The loyalty sale Natalie ran at Elements Festival last year was, in her words, off the charts. The team has been breaking records year over year, all of it built around a mechanic that requires no formal loyalty program underneath. Natalie has spent the last decade in CRM, working across automotive, entertainment media, ticketing, and a long list of ESPs before landing on the festival side at Elements, where she now manages the program.
"They actually don't have to sign up. We know you've been multiple times. So we're going to recognize you for that. And actually, the longer you've been with us, the better deal you get."
She calls the sale a gesture rather than a program. The offers were segmented by attendance history: one version for fans who had been seven times, another for three, another for less. All of it ran inside the email send itself.
"It was really like a nice gesture, and I think everybody appreciates it. We have a really strong community of repeat attendees, and I think these kinds of things are the things that they appreciate."
Natalie's rule about when to send an SMS is straightforward; it comes from the fact that SMS unlike email, costs money to send.
"If it's something sales related and we're going to see revenue come back to us, we'll fire on SMS. We'll be a little bit more selective on something that's not sales related. User survey, for example, we'll send on email."
The rule shapes which channel goes out for what. On the work most directly tied to fan loyalty, like early announcements and the loyalty sale itself, she leans on both email and SMS. In her experience, those direct channels reach fans in a way paid and organic social can't quite match.
The biggest SMS unlock at Elements last year was the abandoned cart automation. It runs as a single multi-channel journey using both email and SMS, with the system deciding fan by fan which channel is more likely to land the recovery message.
"That one's a really nice multi-channel campaign. We set up one journey with both email and SMS. We're checking for optimal channel: if we think you're going to respond to SMS more than email, we'll send you an SMS."
SMS also reaches a segment of fans email cannot.
"There's people who are opted into SMS that are not opted into email, so it unlocks an entire new segment of people that we might not be able to reach otherwise."
During the event itself, SMS plays a smaller role than the Elements app and push notifications, reserved for big changes and weather notices.
The SMS list at Elements grows from three steady sources on the website: a pop-up for new visitors, an embedded form on the main page, and the checkout flow, where Elements collects both email and SMS opt-in at the moment of purchase.
The future state Natalie has been thinking about reaches further. She wants to use the non-email/SMS channels she hasn't leaned on much, like organic and paid social, and the partner co-branded promotions that could fill the top of the funnel.
"I definitely want to tap into our social channels, maybe do some contests. We've done it before. We didn't do that much this year, but it does definitely fill the funnel a little bit more. It just tends to be a little bit higher funnel type of lead, so they do require a little bit more nurturing."
When Elements sends the before-you-go logistics email in the weeks leading up to the festival, it goes out in roughly fifteen versions. The segmentation is driven by ticket type and accommodation.
"Maybe 15 versions, because we have so many different ticket types: camping, hotel accommodations, single day tickets. And then within those, depending on what hotel you're staying, different instructions on where to pick up your ticket."
The loyalty sale also runs on segmented versions: one for fans who had been seven times, another for three, another for less.
When asked about her vision for the program, Natalie pointed to more personalization and more automation. She specifically wants dynamic content blocks that would let her swap variations inside a single send rather than rebuild the email from scratch fifteen times.
"In terms of the CRM program my goal is always to take it to the next level, and that usually means more personalization and automation."
She also wants to deepen the segmentation inside existing automations. The welcome series already splits buyers from non-attendees, and an abandoned cart variant for fans who have attended multiple times is on her list.
"Maybe for abandoned cart we could have versions for people who have been multiple times."
The bigger ambition, as she puts it, is efficiency.
"Ultimately the goal there is efficiency, so dynamic templates would definitely unlock that as well."
Every year Elements collects artist interest from fans through a survey that combines a free-form text field with a preset dropdown list. The team uses the data to inform the lineup the following season.
"We always collect artist interests from our fans, and we do value their opinion and use it to curate the lineup."
She calls it one of her favorite parts of the cycle, watching how the lineup evolves over the years based on what fans are asking for.
"It's really interesting to see how our lineup has evolved over the years."
Natalie's approach to AI has been to think about it for almost everything she does. She mapped out every step of her workflow (segment building, copywriting, design, analytics) and tried different use cases against each one to see where it was most efficient.
"I pretty much thought about it for pretty much everything I do. I mapped out what is every step in my process. Then I tried different AI use cases for each of those things and saw where it was most efficient."
The exercise turned up two clear wins, both centered on copy and analytics.
The first is copy refinement. Natalie feeds a draft into a model with a description of the festival and its audience, then asks whether the email is going to land.
"I could basically insert, OK this is what the festival is about, these are the customers we have, read this email and tell me, am I not going to capture that audience?"
The second is analytics. AI helps her sift through raw data and surface patterns.
"Can you find any trends here? What were the best subject lines? Do they have anything in common? Is there a time of day or day of week that's optimal?"
When asked about her proudest moments, Natalie pointed to two things. The first is the view at the event itself: she knows a measurable percentage of fans in the crowd came through email.
The second is the post-event surveys, which kept coming back with people saying it was their best year yet.
"People are raving. Talking to people who have been there longer, we're all in alignment: this is our best year yet. And we always say that, but that's kind of the point. It should get better every year."
This post is based on a conversation from Hive Backstage. Watch the full Episode 2.
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