Brown Paper Tickets reviews consistently point to the value of automation in reducing stress and increasing reach for busy event teams. With responsibilities ranging from vendor coordination to attendee engagement, efficiency is not a luxury—it’s a necessity. Marketing automation empowers organizers to streamline communications, eliminate repetitive tasks, and maintain consistent, high-quality interactions across every phase of the event lifecycle. Platforms like Brown Paper Tickets—a global ticketing service providing tools for seamless event planning and execution—enable event teams to integrate automation while preserving a professional and trustworthy attendee experience.
From pre-event outreach to post-event nurturing, tools like HubSpot, Marketo, and Mailchimp allow marketers to build targeted, timely campaigns without sacrificing bandwidth. With automation doing the heavy lifting, your team can focus on creativity, strategy, and delivering a truly standout event.
Core Workflows That Save Time and Boost Reach
Marketing automation simplifies and strengthens every phase of your campaign. Here’s how:
Pre-event campaigns can be automated to build excitement and drive early registrations. These include welcome emails after ticket purchases, early bird deadline reminders, speaker highlights and even abandoned registration follow-ups. For instance, if someone starts the registration process but doesn’t complete it within 24 hours, you can trigger a follow-up email with a limited-time discount or event highlight to nudge them to finish signing up.
Lead nurture sequences are designed for contacts who haven’t yet registered. This could include educational content about the event’s theme, testimonials from previous attendees, video messages from speakers or special promo codes. These workflows help maintain interest and warm up leads who need a little more time before converting.
In-event engagement workflows include real-time notifications about session reminders, pop-up activities and speaker changes. You can also automate social media interactions, such as tweets or Instagram Stories, promoting what’s currently happening at the venue. These help attendees navigate the experience and feel more connected while reducing pressure on your team.
Based on attendance data, post-event follow-ups like thank-you messages, session recaps, survey requests and promo codes for future events can be automated. These messages continue the conversation and help convert one-time attendees into loyal followers who return year after year.
The Best Tools for Event Marketing Automation
Several powerful tools make marketing automation easy for event professionals:
- HubSpot offers a visual, drag-and-drop workflow builder with CRM integration and advanced segmentation, ideal for scaling outreach with a personal touch. It’s especially helpful for mid-sized event teams that want full visibility into their marketing pipeline.
- Marketo provides enterprise-level automation with robust lead scoring, detailed analytics and multichannel capabilities. It’s a strong choice for larger organizations managing complex event series across multiple regions.
- Mailchimp is a favorite for smaller teams, offering ready-to-use templates, contact tagging and basic automation that are simple to set up. It’s budget-friendly and perfect for single events or recurring series with limited complexity.
These tools allow teams to set up automated sequences based on triggers like behavior, time and engagement level. For example, if someone clicks on a speaker announcement, a follow-up email with session recommendations or a related blog post can be sent automatically.
Platforms like Brown Paper Tickets provide secure, user-friendly tools for ticketing and registration, enabling seamless integration with automation software and helping organizers focus more on creativity and strategy.
A/B Testing: Improving Performance Through Data
Marketing automation makes A/B testing more efficient and insightful. Event marketers can test subject lines, call-to-action buttons, layouts, email frequency and send times across different segments.
For instance, you might test two variations of a pre-event email, one emphasizing price and the other focusing on speaker credibility, to see which message drives more clicks. By understanding what motivates your audience, you not only improve conversion rates but also learn how to tailor future campaigns better.
Tracking metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and time spent on landing pages helps refine your messaging and boost return on investment. These iterative improvements accumulate over time, leading to stronger brand loyalty and better performance with each event cycle.
Best Practices for Successful Automation Workflows
To maximize the benefits of marketing automation, it’s important to build workflows around the full attendee journey.
Start by mapping out key touchpoints from first contact to post-event re-engagement. Define goals for each step in the journey, such as registering, upgrading to VIP or referring a friend.
Use segmentation to tailor messaging by demographics, past behavior, ticket type or engagement score. Trigger emails based on real-time actions, such as clicking a link or attending a session. Always review metrics to improve open rates, reduce bounce rates and maintain list health.
Keep your workflow clean and focused. Don’t overcomplicate your first sequence; begin with basic triggers and add complexity as you gather more data. Also, create internal naming conventions and documentation so that your team can quickly understand and update campaigns when needed.
Building Momentum Beyond the Event
One of automation’s hidden strengths is that it supports long-term success. The data collected from email engagement, attendance and post-event behavior helps you better understand your audience over time.
You can use this insight to create VIP lists, trigger re-engagement sequences for dormant contacts or automatically promote upcoming events based on user interest. Additionally, you can reward high-engagement users with exclusive previews or limited-access content, fostering a deeper sense of community.
This approach compounds results, making every event a building block for future growth. The more refined your workflows become, the more consistent your reach and results will be.
Automate With Purpose and Precision
Today’s event professionals are expected to deliver high-quality, personalized experiences at scale. That’s where marketing automation makes all the difference. It empowers teams to work more efficiently, communicate more effectively and focus on what truly matters, connecting with attendees in meaningful ways.
By automating workflows for campaigns, follow-ups and testing, event marketers reduce busy work and increase their ability to execute with precision. With trusted platforms handling the back-end logistics, teams can build smart, scalable strategies that drive real results and do it all with less stress and greater confidence.