Historically, marketers treated social and email like solo acts. But music festival Outside Lands showed the two channels can harmonize by launching an automated social media digest highlighting user-generated social content.
Although Outside Lands is only a three-days-long experience in August, promoting the music festival is a year-long endeavor, which is why festival producers Another Planet Entertainment provides multiple social and digital engagement opportunities before, during, and after the event. Before the festival, Outside Lands’ Twitter feed took on the persona of the festival’s mascot Ranger Dave and teased the festival’s lineup by linking to Instagram album cover images of the booked bands. Jill DiBartolomeo, marketing manager of Another Planet Entertainment, says Outside Lands started promoting the festival in April.
But Outside Lands amplified its engagement touchpoints during the festival this year by sending automated social media digests using FanCentric’s Content (Ctrl)—a tool that allows marketers to syndicate, curate, and publish social content in their email marketing. Every morning during the festival, Outside Lands sent ticket purchasers The Morning Dew—an email newsletter that recapped the previous night’s festivities by featuring Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter posts from attendees and from the festival’s official social channels.
“We really wanted to have a platform for people to see what was going on at all time, even if they wouldn’t be there in person,” DiBartolomeo says.
The social digest emails accounted for 55% of all clicks to the festival’s Instagram content. In addition, they increased engagement across the festival’s Tumblr by 15%, Facebook by 9%, and Twitter by 4%. In fact, the social digest generated 46% of total clicks to one attendee’s Instagram photo alone, resulting in the photo receiving more than 2,200 total Likes and an estimated 273,000 impressions. However, DiBartolomeo says Outside Lands was unable to track whether this increased level of engagement led to an increase in festival attendance.
Other forms of digital and social engagement during the festival include posting images via the brand’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts and streaming videos on the brand’s website.
In terms of post-event engagement, DiBartolomeo says Outside Lands also sent a recap email to its list highlighting event photos and opportunities to purchase event merchandise. She adds that the social digest emails were such a success that the festival plans on using the social digests in the months leading up to next year’s festivals to showcase last year’s highlights.
