Music festivals have taken advantage of the ongoing development and innovation of technology  in many ways; none more so than the emergence of mobile apps for music festivals. In this day and age, for any music festival to have an effective digital marketing campaign, and compete with rival festivals, then they must have an active mobile app campaign.

Mobile apps are a great communication stream for any music festival to have, they also help give customers regular updates, create a sense of community for the festival and a practical source of information. The benefits of mobile apps to festival goers are that they provide convenient access to the festival’s online presence, offer location based services such as festival maps, privacy, personalisation and security, meaning that they are a very viable resource for music festivals to use in order to enhance the customer experience (Chaffey et al., 2009).

Various music festival apps include travel information, links to their other social media platforms and artist background, all adding to the overall festival experience, this means apps are a viable virtual space to help engage customers and also feed in much needed information in an accessible manner (Cook, 2014).

Mobile apps are crucially used by music festivals for ‘relationship marketing’, to help promote customer retention and satisfaction, rather than a dominant focus on sales transactions. This makes a high quality one crucial, to heighten customer experience, create a relationship between the festival and user and also establish loyalty. Personalised apps to consumers, links to other social media and apps with formative messages will help aid this (Christopher et al., 1991)

However if produced in the wrong manner, a phone app can seriously damage a festivals’ reputation and impact how loyal the customer is, as Cook (2014) states “You’re probably not going to decide which festival to attend based on the app you use to keep track of what bands to see where, but whether or not it crashes every five seconds definitely affects your experience”.

The cost of building an app is also more expensive than other digital marketing methods such as Facebook, which is free. A major drawback of using mobile apps as a marketing tool is that they can only be accessed by iOS and android users, which means some customers may feel alienated and left behind (especially the older generation, who might not be technologically advanced enough). The fact that the market for apps is extremely competitive means high barriers to entry; as consumers are inclined to download so many apps regularly, there is a real threat that they may ignore or even possibly delete the festival’s app (Ganguly, 2013). This means that app retention is a possible problem. The image below shows the average app retention by consumers, showing that 80% of initial downloaders are lost.

The best way to keep retention of customers and ‘relationship marketing’ is to, create a loyal community for users (through feedback, customer research, personalised communications), analytics and iteration to understand customers behaviour (identify places of popularity and places of exit), create a connection (push-up notifications and personalised e-mails), and hurdles barriers to entry for a more enjoyable customer experience (make decisions on behalf of customers). This is crucial for long-term customer engagement (Techcolz,2016) . Many apps measure there effective of retention (such as Coachella), through Aspalar mobile analytic and tracking platform, to help the issue of bad customer retention a non-issue (Albright, 2012).

Examples of effective mobile apps from music festivals include, Coachella. The festival is renowned for its innovative thinking, and in 2015 uploaded its app with new features such as friend finder (links to other social media platforms, to search for people you know at the event), social media integration, schedule maker, a simple but detailed map (with stages, trademark points) and push notifications, all contributing to a hugely successful app (all examples of ‘relationship marketing’). All these engaging aspects leads to high retention, and a viable and beneficial app for customers (Jaekel, 2016).

Coachella use the app to their advantage to see how people are utilizing the app and going around the venue points. They also use it to see the viability of the artists, for example using Aloompa data (tracking device of app users), to see how much of the audience stay for what acts, which means crucial data to see the most successful artists (Raymundo,2016). Below shows images of the Coachella festival app.

Other effective examples include ‘Firefly Music Festival’, in 2015 it had customised daily schedules, maps with pinch and zoom capabilities, a integration system with Instagram to capture and post your favourite moments and need-to-know for the weekend, to all heighten the customer experience and bring together ‘Relationship Marketing’ (Cook,2014).  Images of the app are shown below:

Another simple yet effective example is ‘Newport Folk Festival’, with essentials such as map, news and line-up shown in a user friendly manner, this is a great reputation and image for the festival to use (shows a warm and friendly identity). It can even be used to buy tickets for the festival on (Cook, 2014). Images of the app are shown below:

