SMS marketing is crucial for event brands looking to maximize revenue. With top event brands achieving over 20x ROI from their event SMS workflows, this is an area of marketing you don’t want to miss in your 2022 strategy. Whether you run an annual festival or manage multiple venues, here’s how to properly collect SMS opt-in and seamlessly kickstart your events SMS strategy. It’s easier than you think!
How to collect SMS opt-in
A solid SMS strategy relies on proper opt-in and phone number collection. Depending on your ticketing platform and past marketing strategy, there area few ways to leverage opt-in you’ve already collected or build onto your current signup flows:
Auto-sync via your ticketing platform
Some ticketing platforms have functionality built-in to enable you to collect SMS opt-in, typically upon a ticket purchase. Chat with your account manager to explore this further. In most cases, ticketing platforms can enable this on their end which automatically syncs any past and future SMS opt-in data into your ESP.
Signup forms
The best way to start collecting SMS opt-in and integrating SMS into your marketing strategy is through your signup forms. Best practice is to update your high traffic signup forms to include a phone number field, as well as create a mobile-specific signup form that asks specifically for SMS opt-in.
We recommend mobile-specific pop-up forms as they’re designed to show up only for users when they’re using their phone. The seamless brand experience encourages more signups, and you can always offer an SMS exclusive promotion to maximize conversion.
Strategies to grow your SMS list 10x
Due to the timely nature of SMS marketing, event brands have seen the highest conversion to ticket sales when leveraging SMS sign up for pre-sale and on-sale notifications, exclusive merch releases, and contests/giveaways. We recommend our event clients to set up the following SMS opt-in landing pages to set their future campaigns and automations up for maximum revenue and conversion:
SMS Opt-In to ticket and merch pre-sale notification
Let your attendees sign up to be notified via SMS when tickets go on-sale or your new merch drops. This way, you build data-rich segments you can target future campaigns to. Your ESP should have functionality that lets you build customized landing pages. Hive’s landing page builder even lets you throw in a countdown timer!
SMS opt-in to contest or giveaway
Who doesn’t love free stuff? Leveraging a contest or giveaway is a bulletproof way to grow your SMS list while building a segment interested in the particular event/artist you’re giving away tickets to. Best practice is setting up a landing page for your contest/giveaway, and promoting it on your social platforms.
Wrap up
SMS is a tool event marketers do not want to miss out on, especially heading into 2022. With a 30% higher conversion rate than email and top event brands achieving over 20x ROI from their SMS workflows alone, start collecting SMS opt-in and growing your SMS list now so you can start leveraging the power of SMS for your revenue and bottom line in the new year.
Interested in seeing the power of SMS for yourself? Check out Hive’s SMS features built for Event Marketers.