The gates to fairs are reopening, fans are returning to concerts, travelers are boarding planes, major sports games are kicking off again and people are finally attending events again. To say the pandemic has changed the landscape of the event industry is an understatement.

Here are some of the lessons we’ve learned over the past year and a half, and how events can successfully return.

Bringing Back 2020 Favorites

Did you host a socially-distanced or virtual event last year? The past year and a half has led to some pretty creative solutions from across the board that people ended up loving!

At fairgrounds and amphitheaters across the country, drive-in movie theaters popped up like popcorn. Last year, the Social Circle hosted a series of drive-in movies over Memorial Day Weekend at the State Fair of Louisiana. Before each showing, viewers also enjoyed live music from a local band.  

If you did something last year that was well received, consider hosting it again! After their first Fair Food Drive-Thru drew more than 1,800 cars last summer, Cass County Fair decided to bring it back in 2021. For three days, guests could stop by the fairgrounds to satisfy their cravings for a fresh elephant ear or other fair faves.

Cass County Fair Board President Brian Kuemin told a local reporter, “This was really well received last year, and the community really came out to support our vendors. Our first one was hugely successful. People still want community events, and with the pandemic, people want to get out and do things. This was an opportunity for families to come out, and hey, who doesn’t want fair food?”

Connecting Online

Since we weren’t able to meet up in person in the past year, it’s been crucial to connect with fans and attendees digitally. The platforms you choose to promote on (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn) will depend on who your event is for or who you are targeting. Your best bet will be to do some type of promotion on a few different platforms to get the highest reach.

Once people are ready to buy tickets, don’t make it difficult for them! Having an integrated website and ticketing platform will make the checkout experience as smooth and seamless as possible, leading to higher ticket sales and improved customer satisfaction. 

Going Cashless for a Better Experience

In order to reduce physical contact during transactions and at the box office, many events and venues switched to a digital, cashless ticketing experience. With Saffire’s contactless ticketing technology, you can create a safer, stress-free environment for anyone by eliminating points of physical contact when scanning, selling tickets and accepting payments.

When the South Florida Fair broke tradition for the first time in over one hundred years and decided to host two fairs in 2021, they also decided to introduce Saffire’s contactless ticketing system at the gates and in the midway. Attendees could skip the ticket booth line and get a digital QR code that would scan them into the fair. To encourage sales, the fair offered considerable weekend savings for advanced ticket purchasers. The South Florida Fair made history by being the only fair in the industry to hold two fairs in just four months, ending with a historic closing Sunday night.

Make Attendees Feel Comfortable

As excited as people are to get back to in-person events, they’re also conscious that some risk is still present. Making visible efforts to promote health and safety precautions will help guests feel more comfortable as they are welcomed back.

In accordance with many local mandates, proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test is required for entering a venue or event space. Think about your customers and make this as simple as possible! Some events have even offered rapid on-site testing for attendees. Ensure your space is set-up to encourage social distancing, hand sanitizer is readily available and you have a supply of disposable face masks on hand. Details can make all the difference to ensure everyone feels safe coming to your event.

Be Data Driven

By using new ticketing technologies, you can better track your event attendance and monitor the data that is gained from those digital tools. For example, during the event it may be important to know in real time what the capacity of the venue is at or how many people have checked into a certain area.

Following your event, you can send out feedback forms to attendees to collect data about their experience. In addition to looking at ticket sales and extrapolating from attendee data, this info will be the most crucial information in planning your events in 2022 and beyond!

These are just a few of the biggest things we’ve notices from 2020-2021. And as we’ve learned recently, the future is always unexpected. If you have an idea or experience to share, drop us a line and let us know!

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Whether your event is being sponsored by a big name brand or a local non-profit organization, it’s important to incorporate fresh strategy for attracting and retaining event sponsors. 

Once you’ve found the perfect sponsors for your event, the first step is to communicate with your sponsors to understand the message they are wanting to convey, and how you can help them without disrupting the attendee experience. You will want to shape your sponsorship proposal around that core message. 

Below we highlight ways to put your sponsors in the spotlight: 

Go Digital 

Sponsorships shouldn’t only be visible during the event! Highlighting your sponsors with a custom banner on your website or within your digital marketing materials will help to show gratitude and affirm your partnership long after your event ends. If you’re hosting a virtual event, you might consider selling ad space on your live stream, or even using branded transitions between speakers or slides. 

