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Lessons from an expert: Growing your fan base—featuring Zane Duffner

Build your fan base with expert tips from Zane Duffner. Discover how top promoters grow their list and keep fans coming back with proven tactics.

Published on

May 28, 2025

Written by

Kait Huziak

Category

Strategy

Even your best shows can fall flat without an active fan base. As an event marketer, if you’ve dealt with soft onsales, low engagement, or last-minute ticket pushes that barely make a dent, you know the feeling.

Whether you’re promoting a club show or working on an arena calendar, growing (and regularly communicating with) your fan base is the difference between chasing your audience and leading them.

In this article, I’ll break down why fan growth matters and share real-world strategies to help you build a list that works harder for every show.

Why growing your fan base pays off

Your fans are the heart of your brand. They’re the reason you do this job—bringing people together for unforgettable experiences. 

Every concert, comedy show, or festival could be the best night of someone’s life. As promoters, our job is to make sure no one misses out just because they didn’t hear about it.

While growing your fan base makes it easier to sell tickets, a healthy, growing list also:

  • Builds long-term loyalty
  • Opens up more chances to engage (both online and at the venue)
  • Helps you attract better sponsors with consistent audience data
  • Future-proofs your marketing by expanding your direct reach
But here’s the thing: not all engagement is equal.
 
It might feel good to see an increase in vanity metrics like post likes or video views, but they don’t always translate to ticket sales. An email click or a presale registration, on the other hand, shows real intent. It’s a signal you can act on.

Someone clicks your email? You can retarget them, drop them into a segment, or send a quick “Tickets Going Fast” message to help close the loop.
 
 

Take control of your audience

Social media is great for creating hype. But when it comes to driving ticket sales, your owned channels—especially email, SMS, and first-party data—are where the real work gets done.

Unlike social, you’re not relying on an algorithm to hopefully deliver your message. With email and SMS, you have direct access to your fans without having to battle a clutter of ads, sponsored posts, and trending noise.

For example, let’s say you’ve got a big rock show like Guns N’ Roses coming up. You might hit social to reach new fans at the top of the funnel. But your subscriber list? That’s where the real conversions happen. 

With owned data, you can segment by genre, location, purchase history, or engagement. This way, every message feels personal to your fans and is more likely to lead to a sale.

But email and SMS are just the beginning. 

Other owned channels give you even more ways to grow and reach your audience directly, including:

  • On-site data capture from Wi-Fi, ticket scans, or QR codes
  • Website forms and newsletter modules (homepages, show pages, checkout flows)
  • Presale signups and waitlists
Ultimately, the more robust and current your data is, the better your targeting gets, and the more tickets you’ll sell.