Festival Events Hub

This is a special hub to centralize information, resources, and best practices on how to set up and execute a festival event on the GiveSignup platform.

placeholder

GiveSignup supports festival event organizers with many flexible and powerful tools to market their events. In this blog post, we will cover four that offer the greatest impact and potential for success.

1. Free Websites

GiveSignup events all come with a free, customizable event website. Unlike other ticketing and registration platforms, your GiveSignup event website can be branded for your organization (not ours), never include ads from other events (or anything else), and can include multiple pages with a full website menu.

Why you need it: Your online presence is often the first interaction a potential attendee has with your event. A clean, branded website gives them a preview of what to expect on event day, makes it easy for them to find key event details, and makes your event look like a first-rate affair.

Best Practices for Your Free Website

• Brand your site with an event logo and consistent brand colors.

• Add a Cover Page for a professional homepage. Include images and videos to highlight experience of your event and add a countdown clock for a sense of urgency.

• BYO Domain or Subdomain to make your website feel more official and less like a ticket-buying site. Your brand is also front and center.

• Use the Website Builder to add additional content and logistical information to your site – and organize it with pages and menus.

2. Free Email Marketing

GiveSignup’s free email marketing platform is purpose-built for your events, providing a robust (free) option to market to current and past participants. Email marketing is included on every event dashboard and includes default lists, unlimited contact uploads, and unlimited contact uploads.

Why you need it: Email has a wide reach, with 82% of Americans reporting that they check their email at least once a day. It’s a timely and efficient way to communicate with all your contacts, and when it’s free to send, it’s guaranteed to have a great ROI.

Best Practices for Your Free Emails:

• Separate marketing and transactional emails. GiveSignup allows you to designate whether your email is marketing or transactional (on the review step of email sending). Keep these separate to ensure that attendees can opt-out of marketing emails without missing out on important event details.

• Personalize your emails. Take your communications to the next level and make your attendees feel valued with custom information for each recipient. This can be as simple as including the attendee’s name, or as powerful as including the number of events the attendee has joined in the last five years!

• Build beautiful emails. Whether you chose a basic template out of the box or start from scratch, our Email Builder ensures your email is mobile responsive. Make sure your email is branded for your event (we bring over your theme colors and logo automatically!), includes enticing images, and has clear call-to-action buttons.

• Segment your recipient lists to send different versions of emails to current attendees vs. potential attendees, or further segment to specific ticket purchases (I.E., VIP ticket holders).

 
3. Referral Rewards

A referral is when an event attendee recruits a friend or family member to join your event with them. When you enable referrals on GiveSignup, each purchaser will get a unique referrer link that they can share with their network.  When someone makes a purchase from that link, the original referrer will get credit for the referral. You can take it a step further with Referral Rewards and enable the system to automatically give the referrer a refund when they refer a certain number of purchasers. For example, a referrer who refers 5 ticket purchases gets a $20 refund!

Why you need it: Referrals can be a huge boost to your event. In 2021, 8% of all transactions were from referrals when they were enabled, and we have seen that number reach as high as 30% for events that really promote their referral program. It’s easy to set up, automated to run, and there’s no better ambassador for your event than another attendee. People trust their friends and family more than any ad you can run!

Best Practices for Your Referral Rewards Program:

• High threshold, high reward programs are the sweet spot. You want a goal that is attainable, but challenging, to incentivize a large number of attendees to share their referral link while only a handful will reach the threshold for a refund. To keep your attendees motivated and your ROI high, we recommend a reward of $15 or more for 3-5 referrals.

  
  
   

• Stack your rewards with additional refunds for referrers who meet the original goal. By providing a secondary, higher goal, you give enthusiastic attendees a reason to keep sharing your event even after the initial threshold is reached.

  
   

• Promote your referral program everywhere! The free website and email we talked about before? They’re key to promoting your referral program. Add a section on your cover page with information about the referral program, and use replacement tags to include each attendee’s unique referral link in emails. Your referral program only works if people know it exists!
  
  

4. Social Media: Make Connections

Why you need it: Social connections drive event participation and the most powerful connecting tool is social media.

Best Practices for Social Media Customizations

• Add a custom image and text to display when sharing. To get you started, your event logo and default text will be included when supporters share your event. But you can do more! Take advantage of our Social Sharing Message settings to add compelling photographs and action-focused copy that speaks to your social media audiences.
  