Scavenger Hunt 

Hosting a virtual scavenger hunt is a fun way to highlight your sponsor and interact with your customers! By using tools pre-built into Saffire software, it’s easy to create a custom problem-solving journey that will drive traffic and improve engagement while allowing you to collect data and capture sponsor revenue. Sponsors may also choose to offer prizes to raise the stakes of the hunt. 

Leverage Social Media

A strong online presence can reach far beyond just those who attended your event, and there are several ways you can utilize your social media to gain exposure. Update the headers on your Facebook and Twitter accounts before the event to feature the logos from your sponsorship and don’t forget to cross-promote and celebrate the work of your sponsors!

Offer a Photo Booth

Set up a fun social photo booth for guests to take pictures, GIFs, or TikToks! Use a backdrop with your sponsor’s logo and create a fun theme with props or signs. Pictures or videos that are uploaded with an event hashtag (which could also include a sponsor’s brand) are some of the most potent social content your attendees can share at an event. 

Fun Swag 

Have some swag to offer that is tailored to your guests and the event! An outdoor gear company for example may sponsor an environmental fundraiser by providing branded reusable straws. This also gives you an opportunity to offer a high-end, premium swag bag. Sponsors can reach high-tier ticket holders with more unique swag offerings.

If Instagram Reels aren’t on your radar, they should be. With their wide reach and entertaining format, Reels can generate buzz around any event and grow your social media following. What are “Reels” exactly, and are they worth the effort? We’ve gathered some basic principles and fun content ideas to help you and your team create awesome Instagram Reels today!

What are Instagram Reels?

Instagram Reels was born shortly after the mobile video app TikTok became a wildly popular app downloaded by millions of users worldwide. Similar to TikTok, Reels allows you to create fun and engaging content in the form of 3-30 second videos. Using a compilation of video clips, you can very easily edit together a short-form video that entertains and engages their audiences.

The beauty of the Reels feature is the suite of tools it offers to cut and edit video clips with music, text, filters, and other special effects. Anyone with a smartphone and an ounce of creativity can create engaging video content to help bring events and brands to life!

Why use Instagram Reels?

Reels can be a great way to get “real” with your audience! Reels let them in on the behind-the-scenes moments, they capture unique experiences only your event offers, and they show your followers you’re in on the latest trends. The best part is you don’t have to spend a lot of money on production.

Perhaps most importantly, Instagram (and many other social media platforms) will continue to favor video content – especially video that sparks engagement, saves, and shares. The more your video content is entertaining and shareable, the further it will reach new viewers.

Bottom line: Reels can turn new viewers into followers, and followers into loyal customers!

Best Practices for Instagram Reels

• Compile enough clips to have some movement every 2-3 seconds.
• Set your Reels to trending songs or audio clips
• Make sure to include text in each clip so people can quickly follow along as they watch. People don’t read long captions!
• Add titles to your Reels cover shot so when someone navigates to your Reels tab, it’s easy for them to choose a Reel they want to watch.

Fun and Engaging Instagram Reels Ideas for Events

1. Highlight a Popular Concession Stand or Vendor. Maybe it’s a popular food vendor or an activity like face painting at your event that people love; take shots of the process from start to finish and create a Reel to get people excited! Take a look at this Reel from Alameda County Fair: www.instagram.com/reel/CMm0CG5BVLl/

2. Showcase Bucket List Items: Think of a list of 4-5 things people should do to make the most of their time at your event, venue, or destination spot. Take a look at this Instagram Reel posted by Destination Dripping Springs that shows how they would spend a day in Dripping Springs, TX. For an event, this could translate into something like 1) Eat a funnel cake 2) Ride the Ferris Wheel 3) visit the petting zoo 4) end your day at a concert. Just be sure to make some of the items unique to your event! View Reel here: www.instagram.com/reel/CMcnAICF5gB/

3. Announcements: Got new merchandise or products? Take a few quick shots, pair it with a trending song and a few descriptive subtitles, and voila! Here’s an example from Pendleton Round Up’s Reels page where they announce new merch. View Reel here: www.instagram.com/reel/CPRAQpGpuBy/

4. Repurpose Content: Take your old stories and posts and repurpose them into a 15-30 second reel that highlights your event! Madera County Fair compiled photos and videos to announce their 2021 fair. View Reel here: www.instagram.com/reel/CQR0hwsp7CZ/

5. Employee or Team Culture Highlight: Showcase your organizational culture and who makes up your team! Does your team have a great sense of humor? Are there fun perks or funny quirks to your team culture? Take a look at this Reel the Wisconsin State Fair made to announce their job fair: www.instagram.com/reel/CPoVygRHMqg/

6. Insider Tour of the Grounds or Venue: Whether it’s opening day of your event, or you’re doing a walkthrough of the grounds before the event begins, give your audience a taste of what they can experience at your event! We love this Reel from Florida State Fair: www.instagram.com/reel/CN-tX50j_dz/  

Reels are a great way to entertain and engage your followers. They can generate buzz around your event and turn new viewers into followers. The feature has been out for almost a year, but we’re still not seeing too many events and festivals taking advantage of this awesome tool.

