Ticketfly

Hey promoters! Courtesy of the Icelandic pop band Of Monsters and Men, here’s an awesome idea for getting your fans to interact with your Facebook page post-show. And it seems to be working. They have over 100K Facebook friends and over 13K fans talking about them this week alone.

Snap a photo of the crowd during a show and create a post the following day encouraging people to tag their own happy faces. It will get your Page more fans as they share the photo and it makes them feel like you care that they showed up! Love it. I guess all those Omega-3s are good for creativity. This was an attempt at a fish joke. Sorry, Iceland, it’s Friday.

Venue Background
Parish Entertainment Group is a production company and trio of independent arts and entertainment venues that has some of the Bay Area’s most diverse music events, as well as food and upscale cocktails. The group is comprised of three venues: the New Parish, a 450-capacity space in Oakland, CA; Brick & Mortar, a 250-capacity music hall in San Francisco; and the Rock Steady in Oakland, a 100-capacity DJ club. The venues host a variety of artists almost every evening, from Estelle to Shellac, Pinback and the Bay’s own Too $hort. Parish has made significant contributions to the revitalization of the independent music scene in both Oakland’s downtown and San Francisco’s Mission District.

Challenge
Parish Entertainment Group venues focus on live music. The venues needed a way to streamline their ticketing process and sell more advance tickets. If Parish could rely less on walk-up sales, they would be able to better manage staffing, security and marketing. Staff had previously spent hours publishing events, and had few measurement tools to correlate ticket sales with marketing efforts. Management understood the potential for growing revenue and saving time once the right ticketing system was put into place.

Results
The New Parish, Brick and Mortar and Rock Steady each host hundreds of shows a year. Management integrated Ticketfly in the latter half of 2011, including Ticketfly’s branded websites, and began training staff with the help of Ticketfly’s client support team. Parish Entertainment Group began using Ticketfly’s Backstage content management system to build landing pages for shows and Ticketfly’s automated social marketing allowed people to share and RSVP to events, exposing more of their friends to shows and spreading the word. Ticketfly’s email marketing tools saved staff hours of time, enabled greater personalization for subscribers, and helped to regularly sell out shows in advance.

A comprehensive ticketing system that served all three venues helped staff easily manage marketing efforts, and streamlined the ticketing infrastructure for future venues. Rock Steady, the group’s third venue, opened in early 2012 and marketing and events staff were able to easily incorporate the new venue into existing the existing system. Buzz surrounding Brick & Mortar as a popular venue for indie bands generated interest from a prominent blog promoting their New Year’s Eve party, which sold out the event weeks in advance.

Parish Entertainment Group venues were the first to use the Ticketfly Facebook App as a beta partner, and this new application had a direct impact on Parish’s bottom line. In the first month, Parish’s three venues generated 25 percent of advance ticket sales on Facebook.

Parish saw advance ticket sales increase more than 500% during the first six months of the Ticketfly integration, and started selling branded sponsorships that further leveraged website and social marketing visibility. Parish Entertainment Group was named Rookie of the Year during Ticketfly’s 2012 Client Summit and the Ticketfly staff regularly hangs out in their awesome venues. Follow New Parish and Brick and Mortar and you can too!

by Amy Miller, Community Manager

As a promoter, you have your hands in about a million different things, trying to market your events and get people in the door however you can. Maybe a local blog or radio station has approached you about running a banner ad or buying space in an email blast, and made a lot of exciting promises about how many impressions you’d get for your money. Then comes show day and you’ve spent $1,000 on a banner ad and two people are inside the venue. Womp.

We already provide the industry’s most comprehensive sales analytics, but we know that what you really care about is how many tickets you’re selling from that specific banner, Tweet or email campaign. And there’s an easy way to find out. If you typically hear things like “utm_source” or “medium performance” and glaze over, stick with me! It’s very easy to build tracked links and swap out key information, and then view direct sales in your Dashboard.

The Basics!

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Basic Link Structure
You can even paste it somewhere on your computer for future use.
http://www.ticketfly.com/event/EVENTID?utm_source=SOURCECODE

Source Code
This is whatever you want to call your promo, like “PollstarEmailBlast” or “RadioStationBanner.” Just make sure the source is alphanumeric with no spaces, but dashes or underscores are OK.