  
  
  

• Include social sharing icons on your Cover Page: Now that you have added dynamic photos and your own messaging, be sure to feature our social media sharing icons in a prominent position of your Cover Page.

  
  
  
  

• Track social ads by using unlimited custom source tracking URLs that you can link to each post or advertisement on social media (also eblasts and websites) to understand the success of targeted promotions.

  
  

5. QR Codes and Text Messaging Links

Every event on GiveSignup has a set of QR codes created to link potential attendees to your event website. Even more fun? Supporters can request a link for your event website to be sent via a designated text messaging short code – no URL’s to remember or type in. For example, text H1509 to 49514 to get a link to an example Golf Event!

 
Why you need it: No one likes typing a long URL into their phone to get to your event website. Make it easier for people to sign up by adding the QR codes and text messaging short codes on all printed materials, including posters, flyers, and on-site collateral. Learn more.

Best Practices for QR Codes and Text Messaging Links

• Make purchasing mobile friendly. If you’re using links that are intended to be reached from a phone, make sure you keep your purchasing path simple, with limited information collection.
• Provide both link options when possible. While QR codes have exploded in popularity over the last two years, some people will still be more comfortable with texting. Offer both options on printed collateral to maximize the impact.
  
  
   

We are Fundraising Event Experts

Our mission is to make it free and easy for nonprofits to raise more money, grow their events, and engage their supporters. Events are key to driving revenue, new supporters, and awareness for our nonprofit customers. We create free and easy to use fundraising event software that you can fully control.

We've helped our customers raise more than $1.4 Billion. More than 10,000 nonprofits and 26,000 events use GiveSignup today to make events easier, raise more money, and create awareness for their missions. 

Learn more at GiveSignup.org

What We do: Free technology for events.

• Free Ticketing

• Free Email

• Free Websites

• Free Reporting

• And More!
  
  

What We Don't Do: No subscriptions. No commitments. No invoices. Just free and purpose-built technology.

• $0 Subscriptions per year

• $0 Upgrades per year

• $0 Support per year

• $0 Unlimited Email Contacts & Emails per year

• $0 Websites per year

What We Charge: We only make money when you make money, which keeps us aligned with our customers.

To keep our platform free, we charge a processing fee (that includes all credit card fees) to purchasers on each transaction.

Ticket and Registration Processing Fees

• Processing fees are inclusive of both credit card (including AMEX) and platform fees

• Donations have a low and flat processing fee of 4% (yes, that still includes both platform and credit card fees!)

• Volume Discount pricing is available

• Free events are always free!

What support do I get if I have questions setting up my event?

GiveSignup and TicketSignup create technology that you can control and easily customize & update. Every event that is set up on our platform is reviewed by our support team, and we will proactively reach out with tips for the best set up for your fundraising event. In addition, we provide written and video tutorials to help you create and customize your events to match your own branding and messaging.

Flexible, Secure Infrastructure

GiveSignup has invested in the latest technology and cloud architecture to meet our customers’ needs. Our cloud architecture benefits you with speed and scalability at a low cost, providing the ability to handle large events with 50,000+ attendees attempting to register simultaneously. Information sharing is secure; we use multiple levels of firewalls and all pages are secured with TLS/SSL and HTTPS. Runners can access us from any device including computers, iPads, and both Apple and Android smartphones. You can count on our secure infrastructure to be highly available. This secure infrastructure allows you to be comfortable that your data is being handled properly and payments to you are accurate and on time.

PCI Level 1

GiveSignup has achieved the highest level of PCI compliance as evidenced by our Attestation of Compliance. Our volume of transaction processing required us to go through a rigorous certification process, which included onsite reviews and scanning and vulnerability testing with an independent third party Qualified Security Assessor. As part of the certification process we implemented the following advanced security measures:

• Secure password storage with protections like bcrypt
• Secure user input fields with SQL prepared statements to prevent XSS attacks and SQL injection as well as CSRF attack
• Advanced encryption key management procedures
• Secure network configurations with multiple levels of firewalls
• Employee, customer, participant segmentation and access control and login management
• 100% code review and change logs
• System hardening including implementation of Center for Internet Security recommendations
• OSSEC log analysis
• AntiVirus scanning including ClamAV
• Constant vulnerability scanning including implementing Nessus
• Monthly process to install security patches

Payment Facilitator

GiveSignup has taken steps as a company to meet stringent security, banking, VISA and MasterCard processing rules to become an authorized intermediary (Payment Facilitator) between credit card holders (registrants) and race owners. This means that with our Advanced Payment Accounts we never handle your race proceeds. After the credit card transactions are settled for your race, the race proceeds are held in escrow for your benefit with our back end credit card processing company. Funds transfers to you happen accurately and on time by either ACH or check based on the frequency of payment you have requested.

