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. Unfortunately, most venues don’t know how to incentivize their guests to pre-purchase their tickets, resulting in wasted effort.
Follow these steps to incentivize your guests and earn more pre-sale revenue for your event.
1. Set the price and use a yielding strategy
It’s critical to understand what your customers will pay in return for your type of event. People understand and have been programmed to pay top dollar for major events. They even understand that ticket prices generally go up as it gets closer to the event date due to demand. It’s all about dollars per square foot. This is yielding, and is something you need to use to your advantage. Take this example (for easy math, let’s assume your venue holds 100 people):
• Tickets are released and priced at $50
• Once 50 tickets are sold (half your venue), raise the price to $75
• Once 75 tickets are sold (three-fourths of your venue), raise the price to $100
• Once 90 tickets are sold, raise the price to $150
This yielding strategy earns you more dollars per square foot per person. It also incentivizes your guests to get their tickets early rather than waiting the night before or the night of the event.
2. Get the right ticketing system
Not all ticketing vendors set you up for success. Many simply provide a place where guests buy their tickets and not a whole lot more. Money doesn’t go directly into your bank account until weeks after the event, you never get to see your customer data, and you don’t get a clear picture of how your event performed.
Instead, look to event ticketing companies, like Vēmos, that puts money directly in your hand 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 through a mobile app, and automatically calculate your yielding strategy, all while tracking results along the way.
3. Start selling
Marketing and sales go hand-in-hand. While your sales team is out there making transactions, make sure your marketing team is working alongside them with spreading the word. Use a multi-channel strategy to sell your tickets, such as one that consists of online, mobile, and in-person sales. Turn your promoters into mobile box offices by selling tickets to customers directly from their device (contact us to learn how). If you have a CRM system in place, use filters to segment your customers into specific targeted audiences to send information about your event to those that matter most. All the channels working together at once is what drives awareness, buzz, and sales.
4. Strategize your lines
What’s the benefit of a guest pre-buying a ticket if they don’t even get to skip the long line? Do not have just one line at your event. Oftentimes, there are 3 different audiences standing in this one line that you need to consider:
- Guests who pre-bought a ticket</li>
- Guests who were on the VIP guestlist and did not need to buy a ticket
- Guests waiting to buy a ticket at the door
Putting a bit of strategy into how you treat your line can increase your revenue and speed of night, especially when it comes to pre-sale tickets. Use a separate line for different functions and slow down the general admission line just a bit to amplify the speed of the pre-sale line. This entices guests to make behavioral changes to buy a ticket ahead of time, which in turn equates to more money in your pocket before the night of your event.
Whitney Larson is the president and director of marketing at Vēmos. Contact her at whitney.larson@vemos.io or fill out the form below.
