The first email that goes to the venue's full list the moment a new show is announced and goes on-sale, drafted in the venue's voice, with every required ticketing detail in place.
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 announce 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 artists or genres your list cares about, 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.
Once it's saved, trigger it by telling Claude "use the pre-show announcement email skill" and pasting the show details.
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.
The rest of the announce cycle is covered by the pre-sale-reminder-email, on-sale-day-email, before-you-go-logistics-email, and last-call-email. Install them as you need each send in the lifecycle.
---
name: pre-show-announcement-email
description: Draft the first email that goes to the venue's list the moment a new show is announced and goes on-sale, in the venue's voice, with every required ticketing detail in place. Trigger whenever an event marketer or venue operator says "we just announced [artist]", "the [artist] show is going on sale", "write the announce email", "draft the on-sale email", or pastes show details (artist, date, doors, presale code) and asks for an announcement. Also trigger when they say "we got the headliner, can you do the email" or any phrasing that implies they need the first list email for a newly announced show. This skill is the front of the announce cycle. It should be the default email draft the operator gets back when the show first hits the public calendar, before any reminder, last-call, or recap email runs.
---
# Pre-show announcement email
## What this skill does
This skill writes the very first email that goes to the venue's full list when a show is announced and goes on-sale. The email has one job: get the right fans to click through to the ticket link before the show sells out. It is not a logistics email, it is not a hype reel, it is the announcement.
The email runs in the venue's voice, not a generic event marketing voice. Before drafting, this skill checks for a venue voice profile produced by venue-voice-profile-builder. If one exists, pull from it. If one does not exist, ask the operator whether to build one first or fall back to the Backstage default voice for a single email.
## When to trigger
Trigger when an operator says a show has been announced and they need the first list email. Trigger also on phrasings like "draft the on-sale", "write the announce", "we have [artist] on [date], can you write the email", or when the operator pastes a show details block and asks for copy.
Do not trigger this skill for reminder emails (use pre-sale-reminder-email), on-sale day push (on-sale-day-email), logistics (before-you-go-logistics-email), or last-call sends (last-call-email). This skill is the announcement only.
## Required inputs
Before drafting, confirm these. If any are missing, ask once in a single message rather than drafting around them.
Artist name as it should appear in the email. Confirm spelling, capitalization, and whether to use a stylized form (e.g. lowercase). Get this from the operator or from the show page.
Date and city. Day of week is helpful. If the venue has multiple rooms, name the room.
Doors and set time if known. If set time is not locked yet, draft with doors only and note that set time will be added.
Presale code and presale window if there is one. The presale code goes in plain text inside the email body, not buried in a button. If there is no presale, skip the section entirely rather than write around it.
Public on-sale time and the ticket link. The ticket link is the single primary CTA.
Support acts if known. Optional. Include if the names will mean something to the list.
Anything the operator wants flagged: tour name, album cycle, last time the artist played the venue or city, sold-out history, anything that gives a reason the email is worth opening.
## Voice
If a venue voice profile exists, read it and follow it. The profile is the source of truth for tone, signature phrases, hard rules, formatting habits, and sign-off conventions.
If no profile exists, default to the Backstage operator baseline: confident and direct, warm without being chummy, specific about why this show matters, no hype superlatives, no exclamation points stacked on each other. The email should read like a venue you trust telling you something is on the calendar, not like a marketing department announcing an opportunity.
Hard voice rules that apply regardless of venue profile:
No em-dashes. Use commas, semicolons, or periods. If the draft introduces one, fix it before delivering.
No fragment chains. Do not stack three noun-phrase fragments in a row to sound punchy. Use complete sentences with rhythm.
No fabricated specifics. If the operator did not say the show is selling fast, the show is not selling fast. If the operator did not tell you it is the artist's first time in the city, do not write that. Specifics earn their place because they are true, not because they sound good.
No hype superlatives without proof. "Biggest show of the year", "must-see", "the show everyone is talking about" are out unless the operator confirms a specific anchor for the claim.
## Structure
Always draft in this order. Other skills downstream of the announce cycle expect this skeleton.
Subject line. One option, not three. The job is editorial judgment, not a menu. Default pattern: the artist name plus a short anchor (the city, the date, "on sale now", or the venue if relevant). Keep it under 55 characters so it does not truncate on mobile. No all caps. No emoji unless the venue voice profile explicitly uses emoji in subject lines.
Preheader. One sentence, twelve to eighteen words, that earns the open by adding context the subject line did not have. Do not repeat the subject line.
Opener. One to two sentences. Name the show in the first line. Give the reason to care in the second. If there is a real, operator-confirmed hook (album, tour, return, first time), put it here. If there is not, do not invent one.
The news. The artist, the venue, the date, the city, in clean prose. This is the part where the reader confirms "yes this is the show I care about and here is when it is".
Key details block. A short list that includes doors, set time if known, age policy if relevant, and presale info if there is a presale. Keep it scannable. Three to five lines. Use a labeled list, not free-flowing prose, because this block is what the reader scrolls back to.
CTA. A single primary button or link with the ticket URL. CTA copy is short and specific to the venue voice. Default fallback if no profile: "Get tickets" or "Grab tickets". Do not stack multiple CTAs in the body.
Close. One line. Optional sign-off if the venue voice profile uses one.
## Length cap
Body copy, opener through close, sits at about 120 words. The reader is deciding whether to click in under ten seconds. Anything past 150 is too long and should be cut.
The key details block does not count toward the 120 because it is a reference block, not prose.
## Common failure modes to avoid
Padding the opener with throat-clearing. "We are so excited to announce that we will be welcoming..." is twelve words that say nothing. Open on the news.
Burying the date or the ticket link. The date appears in the first three lines. The CTA is reachable without scrolling on mobile.
Treating the presale code like a secret. The presale code is plain text inside the email, in a labeled line that says "Presale code: [CODE]". It is not hidden in a button URL.
Over-promising. If the operator did not say the show will sell out, do not write that it will sell out. Hype that the show cannot back up burns trust.
Writing the same email every time. Different artists deserve different openers. Pull the hook from the operator's notes about why this show matters.
## What to deliver
Return:
Subject line (one).
Preheader (one).
Email body, ready to paste into the send tool, with the key details block formatted as a labeled list.
CTA copy and the destination URL.
If anything in the operator's inputs was missing or ambiguous, name what is missing in two or three sentences at the end. Do not list every word swap or stylistic choice. The operator can read the draft.
.svg "backstage logo 1 (3)")