Data Privacy

Data privacy is important to you and to your participants. Whenever we collect or transmit sensitive data, that data is encrypted and transmitted in a secure way. We don’t sell or share participant data with anyone other than the owner or Event Director of the event for which a participant has signed up. GiveSignup will not market or sell anything directly to participants who use our site. We only collect credit card information when a participant requests us to and if requested it is stored securely with a third party PCI Level 1 compliant vendor who specializes in credit card storage.

A reliable and feature-rich technology platform is critical to the success of your festival event and GiveSignup is the best solution. But what about the rest? Check out our general festival event planning timeline below. It is not meant to be comprehensive. Rather, this suggested timeline provides first-time festival event planners a starting point on what to do and gives seasoned pros reminders on the ABC's that can get lost in the sea of details.

9-12 Months

• Establish the event purpose, format, goals, name, and branding
• Secure date and venue
• Begin booking talent
• Apply for special event permit application with the city (if applicable)
• Update website
• Reach out to last year's sponsors and work on establishing major support

6-9 Months

• Create artist/merchant/nonprofit exhibitor application
• Develop sponsorship deck with benefits and levels
• Create sponsor prospect list and reach out to potential sponsors
• Invite your current supporters and offer exclusive savings or other amenities (e.g. bonus swag, free drink) that will motivate them to commit early and initiate your word-of-mouth campaign
• Announce event with initial "Save the Date" marketing campaign
• Create your event registration website and test with your team
  • Use tiered pricing to encourage early sign ups (Ex: Save $10 if you sign up before April 1st!)

4-6 Months

• Launch ticket sales
• Market exhibitor opportunities to artists, merchants, and nonprofits
• Identify, quote, and secure third party vendors (stage, sound, barricades, toilets, security)
• Continue sponsorship sales efforts and communicate milestones and deadlines to confirmed sponsors (e.g. when their logo is due for the thank you sponsor banner)
• Create staffing plan to cover all functions needing support and oversight from your organization

60-90 Days

• Reevaluate performance of marketing and promotion activities, adjust as needed
• Update website with additional event details, changes, and fun updates about fundraising progress
• Build your event team and confirm staff positions, shifts, and personnel. Collect employment documents (W9 for independent contractors, for example) as you confirm each team member.

30 Days

• Apply for special event liquor permit license
• Re-confirm vendors and other support resources and make sure you know their deadlines (last date to add equipment or modify the food and beverage head count)
• Update website with changes
• Consult with venue and discuss event day timeline, support services (parking, security, trash and recycling, deliveries, WIFI, etc)
• Remind fundraisers about goals and milestones, provide them with tips and tricks for their final push to help them  reach their goal
• Check in with top fundraiser and special guests 
• Review budget and adjust spending and orders as your registration or ticket numbers require

Event Week

• Send out pre-event guide to current ticket purchasers with important details like directions, parking, check-in location, meal package, entertainment schedule, event day timeline, etc)
• Complete final outreaches to vendors and review orders, times, and costs
• Send out QR code for each ticket holder one day before for quick and easy checkin upon arrival

After the Event

• Send a thank you email with the total number of attendees, photos, and other memories from the weekend to show attendees how their participation supported your event and/or cause, and how they can keep engaged or how they can support you further. 
  • Include a link to a survey and allow your participants the opportunity to give you feedback
• Thank your vendors and collect final billing and payment instructions
• Thank your sponsors and provide demographics on attendees and summaries of their benefits and total impressions
• Finalize budget with all actual costs and centralize all statements and receipts for easy review by stakeholders and next year's event team
• Conduct a wrap-up meeting with your team to document successes, challenges, and areas to improve upon for next year