Superfans: How to identify them and engage them through events

Superfans are much more than ordinary fans: they are passionate individuals who are willing to invest generously in everything you create whether it’s tickets, merchandise, or unique experiences. Their commitment goes beyond admiration: they provide stable revenues, amplify your visibility through word-of-mouth, and remain loyal even during challenging times. In return, they offer valuable insights to help refine your strategy and successfully carry out your projects. But how do you identify and effectively engage with them?

1. Identifying Your Superfans Through Ticketing

a. Getting to Know Your Fans

Spotting your superfans within a large community can be really challenging. Before diving into a “Where’s Waldo?” of fan spotting, it’s essential to understand the different types of your audience. Remember our pyramid from the previous article?

Casual

Your casual audience represents the largest segment of your fanbase. These are individuals who discover you through recommendations, media, or posts but aren’t yet invested in your brand. The goal here is to capture their attention and convert them into an active audience.

Active

Your active audience consists of people who know your work and engage with you regularly. They consume your content and have decided to follow your updates. However, you need to convince them to take a step further and become part of a connected community.

Connected

Connected members are fans who identify with your brand and the rest of your community. They interact with one another, provide valuable feedback, and validate your new ideas. It’s within this group that your superfans emerge.

Superfans

The ultimate fan. The one who wholeheartedly supports their favorite artist or team. The one we write all these articles about and the one who deserves your full commitment to ensure steady revenues and secure the future of your project.

b. Why Ticketing is One of the Best Ways to Identify a Superfan

Ticketing is a powerful tool for identifying superfans through three essential pillars:

1. The Purchase Act: A Significant Financial Commitment

Buying a ticket is far more than just a click or an online interaction. It’s a financial decision that reflects genuine commitment to an event, an artist, or a team. Unlike social media or newsletters, where involvement is often passive, purchasing a ticket demonstrates tangible attachment to your project. Superfans, in particular, do not hesitate to invest in premium seats, bundles, or VIP experiences, showing their deep connection and willingness to actively support their passion.

2. Physical Attendance: A Powerful Emotional Commitment

Attending a live event is no small act: it requires time, planning, and true motivation. These shared moments, filled with intense emotions, create unforgettable memories for participants. For superfans, these experiences are essential to strengthening their bond with their idols or community. Their commitment goes beyond mere financial support, transforming into a truly immersive experience.

3. Valuable Data to Understand Your Audience

When a fan buys a ticket, they share important information with you: name, age, location, email, and sometimes much more.

This data allows you to segment your audience: fans who rush to buy merch, superfans who prioritize premium experiences, or local attendees who prefer nearby events. You can then tailor your messaging across the channels you own. For instance, you could launch an email campaign targeting local participants to inform them about a new date near their area or offer exclusive presales to those who opted for a VIP experience.

By personalizing your communication and offers based on the collected data, you can further engage your fans and strengthen their loyalty in the long term.

c. Key Indicators to Spot a Superfan

Purchases Within the First 72 Hours

Superfans often stand out due to their responsiveness. Look for those who whip out their credit card faster than their shadow and secure their tickets within the first 72 hours of sales. Chances are, these are the superfans you’re looking for.

This quick action reflects a deep attachment to the event, artist, or team they support. It also highlights their fear of missing out on an experience that brings them closer to their idols. This behavior firmly places them among the most dedicated fans.

Bundles, a Winning Strategy to Attract your Superfans

Driven by a strong need for belonging, fans primarily seek to strengthen their connection with their idols. This often translates into significant financial support through the purchase of merch, collector’s items, event tickets, or VIP experiences.

Bundles, which combine tickets with merchandise, are the perfect way to capture this type of profile and their commitment. This purchasing experience allows superfans to extend these fleeting events and keep a cherished memory of them—all while giving you an opportunity to maximize sales.

Opt-in Marketing, the Gateway to a Successful Community Strategy

Checking that small box to receive news or special offers during the purchase process is a clear signal of your fans' intentions. It reflects their desire to stay informed and connected, a key marker of the superfan status. This opt-in then becomes an ideal tool to establish a direct relationship and foster loyalty, ensuring a community with solid foundations and stable revenues.

