Nicholas Garofalo 4:52 pm on February 5, 2026

Marketing Lessons from WordCamp Asia

TL;DR: An experimental one-week burst-fire promotion for WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Asia increased traffic and engagement but did not meaningfully change ticket purchasing behavior. The strongest results came from the WordPress News post, followed by Showcase entries and cultural blog content, while contributor stories and standard announcements underperformed. Future event marketing should prioritize well-timed News posts, showcasing sponsors and local WordPress sites, and cultural content.

Hello, Make/Community readers! @bjmcsherry and I have been actively involved in the promotion and marketing of flagship WordPress events (WordCamp Asia, WordCamp Europe, WordCamp US, and State of the WordState of the Word This is the annual report given by Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress at WordCamp US. It looks at what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and the future of WordPress. https://wordpress.tv/tag/state-of-the-word/.) for the past few years, ensuring that the official WordPress marketing channels (social, email, blogs, livestreams, etc.) deliver relevant event information. We also aim to provide event-to-event recommendations in a world where each event may be in a different location and have a different set of contributors.

While our well-established, long-term drip of event content has effectively garnered attention and engagement, we recently experimented with a burst-fire strategy for WordCamp Asia (WCAsia) to increase urgency, break through the online noise more effectively, and drive additional ticket sales and sponsorships.

Our tactical goal was to make WCAsia content unavoidable by saturating the official WordPress marketing channels, generating conversation online and through word-of-mouth. To avoid completely exhausting our audience and their awareness, the experiment ran from Wednesday, 21 January through Wednesday, 28 January 2026, to maximize our use of mid-week engagement highs. We took the following tactical actions:

Posting Be Part of WordCamp Asia 2026 to WordPress.org/news (these posts also appear in WordPress dashboards, are shared in the Make WordPress SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/., and are emailed to News subscribers).
Increasing our social posting cadence to 3 posts per day across all platforms (including video shorts), filling all empty slots (those not taken by other announcements) with WCAsia content.
We encouraged others to get in on the excitement, further expanding our reach to other social audiences.
Social profile banners were updated to highlight WCAsia.
WCAsia organizers made multiple posts to the WCAsia blog, including posts about local restaurants and culture (some of the best-performing content from past events). See Mumbai on a Plate, Namaste India! Guide to Indian Culture, and About the Venue.
A reminder email was sent to global WordPress MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. participants.
Reminder emails were sent to past WCAsia attendees.
Two new Showcase entries from India were published and promoted on social platforms: Tata Motors showcase and Prime Minister of India showcase.

Outcomes

The following data is from Wednesday 21 January through Thursday 29 January 2026, and sourced from Jetpack and the internal ticket reports on asia.wordcamp.org/2026/.

Views: 15,406 (+46%)
Visitors: 5,408 (+83%)
Tickets sold: 49

Insights

Here is what we observed on the course of the experiment:

Overall impact, while comparatively impressive (visitors up 84%), was minimal in absolute terms (roughly 2.4k more visitors). Similarly, while there was a spike in ticket sales (49 tickets sold) compared to recent weeks in January, average weekly ticket sales since October were 69/week. We did not radically shift purchasing behavior.
The biggest impact appears to coincide with the publication of the Be Part of WordCamp Asia 2026 News post, and its subsequent social and email campaigns. Other timely, broad-appeal content performed well (high views and engagement) during this period: Tata Motors showcase, Prime Minister of India showcase, Things to do in Mumbai, Mumbai on a Plate, and About the Venue.
Standard announcements (calls for organizers/volunteers, ticket announcements, etc.) and contributor stories did not perform well, and in fact performed below baseline performance for content. The poor performance of contributor stories also aligns with that of the now-discontinued People of WordPress series.
The channels driving the most traffic to the site were, in order: Search, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Instagram. Compared to the previous week, LinkedIn and X were the standout platforms during this experiment.
Social engagement rate dropped, as expected, but total engagement did increase, suggesting that we were not algorithmically punished for the increased posting cadence during this experiment.

