In early 2022, Megaport Festival tickets sold out in seconds once again.
For the organizer, that should have been good news. Megaport Festival started in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 2006, and since its third edition it has taken place every March at the Pier-2 Art Center. Built around performers from southern Taiwan, the outdoor festival reached its 13th edition in 2022 and is one of the most iconic large outdoor music festivals in Taiwan. The year before, when it returned, it had just set the record for the fastest sellout of any music festival in Taiwan.
But a sellout has a flip side: many veteran fans who had made it in year after year didn’t get tickets this time.
The ticket numbers looked great, yet the organizer realized it couldn’t answer a more fundamental question. Who exactly were the people who bought tickets and stood in front of the stage? And where were the die-hard fans who called Megaport “the festival of my life” and came back every year?
The buzz came fast, but the relationships didn’t keep up
After the festival’s return, a wave of new fans arrived, and the audience no longer looked like it used to. The organizer had ticket sales figures, but no clear picture of its fans.
Promotion wasn’t the problem. Megaport Festival had always generated strong buzz on Facebook and Instagram. But those channels excel at reach and driving traffic. They make it hard to tell casual passersby from true fans, and even harder to stay in one-to-one contact with each of them.
The on-site experience was under pressure too. The festival spans the Kaohsiung Light Rail and the outdoor plaza of the Kaohsiung Music Center, with nearly 10 outdoor and indoor stages of various sizes spread across the grounds. Fans had to find their way, keep track of set times, and, at entry, exchange their tickets for wristbands and complete real-name registration. The long entry process had drawn complaints for years. And there was another group: people who couldn’t be there in person but cared about the festival just as much.
Without a change, each year’s excitement would remain a one-off transaction. When tickets went on sale for the next edition, the organizer would have to fight for attention from scratch, while the die-hard fans who truly held the brand up might slowly drift away.
Exposure gets you noticed. Relationships bring people back.
Megaport Festival came to one realization: social media exposure and member engagement are two different jobs, and they can’t be done the same way. It’s a blind spot many event marketing teams share. They use every channel to chase buzz, but no channel is responsible for keeping people.
Turning a fan into a die-hard fan doesn’t take one more promotional post. It takes showing up when they actually need you: when they can’t find a stage, when they’re waiting in line at the gate, when they’re worried about missing a set they want to see. Whoever helps in those moments is the one people remember.
4 steps to event marketing with a LINE Official Account
Once the promotional push was in full swing, Megaport Festival used OakMega Social CRM to build an event marketing strategy centered on its LINE Official Account. Facebook and Instagram kept handling reach and traffic, while LINE took on the job of accompanying fans through the entire festival.
| Problem to solve | Features used | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| Festival info scattered and hard to find | Rich menu, multiple message formats | One-tap access to the venue map, merch, market guide, and MEGAVERSE; real-time delivery of the latest news, press coverage, and what to watch before you go |
| Long entry process | Module Store (survey forms), rich menu | Fans complete real-name registration in advance through the “Banxian” registration field, then show their ticket and phone screen at the gate to collect a wristband |
| Performance info easy to miss | Interactive broadcasts, Module Store (subscription topics) | Segmented countdown reminders and stage locations sent based on the performances each fan follows |
| Some fans can’t attend in person | Reminder broadcasts | Guides fans to switch between livestreams of two stages, Nan Ba Tian and Nu Shen Long, on LINE TODAY |
Entry saw the biggest change. Megaport Festival planned ticket-to-wristband exchange and real-name registration together, and designed separate lanes by ticket type, such as “two-day ticket with registration completed” and “single-day ticket with registration completed.” Fans register from the rich menu before leaving home, and at the venue they only need to show their ticket and phone screen.
Performance info now goes out based on what each fan needs. Before sets begin, the official account sends each stage’s location so fans can move between shows more smoothly. Online reminders that bring people to the right place on site made LINE part of the live experience itself, achieving an OMO (Online Merge Offline) effect. Fans who couldn’t make it also get reminders and can switch straight to the livestream.
What the numbers showed after one festival
Friend engagement rate topped 130%.
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| LINE Official Account friends | 30,000+ (up 62%) |
| Friend engagement rate | Above 130% |
| Block rate | Below 6% |
| Message interactions during the event | Nearly 20,000 |
Source: OakMega platform data for the 13th Megaport Festival in 2022. Engagement rate is calculated as total interactions divided by the number of friends; anything above 100% means the average friend interacted more than once.
Friends grew 62% because joining on LINE brought real convenience, like completing real-name registration in advance and checking the venue map anytime. An engagement rate above 130% shows fans didn’t just open the account once: countdown reminders and stage locations got used again and again across the two festival days. Keeping the block rate below 6% was the result of segmented broadcasts: most of what fans received was information about the performances they cared about. The low block rate didn’t come from sending less. It came from sending the right things.
The longer-term gain is that Megaport Festival now has first-party data on both new and longtime fans for the first time. That data can power remarketing and lays the groundwork for member engagement at the next festival.
If you face the same challenge
- Be clear about what each channel is for. Facebook and Instagram are great at getting you noticed; one-to-one channels like LINE are great at getting you remembered. Start by checking what each of your channels is responsible for today, and whether some of them are doing the same job.
- Show up when users need you most. Building service into the experience keeps people around better than one more promotional message. List the three biggest friction points in your customer experience, and see which one a single message or menu could solve.
- Segmentation matters more than frequency. Send only what people care about, and the block rate will fall on its own. Tools like OakMega Social CRM make segmentation practical, but deciding what to send starts with understanding your audience.