We hope this article will inspire you to try Instagram Reels, we are positive it will pay off!

In 2021, event and venue managers have their work cut out for them–they must provide the best experience for attendees, abide by new health and safety guidelines AND ensure a successful event outcome. Even for the most experienced, that’s a tall order! The good news is, there are systems event managers can set up to help ease some of these big demands.

Cashless systems are becoming increasingly popular in the fair, festival and event space and for good reason. There are plenty of benefits that come with implementing a cashless system–touch-free payments, faster transactions and shorter lines–but one of the best assets you gain by going cashless is access to robust, comprehensive data.

Here are 6 ways you can use the data you get by going cashless to improve your event experience and increase revenue:

#1 Get to know your customers. Unlike the exchange of cash or tokens, a cashless system captures valuable customer data the second a customer purchases a RFID wristband or card online, all the way through to the end of the event. Before the event even starts, you can see which customers are adding items like drink credits and ride credits to their card or wristband. Once attendees are onsite at your event, you can see exactly where they spend and how much they spend inside your event. Event managers can leverage this data to improve customer experience and increase revenue!

#2 Segment and engage your customers. Based on purchasing behavior, you can segment your customers into different categories, and send out promotional offers that best suit their interests. For example, you can engage your customers who previously bought event merchandise with promotions announcing new swag.

#3 Surprise and delight your top spenders. You can see who your top customers are and reward them with special promotions to keep them coming back. This could look like a free parking voucher or VIP upgrade!

#4 Optimize resources and reduce overhead. Real-time reporting allows you to identify which entry locations are getting customers through gates quickly, which ones are getting overloaded, and which spots are not seeing any action. You can re-allocate or cut the number of staff members and adjust scanning locations accordingly and use the data to improve the flow for the current and future events.

#5 Evaluate your vendors. You can evaluate a vendor’s popularity based on real-time customer spend and frequency. This allows you to make data-driven decisions on which vendors you should keep or cut for future events based on performance. You can also use the data to consider increasing your vendor fee or percentage cut, if the numbers make sense.

#6 Secure bigger and better sponsors. With cashless data, you can create killer sponsorship proposals with data like customer demographics, average spend per head, what kind of products customers purchase most (alcohol sales, food sales, etc). This is the kind of data that is expected to secure big name sponsors.

The data you get from going cashless can give you valuable insight to make educated improvements to your event both while it is happening, and in the future. If you want to learn more about Saffire’s cashless system, BlastPass, please reach out to us today. We’re here to help make your job a little easier, and your event more successful!

We are now a full month into living within our “new normal.” We are staying indoors, limiting our human interaction and applying hand sanitizer like it’s our part-time job.

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If you’re like us, you may have had an influx of creative ideas and ways to re-strategize your marketing efforts at the beginning of the pandemic, but the more time passes, and the reality sets in that most of us will be staying quarantined for the foreseeable future, you might need some inspiration on how to continue to engage your customers & community without adding to all the noise.

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Our Saffire Family continues to impress us with their efforts to engage, entertain, and support their physical and virtual communities. Check out the examples below to get inspired!

ENGAGING SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT

Van Andel Creates Fun Interactivity

A spin-off of the trending meme, “Choose Your Quarantine House”, Van Andel Arena creates a “Choose Your Quarantine Concert” meme, where people can comment on which concert series they’d most like to go to. This post received an overwhelming amount of comments and tags!

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Portland Rose Festival Provides Fun Activities for Kids

Portland Rose Festival hosts a live story hour with their festival princesses, coloring book pages and other fun activities for kids on their social media pages. What a great way to engage parents and children while keeping your postponed event top of mind!

HOSTING VIRTUAL EVENTS

Clay County Fair Creates a Virtual Fair Experience

A big round of applause to Clay County Fair, who in a matter of days turned their canceled fair into a buzzing online experience! Check out their Facebook page to see more.

