The email that fires the morning the public on-sale opens, with a subject line that announces tickets are live, a single primary CTA, and urgency that comes from facts rather than hype.
How to use it
Copy the SKILL.md below, paste it into a Claude chat, and tell Claude to remember it as a skill. Claude will save it and pull it in the next time you ask for an on-sale day email.
To make it match your venue, tell Claude the details it doesn't know yet: your venue name, your typical CTA wording, your sign-off, the kind of urgency framing your team uses, anything your team does differently. Then ask Claude to update the skill with that information. The file will be tuned to how you actually write, without you ever opening a code editor.
Works best with: install the venue-voice-profile-builder first. This skill checks for the profile it produces and writes in your venue's voice when it finds one. Without it, Claude falls back to a generic event-marketing voice.
Once it's saved, trigger it by telling Claude "use the on-sale day email skill" and pasting the show details with the public on-sale time and the ticket link. Do not use it for the first announce, the mid-cycle reminder, or the last-call push. Those have their own skills.
---
name: on-sale-day-email
description: Draft the email that fires the morning the public on-sale opens, with a subject line that announces tickets are live, a single primary CTA, and urgency that comes from facts rather than hype. Trigger whenever an operator says "on-sale is tomorrow", "tickets go live in the morning, write the email", "draft the on-sale day push", "the [artist] public on-sale is at 10am, write the email", or asks for the email that converts the presale list into walk-up ticket buyers the moment the public link opens. Also trigger when the operator mentions a public on-sale time and wants the email queued. This skill is distinct from the announcement (use `pre-show-announcement-email`), the mid-cycle reminder (use `pre-sale-reminder-email`), and the last-call push (use `last-call-email`). It is the email that hits inboxes the morning tickets become available without a code.
---
# On-sale day email
## What this skill does
This skill drafts the email that lands in inboxes the morning the public on-sale opens for a show. The job is narrow. Tell the list that tickets are now available, point them at the link, and give them a real reason to click today instead of next Thursday. The reader has likely seen the announce email already, so this email cannot rerun the announce. It has to do something different.
The reason for the urgency is the public on-sale itself. The presale window is closed. Anyone holding off now is choosing between buying today and risking the show being gone. The email's job is to land that choice clearly without overselling.
## When to trigger
Trigger when an operator says the public on-sale is today or tomorrow and they need the morning email. Trigger on "on-sale day email", "tickets go live, write the push", "draft the public on-sale email", "the [artist] on-sale opens at 10am, write the morning send".
Do not trigger for the first announcement (use pre-show-announcement-email), the mid-cycle reminder between announce and on-sale (use pre-sale-reminder-email), or the last-call push in the final 24 to 48 hours (use last-call-email). This skill is the morning of the public on-sale only.
## Required inputs
Confirm these before drafting. Ask once in a single message if anything is missing.
Artist name as it should appear in the email.
Show date, day of week, venue, and city.
Public on-sale time and the exact ticket link. The CTA in this email goes straight to the public sale page.
Where the show is sitting heading into on-sale: presale sellout, partial presale, slow burn, or no presale. This shapes what the urgency is honestly about. A show that sold heavily in presale has different urgency than one that did not.
Anything specific worth flagging: limited tier remaining, only balcony left, last show of the run in the city, sold out the last time the artist played the venue. Only include if the operator confirms it.
## Voice
Read the venue voice profile if one exists and follow it. If no profile exists, default to the Backstage operator baseline: confident, direct, urgency from facts not adjectives.
Hard voice rules:
No em-dashes. Use commas, semicolons, or periods.
No fragment chains. Use complete sentences with rhythm.
No fabricated specifics. If the operator did not say the presale sold heavily, do not write that it sold heavily. If they did not say "only balcony remaining", do not write it.
No hype superlatives. The urgency is the facts. "Tickets are live now" is the news. "Tickets are flying" is not, unless the operator confirms it.
No exclamation points stacked on each other. One is the ceiling, and only if the venue voice profile uses them.
## Structure
Always draft in this order.
Subject line. One option. The clearest pattern is the announcement of state change: "[Artist] tickets: on sale now", "[Artist] is live", "[Artist] tickets are public". Under 55 characters. No all caps. The subject line is the news; the body backs it up.
Preheader. One sentence. Use it to add the single most useful detail not in the subject: the show date, the venue, the room, or a real scarcity note if the operator confirmed one. Twelve to eighteen words.
Opener. One to two sentences. State that the public on-sale is open. If the show had a strong presale, lead with that fact. If it did not, lead with the date and the room.
The why-today. Two to three sentences. The reason the reader should buy now rather than later. Honest reasons only: the show is on a Friday and Fridays move fast, the artist sold out the last time they played the venue, only a single tier remains, the venue is small. If the operator did not give you a real reason, the why-today is simply that the link is live and the show is on the calendar. Do not invent scarcity.
Key details block. Four to five labeled lines: on-sale time, doors, venue, age policy if relevant, and any tier note the operator confirmed. Scannable.
CTA. One primary button or link with the public ticket URL. CTA copy is short. Default fallback: "Get tickets" or "Buy tickets". Do not stack multiple CTAs.
Close. One line. Optional sign-off if the venue voice profile uses one.
## Length cap
Body prose sits at about 110 words. This email is shorter than the announce because the reader already knows the show exists. The key details block does not count toward the cap.
Total email length should not exceed 160 words. Past that, the email is hedging or restating the announce.
## Common failure modes to avoid
Restating the announce. The reader saw the announce already. Repeating the artist's tour cycle or the venue's history of booking them wastes the open. The opener jumps to the news, not the backstory.
Inventing scarcity. "Tickets are going fast" is the most common AI-drafted on-sale lie. If the operator did not say it, do not write it. False urgency burns trust the next time the list opens an email.
Burying the CTA. The public ticket link is the only thing the reader needs from this email. The CTA should be reachable in the first scroll on mobile.
Mixing in next-show content. This email is about this show. The next show belongs in the recap, not the on-sale day push.
Treating "on sale now" as the subject and never delivering the news in the body. The subject and the opener should not be redundant. The subject announces. The opener confirms and adds one detail the subject could not carry.
## What to deliver
Return:
Subject line (one).
Preheader (one).
Email body, ready to paste, with the key details block as a labeled list.
CTA copy and the destination URL.
If anything in the inputs was missing or ambiguous, name what is missing in two or three sentences at the end. Do not walk through every word choice.
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