Eventbrite | Case Study

Holland knew that social media was a great way to reach a new demographic for their event. Specifically, Lewis Ginter targeted their event to people who had expressed an interest in similar after-hours social events. Facebook helped Lewis Ginter find people looking for things to do — who wanted to attend an outdoors event just like they were hosting.

Holland turned to Eventbrite, attracted by the seamless Facebook integration that would allow her to automatically publish their Eventbrite listing to Facebook to reach their community of over 47,000 followers, in addition to this highly targeted audience.

She wanted to stretch their reach on Facebook, but with the small advertising budget typical of nonprofit businesses, she knew she had to be strategic with her spend. Holland set up a highly targeted ad campaign using Facebook’s advertising tools and saw stellar results — by spending only $50 to boost their event, they saw a 61X return on their investment.

The final piece of the puzzle was making it easy for interested event-goers to purchase tickets. Thanks to Eventbrite’s integration with Facebook, attendees were able to purchase tickets without ever leaving Facebook. No redirects meant that fewer attendees dropped off before completing their purchase (especially on mobile), increasing their conversion rate to nearly 20%.

As a result, Lewis Ginter reached more than 15,000 people, including countless first-time visitors to the gardens — and they sold out in ⅔ the time. What’s more, over 25% of all tickets to the sold-out event were purchased directly through Facebook. “We weren’t at all surprised the event sold out — that’s what we were going for — but we were surprised at how quickly it sold out,” shares Holland. “By selling out early, it allowed me to direct my time to promoting other Garden events.”

The first challenge Hammill had to tackle was improving his promotion strategy. He knew his fans were on social media — so he began to advertise his shows on Facebook. He used Eventbrite’s integration to sell tickets directly on his Facebook event page, which now accounts for 90% of ticket sales. Hammill also saw a 20% increase in Facebook followers, and a steady acceleration in likes and engagement with the online community.

Not only was Hammill able to reach interested movie lovers, but the native checkout on Facebook also gave them a trusted way to purchase tickets. In fact, both Eventbrite and Facebook consistently rank in the top 100 of most the trusted sites on the web. “I was able to build trust and be seen as more of a legitimate business,” says Hammill. This led attendance to double — and the increased demand encouraged Hammill to grow from one show per month to one per week.

Not only did Hammill begin selling out 4x the shows using Eventbrite and Facebook’s marketing tools, but the intuitive features and seamless integration cut his work time down by 80%. Today, Hammill is able to save 12 hours each week by using the integrations — and the increased professionalism of his operation has lead to a decrease in support calls and customer complaints.