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Food & Vine Time Productions Hosts a Series of Wine Tasting Experiences 

Food & Vine Time Productions, who organize the popular spring-time event Katy Sip n Stroll, records a series of “Wine Tasting Tours” that their audience can tune in to and follow along!

SHOWING SUPPORT FOR LOCAL COMMUNITY

The Big E Donates Space to Support COVID-19 Testing

The Big E opens its doors to first responders to use the fairgrounds as a COVID-19 testing spot. What an awesome way to utilize your resources at this time!

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Swiftel Center Joins #aworldofhearts Movement in Solidarity with Their Community

#aworldofhearts movement has inspired thousands of folks to draw or paint hearts in their windows to send a message of love & hope to their neighbor during this time! The Swiftel Center joined in with an amazing display to show their love and support.

What do you think? Inspired? We hope so!

As always, the Saffire Team is here to support you and your organization in any way we can. Please reach out if you need any help with your website or marketing during this time!

Want to better use Instagram stories to increase engagement and ticket sales for your organization?

 

Instagram stories are the perfect medium to give your followers a behind-the-scenes look at your organization, tell longer stories to engage your audience over time and post cool things that may not be just right for your feed. In this post, you’ll learn how to plan, create and execute and optimize Instagram stories for your business.

 

STEP 1: CHOOSE YOUR CONTENT STYLE AND GOALS

 

As with all of your marketing efforts, it’s important to understand your “why.” Goals for your Instagram stories should be intimately tied into your other marketing and organization-wide goals. Think about what you’re hoping to do with your stories. A good tactic is to choose a goal that complements what you are already working on, either with your Instagram feed, other social media or in other campaigns. Another option is to choose what you are missing, instead. Pick a goal that you are not yet hitting with your other initiatives.

 

– Are you looking to generate ticket sales?

– Are you hoping to pull in more engagement?

– Are you hoping to increase followers and brand awareness?

 

Choosing a goal is important. It will help you create content that is better suited for your initiatives and will help in measuring your success. For example, if you’re looking to generate sales, you probably want to create content that drives people back to your website, but if you are looking for engagement, you will want to encourage people to spend more time on your Instagram page.

 

Use this goal to decide which types of content are best for your stories. We suggest choosing 3-4 different types to focus on as you get started. Remember, content can be anything that is useful or engaging to your audience.  Some examples of content types are: Behind the scenes shots, client or customer features, interviews, photos or stories from events, photos of food or animals, promos and deals, how-tos, etc.

 

STEP 2: DECIDE WHAT AND WHEN TO PUBLISH

 

Now that you’ve gone through your “why,” it’s time to decide on your “what.” This means determining a schedule and taking note of your assets. A common mistake we see with Instagram stories is that people believe that their posts must all be in-the-moment content.

 

While live footage can make for great content, what’s most important is the commitment to a consistent cadence of content. Whether this means a weekly series, creating a content calendar around product or ticket releases or simply scheduling time to come up with posts, it is important to schedule posts to supplement your more spontaneous content. AKA, you need to create a plan just like you would create for your regular feed.

 

If you are serious about creating an Instagram Story strategy, we recommend posting at least 2-3 times a week. Unlike feed posts that usually stand on their own, stories are designed to be a series of posts. You could post something on its own, but it is much more likely to see users post a combination of photos, text, and videos that work together to entertain and convey information. Think of it as your own mini TV show or presentation!

 

CREATE AND POST YOUR STORIES

 

Instagram stories are known for all the options they offer to get truly creative. With Instagram Stories, your posts can be as funky (or not) as you want them to be!

 

When it comes to stories, your content should be all about your brand. Because the options are endless (draw here, add music, link to another user’s work), it can be easy to get lost in the sauce. Just like anything else you create, your stories should be representative of your organization. We recommend sticking to your brand colors, deciding on a font or two and selecting a filter to use across the board. Your followers should know it’s you when they view your story without ever seeing your name.

We recommend checking out these design apps to help you get just the right look!

 

– Over: For really great story design templates.

– Canva: A great tool to create stories. Use video with the app.

– Adobe Spark Post: Another great design tool.

 

Remember, Instagram stories have tricky dimensions (9:6), so taking landscape style photos and designing your graphics ahead of time is often best.

 

With this plan, you can focus on posting stories that create engagement and add value to your brand. Remember, the more followers view and engage with your stories, the higher you’ll place in the algorithm!