26th February 2008

tixmob and Virtual Festivals deal will help festivals attract new visitors

A new method of festival marketing is to be pioneered under an agreement recently announced by tixmob, the festival ticketing specialists, and VirtualFestivals.com, the UK’s largest online community of festival-goers.

A new method of festival marketing is to be pioneered under an agreement recently announced by tixmob, the festival ticketing specialists, and VirtualFestivals.com, the UK’s largest online community of festival-goers.

In a marriage of mobile phone technology and the internet, festival organisers will be able to benefit from an exclusive ticketing and marketing package that comes with a ready-made customer base of more than two million active festival-goers on the Virtual Festivals website and a database of 100,000 subscribers.

tixmob has already made an impact in the festival industry by introducing a flexible and secure e-ticketing system, where barcoded tickets are either printed at home or delivered directly onto mobile phones. This is proving effective in beating the ticket touts. The ability to gather information on festival-goers who opt in, and, subsequently, to market during the event itself, makes the system a powerful data capture and marketing tool as well.

The partnership between tixmob and VirtualFestivals.com creates a 360 degree model whereby live music fans will find out about events through VirtualFestivals.com. They can then purchase tickets online, receive them on their mobile phone, share information with other friends and get pictures or music clips through their mobile, as well as email before arriving at the festival. When they are at the festival, customers will capture the event via photos, videos and blogging on their phones and upload them to Virtual Festivals, enhancing the experience and building 365-day-a-year excitement for, and awareness of, these events.

“Regardless of how good their ticketing system is, the challenge for smaller, independent festivals who lack marketing budgets has always been to drive awareness of the event, in order to shift their tickets,” said Steve Jenner, managing director of Virtual festivals.com. “This initiative is the perfect solution, as it provides participating events with a very powerful marketing resource at no cost to themselves. We are very excited about the opportunities this will create for the UK’s many hundreds of brilliant grass-roots festivals to increase their profiles and sell more tickets, faster.”

Commenting on the new partnership, Ramesh Kumar, business development director, tixmob, said: “Everyone carries their mobile phone to festivals. tixmob offers a simple way for customers to purchase tickets online and receive them on their mobile immediately, without incurring huge booking fees. We are delighted to be working with Virtualfestivals.com, a premier portal for festival goers. We believe this partnership can reshape the marketing and ticketing for the festival sector.”

Nike Phantom Vision