Let fans sign up for your presale and get notified to buy tickets when it starts.
Promoting your presale with Bandsintown is the easiest, most powerful way to grow your email list, engage more fans, and drive presale ticket sales at no cost. You can also activate SMS alerts to maximize fan conversion (paid option – free until Dec. 31, 2024).
Once you announce a date and time for your presale, you can start capturing presale signups through your website and socials. Shortly before the presale goes live, fans who signed up will automatically be notified via email with your ticket link and presale code.
Listing your presale
First, make sure you’ve set up your presale through your ticketing platform.
When you add or edit your event on Bandsintown for Artists, toggle on the Presale feature, then add your presale details including start date/time, end date/time, ticket link, and presale code.
You can set a unique code for each event, or opt not to use a code at all.
Once that's done, you'll see the Presale button displayed on your Bandsintown event page as well as on your Widget and Smart Link.
The Presale button points to a presale signup page, which allows fans to opt-in via email to receive an alert 30 minutes before the presale begins.
PLEASE NOTE: Only one Presale can be listed per event.
Presales dashboard
The Presales dashboard displays any past and upcoming presales listed with Bandsintown with dates for each Presale and the number of events linked to each.
Presales can be created from the dashboard by clicking on Create Presale and providing the presale start and end dates and times, presale ticket link, and presale code, and then selecting one or multiple events.
Each Presale signup page can be linked to multiple events or an entire tour, allowing fans to sign up for each event, provided the presales are happening at the same time and direct to the same presale ticket link across all events.
PLEASE NOTE: If the ticket link is different for each event, or if the presale start and end times vary across events (or are the same but under different time zones), it is still possible to create event-specific presales from the event form while creating or editing an event. You can also duplicate a presale from the Presales dashboard, edit it to link it to a different event and apply that event's specific ticket link or/and presale times.
Customizing your presale
Presale signup page
Customize the page’s title, description, call-to-action, font, artwork, and background color, gradient, or image.
Presale signup flow
Choose whether to make fan signup mandatory to access the presale link, and whether to send presale alerts or not. A description of the presale behavior based on which option is turned on or off is available in your dashboard.
Presale signup confirmation message
Customize the message displayed at the end of the signup flow.
Presale fan alert emails
The presale fan alert email includes your presale ticket link, presale code (if applicable), event details, and presale start time. When fans click the link, they’ll be directed to your ticketing page, where they can enter the presale access code to buy tickets.
PLEASE NOTE: If your presale code is communicated to your fans through another exclusive channel, you can disable presale fan alert emails from Bandsintown; this will ensure your Presale button will bypass the Bandsintown presale signup page and send fans directly to your ticket provider.
SMS presale fan alerts
SMS presale fans alerts is the way to notify fans directly when your presale is live.
Currently, the SMS alerts are available for phone numbers within the United States and Canada only, and are free to send until the end of the year (Dec. 31, 2024).
Beginning January 1, 2025, SMS alerts will cost $0.016/SMS.
PLEASE NOTE: You will be charged after the SMS campaign is complete based on the number messages that were successfully delivered to your contact list.
How SMS presale fan alert works
When SMS alerts are enabled, the presale signup flow is updated to ask fans for their phone number in addition to their email address. Fans can choose to opt in to both email and SMS alerts or only email alerts.
Eligible fans will receive both email and SMS alerts shortly before your presale starts.
SMS fan alerts include the event information, the presale start time, the presale code (if applicable), and the presale link.
SMS presale links are automatically shortened by Bandsintown for length. For example:
Presale starts today at 8:00 AM MST for Echosmith at Valley Bar on 12/7! Use code COOLKIDS10 https://m.bnds.us/aO9LPB
Artists can also add custom terms of service language to the phone number capture step when needed.
Options for fans signups and fan alerts
From the Presales dashboard, you can fine-tune the signup process for fans. Specifically, you can decide whether fans are required to sign up to access the presale link and whether Bandsintown will automatically deliver fan alerts to signups.
For example:
If you want to handle fan alerts through your own channels, you can toggle Enable email presale fan alerts off
If you don't want to capture fan contact information and let fans access the presale directly, you can toggle Require fan signup to access presale link off
Presale insights
Monitor the performance of your Presales from the Presales tab within the Insights section of your dashboard.
Insights include:
Number of signups
Number of signup page impressions
Number of presale fan email alerts sent / opened / clicked
Signup page impressions in time (last 7 days, last 4 weeks, last 12 months)
Signups in time (last 7 days, last 4 weeks, last 12 months)
Top locations (of signups) with number of signups for each location