Customer Snapshot
- Years Running: 35
- Artists on Site: 190
- Exhibitions: 58
- Competitions: 16
The Richmond Tattoo & Arts Festival was founded in 1988 as one of the first tattoo conventions in the country and has a long history of attracting the best artists in the industry. As a relatively small show, the focus is on maintaining a high quality vendors and entertainment options. With his deep roots in the art world, owner/promoter Jesse Smith also brings in the broader art world, including NFT artists, painters, and muralists to compliment the tattoo artists. In 2023, they implemented TicketSignup to sell festival tickets, communicate with attendees, and manage event day.
The Art of Branding
Art is at the core of everything Jesse does at the Richmond Tattoo and Arts Festival. As such, the branding for the event is stylized and intentional, with bold colors and consistent themes. They used the TicketSignup website builder to create a ticketing site that matches the style of their own event website.
Richmond Tattoo & Arts Festival: Main Event Website
Richmond Tattoo & Arts Festival: TicketSignup Site
The artistic flair of the event showed up on their ticket tiles, each of which was customized with an unique image for each ticket option. To create the eye-catching look, they simply updated the Display Options for each ticket to include both a visual element and all requisite ticket details.
Display Setup
Ticket Tiles
Branded Email Marketing
The detailed event branding doesn’t stop with a ticketing site. Richmond Tattoo & Arts Festival took advantage of integrated email marketing to send free emails to their internal marketing list of more than 20,000 contacts. Like their website, the emails sent by the event included a dedicated color scheme, vibrant images, and callouts to their ever-valuable sponsors.
The PR team found the process of uploaded contacts and sending emails to be simple. And the emails worked: 18% of festival tickets were purchased directly from an email send. Because many of their emails sent people to their main event website first (to view event details like pre-festival promotions and schedule details), the true impact of email on their ticket sales is likely even higher.
Data to Drive Decisions
For Jesse and his Richmond Tattoo and Arts Fest partner, understanding their audience is key. They use custom questions in the purchase path to give attendees an opportunity to share what they hope to see and hear at the event. Early on, this report was only available as a data download. However, after conferring with their TicketSignup account manager about the importance of graphical reports, the development team released new reports that matched their needs.
These questions help drive decisions for the festival team. They include data on everything from where to spend advertising dollars to which tattoo artists to prioritize and what music to play at the event.
Event Day Flow
With most festival tickets sold online ahead of time, the flow of traffic on-site was simple. As attendees arrived, the on-site team simply scanned the QR code from their confirmation email, gave them a wristband, and sent them on their way. Additionally, they allowed for upgrades at their registration booth to maximize revenue.
The Richmond Tattoo and Arts Fest team used the TicketSignup Tickets App to check-in all ticket types and add-ons. In addition to admission, they checked in parking upgrades and special events. To keep it easier for their on-site team, the on-site team set separate configurations for CheckIn and Parking and limited the details shown to the essentials.
“Art is at the Core Of Everything I Do”
“Bryan and Elisabeth were amazing to work with. Emails were always answered within 24 hours and they were able to solve any issue. They made my life easier”.
– Jesse Smith
Jesse Smith ensures that art is the driving force behind the event, from their online presence to their on-site entertainment. Even their support of their charity partner, Richmond SPCA, is artistic: they host a live “Art for Charity” event on-site with an auction benefiting the SPCA. For him, an easy-to-use ticketing platform with personal support ensured he could focus on the art, not the technology.
Interested in TicketSignup for your festival tickets? Create your event today, or schedule a call to learn more about the platform.