Jade Presents: Events Company Thinks Beyond the Calendar

Anyone in the business of event promotion knows that knows that the success of the event is a reflection of the success of your work. If the event is well-promoted, then it is more likely to succeed. And if the event succeeds, then it is more likely that you will land more clients.

Let’s take a look at the website for Jade Presents. Touted as one of the top 100 promoters in the world, Jade produces a wide variety of events for big-time artists, corporations, non-profits, and festivals. Needless to say, Jade is serious about events, making this brand a perfect case study for how an online calendar can be used for effective event promotion.

The site relies on The Events Calendar to publish events online. We think that’s great! But it’s how Jade Presents uses the calendar plugin on its WordPress site that impresses us most.

Here’s what we can take away from this awesome site.

A calendar can serve as both a call to action and a portfolio

The first thing you’ll notice when visiting Jade’s site is that events are front and center. The site starts with a rotating slideshow of upcoming featured events, powered by the Slider Revolution plugin. This is an excellent way to showcase key events and get visitors to notice them right away.

A slider on the Jade Presents homepage showing featured upcoming events.

Further down is a table of more upcoming events that serves more like a traditional calendar. Events are ordered by date and the table provides more granular details, such as when and where the event takes place.

A list of three upcoming events in a custom table format that shows event details, a featured image and an event description for each event.

Together, the slider and the table of upcoming events demonstrate that a calendar is more than a collection of events. Sure, Jade would love it if a visitor takes notice of an event and decides to attend it, but they also get the benefit of showcasing the work they do for potential clients. The calendar becomes a promotional tool to get more attendees and new projects in a single punch!

Event data can be used in creative ways

The interesting thing about the upcoming events on Jade’s homepage is that it’s built with a custom block using the Gutenberg editor in WordPress. Jade could have simply used the Event List widget that’s included in The Events Calendar. They also could have used calendar shortcodes included in Events Calendar Pro. Using the Gutenberg block editor combined with The Events Calendar’s REST API, however, allows them to create a super customized experience that’s tailored to their exact needs.

The neat thing about the REST API is that it opens up infinite possibilities to re-purpose events for other uses. You can use it to power an iOS or Android app, let users submit events to the calendar, manage events outside of WordPress or just about anything you can think of. Here’s a tutorial that walks through it in greater detail.

A calendar can still look clean with tons of events

Jade obviously runs a lot of events and the calendar has no shortage of them. This could turn into an issue where showing everything would be an overwhelming experience for visitors, but Jade does an excellent job curating events so the calendar looks its best.

For one, the calendar uses List View by default. That’s a nice way to show events in a clean layout that makes event details scannable and easier to see at a glance.

A list of events on Jade's online calendar showing two events with details and information.

But what about Month View? Showing too many events in a single day could make the calendar messy and uneven. Jade deals with this elegantly by limiting each day to a maximum of four events. That’s something that can be done in the The Events Calendar’s settings.

The month view of Jade's online calendar where one day contains three events with a link to view more events.

Maybe showing more events in Month View is super important for your calendar. If so, there’s a way to show all events for a single day.

How will you use a calendar to promote events?

The question now, of course, is how you will use the examples here to promote events with your calendar. Jade’s website shows how an online calendar can be used to promote events and drum up more business by employing best practices and thinking beyond the calendar, so to speak.

Now it’s your turn. How will you use your calendar to showcase events in new and creative ways?