1. Roseland Festival Email Case Study
2009 we were approached by a young Music & Arts Festival who wanted to increase attendance at their events &
maintain & enhance engagement with their core supporters, the Members & Sponsors.
The Plan
After discussing the plans & objectives of the festival in detail, we identified the following plan.
The key to achieving the festival’s objectives was an email campaign to maximise response. We identified four key
customer segments.
The identified segments were:
 Members - those who have paid a fee to have access to pre-release tickets, plus discounts
 Sponsors - local companies and organisations who have sponsored the festival
 Previous Festival Attendees - those who have attended the festival, but are not a sponsor or member
 Enquirers - those interested in the festival but not one of the above
Exploration of the key messages for each group quickly identified that the same message could often be sent to
more than one segment, thus making the overall project more cost effective.
By analysing the existing marketing plans of the festival we were able to outline the following communication
structure to create an enhanced level of awareness of the festival and encourage booking.
1. Preview booking with 10% saving for Members and Sponsors
2. Reminder of preview booking with 10% saving
3. Booking open to all
 Recommend to a friend sent to Members and Sponsors
 General booking information sent to Previous Attendees and Enquirers
4. Purchase reminder
5. Events imminent reminder
6. Festival ongoing – extra events info
The next step was to design an email that would
- Reflect the branding of the festival
- Explain the range of events on offer
- Encourage purchase
- Provide space to explain the message of each email
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2. The Design
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3. The final outcome of the planning stage was to add an email after the event to thank everyone and gather
feedback for next year.
The survey results were also segmented and encouraged the uptake of sponsorship and member packages.
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4. The Results
Here are the full email results:
# Segment Sent To Stage Delivered (%) Unsubscribed (%) Opened (%) Clicked (%)
1 Members, Sponsors Preview Booking 81% 0% 50% 31%
2 Members, Sponsors Preview Booking 81% 0% 27% 0%
Reminder
3 Members, Sponsors Recommend to a 81% 0% 27% 29%
friend
4 Members, Sponsors Purchase reminder 79% 0% 38% 31%
& Enquirers
5 Members, Sponsors Events Imminent 92% 0% 47% 44%
& Enquirers
6 Members, Sponsors Festival Ongoing 93% 0% 43% 29%
& Enquirers
7 Members Survey and Thank 88% 0% 43% 50%
you
8 Sponsors Survey and Thank 100% 0% 50% 0%
you
9 Enquirers Survey and Thank 100% 0% 73% 38%
you
Key Points
 Not a single person unsubscribed from future mailings – a real achievement.
 An average open rate of 42% - this is a really good open rate, industry benchmarks sit at 20-30%.
 Click-through rate of 32% - this is in line with benchmarks and is high considering that a lot of information
was contained within the emails themselves & the 10% preview offer could only be redeemed offline.
 The survey also achieved a strong response with some really useful feedback gained for the festival
organisers.
Conclusion
Overall the email marketing was a great success, helping to ensure the festival reached its sales figures. The plan
for 2010 is to build on the success of 2009’s campaign and look into the incorporation of social media to work
alongside the email campaign.
Plans for Next Year
 The email addresses of buyers are generally one of the most interactive lists a company/organisation sends
to – if we were able to gather these email addresses from the last two festivals before next year’s sends it
would help us to drive more sales.
 Look to get conversion tracking set up on the booking website to further improve analysis
 More offline data capture to grow the lists
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