The challenge
There is no doubt the ‘go live’ date for the Piglets Christmas event is highly anticipated every September. Agility’s role is to heighten pre-launch ticket demand to create a buying frenzy.
In 2022, we sold nearly 48% of tickets in the first 24 hours. This year we really wanted to do better. We had fine-tuned a proven marketing launch for the ticket release and all the signs were positive for a successful ticket release when we suddenly heard the very sad news that ‘Her Majesty the Queen had died’.
Our strategy
The September Christmas ticket release date has been softly promoted over the Summer via a Facebook event, however, the real marketing drive started 7 days prior. Gaining momentum in the week leading up to the Friday ticket release, we had a series of social posts, published a new video, an email shot to their 35,000-marketing list and a tiny ad spend reaching those who had clicked on the Summer’s ad.
Whilst we had created huge awareness for the Friday ticket launch, when we heard the sad news about the Queen we agreed as a mark of respect to delay the ticket launch by a week. We were also aware that social media was going to be completely and justifiably awash with tributes for the late Queen Elizabeth the 2nd.
Acting quickly that night, our team amended social posts, amended emails, and altered web pages. This was definitely the right decision as the post published announcing this news obtained 63,000 reach, six times the reach of their usual posts.
The following week, we implemented the final marketing push on social, email and a limited ad spend.
The results
Despite delaying the ticket launch for a week, the release had great results with selling over 25,000 tickets (75% of their capacity). The email campaigns had nearly an 8% click through rate, our social posts collectively saw a reach of 145,000 and our £120 ad -spend resulted in a cost per transaction of 81p. This was Piglets’ best ticket launch sales ever and the website had a huge spike in traffic showing a clear demand created. Delaying the ticket launch was the right decision for so many reasons and it shows that with a consistent message across social, email, website and advertising; huge results can be obtained, even in the face of adversity.
We are so pleased we obtained the massive result for Ed, Sarah and the Piglets Team for their ‘Money Can’t Buy Christmas Experience’. We can’t wait to see what we can achieve next year.
8%
Email CTR
145,000
Social Media Reach
81p
CPA
“As our Magical Sleigh Ride event continues to grow in popularity year on year, Agility has given us the tools & direction to make it a success across our socials, email, website and advertising – we’re very pleased to be working with them!”
Sarah Sykes, Piglets Adventure Farm
