Case Study: 2016 San Angelo Rotary Shrimp and Wine Fest

The annual San Angelo Rotary Club Shrimp & Wine Fest was a laggard event. Over the years, the club attempted to revive the tradition that originally was held at Lake Nasworthy but moved into town and held at the El Paseo de Santa Angela.

The problem was, not enough people in San Angelo were learning about the event. It’s an all-you-can-eat dinner of boiled shrimp served with barbecued sausage, beans and coleslaw. Local musicians provided entertainment.

For the 2016 event, the Rotary Club engaged San Angelo LIVE! to drive up pre-event ticket sales and to get more people to show up at the door. We succeeded on both accounts. Sales for 2016 exceeded $26,000. The previous year, sales were stuck in the $12,000 range.

Here are the marketing strategy and tactics used to enhance the event:

Strategy

The Rotary Club changed the name of the event by adding wine to the title. Wine was sold at a cash bar. The strategy behind this was to increase the interest of women in the San Angelo DMA demographic since women drive participation in dinner events like this. It worked.

Secondly, the Rotary Club could gage the effectiveness of the event through ticket pre-sales. We used Eventbrite because it has a tested and proven event ticket sales user interface. We didn’t want to lose sales because a potential customer had difficulty purchasing tickets online.

Tactics to get the word out

We used a three-pronged approach at audience engagement. The products we used were branded Facebook posts, a direct solo email, the San Angelo LIVE! Daily Email with sponsored content, and a direct solo email near the date of the event. Any of these tactics could have been enhanced with a greater ad spend. We didn’t need any of it, though.

Here are examples of the LIVE! Ad Products we used to promote the event:

Banner Ads: Using HTML5, we implemented the use of a loop video in the banner ads to give them motion, and to attract attention in a subtle way. Click here to see examples (best viewed on desktop computer screen size).

Branded Sponsored Post on Facebook. A series of three branded posts were made on Facebook leading up to the event. Each post averaged 10,000 views and hundreds of clickthrus.

Here is an example post (you can see it live online here).

Event Listing. The event listing on San Angelo LIVE! received over 2000 views over the two weeks leading up to the event. See the event listing here.

Eventbrite. Our partner Eventbrite provided a landing page where pre-event ticket sales took place. We utilized the data on how many tickets were sold to estimate turnout. This is where the majority of the traffic generated by this campaign was sent. We wanted to close as many as we could before the day of the event. See the Eventbrite listing here.

Direct Solo Email. We emailed a personal invitation to the most engaged members of our audience, our subscribers to the San Angelo LIVE! Daily Email. The email was a hit and over 7,000 people opened it. It was shared on Facebook, and the post obtained over 15,000 views. See the email here.

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