Ticket Tailor, a leading self-serve event ticketing platform, has shared details of how it helped Stonepitts Farm sell out tickets to its annual folk festival in under an hour.
Stonepitts Farm is the oldest strawberry farm in the UK. Folking in the Strawberries, its annual pop-up folk festival, has been taking place for over 15 years. Every summer the event attracts 1,000 people to each of its eight dates. This year, they sold all 8,000 tickets on Ticket Tailor within an hour of their release. This set a new record for the event promoter and British singer-songwriter Dan Clews.
Authentic experiences
Stonepitts Farm gained fame in the late 1800s as a leading fruit and hop grower, which sent horses and carts to take its produce to the London markets. In the mid-1960s, it launched as one of the first pick-your-own strawberry farms in the UK.
The farm was purchased by Martin and Jackie Clews in 1989. They grow strawberries and raspberries using traditional methods and have continued to offer pick-your-own at the farm. They have also expanded into growing Norway Spruce and Nordman Fir Christmas trees, and are now a major supplier in the region.
The folk festival was born from a late-night strawberry-picking session in 2008, when Dan, the Clews’ son, entertained pickers with some music. Now, the festival takes place weekly during June and July and welcomes 1,000 ticket holders to each date.
Folking in the Strawberries has become popular with a wide audience demographic, and in particular, attracts families to the Kent farm. These visitors book tickets for the event’s unusual location and live music line-up. The audience can enjoy an escape from the day-to-day with live folk music from leading UK artists, accompanied by a beautiful countryside location and high-quality refreshments.
Managing high demand
Stonepitts Farm has collaborated with Ticket Tailor to provide robust ticketing for Folking in the Strawberries. Using this platform, the Farm has been able to manage high demand thanks to Ticket Tailor’s intuitive interface and sophisticated features.
Clews says: “It’s really easy to embed into your website, it looks great, it’s a very easy interface, and it can handle a lot of traffic – like I say we sell these events out in one hour. That’s 8,000 tickets selling in one hour. And it handles that!
“The waitlist feature is brilliant, if you sell out quickly like we often do, we can set up a waitlist. So then when we have a second sale we can communicate with those people on the waitlist. It gives us an idea of how many people are really interested in the event, which allows us to really grow it and manage the size of the event in the future.”
Creating urgency
Stonepitts Farm has successfully used scarcity and urgency in its marketing of the folk festival. By emphasising that ticket sales are limited and sell quickly, the event organisers have not only encouraged visitors to book early but have created a heightened awareness of the event.
Social media was strategically used to promote the event, with teasers and countdowns adding to the sense of urgency for the Farm’s followers. The Farm also promoted the event through folk music and community networks, working with influencers to connect with specialist, highly engaged audiences.
Selling out tickets in under an hour is an impressive achievement for an event organiser, and it was made possible for Stonepitts Farm thanks to its combination of robust technology, comprehensive event planning and effective marketing. Together, these factors reached the right audiences for this carefully considered, unusual event, and provided an excellent ticketing experience.
Ticket Tailor recently celebrated the success of its partnership with Amsterdam Tulips Tour, a small start-up that has evolved from a niche tour operator to a company that has hosted Barack Obama.