Actions

Here is what we’ll be recommending to organizers of flagship WordCamps in the future:

Saturating our channels had little impact, so we should maintain our typical posting cadence (I.e., posting more will not meaningfully increase ticket sales; event awareness is not holding event attendance back).
Attention and contributor time are limited resources. I recommend that unpopular content, such as contributor stories, be adapted or dropped. There may be an opportunity or audience for this content if we shift focus to the work/contributions rather than the individuals.
I suggest that attention be directed to timely, broadly appealing content, such as the cultural blog posts and relevant Showcase entries. These should be produced early (months ahead of the event) and promoted often, communicating the spirit of the location and the event. Calls for volunteers and organizers can be bundled, rather than released in stages, and then announced in a WordPress News post.
For WordPress News, there should 2 News posts in the lead up to the event: 1 post calling for organizers, volunteers, sponsors, etc. early in the planning process, and another post sharing the event, calling for attendees and filling any gaps.
While much discussion has been held around marketing these events, our thinking should be shifted toward producing a marketable event. What performed well here suggests that we should lean into packaging and promoting the venue/city/culture, education/career opportunities, and sponsor/business connections.
- venue/city/culture: Cultural posts have repeatedly been well-read, which is understandable given the number of travelers attending the event. These posts create excitement around visiting the host city. It would be worth exploring what kind of relationships could be built with local restaurants and businesses. Marketing not just the event, but the entire experience (inside and outside of the venue), shows promise.
- education/career opportunities: The growth of WordPress education initiatives and the performance of WordPress content on LinkedIn reinforce WordCamps as a place of learning. Adapting the messaging around speakers and talks to focus on their educational value (What will I learn from this speaker?) will likely entice further ticket sales.
- sponsor/business: We’ve seen both Sponsor Hall content at past WordCamps and local showcases perform well. These are strong indicators that sponsors bring not only cash, but life and engagement to the events. Sponsor and comms/marketing teams should be more closely integrated. Rather than simply announcing sponsors, we should be celebrating them.

Other data

As we continue experimenting with how to promote flagship WordCamps, and WordCamps in general, I’ll share more info here. Once some learnings and practices are well-established, this information will be moved to a more permanent handbook. In the meantime, please use the comments to ask any questions about this experiment or make additional suggestions.

Thanks to everyone who makes these sorts of experiments possible (too many to list). Without all the contributors, organizers, content authors, and designers, all of this wouldn’t be possible.

Juan Hernando 5:48 pm on February 5, 2026

Thanks @eidolonnight and @bjmcsherry for sharing these insights! It’s really valuable for understanding what resonates with our audiences. The performance differences between content types are particularly interesting.

A couple of follow-up questions:
Format performance: Beyond content types, did you notice any standout differences in post formats across platforms? For example, carousels or videos outperforming single image + text posts? Or was engagement primarily driven by the content topic itself?

Paid promotion: Given the strong performance of certain posts, has there been any consideration for testing paid advertising with the top performers? It could be interesting to see if boosting those posts helps us reach beyond our existing circle and attract new audiences who wouldn’t otherwise discover these events.

Thanks again for running this experiment and sharing the learnings openly!
- Nicholas Garofalo 6:12 pm on February 5, 2026
  
  Good questions @unintended8
  
  Format performance
  
  Videos and photos typically perform better, but in this case, the content/topic was more important. I was actually very surprised by how well the Showcase entries performed, but in hindsight, I think the recognizable names attracted attention. That is also why I think we should celebrate sponsors more and potentially release speaker information sooner (if possible).
  
  Paid promotion
  
  I’m checking to see if there’s any budget for this, but I’m also not encouraging it. We’ve tried paid ads a few times across WordCamps and State of the WordState of the Word This is the annual report given by Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress at WordCamp US. It looks at what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and the future of WordPress. https://wordpress.tv/tag/state-of-the-word/.. They have never driven significant ticket sales, regardless of platform and targeting.
  
  reach beyond our existing circle and attract new audiences
  
  We now have an organic following of over 2.4M followers on social media, tens of thousands of email recipients, and visibility in every WordPress dashboard. That’s why I’ve suggested that reach/awareness is not the issue. If we want to attract new audiences, we need to put on an event that people want to attend and message it appropriately.
Dan Knauss 6:32 pm on February 5, 2026

This sounds right on to me. WCEH24 and 25 (much smaller events) both saw their ticket sales spike and increase each month from their initial opening, but they really took off after speakers and the schedule were announced. Steady blogging, special featured posts about emerging keynotes, and other news fueled a growing sense of anticipation.

