Event Promotion Tips

Key dates for ticket sales this festive season

By Ryan Moss
09 Dec 2024
8 min read

The final approach to Christmas Day has begun. That’s right, we’ve made it through another 365 days (Well, almost), unscathed and ready to round out another mammoth year of events!

Festival season, Freshers Week, Bonfire Night, Halloween, Oktoberfest… All been and gone. Now, both your attention and ours switch to the festive period ahead.

There’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Mad Friday and, of course, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day to contend with. That’s not to mention all of the dates in between the big day and the grand finale of the year when people are most eager to get out to experiences to ensure they make the most of their hard-earned time away from work.

So, to help you with your festive event planning, we’ve put together a short blog detailing all the crucial dates you need to be aware of to help you maximise ticket sales to your events this December. We’ve also shared a few ideas on how you can use our tools to promote your events and boost those ticket sales even further! All free of charge, of course.

Keep scrolling to learn more.

Black Friday & Cyber Monday

First up, it’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Black Friday falls on the 29th of November, with Cyber Monday coming three days later on the 2nd of December.

Both dates can be extremely beneficial for promoters. According to Voucher Codes, consumers are set to spend a whopping £9.14bn on Black Friday in 2024.

Finder.com states that 86% of Gen Z intend to purchase something in the Cyber Weekend sales, while 80% of millennials are planning to make a Black Friday purchase.

These are the people who could be buying tickets to your event.

Want to discover what Skiddle are doing to help promoters on Black Friday? Click here and get involved.

Festive Pay Dates and Boxing Day

Paydays will happen as normal in November. So, people will likely be paid either at the end of the month or toward the end.

However, employers tend to change the pay date in December. This is so people have money to cover them over the festive period.

Christmas Day falls on a Wednesday this year and paydays usually fall on the end of the month. So, employers may have their payday earlier, choosing to pay their employees on Friday 20th December, or later toward the end of the year, on Friday 27th December.

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If you’re promoting a New Year’s Eve event this year, a wise move would be to promote your event on the weekend before Christmas and in the days leading up to New Year’s Eve.

That way, you’re putting your event in front of people at a time when their bank balance looks it’s healthiest. People are more likely to start browsing events and make a choice when they know they can afford to splurge.

An especially important day for sales on Skiddle, as observed in previous years’ data over the festive period, is Boxing Day (26th December). All the presents have been opened, the hangovers are either kicking in or subsiding, if you enjoy a tipple, and the leftovers in the fridge are just begging to be eaten. This is the time we see event-goers heading to Skiddle in their droves, looking for an experience to help them celebrate the second bank holiday of Christmas and the days in the lead up to the final day of the year.

Mad Friday

Mad Friday takes place on the 20th December this year, the last Friday before Christmas Eve.

A special date in everyone’s calendar, Mad Friday, for many, is the last working day of the year, marking the beginning of an extended period of annual leave. The buzz in the air is palpable as people clock out, festive spirits high, ready to let their hair down and enjoy a great day or night out.

If you’re thinking about organising an event on Mad Friday, you’ve got a great chance of attracting these people.

Skiddle’s features can help, too. As it’s Mad Friday, you could set up a special discount code for attendees to use. You could run a competition and give the code to the first twenty people who like an Instagram post about the event.

Student Loan Payments

Don’t forget students over this festive period.

Most will go home over Christmas and New Year, but some will stick around or come back in time for New Year’s Eve.

They’ll be looking for a knockout event to attend over NYE, so if you’re promoting an event, they should factor into your promotion.

Our Payment Plan feature can help you promote effectively to students.

Loan payments come in instalments, with the students getting their first payment between the end of September and the beginning of October. The next payment comes in the following January, so you could set up a Payment Plan to help students spread the cost of their tickets. There aren’t any limits on minimum and maximum payments, so all you need to do is set the deposit, work out the number of instalments and set up the plan in The Promotion Centre.

Watch our How-To video on Payment Plans below.

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Got a question you need an answer to?

Give us a call on 03333010301 or ask us a question over on the Skiddle Promoter Twitter account by clicking or tapping on the button below. Alternatively, you can also find a list of our most frequently asked questions over at https://help.promotioncentre.co.uk

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