A launch timeline for your event

Overview

Events rarely sell themselves in the final week. If you announce early, put tickets on sale early and then follow up in waves, sales spread over several weeks and you find out in time whether the event will pay for itself. This guide gives you a timeline to adapt to your event. The weeks are rules of thumb for a club night or a concert with a few hundred guests. For a festival you start months earlier; for a small association party four weeks are often enough.

Before you announce

Only announce once these are settled:

• Date and venue are confirmed in writing.
• The acts you name have said yes, and you're allowed to announce them. Many booking agreements set the date from which you can. More in the guide Announcing your lineup.
• The budget works, in the cautious scenario too. See Budget and P&L for your event.
• The authorities' deadlines are in your calendar: depending on the province and the size, you have to notify the authorities or get a permit, sometimes weeks ahead. See Safety concept and event notification. Music has to be registered with AKM beforehand, see AKM and other levies.

Eight to twelve weeks before

• Set up the event page: name, date, venue, an image and a few sentences on what it's about. While you're still building, the event stays a draft.
• Set ticket types and price phases: an early-bird price that runs until a date or until its allocation sells out rewards the first buyers and gives you an early signal. Plan the phases so that each price step lines up with an announcement.
• Save the date: date, venue and the mood. If you're allowed to name acts already, name them.
• Open ticket sales as soon as the page is ready. People who see the date early should be able to buy right away.

Four to eight weeks before

• The second wave: more acts, the headliner, or the details that make the event special (the venue, the stages, partnerships).
• Bring in partners: artists, the venue, friendly collectives and associations share the event. Give each of them their own link so you can see later what it brought in. See Channels that sell tickets.
• Newsletter to everyone who agreed to receive it.
• Posters and flyers go to print, if you make any.

The final two to four weeks

• Publish the timetable: who plays when. Many guests only decide now.
• The last price phase: say when it ends, and stick to the deadline.
• Close the guest list: set a date by which artists and partners enter their names. See The guest list as a marketing tool.
• Prepare admission: crew, scanners and the box office. See Admission and scanning on event day.

The week of the event

• A reminder to everyone who already has a ticket: how to get there, when admission opens, what to bring.
• A last call on the channels that have sold best so far.
• On event day, photos and short videos for the follow-up, with consideration for the guests in the picture.

After the event

• Say thanks to guests, artists and crew, ideally the next day.
• Look at the numbers: when did tickets sell, through which links, at which price? That's the basis for the timeline of your next event.

Honest scarcity

“Only a few tickets left” and “Early bird ends today” sell, but only when they're true. Under Austrian unfair competition law, falsely claiming that an offer is available only for a very limited time is always an unfair practice toward consumers (UWG, annex item 7), and misleading statements about an offer are prohibited in general (§ 2 UWG). So only announce deadlines and remaining quantities you'll actually stick to.

With Gathermatter

• Price phases are set in the ticket type: an early-bird price ends on a date or when its allocation sells out, and the next step applies automatically. See Sell your first tickets.
• Visibility: an event stays a draft until you publish it. See Managing events and tickets.
• How ticket sales develop is in the event under Review › Recap: revenue, ticket types and sales by day.

Sources

• UWG § 2 (misleading commercial practices, German) and the UWG annex, item 7 (German)