How to Promote an Event with Gleam

Spreading the word about your event and getting it in front of new audiences can be hard, but we have some great tips and tricks to help you out.

In this guide, we'll walk you through how to promote your event to get more people to purchase tickets or sign up. We'll also cover how to encourage people to subscribe to your mailing lists, follow your social media, or refer friends.

These are great ways to keep a direct line of communication open to promote your event.

One great example of this in action is ESL Gaming, which used Gleam to promote its ESL One Cologne event, generating over 2 million actions and a 47% conversion rate from 200,000+ entrants. This case study shows how contests, referrals, and incentives can turn event buzz into measurable growth.

We’ll also explore helpful ways to encourage people to take photos and videos at your event, which is another awesome promotional strategy.

Let's get started.

Whether you're hosting a small local event or a large-scale festival, Gleam can help you promote it more effectively.

• Music festivals & concerts – boost ticket sales and build excitement before launch.
• Conferences & expos – collect registrations, leads, and attendee insights.
• Restaurants, bars & venues – drive RSVPs and foot traffic for openings or themed nights.
• Ecommerce & brand activations – create buzz around pop-ups or product launch events.
• Community & charity events – grow awareness, reward supporters, and gather UGC for future campaigns.

Using Gleam Competitions, you can run an awesome promotional competition for your event.

This works by asking users to complete actions to be in for a chance of winning a prize. These actions could help you achieve business goals like subscribing to your newsletter, following your socials, or sharing the event with friends.

This kind of event promotion deepens engagement and extends your reach and visibility. By encouraging people to refer friends in return for a bonus entry, you set yourself up for organic word-of-mouth marketing, which is an excellent way to get your event in front of huge new audiences.

Running a giveaway campaign like this also builds excitement and interest in your event and gets people talking about it.

Plus, you can use all the data you collect, like email addresses and the increase in your social media followers, as a direct line of communication for any promotional campaigns you run in the future.

Make sure you offer a targeted prize related to your event or brand so that you get the most qualified entrants only.

Incentivize event registration by running a sweepstakes in the run-up to your event.

This is a super effective way to boost sign-ups, gauge interest in attendance, and collect valuable contact details.

By registering for the event, participants are then entered into a draw, with the winner being announced at the event itself. This adds another extra layer of excitement and will encourage more people to register and attend the event.

To maximise the benefits even more, you could include fields in the registration form like How did you hear about us? or What is your industry? This information can provide valuable insights for any future events you decide to run.

The Gleam Competitions widget is directly integrated with Eventbrite, which means participants can purchase a ticket from Eventbrite on the widget itself. This not only tracks ticket sales but also allows participants to earn extra entries by purchasing a ticket, which is a direct incentive to attend the event.

Promote the campaign by adding the link to your Linktree and sharing it across all your channels, making it easy for people to click the link in your bio to sign up.

Another fun and exciting way to promote your event is to announce in the lead up that there is going to be an exciting lucky draw at the event.

Customise this template and generate hype by posting about it on your socials, in email blasts, and on your website. You can even promote the lucky draw on the event itself by sharing the QR code with attendants. Our mobile responsive widgets allow you to run campaigns in Event Mode to ensure a smooth process.

You just have to get people to enter their name and email, and then you can draw the winner when you're ready to go at the event.

This is a really fun way to get people excited to attend your event, with the added bonus that they might win a cool prize once they are there.

Alternatively, using our Quick Draws Tool you can easily import all the entries to a live 'Spin the Wheel' interface which you can broadcast on the event itself.

Run a photo contest where you collect photos taken at your event by offering the chance to win a prize.

This is really great, especially if you run events regularly, as you can use this user-generated content on your social media platforms as promotional material and fresh new content for your feed.

The main benefit of this is that event goers taking photos and tagging you in photos is an awesome way to reach new audiences in an authentic way. Essentially, you're getting existing fans to promote the event for you.

Ask people to take pictures at the event and to post on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, using your hashtag and tagging your account. You can then use Gleam's import actions to import all the entries from social media into Gleam for picking a winner, and to showcase the submissions in a Gallery.

This is an awesome way to extend your reach and visibility because their followers will see the post on their social media stories and feeds.

State what photos people should submit. For example, a picture of them and their friends at your event, or a picture of the food and drinks.

It's super easy to run this, just customise our template below:

You need to make sure you promote this before the event and remind people when they are there too; otherwise, people may not actively be taking pictures or forget.

A video contest works in the same way, but instead of collecting photos, you’re encouraging video or Reel submissions.

This has the same effect, but you can use this content in different ways. For example, you can repurpose them into Instagram Reels and TikTok, which usually have a bigger chance of going viral. You could also make a brand video or Youtube video.

With Gleam, you can import all these images and videos using the branded hashtag and mention and have all of them stored neatly in one place.

Then, you can then embed them in an awesome gallery on your website!

This is a great way to showcase photos that attendees take and share on social media. This is a really effective way to build awareness and to promote your next event by showing how great your last one was.

You can even showcase the Gallery in a full-screen display live at your event which is a fun way to liven up your event and engage attendees.

This is a fun way to showcase how great your event is because user-generated content is an awesome way to build credibility and social trust. It also just looks great on your website!

You can also offer up discounts in return for users promoting your event.

A fun way to do this is to tell your event-goers that if they check in to your event on Facebook, they can unlock a discount to use at the event.

This effectively promotes word of mouth marketing as checking in on Facebook will show up on all of their friends' feeds.

You could offer discounts for things like merch, food and drinks, or anything else you sell at the event.

An exciting way to build hype around your event is to run a pre-sale ticket giveaway.

To run this type of giveaway, you just need to customise the template and then people can enter to access pre-sale tickets by completing actions like following your socials.

This is awesome as you capture the attention of people interested in your event and create a means of staying in contact with them to let them know about future promotions.

Not only that, but by encouraging users to repost the giveaway on their socials, you get your entrants to essentially promote your event for you before the tickets have even gone live.

An eye-catching popup is an easy way to promote your event without running a giveaway.
It includes a signup box that you can customise to match your website’s theme, helping you capture interest and encourage visitors to register or access presale tickets.

For best results when promoting your event with Gleam:

• Keep campaigns short (2–4 weeks) to maintain urgency and excitement.
• Offer prizes or discounts directly related to your event, such as free tickets, upgrades, or merch.
• Promote across multiple channels: share on social media, email newsletters, your event website, and partner pages.
• Use QR codes or popups to capture last-minute signups at your venue.
• Always include clear Terms & Conditions and eligibility rules to stay compliant in all regions.
• Follow up after the event by emailing participants to thank them and promote future events.

Now you know everything you need to know about promoting your event with Gleam and you can start running a campaign!