How Skiddle Supported Highest Point Festival 2024

Ticketing

Like many things in life at the moment, the cost of living crisis has affected the events industry. However, people still want to attend events and hear the music they love. 

To combat this, the team at Highest Point used Skiddle’s Payment Plan feature, allowing attendees to spread the cost of their ticket over several months. This idea proved popular, as all Payment Plan tickets sold out before the festival. We’ll hear a bit more about this later on in the article, courtesy of Sinead, one of our Account Managers who helped the Highest Point team with their marketing. 

Elsewhere, the team used our ticket builder to create a range of ticket types for attendees. After all, not everybody can attend the full weekend and for some people, Highest Point will be their first festival and they might choose to dip their feet in by attending either Friday or Saturday. 

Our ticket builder allowed Highest Point to create day tickets, allowing customers to choose from Friday or Saturday. Tickets were available based on age, with the price reducing depending on whether the attendee was an adult (18+), a teen (13-17) or a child (0-12). 

Full weekend tickets were on sale, as well as VIP upgrades, giving attendees the chance to access the VIP bar, the Ashton Memorial Viewing Point and more.

Content, marketing and social media

Blog posts

The written word has power. Our content team – Holly, Tom, Matty, Leah and Gabe – know a thing or two about that, and they created a series of blog posts to help bring attention to Highest Point Festival 2024. 

Kicking things off was an exclusive announcement of the full lineup for Highest Point 2024 and a post detailing the Big Family Day Out set to take place on Sunday 12th May.

Then, the team worked on a series of interviews. From headliners to afternoon acts, they ensured potential attendees got the lowdown on what to expect across the weekend, speaking with Busted’s Matt Willis, house stalwart Yousef, electronic sensation Issey Cross and hometown heroes LOWES in interviews published on the Skiddle website. 

It meant that Highest Point Festival could take advantage of our monthly user base of over 6.5 million people, as well as showing off the breadth of entertainment, attractions and experiences on offer at the event. 

After the festival had finished, the content team published reviews of each day and reviews of The Big Family Day Out, Sunday’s family-focused event.

Social Media

Our social media maestro’s, Liv and Hannah, were also on hand to ensure Highest Point Festival had the best Instagram page in the game. 

Before the festival, the Highest Point team secured partnerships with Rubicon and Spud Brothers. Liv and Hannah announced the first with an exciting competition, where five winners were given two tickets each to the festival. 

For the second, Liv and Hannah ventured to Preston, where they swapped two Highest Point tickets for two lovely-looking jacket potatoes courtesy of The Spud Brothers. 

Both partnerships are examples of savvy social media marketing. Rubicon is a reputable drinks brand and The Spud Brothers have taken social media by storm lately. By partnering with both, Highest Point was able to create entertaining content, provide value to their audience and get extra eyes on their event. 

Marketing

As our social media and writing teams got to work promoting the festival through content marketing, the Highest Point team enlisted the help of Sinead, one of our Account Managers, who sat down with the team, using our E-Flyers feature to promote the event. E-Flyers are our targeted mailshot service, allowing promoters to advertise their event to people within a 20-mile radius of their venue. 

Sinead tells us that she “came on board as account manager just before the lineup dropped, so that was what we initially led with. The lineup drop focused on a wide target for these artists and similar artists around Lancaster.”

After the lineup dropped, Sinead and the Highest Point team looked at how they could best target potential attendees. 

“The lineup for HP this year was varied, so instead of mailing out the same info to a huge audience and hoping that something stuck, we created one piece of artwork which focused on the DJ lineups and one which focused on the live. So we had one E-Flyer going out for “Highest Point Festival DJ Headliners” and another for “Highest Point Festival Headliners”, both going to a radius around the festival location.”

E-Flyer artwork

But the artwork for the E-Flyers wasn’t always the same. 

Sinead tells us that “each piece of artwork used different colouring, so although the content was essentially the same – a lineup poster – it didn’t feel spammy. The colour change portrayed fresh info to the reader.”

Our Payment Plan’s feature also featured heavily in Highest Point’s marketing. 

“Payment Plans were a big part of the campaign. So much so, either in content text or included artwork, we told potential attendees about the feature. Artwork was created for this, again to change up the lineup poster so it was something new for the reader to see and hopefully get them to click. The key with the Payment Plan E-Flyers was to simplify its content and make the subject copy concise. This would ultimately convey how easy it is to make the festival affordable by spreading the cost over a few months.”

Sinead and the team then looked at further ways they could vary the content of E-Flyers. 

“As we got to six weeks before the festival, we sent out a Busted-only E-Flyer as we had fresh content via an exclusive interview. The last few E-Flyers sent out focused heavily on PayPal Pay In 3, which had been the tagline to every E-Flyers, sometimes with the PayPal artwork to compliment.”

E-Flyer tips

When it came to the copy of the E-Flyers and general tips on sending them, Sinead told us:

“The main focus of any E Flyer was that the message you wanted to get across had to be considered and done in the first sentence. If potential attendees only read one sentence from the entire thing, make sure it’s the information that you want them to have or know.

You don’t always have to lead with the lineup poster if you’ve already sent a few E-Flyers. Sometimes, people think they’ve already seen or read your E-Flyer at a glance, so although it should always be there, an image can be just as impactful, if not more. For example, the Busted interview led with their artist square image, with the lineup poster added at the end.”