Life is Beautiful is a 3-day music festival hosted in Downtown Las Vegas. Find out how SimpleTexting helps them reach more fans, sell more tickets, and grow their SMS efforts.
Life is Beautiful is a three-day celebration held in the heart of Downtown Las Vegas. The annual festival is centered in music, art, taste and ideas.
With their previous SMS service, Life is Beautiful was only able to message a small fraction of their list at once. Plus, they weren’t able to have 1-on-1 conversations with fans.
Life is Beautiful switched to a dedicated short code with SimpleTexting and their delivery rate increased from 21% to 98%. Texts now account for around 25% of their ticket sales.
With past acts such as Kanye West, Stevie Wonder, Foo Fighters, Billie Eilish, and The Killers, it’s no surprise that Life is Beautiful drew around 186,550 people last year—42,000 of whom traveled from out of town to attend.
Kyle Huender is Life is Beautiful’s digital marketing specialist. He oversees everything from paid media to email and SMS.
“Life is Beautiful has always had a long-time goal of using SMS to communicate with its festival fans and customers directly,” he explains.
When Kyle joined the Life is Beautiful team two years ago, the festival already had a contact list of over 200,000 phone numbers. The problem, however, was that their previous SMS service only allowed them to message a fraction of their list at once and at a relatively slow pace. After Kyle did some research, he switched to SimpleTexting, a platform he found could operate at the scale he needed it to.
Prior to SimpleTexting, Kyle estimates he could only reach 21% of Life is Beautiful’s list. Now their delivery rate is 98%. That’s a 366% increase.
With the festival’s previous SMS service, they only had access to a 10-digit number, otherwise known as a long code. SimpleTexting helped Life is Beautiful provision an easy-to-remember, dedicated short code: 75787.
This number has a significantly higher throughput, meaning it can deliver thousands of texts per second as opposed to a few hundred.
It can be a long journey to acquire a dedicated short code. Luckily, our team has done it enough times to make it painless. We guided Life is Beautiful through the whole process—from working with the Common Short Code Administration to filing the proper paperwork with cell carriers.
Once the short code was provisioned, all he had to do was import the festival’s existing list of phone numbers.
“It was easy to add our current subscribers. Now we can message our entire audience within minutes as well as create hyper-targeted segments for more specific messages.”
Phone numbers are a valuable asset. Life is Beautiful has managed to build an impressive list by sending texts with special deals, useful reminders to active wristbands, and more. To sign up for these exclusive messages, all a fan has to do is enter their number into the web form on Life is Beautiful’s site, which connected to SimpleTexting via our API.
Kyle estimates that text message marketing contributes both directly and indirectly to 25% of all ticket sales.
In addition to promotions, Life is Beautiful uses the channel to send out the most coveted text of all, the lineup announcement.
“Using MMS messaging, Life is Beautiful delivered a sharable lineup poster asset directly to its audience, instead of requiring contacts to click a link.”
Here’s what that message looks like:
A higher throughput and MMS messaging aren’t the only features the Life is Beautiful’s team gained when they switched to SimpleTexting.
“With our last provider, were we unable to interact with our customers on a 1-on-1 basis for community management and customer service. SimpleTexting’s Inbox lets us do that.”
The ability to respond to questions is only the beginning of building a good relationship with contacts. It’s also important to only message contacts who have given you permission to text them. SimpleTexting automatically removes contacts who ask to opt out, saving Kyle and his team time.
Plus, he can easily keep an eye on how many messages are going out and how many contacts are unsubscribing.
“We needed a platform where we could effectively manage and see the direct results of our SMS efforts. Both of these features we key in our decision to choose SimpleTexting. Analytics and reporting were previously not available to us.”
Looking ahead, Life is Beautiful plans to advertise their new short code on signage during the event, get more sophisticated with their segments, host text-to-win sweepstakes, and more.
Life is Beautiful reportedly brought an additional $43 million into the local economy of Downtown Las Vegas. That said, even small-scale events can benefit from the power of text marketing. Want to find out more? Visit our industry guide for events and entertainment venues then sign up for a 14-day, risk-free trial.
Founded in 2012, Altitude is the fastest growing trampoline park company in the world. Learn how their Tampa location uses text marketing.
ReadText invites are fantastic for business meetings, events, and parties because they're quick, effective, and customizable. I’ll walk through how to send invites via text.
Read
Start a text marketing campaign or have a 1-on-1 conversation today. It's risk free. Sign up for a free 14-day trial today to see SimpleTexting in action.
No credit card required
