We talk a lot about what to do with your customers after they see your show.

But what can you do with them before they see your show?

Although advance ticket sales have declined over the years, there’s still a huge amount of people who do buy their tickets days, weeks, and months in advance.

If you had access to your customers’ information (!!), you could do all sorts of fun (and profitable) stuff to build their excitement and anticipation for the event.  You could tickle and tease them with all sorts of stuff like:

• important plot/story information so they are more inclined to understand and therefore enjoy what they are going to see (The Coast of Utopia trilogy could have benefited from this).
• parking and dinner recommendations (and collect commissions or advertising revenues from those partners).
• offers for additional tickets if that performance isn’t selling out (since you bought 4 tickets, you can get a 5th for only $XX more).
• a chance to buy the CD in advance to get them more familiar with the music.
• teasers countdowns to build excitement (e.g. For Wicked, an email every week that says:  “The Wizard will see you in 13 days . . . “
• Insert your thousands of other ideas here.

Done right, this kind of campaign could build enough fervor and excitement to make the actual show even more of an event.  You could actually start your word of mouth before your curtain went up and tickle your way to more ticket sales.

But take heed . . . building excitement, also builds expectations.  Your show better be a winner once you get that customer in the theater.

Because teasing an audience and then failing to deliver will give you a word-of-mouth whiplash you won’t be able to withstand.