Back to blog

How to sell out your festivals this summer season

Harness these ticket-selling tips for a sell-out summer festival season.

Blurry, sunny photo of a music festival with a girl to the forefront

It’s no mean feat to organise a festival – but you already know that. What you’re interested in is how to drive sales so your festival sells out. How do you ensure the word gets out about your event? And how do you build enough hype so that your festival is a serious contender for the season’s competition?

The secret lies in forward-planning. When you give yourself enough time to devise and run a range of promo strategies, you stand a much better chance of selling every single ticket. 

With that in mind, here are some of the best sales-driving strategies to employ as a festival creator 👇.

Colourful festival with blue skies and pink balloons

Curate a line-up that’s impossible to resist

Focusing on curating an unmissable experience that is highly tailored towards your own unique audience is probably the single most powerful thing you can do to sell out. And we’re not just talking about music festivals, here. Festivals in the arts, food, and cultural spaces should all focus on curating headline acts that genuinely excite their audience (yes, food can be a headline act!). 

Why not run a social media poll to gauge what your potential attendees would really love to see at your festival?

Reward previous attendees

If this isn’t your first rodeo, now’s the time to harness the relationships you’ve already built. 

Simply put – those who’ve attended one of your festivals already are much more likely to care about your upcoming events. Jump on this golden opportunity by emailing past attendees with exclusive content about your next big happening. That might be offering them the first sneak peek at your music festival line-up. Or giving them access to exclusive early bird tickets to your street food fest.

Rewarding your existing fanbase in this way is one of the best ways to kickstart those ticket sales. 

Run targeted email campaigns

Email campaigns are still a highly effective way of marketing events. In fact, this end-of-2023 Hubspot report revealed that 77% of markets had seen an increase in email engagement over the past 12 months.

When it comes to running a great event promo email campaign, you should:

Carefully segment your email recipients 

As a minimum, divide them into those who’ve attended one of your festivals before, and those who haven’t. Then, send tailored content to each group. Why? Because segmented emails get a 30% higher open rate and a 50% higher clickthrough rate than unsegmented emails! 

By sending targeted content that is highly relevant to the recipient, you make it much easier for them to take action. 

Follow up with reminders

After sending your first email, always follow up with scheduled reminders to those who’ve yet to buy tickets. Make sure to employ ‘scarcity tactics’ in these emails. In other words, remind recipients that time’s running out to get their tickets.

Send exciting updates about your festival

Drop exciting teasers and inspirational content into your emails to keep potential attendees feeling excited and engaged. That might be through making a big deal of announcing new additions to your line-up, or sending cool teaser video footage of one of your upcoming event’s main attractions. 

👀Check out this further reading to nail your email strategy:

A young girl and a woman posing for a photo at a festival

Sell early bird tickets – then release tickets on a scarcity model

Your ticketing strategy can play a major role in how many tickets you sell – and how fast. For the best chance at selling out, start by releasing a limited number of early bird tickets at a discounted price. It can help to highlight exactly how much attendees will save by purchasing early.

This 👆helps to create a sense of scarcity. It’s marketing 101 – when people feel they’re going to miss out on a great deal, they’re more incentivised to buy now.

And your scarcity-sell doesn’t have to stop when your early bird tickets run out. To keep it going, release another set of tickets at a slightly increased price – again, letting potential attendees know the number of tickets available at this price are limited. You’d then do this another one or two times before releasing your final tickets at full price.

This model is a great way to both reward early ticket-buyers with discounts, and to build a sense of urgency and ‘hype’ around your event. 

Offer discounts for group bookings

It can be a nice touch to offer attendees a discount for booking multiple tickets at once. For example, you could offer a deal that means they can get six tickets for the price of five. This is a simple tactic that helps to encourage potential attendees to grab tickets for their whole group, which might just be the motivation that one on-the-fence member needs to commit. Your attendees are rewarded for making a bigger booking, and you get to see a nice chunk of tickets fly off the shelves – win-win.

