightful reports and presented on the platform’s dashboard for organisers.

Diversifying Revenue Streams Year-Round

Most festivals occur annually, with the majority of on-site revenue concentrated into a short period. However, an AEP and its corresponding app can maintain engagement and enhance the fan relationship long after the event, opening up year-round revenue opportunities.

• Organisers can send special offers, such as upcoming artist album launches and advance downloads.
• Being API-friendly, AEPs can integrate with third-party software to further increase engagement.
• The highly customisable app also creates valuable digital real estate that can be sold to sponsors.

Using the AEP’s data segmentation tools, operators can intelligently leverage gathered data to serve relevant content to festival-goers (or any visitor at an attraction) at any stage of the event lifecycle. This allows brands to reimagine their commercial strategies. If sponsors are running post-event promotions, they have access to pre-qualified and segmented audience data directly through the festival’s AEP. While the festival organiser retains data ownership and the fan relationship, they can push out sponsor content with the appropriate permissions.

Organisers can also explore API integrations with existing music streaming sites for when profiled artists release new music. This ongoing engagement offers the potential for additional and continuous revenue for the festival organiser, whilst benefiting artists by growing their following and potential for music sales.

Spreading the Message Through Social Sharing

According to a Datareportal report from January 2022, 58.4% of the global population uses social media, spending an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes daily. Mobile devices account for 53.5% of internet access, with users spending 4 hours and 48 minutes on their smartphones each day, 92.5% of which is spent on mobile apps – predominantly social media-driven.

Branded digital photo frames from the event enable festival-goers to share content. Given these statistics, such sharing has a strong potential to disseminate the event's and sponsors’ messages to a much wider audience. These are just some of the ways technology helps forge sustainable relationships that deliver value to all stakeholders.