Marketing & Communications

June 2, 2026 · Last updated on June 3, 2026

Recipe: Identify First-time Attendees

# recipes for success

# marketing

Makes: A tag that allows you to easily identify who’s buying tickets from you for the first time

54% of audiences in 2023 were new — but who exactly are the first-timers at your organization?

Knowing this means you can benchmark their behavior against the Tomorrow’s Audience data developed by Indigo-Ltd in partnership with Spektrix. Tracking these attendees leads to greater understanding of their motivations and barriers, ultimately enabling more targeted communications that better serve them — and you.

What you need

Access to segmentation tools in Spektrix

Permission to create Autotags

A basic understanding of customer and purchasing metrics

Time required

10 minutes

What will this help me achieve?

Establish a consistent and accurate method to identify first-time attendees

Enable targeted, personalized messaging to increase return bookings

Improve trust in your data across the organization

Concepts we’ll be using

Autotags: Labels for customer records based on criteria like “potential duplicate = true”.

Purchase/Attendance Date: Use to time-stamp first visits for targeting.

“First visit” purchasing segment: A true/false flag that identifies if a specific ticket booking was a customer's first-ever visit. It must be paired with a date metric (like Instance Date or Date Transaction Confirmed) to filter for individuals whose first visit fell within a specific timeframe.

Optional: “Booked once” customer segment: Use in conjunction with "First Visit" to filter for individuals whose first attendance fell within your chosen timeframe, but who have not booked a second time.

Prep

Define your objective: e.g., Individuals whose first-ever visit is coming up next month or individuals whose first visit was within the last year but haven't returned.

Review your segmentation tools and confirm you can use both purchasing and customer segments

Determine if your usage will include marketing, and check relevant contact preferences.

Activate

Create a new Autotag in Spektrix.

Use a Purchasing Segment:

Check “First visit”

Combine with relevant purchase or event date using relative date criteria such as “between today and 30 days in the future” or “last 365 days”

Optional: If your goal is to find first time attendees who have not returned for a second visit, add a second Customer Segment

Check “Booked Once”

Apply this tag to customer lists or report criteria sets.

If using for communications, confirm contact preference is compliant

Try this twist

Want to keep these audiences engaged? Set up automated follow-up campaigns based on your new first-timer tags — send surveys, welcome messages, or tailored promotions.

More to explore

↗️Normal Tags and Auto Tags Step‑by‑step guidance on creating Tag Groups and configuring both Normal and Auto Tags in Spektrix. This will help you set up and manage the tags you need for first‑timer identification.

↗️Understanding Audience Loyalty Learn reporting techniques to assess the percentage of first‑time bookers and retention rates—great for evaluating the impact of identifying first‑timer audiences.

↗️Improving Retention Program Template A Spektrix‑provided Dotdigital template that helps you follow up with first-time bookers through automated email programs—perfect for boosting return rates.

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