A sold ticket is a promise, not an attendance. The gap between the two is where reputations are built, because a half-empty room full of people who paid still feels like a failure.
Remind at three points
On purchase, one week before, and the morning of. The morning-of message matters most and is the one most often skipped.
Make the reminder useful
Not "don't forget". Send the practical things: what time to arrive to avoid the queue, where to park, what the weather is doing, what is on when. A message that solves a problem gets read.
Reduce the friction of arriving
A map link that opens in their phone's map app. The nearest landmark, because addresses in parts of Lagos are aspirational. The name of the person on the gate.
Create a reason to be early
Something that only happens in the first thirty minutes: a set, a drink, a draw. Otherwise everyone arrives at the same late moment and your first hour looks empty in every photograph.
Know your own number
Track the gap between tickets sold and tickets scanned at every event. Once you have three data points you have a show-up rate, and a show-up rate turns catering, staffing and seating from guesses into arithmetic. Most paid events in Nigeria land somewhere between eighty and ninety-five percent; free events are a different world entirely.
Watch which tiers no-show
Discounted and complimentary tickets are consistently the least likely to be used. If your no-show rate is climbing, check whether it is your paying audience drifting or simply that you issued more free passes than last time.
Make the ticket easy to find
A guest who cannot locate their ticket ten minutes before leaving the house sometimes just does not leave the house. Send the ticket again in the morning-of message rather than expecting them to dig out a confirmation from six weeks ago.
Give them someone to arrive with
People attend events with other people. A group discount, a bring-a-friend code, or simply asking buyers who else is coming turns a solo commitment into a social one, and social commitments get honoured.
Ask the ones who did not come
A short, genuinely curious message afterwards. The answers are usually mundane, fixable and repeated across dozens of people.