Drop Highlight Sea You
SEA YOU

Gather them once.
Reach them all year.

A first-party data playbook
17-19 July 2026  ·  Tunisee, Freiburg 01 / 11
01The idea

Reach gets more expensive every year.
Your audience doesn't have to.

Every July you gather thousands of people who choose to spend a summer weekend at the Tunisee. The harder thing, the expensive thing, is reaching them again once they have driven home. Right now that route runs through Meta, and the price of it climbs every season.

There is another route. Capture the crowd while it is in front of you, hold it in a channel you own, and the cost of reaching it next year drops toward zero. They are yours for the weekend already. This is about keeping the line open after.

02The problem

Every summer the crowd arrives.
Every autumn the relationship leaves.

The gates close, the floor empties, and the direct line to everyone who danced at the lake resets to almost nothing. Next spring you buy that reach back from Meta, at next spring's prices, to talk to people who were already standing in front of you.

The problem is not attendance. The festival sells. The problem is that the relationship is rented, and the rent goes up.

03The mechanic

Tease it before. Capture it during.
Convert it after.

THE LOOP BEFORE Tease DURING Capture AFTER Convert
Before
A short campaign points at whichever days have room and drives ticket sales toward them. You decide where it points.
During
The moment people are at the lake becomes captured, owned data. A scan, a photo claim, a consent. Not a rented impression.
After
A gated content drop turns those captured fans into early presale for next year. Unique links and codes mean every sale traces back.

Every euro traced back to a ticket.

Campaign and presale route through Drop Highlight links and codes. The measurement sits in our layer, not your ticketing backend, so the numbers hold even while the backend settles.

04The cost defence

Reach gets rented.
Data gets owned.

A fan captured once is a fan you can reach next year through a channel you own, instead of buying that reach back from Meta. Owned email reach has the highest open rates in music marketing, often multiples above social. The point is the ratio, not a promised percentage. Every captured fan lowers next year's cost to reach them.

89K
Followers on Instagram. Reach you rent from the feed, paid for or throttled every post.
Limited
Owned, reachable contacts today. The gap this closes, and the one that compounds.

The whole job is moving people from the left block to the right one.

05Proof

Already running. Already working.

Case study · 2025
CERCLE
ODYSSEY
Ten shows. Paris. June 2025.

Cercle partnered with Drop Highlight to run branded, fan-facing galleries across the Odyssey residency in Paris.

The same loop you are looking at: capture on the night, a gallery worth returning to, and an owned channel that brings fans back. Thousands relived each set, on brand, and got captured in the process.

40,923
Total downloads
29,321
Gallery views
3:58
Avg. session

Same mechanic. Pointed at the Tunisee instead.

06Build on what's there

The galleries already work.
They just don't capture.

After every edition you publish your photo galleries, including the VIP gallery, and right now they capture almost nothing. A light gate turns each one into known fans without taking away the reason they came. The VIP becomes a sponsor-brandable tier, and a fan-submitted gallery lets the crowd add their own. Here is what the fan sees.

9:41 100%
seayou-festival.de/gallery
Sea You · Beach Republic17 JUL 2026
SEA YOU
Presents
A gallery for the weekend the lake was for. The set, the sun, the moments worth keeping.
Email
Phone (optional)
This edition and the next. Nothing else.
Sea Youseayou-festival.de

Tap it. The gate captures, the gallery is what lands. Styled example, swappable per edition.

Sea You · 2026
Scan for your gallery
And on the night, a printed code

The same gallery, scannable at the lake, for fans who never opened the email. One code, themed to the edition, printed on signage Sea You already produces. No new infrastructure, and no app to download.

EntranceBarsBeach RepublicStagesWake ParkFood TrucksExit
07The superfans

Find the fans who never miss a year.
Reward them first.

Once engagement data is flowing, the fans who return every edition stop being invisible. You can see who they are: who opens, who claims, who uploads, who buys first. Reward them before anyone else, with early access to next year, giveaways, and content made for them.

This is also where Sea You pulls ahead of the field. A festival that knows its returning fans by name can give them a better, more personal weekend at the lake. A festival running only paid ads often cannot match that.

08Why now

The countdown is already live.
The window is open.

Tickets are on sale, the edition is weeks away, and the crowd is already paying attention. That is exactly the moment to start capturing it, while interest is climbing toward July rather than after it has passed.

People already buy next year's ticket during the weekend, on the high. Run the loop this year and it earns its keep twice. It captures and activates that audience now, and it hands you the campaign data you have never had: web traffic, engagement, open rates, who redeems and who comes back.

2026 · This year
Prove it.
Run the full campaign now. No sponsor needed yet, just the engine working and the data stacking up: web traffic, engagement, redemption, who comes back. The kind of measured audience picture few festivals can put on paper.
2027 · Next year
Sell it.
Those numbers are the pitch. A sponsor or a vendor signs because you can show real traffic and engagement, not a guess. That turns sponsorship from a sliver of today's revenue into a real line, with no higher ticket price and no extra Meta spend.
09What we run

We carry the load.
You keep your stack.

Drop Highlight runs the whole loop: the pre-campaign, the gated galleries, the capture, the attribution, and the post-event send from your own Sea You address. It sits on top of your ticketing, not inside it. Nothing to rip in, nothing to migrate, and the measurement lives in our layer, so it holds even while your backend settles.

The post-event send, step by step
01
Gallery
The weekend, already built.
02
Setup
Sea You as sender. Subject locked.
03
Content
The hook, the body, the cards fans click.
04
Contacts
Existing fans loaded. New captures join automatically.
05
Send
Lands within 24 to 48 hours. From Sea You directly.
Sent from your own domain.
Not a third-party platform. The festival owns the From line.
Within 24 to 48 hours.
Last set to inbox, while the weekend is still fresh.
One send, old and new.
Existing fans and fresh captures, reached together.

Low lift on your side. You point it where you want it. We build it, run it, and report it back in numbers.