How Adelaide Fringe sold 1 million tickets in the face of rising inflation

Written By Patternmakers

In our latest Audience Outlook Monitor webinar, discussing the April 2023 results on how rising inflation is impacting audiences, Tandi Palmer Williams spoke to Ella Huisman, Executive Director – Audience at Adelaide Fringe, about one of the most successful campaigns of the year so far.

At the Adelaide Fringe program launch, CEO Heather Croall announced a goal to sell 1 million tickets in 2023. With 828,563 tickets sold in 2019, they had been on track to reach 1 million by 2024, but while the festival was able to go ahead throughout the pandemic, progress was stalled, with sales dropping to 623,667 in 2021.

Despite this, the Fringe team got on board and rolled out a ‘mission to 1 million campaign’. At 10pm on the final night of the festival, Ella (who had spent the campaign furiously analysing ticketing data and refreshing dashboards) and her team watched sales tick over to 1,000,000.

So, how did they do it? Watch the recording of the webinar here, or read on for our key takeaways.

Flash sales can help curb last-minute ticket buying behaviour – and corporate sponsorships can ease the financial impact of discounting tickets 

The Audience Outlook Monitor has highlighted a trend of last-minute ticket buying. In August 2022, 26% of audience members were most likely to have been booking for events within the next seven days or the next 2-3 weeks (43%) – and qualitative data in April 2023 suggests this trend could be here to stay.

Ella says Adelaide Fringe has observed this trend, calling watching ticket sales crawl in ‘everyone’s worst nightmare’.

One of the tactics they employed was a sponsored flash sale, where audiences get access to cheaper tickets and the sponsor pays the artist the difference – rewarding early ticket-buyers without impacting the artists’ box office return.

All types of audiences are seeking free or cheap events – which the Adelaide Fringe Festival had in the hundreds

The average ticket price at 2023 Adelaide Fringe Festival was $35.25, and there are hundreds of free events available – meaning the Festival had plenty of affordable options for those who are opting to limit their arts spending at the moment.

This is a plus for arts audiences, many of whom have reduced spending or actively sought free/cheap activities in the last 6 months. The proportion spending over $50 on tickets to in-person cultural events has decreased from 63% in August and October 2022 to 59% in April 2023, and 54% of arts audiences say they’ve looked for free/cheap cultural activities to attend over the past 6 months.

With economic conditions affecting segments of arts audiences differently, targeted marketing strategies help sell more tickets, to more people

According to the April Pulse Check results, audiences in different age and households are behaving quite distinctly. In terms of cost-of-living pressures, older audiences are the most likely to say their situation is the same (58%), while parents are the most likely to say they are ‘worse off’ (57%) – and young audiences under 35 are feeling the most negative about the economic outlook. Different groups have different programming preferences too, for example audiences over 55 are more likely to be attracted to challenging, topical things (44% vs 39% of those under 35) – and the best places to reach them differ (over 55s are all over email, parents aged 35-55 are on Facebook and under 35s are best reached through Word of Mouth).

Adelaide Fringe used a range of tactics during their ticket sales campaign, such as eDMs and targeted advertising, based on which genres and themes audiences have purchased in the past, as well as post code targeting for shows outside the CBD to speak directly to the people at the local level.

Ella says they also regularly audit their database so that they’re only targeting engaged people, which involves a series of reengagement emails, including allowing them to choose specific genres or subjects they’re interested in hearing about. Even though it can seem counterintuitive to regularly delete subscribers, Ella says it has many benefits, like increasing open and click through rates, helping them to sell advertising among other things. Ella says,

‘It’s great to say you’ve got 500,000 subscribers but if they’re not actually engaging it’s expensive to have them on your system, your open rates aren’t as good, and you’re wasting time sending messaging to people that aren’t interested.’

The location of events is also impacting 33% of audiences more than usual,  and 45% say they are staying closer to home – highlighting a need for campaigns and programming outside metro areas

With costs of parking, fuel, air tickets and hospitality all increasing, qualitative data from the April Pulse Check suggests that proximity to events plays an important role in audiences’ ticket buying decisions.

To tackle this, Adelaide Fringe developed a Near Me Now function on their website, allowing audiences to easily access a list of shows near their current location, ordered by time. The also launched a Fringe Across the State campaign to promote Fringe events outside Adelaide, and provided grant funding to artists to add regional SA locations on a mini-tour.

With cost-of-living and other pressures piling up, clear and simple marketing and ticketing processes can help get indecisive audiences over the line

Being sent to another website to buy tickets, or having to click one too many times to find the information they’re looking, for can be enough to make anyone close the browser and move on. With many audiences prioritising other things or being stricter when choosing where to spend their money, it’s important to make it as easy as possible to find information, buy a ticket and get to your event.

The Adelaide Fringe team have invested in perfecting the user journey to purchase tickets. Ella says,

‘We’ve spent a lot of time and energy to make our platforms really intuitive, focusing on user journey and making the experience of buying a ticket on our website seamless to create a higher box office return for artists.’

With all festival events on sale through the Adelaide Fringe’s website, regardless of the venue, audiences can easily access everything in one place (and Fringe gets access to bucketloads of audience data, helping them deliver their targeted campaigns. Win-win!).

To hear more about the factors in Adelaide Fringe’s success, and how you might apply them in your own campaigns, watch the April Pulse Check Webinar. To dive deeper into the data, download the National Snapshot report.

Cover Image Credit: Veronique Balege. French performance art company Les Commandos Percu’s 'Silence!', performed at Adelaide Fringe, 2023.

About the Author

Caitlin McNaughton
Manager, Research and Insights

 
 

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