With the data collected, for instance, you could send exclusive invitations for special events or product previews, thus creating a sense of exclusivity. For a concert, offering VIP access or pre-sale tickets could be an example. You could also use the data gathered to segment your audience and offer specific rewards. For instance, offering a discount to fans who have attended multiple events.

2. How to Engage Your Community in the Long Term

a. From Fan to Superfan, There's Only One Step...

Or rather, 4 levels! Unlike the classic sales funnel approach, which focuses solely on numbers, a fan pyramid-based strategy prioritizes human experience and long-term loyalty. This model helps artists and their teams understand how each type of fan interacts with their content and then adapt their strategies to encourage fans to climb up the pyramid, thereby increasing their engagement.

Casual > Active:

Since cas fans are not yet familiar with your brand, it’s important to ensure regular exposure to convert them further. Your name should become familiar to them and spark an interest in interacting with you. There are several ways to achieve this: regular ads and posts on social media, interactive content like polls or quizzes, encouraging sign-ups for your newsletter, and so on.

Active > Connected:

The first step has been successfully completed. Now, you need to strengthen the bond between your brand and active fans by establishing a more personal relationship. You can make it by responding to comments, DMs, hosting live sessions on social media, or personalizing your emails. Create dedicated spaces for your community to interact (Facebook groups, Discord servers, Instagram channels, etc.).

Connected > Superfans:

The final step to climb, and it’s a big one! The goal here is to solidify unwavering engagement and a strong sense of belonging. You can achieve this by offering:

• Unique Experiences: Offer VIP access, meet-ups, private sessions, autographs, etc.
• Premium Merchandising: Focus on collector’s items, limited editions, personalized products, etc.
• Exclusive Content: Share content only on platforms where your most engaged fans are, to strengthen their sense of belonging.
• Involvement in the Project: Involve your fans in decisions related to your project (the event location, artistic choices, merch design, etc.)

Building a solid fan base requires a targeted and progressive strategy: turning the curious into active fans, active fans into connected ones, and connected fans into superfans. Through engaging content, exclusive experiences, and attentive listening, each stage strengthens the emotional bond with your community, ensuring both their loyalty and the longevity of your project.

b. Strengthening the Bond Through Events and Data Collection

Platforms like Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube, etc., have become essential for interacting with your audience, but they quickly show their limitations when it comes to gathering qualitative data. Furthermore, reliance on these platforms can be risky: their algorithms are constantly evolving, sometimes leading to a loss of visibility for your content. To maintain and strengthen your bond with your community, it’s crucial to establish a long-term strategy independent of social medias. This involves building a solid contact base through email database. And what better way than your events to collect valuable information that will help you develop effective and sustainable D2C (Direct-to-Consumer) and D2F (Direct-to-Fan) strategies?

Knowing your audience is essential for creating a lasting relationship with your superfans. However, some distributors and marketplaces provide little information about this. Solutions such as Billy, give you access to all the data of your spectators and allow you to easily extract it in Excel or CSV format for use in any external system or CRM (Hubspot, Delight-Data, Attio, etc.).

The collected data allows you to analyze, understand, and re-engage those who have already attended your events without starting from scratch. These valuable insights into their purchasing behaviors and preferences enable you to tailor your future offers and operations, thus reinforcing their loyalty and long-term engagement.

You can easily envision using this data in the geographical analysis of your fans: if your data shows that a majority of spectators come from a certain region, organize additional events or adjust your offers to meet that localized demand.

You can also use the data to gather feedback. Reach out to spectators after an event to ask feedback on their experience. Their responses will enrich your CRM and allow you to improve future experiences.

When analyzing data, it’s recommended to differentiate between buyers (like parents purchasing tickets) and participants (the children attending the event) for proper segmentation. A suitable tool should allow you to collect and effectively segment this data. For example, create personalized tickets to easily identify the buyer (billing information) and the participant (name on the ticket).

Another important consideration when handling data is the legal aspect. While artists are more influential than ever, they actually have limited legal control over their fans' data. Contrary to what some platforms claim, it is privacy laws that govern the use of this information, not ownership rights. This reality can complicate data management for long-term strategies.

c. Offering Ideal Offers Tailored to Your Audience

The sooner you identify your superfans and understand their purchasing habits, the better you can refine your offerings to meet their expectations. By analyzing data on their preferences and behaviors, you’ll be able to create tailored proposals, whether it’s exclusive products or customized experiences.