The pattern with sponsor commitment seems to be similar. It’s probably natural for sponsors to watch and come in more as ticket sales increase. Our local, repeat sponsors were the first ones in both years. For all types of attendees, it’s a chicken-egg dilemma initially until a tipping point is reached, when everyone can see who is going to be there.

Social channels were great, especially LinkedIn, with lots of confirmed speakers, sponsors, volunteers, and advocates in the community chiming in with the enthusiasm, spontaneity, and creativity you can’t buy.
Sebastian Misniakiewicz 6:40 pm on February 5, 2026

I think that we underestimate the power of our Community.
Every person that buys a ticket, every micro/sponsor, every speaker, every organiser or volunteer have their communities. Posts in social media, newsletters, films etc. can reach a huge number of people.
It is important while making a marketing to post as much posts as possible (posts that are interesting for people of course).
Why?
Because our Community knows already about the event.
BUT what about “the rest of 43% of WordPress users”? It is a huuuuge number of people. If we publish only once or twice social media will not show our posts to them.
We have to move out of our bubble. And it is possible by being available in many places as much as possible.
Then when the agenda is published everybody is grabbing his/her ticket and … we are selling out all tickets 🙂
Matt Mullenweg 2:50 pm on February 7, 2026

I would love for you to talk to people who have marketed other successful, similar events, probably commercial ones, and see what motivates people to attend.
- Nicholas Garofalo 6:45 pm on February 9, 2026
  
  Already had Claude researching this past weekend to identify sensible peers to talk to, and possible areas of improvement, both short and long-term.
Felipe Velzani 10:13 pm on February 8, 2026

Thinking broadly about flagship events, I believe the following would be really important:

Paid advertising – I think it would be much easier to convert if we target people at the bottom of the funnel. Given the limited budget for paid ads, I’d put 100% into Google Ads focused on search campaigns as an experiment. Possibly also limit ads to just the state/country where the event is happening, considering the budget limitations as these folks don’t have to travel. It is easier to convert someone searching for “tech events in [their city]” than just trying to create ads on MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. Ads very broadly for anyone “who works as a dev or within WP space” (also you probably would need a lot of testing and many creatives, which would already be outside budget)

Tracking – In the past it wasn’t even possible to track conversions and add things like pixels and tracking scripts — not sure if that’s possible now. I think we need to be mindful of managing the whole funnel and giving proper attribution to find if it is actually working and let the AI tools from these Ads companies to work their magic based on conversions.

Improve our tools for lead management – Maybe starting an email list or using a service like Klaviyo. If we use proper tools (instead of doing it inside WC Central or with Jetpack Newsletter), it is good that we could have even more data, have A/B tests, reach out to people from different editions of the same event, and have different flows based on behaviour (such as add them to a flow when they don’t finish purchase on checkout, so we email and SMS them, etc).

Of course, there are many other opportunities, but IMO these are the very basic things that we don’t implement yet.
- Felipe Velzani 10:47 pm on February 8, 2026
  
  Another opportunity IMO is using the WP Admin to highlight these events. Right now, we only have it inside a widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user.. We could probably have a full page on users’ admin panels talking about specific events.
Lawrence 1:37 am on February 11, 2026

100% agree with this bit:

What performed well here suggests that we should lean into packaging and promoting the venue/city/culture, education/career opportunities, and sponsor/business connections.

How about reaching outside the WP ecosystem too?
For example, could we provide a discount to members of Tech Entrepreneurs Association of Mumbai and similar organisations?
What local / national media would be happy to publish a WC Asia story?
- Nicholas Garofalo 7:18 pm on February 11, 2026
  
  For example, could we provide a discount to members of Tech Entrepreneurs Association of Mumbai and similar organisations? What local / national media would be happy to publish a WC Asia story?
  
  Considering how cheap tickets are, which may actually be an issue to explore later (i.e. what does our low ticket price imply about the event’s value?), I don’t think discounts are as enticing as they may sound.
  
  As for local connections and media, I agree, and I would expand this to include local influencers and businesses as well. Over the years, these events have attracted a global audience, but we seem to have lost focus on the fact that they are regional events. The local populations of the host cities alone should be enough to significantly increase attendance, assuming they deem the event valuable enough to attend. This is, in part, a driver for focus on sponsors. They provide yet another marketing channel (through sharing the event with their own audiences), and they add value to the event.