| Success story highlights: |
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| – 13% of Poof Doof’s ticket sales were sold through Eventbrite’s marketplace – Poof Doof credits Eventbrite’s easy-to-use, glitch-free platform as the reason they switched from a competitor – “From a technical perspective, [Eventbrite] has been incredible,” says Poof Doof Marketing Director Nic Holland |
Poof Doof parties have been legendary in Melbourne for almost 15 years—and these days, all across Australia. The iconic gay bar and club night has a well-earned reputation for immersive, carefree good times, whether it’s at the classic split-level Poof Doof party at Chasers Nightclub or a themed bash celebrating the release of Lady Gaga’s latest album.
Though plenty in Melbourne’s gay community have their own Poof Doof stories, few have experienced the party from the inside quite like its Marketing Director, Nic Holland.
Holland has been a key part of Poof Doof for over a decade. Starting as a bartender and working on the door, he became a promoter before leading Poof Doof’s marketing. In all that time, as the club night went from hidden secret to scene-leading treasure, Holland says Poof Doof’s philosophy has remained the same.
“Our founder and director, Anthony Hocking, always says we’re fun dealers,” he says. “The only test that we need to apply to everything is, is it fun? Are people having fun?”
Having grown to include regular events in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, and internationally, since switching from a competitor to Eventbrite in 2024, Poof Doof is sharing the fun more than ever.
Meeting the Poof Doof audience where they’re at
Something to keep in mind about Poof Doof, says Holland, is that the club night is already well-known in the gay scene. Eventbrite is responsible for 9% of Poof Doof’s page views, with 13,872 (61% of the 9%) coming via the search function, showing that regulars know what they’re looking for. People recognise Poof Doof already, and Holland says it doesn’t necessarily benefit from being spread around widely.
“Eventbrite was really sensitive to our needs because sometimes we don’t actually want to be on the homepage—for example, an event that has elements of fetish involved,” Holland says. “Sometimes we actually don’t want to be seen outside of our community because our events are not necessarily for the masses.”
While 13% of Poof Doof’s ticket sales come from Eventbrite channels, when it comes to meeting its established audience, Poof Doof has subtler, more specific requirements.
“We’ve got our audience established and we’re very proud of that,” Holland says. “Our issue was getting things running so smoothly in our events that the audience that we’ve already engaged doesn’t start switching off, and we’ve definitely been able to achieve that with Eventbrite. [Issues like] a clunky purchasing process, a clunky checkout, your ticket not working at the door, your name not on the guest list—it’s not very sexy.”
Ease of use and customer support
Poof Doof is busy. With a small team behind the scenes and a huge roster of club nights, festivals, and one-off events, the team identified the need for a ticketing partner that made the whole process smoother and more streamlined—a challenge they’d faced with a previous partner.
“They had some ongoing technical issues that were really frustrating, that were perpetuated for months and months and were never fixed,” Holland says. “Standard things like QR codes not scanning, and then the onus being on us to provide them with a detailed report of the issues so they could fix it.”
Coupled with a steep rise in fees at their previous ticketing platform, these technical issues were a big reason for Poof Doof’s switch to Eventbrite. Holland says that processes now run smoothly even in the face of huge crowds and digital ticketing systems.
“With Eventbrite, technically, we’ve had not one issue,” says Holland. “We’ve had quite a few big events, including 5000 people for Purple Disco Machine in January. The entire day, with all those thousands of people, we did not need to call once for technical support. Same with Yasss Queens Park, which was another festival we did for 2000 people in November. In the end, literally nothing went wrong, so from a technical perspective it’s been incredible.”
And if there is ever a rare hiccup or a “tricky situation”, Holland says the Eventbrite team is always there to help.
“Account management has been so great,” he says. “They’re always available in time to troubleshoot or chat. Whenever we’ve had some tricky issues that we’ve had to fix, like with venues wanting to do ticketing from their platform or any situations that require a bit more thought, they’re always available to help, so I couldn’t speak more highly.”
Real-time insights
Selling tickets to a built-in audience is a luxury afforded to scene leaders like Poof Doof. However, Holland and the team don’t take sell-outs for granted, and having access to tools like daily ticket sales reports can help guide the team’s next move.
“We definitely love to see daily ticket sales, just to see how an event is tracking,” Holland says. “This feature wasn’t very developed when we first started, and I kept bugging them to make it more accessible – and they listened! Now through the organiser app or through the desktop web browser login, we can see how many tickets we sold in the last 24 hours. Is it increasing at a rate that means we’ll get to where we need to be for the event itself? That’s definitely the feature that we use the most, I would say.”
Simple, straightforward event pages
Poof Doof events are in regular rotation throughout the year, and between Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and one-off locations, there’s a lot to manage. Having a consistent event page template has made it much easier to keep listings relevant and up-to-date, says Holland.
“When we first started, there wasn’t a lot of personalisation that could be done with Eventbrite’s event pages,” he says. “But we’ve actually found that just being able to provide an image and keep the event set up really classic and standard so that people can read the important information, it’s kind of worked in our favour, and it’s saved us time. It’s helped our audience see the information they need to see. Our website, Instagram, and artwork communicate the vibe of the event, so keeping the ticketing page [consistent] has actually been a real positive that was unexpected.”
Poof Doof’s continued success with Eventbrite
For some organisers, success is about breaking new ground, finding new audiences and hosting bigger and better events. For established scene leaders like Poof Doof, success with Eventbrite is a little different. After more than 10 years of hosting Australia’s best-known gay club nights and events, Poof Doof is already successful by plenty of metrics.
For Nic Holland and the team, the Eventbrite partnership is about more than boosting numbers and hitting KPIs—it’s about easily communicating with an established audience; it’s about customer service for super smooth events; it’s about enhancing what already exists with easy-to-use tools. With the backend in safe hands with Eventbrite, Poof Doof can continue to confidently succeed into its next decade.
