Brighton Festival achieve record online sales
The 43rd Annual Brighton Festival saw record levels of online bookings and attendance, following ongoing email marketing campaigns with Pure360.
The festival, which offers more than 160 events over three weeks, is one of the country’s most important arts festivals, using the city’s landscape to present a wide range of exclusive performances and featuring a collection of premieres.
Giving them an incentive
An initial email was sent to over 65,000 subscribers using PureResponse, Pure360's email marketing software, introducing this year’s festival, followed by five specific bulletins focused on music, theatre, dance, books and outdoor events.
Promotional codes were trialled within the email bulletins; offering consumers discounted tickets online for the first time. Online bookings subsequently increased to 34% and accounted for over a third of all festival bookings.
The use of PureResponse enables Brighton Festival to monitor the results of their campaigns. A targeted email campaign sent to recipients interested in classical music, informing them of exclusive festival dates and offering discounted tickets, received a 34% open rate. The other four campaigns achieved an average of a 25% open rate and a 29% click through rate.
What the clever marketers say
“Pure360 offers a simple and effective service, and is an invaluable part of any marketing toolkit,” said Carole Britten, Head of Marketing at Brighton Dome and Festival.
“Pure360 programmes are extremely user friendly and provide instant tracking information in real time, which is extremely powerful. Brighton Festival has been working with Pure360 for five years, and in that time our subscriber database has grown from 5,000 to over 65,000 people.”
The Brighton Festival website has seen traffic increase by 12% overall this year following the email campaigns.
“The Brighton Festival has seen excellent response results and has increased overall sales and awareness,” said Abi Clowes, Marketing Manager at Pure360.
“Digital marketing is crucial for a festival looking to appeal to a wide range of visitors and Pure360’s technology allowed Brighton Festival’s database to be divided into areas of interest - sending specific emails and discounts relevant to each customer.”
Brighton Festival is using features from the PureResponse Pro package.
