Most venues let profitability slip away by not having the right tools, processes, and systems in place. It’s time to fix that.
Here are 6 tools you need in your wheelhouse to grow your venue.
1. Integrated Point of Sale (POS) System
Integrated POS systems equate to bigger and better data. It takes your club beyond transactional information, giving you insight into rich details of your club’s results, employee performance, individual guest sales, and trending liquor sales. The best way to integrate your POS system is to connect it with other areas of your club (including the ones listed below) through a platform that handles web and mobile POS options. This type of integrated system not only collects deeper information, but also reports it in ways that help you make better business decisions.
2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System
Recognizing your guests’ faces or even their names is just the start. Imagine knowing how many times they’ve been to your club, how many reservations they’ve made, how much money they’ve spent, and what their most popular drink purchases are. That’s valuable information, and that’s what’s going to propel you forward. And a robust CRM system that’s tied to your POS is just what’s going to get you there. Read more about 4 ways you can uncover more information when you know your guests on a deeper level through your CRM system.
3. Pre-Sale Ticketing System
Every event or venue benefits from pre-selling tickets. It’s how you’re able to pay for your event before it happens. It’s how you know whether or not your event is going to be a success. And it’s one of the easiest revenue-building things you can do. Look to event ticketing companies, like Vēmos, that set your entire event up for success and allows you to collect revenue from the get-go. These companies put money directly in your merchant account and provides you with a full 360-degree look at how your event is performing. This platform enables you to sell tickets from your website and mobile app, and automatically calculates your yielding strategy. Plus, when you connect this to your CRM system, you’re able to use filters to segment your customers into specific targeted audiences to send information about your event to those that matter most. Now your event is profitable before it even happens.
4. Reservation Management System
Too many clubs operate with pen and paper to manage table reservations. Some have graduated onto email as their medium of choice, but this still results in double-booked tables and other errors. It’s nearly impossible to keep track of reservations using these old school processes. Reservations are coming in from different sources, tables are over promised, and what ends up getting marked down isn’t true to what’s actually going to happen that night. That’s where the reservation management system comes into play. Just give your employees and partners access to the system with their own personal login where they can add a reservation for a specific night and choose tables that are only available for that time-slot. This streamlines your process to maximize efficiency and accuracy.
5. General Admission Tracker
Tracking VIP reservations, ticket sales, and guest list parties is a no-brainer for nightclubs and events (though it can be improved with the reservation management system mentioned above). Yet, many overlook that of tracking general admission. This is something we at Vēmos sought to change. With our general admission tracker, you’re able to detect how many guys and girls walked in your venue for a given night, how much he/she paid, and what promotions (if any) brought them to your venue. This gives you an accurate picture of who attends your venue and which of your marketing promotions are working in your favor.
6. Analytics System
This is where that rich data we discussed above comes into play. An analytics system takes the guessing work out of the numbers that are being reported. It shows exactly what you want to know about a given area of your club, including your customers, servers, promoters, and venue as a whole. With this type of system, you’re able to define how much money you made or lost over a given time period, whether an event was profitable, which promoters are bringing in the most guests, and which servers are performing the best. All of this information leads to insight about your club to make better decisions for the future.
These 6 tools will help your venue propel forward and maximize your revenue. But don’t worry – these six technologies won’t add six different processes to your venue. Just look for platforms, like Vēmos, that has all of these tools under one platform. That’s easy, efficient, and streamlined operations for a big return.
Whitney Larson is the president and director of marketing at Vēmos. Contact her at whitney.larson@vemos.io or fill out the form below.