Tip: Ticket Tailor’s Ticket Bundle feature lets you do just this 👆. It’s super easy to set up, and you can offer other cool bundles too. For example, to sell tickets and products at the same time – say, a festival ticket + a t-shirt + a reusable cup for your drinks! 

Use ticket grouping to appeal to a wider audience

If your festival runs across two or more days, it can help to offer different ticket types for those who want to attend either all or some of the event.

While it might be tempting to only sell full-event tickets in the hope you’ll make more money this way, you may actually end up losing out on would-be attendees. By grouping tickets into single and multi-day categories, you make your event accessible to those who are only able to attend part of your festival.

💡Tip: Ticket Tailor makes is super easy to create different ticket types and groups >

A dancing crowd at a festival

Get sponsors & collaborators on-board with promotion

Asking your festival sponsors and any collaborators or stakeholders to get involved with your marketing efforts can be a really effective way to reach wider audiences.

This is a mutually beneficial thing – no doubt anyone with a vested interest in your event wants it to succeed. But it’s worth remembering that your sponsors and collaborators are likely already super busy. So it’s a wise move to do whatever you can to make things as easy as possible for them:

👉 Provide them with ready-to-go video footage to post on their socials. 

👉Give them copy to use on their emails and social media posts. 

👉 Make sure they have all the promo graphics and imagery they need to fire out promotional content. 

It may be a little bit more effort on your part, but if it gets others talking about your festival – it’s worth it.

Haven’t sorted sponsors for your festival yet? Take a look at our guide to securing sponsors for an event >

Be very active on social media 

In the run-up to your festival, make sure you’re filling your socials with tons of inspirational content. Try:

👉 Releasing beautifully edited video footage of your festival highlights. Check out our guide: How to make the most out of video as an event creator >

👉 Posting fun quick-fire interviews with people from your festival’s line-up – whether that’s a band, artists, yoga teacher, key speaker, or food stall owner.

👉Running social media competitions – winners get free entry to your festival!

👉 Being super responsive to any comments you get. If people ask questions about your festival – answer them! Or if they simply have some fun memories or kind words to share about your festival, be sure to acknowledge their comments with a friendly response.

A group of friends at a festival

Use clear calls-to-action (CTAs) across your site & comms

Your potential attendees should never have to work hard to buy tickets. Which is why your website, emails, and social media channels should be healthily punctuated with CTAs.

A call-to-action (CTA) is a prompt asking users to take an action (like ‘Buy Tickets’) – often taking the form of a ‘button’ on your website and emails. 

Of course, there is such a thing as overkill – you don’t want to shove this stuff down people’s throats. But you do need to make it very easy for them to head to that purchase page the second they think – “That’s it, I’m going”. So, while you don’t want your website homepage to be awash with CTA buttons, you do want to make sure that, wherever users are on the page, there’s one clear CTA in sight. 

What makes a good CTA? It’s simple really. Make it bold, make sure it’s in a colour that’s hard to miss, and make sure it clearly communicates the desired action. 

It’s worth noting that not all CTAs have to be to Buy Tickets, either. Some website pages and emails may benefit more from softer CTAs – like View Line-Up or Find Out More. It's all about tapping into the stage of the purchase journey that a user is on. If they’ve literally just discovered your festival and have no idea what it’s about, it’s important they can explore things first.

For example, if you were sending out a very early introductory email to people who had never attended your festivals before, your main CTA might be to View Line-Up or Discover [Festival Name], rather than ‘Buy Tickets’. You could then include a Buy Tickets CTA in all follow-up emails.

Selling out your festivals – closing thoughts

That’s a wrap! We hope these tips for selling out your festivals have been useful. Ultimately, it all comes down to planning early, creating a sense of urgency, and inspiring potential attendees to hit that Buy Tickets button. A multi-layered approach is best when it comes to ticking these boxes – one that sees you go big on social media, run targeted email campaigns, and work closely with your sponsors and collaborators. With all that done, we’re sure you’re in for your biggest sell-out season yet. Good luck! 

🤓Further reading – you might find these guides useful: 

Continue reading

View all

We sell ticket events of all shapes and sizes!

Don’t just take our word for it!

Google

Capterra

G2

Back to Top