After extensive research, it has become apparent that the emerging technological advancement in mobile apps is the ability to interlink mobile apps with other social media for a more detailed and accessible use. The ‘Social Media Integration Theory’ definitely can be connected here, meaning that sharing connection, feedback and exposure is heightened by the use of integrating social media methods into company’s apps. It means that the company are communicating with their customers in a much more accessible and engaging manner. (Pan & Crotts, 2012). Examples of this are ‘Coachella’, linking with Facebook for friend finding at the festival, and ‘Firefly’ linking with Instagram to capture festival moments, all to support the festival experience, retain and engage customers and aid the mobile app.

Mobile apps can use ‘e-Customer Relationship Management’ (CRM), to help establish, develop, maintain and optimisms a long-term relationship between the festival and customers, something crucial for any app to be successful (Bergeron, 2002). Looking at examples, with the development of customer personalisation, festivals can now select their customers and cater to them, through linking to other social media backgrounds (such as Spotify playlist, Facebook likes etc.), to see what music and artists they like and other data. Apps acquire this by selecting the festival goers who need further information or want further benefits (such as Coachella’s friend finder). Apps will retain customers by making a loyal base for users and producing an app with personalised information to satisfy customers. They can extend this by even selling (tickets, merchandise etc.) on the app such as with ‘Newport Folk Festival’.

In conclusion, this blog has shown that mobile apps are a effective tool for music festivals to use, with relevant examples to back this point up such as how ‘Coachella’ utilize there app to find out crucial customers and artist information (using Aloompa data), which otherwise may be lost otherwise, or how ‘Newport Folk Festival’, use there app to showcase there warm reputation and also sell tickets.  Apps are especially useful to help, retain customers and create sense of loyalty. The are crucial sources of regular information, which can be personalised to every customer (adds to customers the experience), which means  a good source of ‘relationship marketing’.  This overall shows how useful mobile apps can be used to keep consumers engaged with a music festival, because all of the factors shown above help contribute to a engaged audience.

By Isaac Roblett

References

Albright, P (2012) how do you measure the success of an app? Customer engagement is key, [Online] Available at: http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/how-do-you-measure-success-app-customer.(Accessed 14 April 2014)

Bergeron, B. (2002) Essentials of CRM: A Guide to Customer Service Relationship Management. New York: John Wiley & Sons, p. 2.

Christopher M., Payne, A. and Ballantyne, D. (1991). Relationship Marketing. Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford. p. 264.

Chaffey, D., Ellis-Chadwick, F., Mayer, R., & Johnston, K. (2009). Internet marketing: strategy, implementation and practice. Prentice Hall

Cook, J (2014) The 5 Most User-Friendly Music Festival Apps,[Online} Available at:http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2014/06/the-5-most-user-friendly-music-festival-apps.html (Accessed: 7 February 2016 ).

Ganguly, R. (2013). Mobile App Marketing, App Retention, and Building Real Customer Relationships. [Online] Available: https://moz.com/blog/mobile-app-marketing-app-retention-and-building-real-customer-relationships. Accessed 14 April 2016.

Jaekel, B. (2016) Coachella makes mobile headline act of 2015 festival marketing – mobile marketer – social networks. [Online] Available: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/social-networks/20214.html. Accessed: 1 February 2016).

Pan, B., & Crotts, J. (2012). Theoretical models of social media, marketing implications, and future research directions. In Sigala, M., Christou, E., & Gretzel, U. (Eds.). Social Media in Travel, Tourism and Hospitality: Theory, Practice and Cases (pp. 73-86). Surrey, UK: Ashgate

Raymundo, O. (2016). How the Coachella app uses your data in a ‘not creepy’ way. [Online] Available: http://www.macworld.com/article/3045233/iphone-ipad/how-the-coachella-app-works.html Accessed 14 April 2016.

Techcolz. (2016). Mobile App User Acquisition & Retention Best Strategies.[Online] Available: http://www.techcolz.com/mobile-app-user-acquisition-retention-best-strategies/. Accessed 14 April 2016.