Let’s take a festival as an example. By offering bundles online before the event that include tickets and merchandise (t-shirts, vinyl records, accessories), you can analyze sales to adjust your on-site inventory. If a particular design or product type proves to be popular in pre-sales, you’ll be better prepared to meet demand at the event, avoiding stockouts or costly surpluses. This approach not only helps you maximize your revenues but also shows your fans that you meet their expectations, thereby enhancing their engagement and satisfaction.

d. Social Media: A Hub for Superfans

In today’s world, gaining visibility is nearly impossible without an active social media presence. It’s crucial to wear your best community manager hat and master social platforms. Instagram, Discord, Twitch, and even WhatsApp plays a key role in engaging communities by fostering direct and authentic interactions. On Instagram, discussion channels create a sense of exclusivity. Discord provides an ideal space for fans to connect with one another, strengthening their sense of belonging. Live streams on Twitch (or Instagram) allow real-time connections, where fans can directly interact with their idols, making these moments truly special.

Engaging your fans isn't just about getting them to consume, but about building a lasting relationship. Whether through a progressive strategy to guide them from casual listeners to superfans, data analysis to personalize your offers, or the use of social media to create direct interactions, each action must strengthen the emotional bond with your audience.

Events, targeted offers, and social media are all levers to transform occasional engagement into genuine long-term loyalty. By placing your fans at the heart of your strategy, you ensure not only the longevity of your project but also a positive cycle of exchange and creativity.

3. Some Successful Community Engagement Examples

a. Jacques invites fans aboard his spaceship

Jacques, an avant-garde artist, has chosen Twitch as his platform to engage with his community in a unique way. On his channel, he live streams his creative process, turning his studio into an interactive stage where fans contribute to his music through polls and suggestions. This collaborative approach transforms spectators into co-creators, strengthening their engagement. The result? A tightly-knit community that tunes in not just for the music but for an immersive experience, redefining the artist-fan relationship.

b. The Gentlemates, a community that plays along

The GentleMates, an esports team founded by content creators Squeezie, Gotaga, and Brawks, exemplifies the power of superfan engagement. From day one, the team leveraged the massive, pre-existing communities of its founders, already active on social media. The GentleMates further solidifies this bond by offering targeted initiatives: diverse merchandise, in-person events, exclusive Twitch streams, and many other unique experiences that foster a sense of belonging.

One standout example is their success in the game Valorant, where they ranked as the top French sellers of VCT bundles (in-game additional content), even surpassing their biggest rival, KCorp.

The GentleMates' fans have gone so far as to create their own association, The Green Suits, a space dedicated to superfans to connect, organize event participation, and access exclusive platforms. Hard to find a more engaged community!

c. Roger Federer, master of tennis and fan engagement

Roger Federer embodies the art of building an authentic and lasting relationship with his fans, going beyond his achievements on the courts. In addition to being a tennis legend, he is a brand in himself, which allows him to cultivate a special bond with his community. One of the most remarkable examples of this engagement is the organization of a private cruise in 2023, where he invited 280 fans for an exceptional moment. Far from being just a promotional event, this initiative allowed participants to experience an immersive and intimate time with their idol, strengthening a unique sense of closeness.

Moreover, Federer used his personal brand to include his fans in his world: his collaboration with UNIQLO and the creation of exclusive "RF" branded products are ways to extend the connection beyond the courts. By regularly sharing moments of his life, whether personal anecdotes or heartfelt thanks on social media, he gives his supporters the feeling of being an integral part of his journey.

Conclusion:

Building a strong fanbase and fully engaging with them is essential for generating stable and sufficient revenues to bring your projects to life. This starts with leveraging data from your social platforms, but more importantly, from your events. It’s a crucial step that allows you to understand and segment your audience. It will then be easier for you to identify the different fan types and convert them into the highly sought-after superfan status.

To identify this community, tools like ticketing can help. Monitor their responsiveness, their interest in merchandise, or their desire to follow a newsletter. Once identified, it’s just a matter of engaging them over and over again with personalized actions. Remember, engaged fans mean a secure future.