4 Ways Entertainment & Travel Brands Drive Ticket Sales and Memberships With SMS

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Posted in
SMS Marketing
Published on
Jul 14, 2021
Written by
Caroline Cushner
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As consumers return to long-awaited live events, now is the time for entertainment and travel brands to re-engage their mobile audience.

After over a year at home, we’re all more than ready to start traveling and attending the in-person social events we’ve been missing. SMS can help you connect with your audience by sending timely updates and ticket offers leading up to these live experiences.

Find out how Celebrity Cruises, Envision Festival, ZooTampa, and The Lights Fest are using personalized text messaging to build their mobile audience, drive ticket sales, and increase membership registrations online and offline (and you can, too).

Celebrity Cruises: Highlighting safe travels at sea

celebrity cruises

Celebrity Cruises uses their text messaging channel to update travelers on safety regulations and bookings. After docking their ships for 15 months, the “Celebrity Edge” was the first cruise ship approved by the CDC to sail from a US port.

The luxury cruise lines shared this milestone with their SMS subscribers, and inspired travelers to kickstart their plans and set off on a long-awaited trip. 

As more voyages are approved, Celebrity Cruises plans to lean into personalized text messaging to instantly update their subscribers on upcoming trips, booking deals, and safety protocols. 

Envision Festival: Building hype with early ticket sales

Envision Festival ticket sales text

Envision Festival, a dance music festival in Costa Rica, takes advantage of the instantaneous nature of text messaging to quickly reach subscribers with time-sensitive offers. Ahead of their limited-capacity festival in 2022, Envision shared an “Earliest Bird” ticket sale, exclusive to their SMS subscribers. 

The festival’s SMS subscribers are highly engaged members of the event’s community, making them the ideal audience to promote the early ticket sale. Envision’s animated GIF reminded their subscribers of the immersive experience and created a sense of anticipation for first-time festival-goers. Fans felt like they couldn’t miss out on the limited-time offer and were quick to click the direct link to secure their tickets. 

ZooTampa: Driving membership renewals

ZooTampa membership text

ZooTampa sends personalized text messages that engage subscribers throughout the membership lifecycle. They built an advanced data-driven segmentation strategy so every subscriber gets valuable content relevant to their interests.

The zoo creates segments of SMS subscribers based on their membership data—such as upcoming expirations—and automatically reminds them to renew their membership. This segmentation strategy personalizes the subscriber's experience with ZooTampa while automating the renewal process for the brand. ZooTampa’s membership campaigns—which include limited-time renewal offers—drive impressive 40%+ click-through rates.

The Lights Fest: Personalizing updates with geo-targeting

The Light Festival text

The Lights Fest, in partnership with TicketSocket, is a lantern festival that lights up the skies of cities around the US, uses geo-targeting to send highly relevant text messages to subscribers based on their location. Using Attentive’s Segmentation Builder, The Lights Fest sends localized date announcements, early-bird promotions, and VIP offers to subscribers based on the city nearest them.

The lantern festival sent a reminder for the Pittsburgh event to their Pennsylvania-based audience. The message infused their uplifting brand voice while directly addressing the relevant segment (“See you tomorrow, Pittsburgh!”). They included a GIF of the event’s signature lanterns to reflect its surreal ambiance. The message ends with a direct link to their website, making it easy for subscribers to reserve their tickets, while driving web traffic and last-minute mobile conversion for the brand.

As a personal channel used to communicate with friends and family, SMS marketing can help you create a lasting connection with your audience, stay top-of-mind, and drive immediate action.


Looking for more inspiration? Browse hundreds of text messaging campaigns sent by our customers in our SMS gallery, Texts We Love.

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