The event industry is going through a major digitalization powered with software and data. There are 20+ million events happening yearly globally, 3000+ of them are regular film festivals. To stay competitive and deliver world-class experiences to their fans, mobile-first or data-driven strategies are on the table of most event companies and promoters across the globe now. Our technology company has set out on that journey, aiming at a smarter, data-driven future in the live events space.

What challenge FanSifter is solving?

A common problem in the live events industry has emerged from our customer conversations – there are tons of promoters and events out there who are sitting on top of troves of valuable fan/attendee and ticketing data. Majority of the event teams acknowledge that they need to capture the fan data from multiple sources (ticketing/registration platforms, mobile event apps, social media, loyalty programs, etc) and many of them have learned how to capture that data, but most of them do not use it effectively at all.

A lot of events and festivals marketing teams don´t analyze in a regular streamlined way who their fans are, what they like, what are their preferences, brand affinities, often they cannot answer quickly simple questions like who are the most valuable segments in the fanbase / Superfans, or show me a segment of festival pass buyers from last 3 years who did VIP upgrade. To answer the latter, and if they have that data accessible, marketing might need to spend a few good hours digging in their spreadsheets to come up with an answer, that should be a simple query to the dataset. And based on research, more than 90% of today´s customers expect and prefer personalized marketing instead of spamming with generic messaging.

Some reasons events do not use their data effectively: there is no easy way to analyze fan data – there are no specialized analytics tools for the event industry needs, no streamlined platform products that help to take analyzed/segmented fan data and build measurable marketing campaigns with that data fast, and sometimes also a marketing team´s skillsets of a modern digital marketing stack contribute.

A lot of events still run generic marketing campaigns, instead of sniper tactics and going after specific targets of their customer segments and personas with the power of the data. A lot of event teams, if they use tools already, work with their data in silos in different products (for example, they analyze data manually in Excel or Google sheets, export audiences then to Facebook Ads Manager or other marketing automation platforms, but without continuous feedback loops to the analytics core on the performance of their datasets and segments, etc).

FanSifter is a product built in close collaboration with events and festivals marketing teams to help to solve these pains.

What´s the solution?

FanSifter – fan/attendee/ticketing data analytics and marketing automation solution for events to improve audience insights, get more sales and drive higher conversion rates from their existing fanbase and from newly built audiences.

The most common use case is that we aim to help events to sell more tickets, but it can be sales of any event product or service or another marketing goal.

FanSifter analytics software enables better segmentation/profiling/enriching data of the fanbase and the marketing automation tool streamlines personalized and hyper-personalized communication to these audiences. Everything is end-to-end trackable.

Machine learning is built into the workflows to learn from fan segments and campaigns performance and to feed that knowledge back to the product and to the customer continuously.

How does FanSifter work?

• Event marketing team uploads fan / attendee / loyalty / ticketing data to FanSifter
• The product enables to visualize fanbase data and smart segment fan profiles
• Events can enrich their fan data for smarter marketing targeting, even if all they have is just an email and a name in the database
• FanSifter enables to launch campaigns to segments directly from the platform via email or via Facebook Marketing API solutions (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network). Over time other distribution channels will be added (Google Ads, etc).
• Events can create email and ad campaigns to target existing customers, re-target and re-engage existing customers or target new customers – all options with multiple scenarios
• Events can create custom campaigns based on parameters and segments that best suit their business
• A/B test any campaigns and double up on the ones that perform with the best metrics
• All data is trackable and traceable on dashboards (on data sets, segments, single fan profiles, campaigns, conversions)
• Machine learning powers recommendations what works in segmenting and campaigns
• FanSifter is focused on driving better conversion rates from the existing fanbase and from newly built audiences

FanSifter participated in the 2019 edition of Cannes NEXT program at the Marché du Film that showcases new ideas, new technologies, new business models in the audiovisual sector.

About the author:

Aivar Laan
Founder and CEO @ Festivality

One of the key pioneers of professional Baltic event marketing since the mid-1990s. Live events veteran, 25+ years in the industry, more than 2000 events produced and promoted from corporate events to music and film festivals in the Baltics, Nordics and CEE region. Has founded, built up and exited several marketing communications and event marketing/production agencies in the region.

Founded and ran 5 years as a hobby project 100+ days film festival Rooftop Cinema in Riga and Tallinn, which was also voted into TOP5 best outdoor cinemas in the world.

Now on a mission to digitize the event industry with smart data-driven technologies.

About FanSifter:

FanSifter – fan/attendee/ticketing data analytics and marketing automation solution for events to improve audience insights, get more sales and drive higher conversion rates from their existing fanbase and from newly built audiences.

FanSifter is a new innovative product from live events technology company Festivality.

Festivality was initially launched in 2016 as a platform technology for festivals and events to build smarter next-generation mobile event apps, gain new revenues and actionable event and fan analytics via mobile. Festivality´s mobile app products help to digitize events and turn them into actionable data.

Festivality´s roster of customers includes top European and Asian live event groups, from music to film to city festivals, live tours, major sports and tech events. Our typical customer is a mid-market company in the event industry, who runs event business professionally and has a portfolio of live event or festival assets they grow.

Festivality has a lean experienced and international team in 3 offices: HQ in Tallinn, Estonia; Asia Pacific region team in Seoul, South-Korea, and a representative office in Gdansk, Poland.