How to create loyal customers for your events. As an events manager, you can create loyal customers in different ways. You can create a community, where people feel they are equal and share the same values (Eventbrite, 2011). A great example is Tomorrowland, the festival focuses on love, respect, health, and nature. They have even created a campaign to receive messages and drawings all over the world. these then have been lasered onto the bridge, in the park of Boom. They have introduced the campaign by the following quote, “what if a global community sends out a message in a legendary place in order to become one world”. The campaign has been a success, the bridge contains 210,000 positive messages from people around the world (Tomorrowland, 2013). This is a great way of interacting with the visitors and building a community.
Another way of how to make your customers loyal customers is by making your customers feel privileged (Eventsmangementblog, 2017). Ensure that your customers feel exclusive by giving them extra treatment, this can be done for example by giving them a discount.
Tomorrowland has created extra flights just for their attendees, together with Brussels airlines as the sponsor. This flight is not, as usual, the festival experience already starts on the plane. Imagine having a party on a plane with a live DJ where air hostesses in costumes serve you food and drinks.
Music festivals are not the only ones that create loyal customers, what about sports?
Look at football clubs and their loyal fanbase. An example of how a football club can create a community that is loyal can be seen in the club of Rayo Vallecano, a club from the suburbs of Madrid. Back In 2014, the club has helped an elderly woman that was living in the local surroundings, by covering her loan of 40,000 euro to prevent her getting evicted (Dailymail, 2014). This shows how tied the club is to its community. The community takes care of the club and the club takes care of its community.
Events managers should learn more from football clubs such as Rayo Vallecano. Taking care of the local area in where the event is based must always be considered, this will automatically create a local audience that is loyal. The same practice has been adopted by the Hay festival, they spread the love for books around the world. The festival exists in 6 different countries. They have set up a mission with volunteers to give creative writing workshops for kids and adults alike.
This is a great example of attitudinal loyalty, which has been mentioned by Butcher et al (2001) next to behavioral loyalty. Attitudinal Loyalty is all about the feelings towards a brand, all that counts is the actions of the brand, which can be achieved by often exceeding the expectations of the costumers. This is also known as lovemarks.
Kevin Roberts has explained that lovemark is emotionally connected with its customers and therefore receives high love and high respect. On the other hand, a brand can also receive low love because the brand is not emotionally connected with that specific person. It is also possible that the same person has high respect for the same brand, this is due to the experience with the brand. For example, buying your bread from Hooves, just because you’re used to the brand.
The category products, are products that are perceived so badly that customers don’t even connect them with the brands. Fads are trends that people can love but have low respect, this is because trends are trendy only for a little while. for example, pop tarts and macrons were very trendy to have at events.
I have made my own love/respect axis as an example to events.
Therefore, Start aiming to become a love brand. Create events that will touch the emotions of your customers. This can be done by as mentioned before by building a community and making your customers feel treated. Other things such as understanding your customers and giving a good customer service, should also never be overlooked.
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