Event ID
Easily found in either the Ticketfly link or the link from your Ticketfly – powered WordPress site (examples in green).
http://www.gothictheatre.com/event/114503 <—-Event ID
http://www.ticketfly.com/event/114503 <—-Event ID

Some Easy Examples to Get Your Feet Wet

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Banner Ad
Send this link (which you can shorten with a bit.ly – like service and it will still work) to the website where you’re buying ad space.
http://www.gothictheatre.com/event/114503?utm_source=ReallyCoolLocalBlog

Twitter Promo
Maybe you want to promote a low ticket warning (whether it’s true or not – wink!) or just get an idea of how many people bought through a specific Tweet, rather than your Twitter sales in general for a show.
http://www.ticketfly.com/event/84643?utm_source=LowTicketWarning

Facebook Ad
Facebook has great analytics on your Ad traffic, and you can build ads that are super targeted. We always recommend trying out Facebook ads! And if you use a tagged link, you can see not just traffic, but how many sales came from a specific ad. A good url to use might be:
http://www.ticketfly.com/event/94257?utm_source=FeistFacebookAd

The sky’s the limit on options here. Google Ads, third party branded Email Blasts (like Jambase provides), and partner or band Tweets are all tools clients have used with tagged links.

Evaluate Your Spending

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To view results in Ticketfly’s Backstage, select “Source Performance” in the “Dashboard” section and look at the matrix below the pie chart. You’ll see exactly how many ticket sales resulted from each campaign. And sometimes you might have to look for new media partners if your ads aren’t selling. Sure, you might lose some friends. But you can dry those tears with ticket sales.

This is just the tip of the iceberg! A savvy user can also utilize Medium codes and more. Download the full pdf on Tagged Links here or reach out your Ticketfly Client Rep.

If you’d like more information about how you can maximize your marketing power with Ticketfly’s toolset, head over to ticketfly.com/start!

by Amy Miller, Community Manager

Anyone who goes to a lot of events is probably familiar with the clunky and outdated Space Jam-style websites some of our favorite venues have been rockin’ since the late 90s. When your customers are on the hunt for tickets, as a promoter, you want them to end up on a website that’s easy to navigate. You also want fans to be able to easily share events with their friends and help promote your event. Ticketfly has a professional services team dedicated to the cause of extreme website makeovers. We offer feature-rich, customized websites, that we’ll design, build and host according to your brand and taste. The best part is that when you build your events on Ticketfly, your website will update automatically. No need for programming classes at the local JC!

This week, we rolled out some new features on our client websites, including an event details rollover on event calendars and an “On Sale Soon” event list. These features are part of Ticketfly’s continued efforts to help our clients produce engaging, compelling, and informative websites that drive more ticket sales. Head over to our Client website showcase and see for yourself! I know the Cranberries are touring and everything, but when it comes to websites, the 90s are officially over.

by Aaron MacDonald, Client Services Director

For some of you, the impending festival season will be one of many notches on your promoter belt. For others, this may be your first crack at the ever-growing world of festivals. Whether you are a veteran in the promoter business or just starting out, these helpful tips will increase your sales as well as ensure smooth on-site ticketing operations! With a combined 50 years of experience in the ticketing industry, we have managed festivals from Life is Good to Smokeout. We have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to festival operations, and now we want to make your next festival your best(ival)!

Building Events: Preparing for Onsale
The decisions you make during your event planning process are critical for success on the day of the event and working with a flexible platform that can handle demand can make a big difference.

• Ticket Types – Determine what options you need. Single day? Weekend Pass? Camping Passes? Will you be using wristbands? VIP?
• Exclusive Presales – Many clients partner with radio stations and other local businesses to offer a chance to snag tickets to the event early and generate early buzz. With Ticketfly, you can use discounts, password protected presales and access lists to manage these presales.
• Custom Event Naming – Customize your event name and image while still keeping your headliners’ information and bios listed on the Event Detail Page.
• Additional Web Info – This Ticketfly field allows up to 1,000 characters and is HTML-friendly. You can include any general event information as well as a link to your site.
• Custom Terms and Conditions – Add additional information specific to your event, including Dos and Don’ts, beyond our standard Terms & Conditions.
• Custom Confirmation Emails – Add additional text and linked images in the subject, body and footer of your confirmation emails. Add links to your site or FAQ as well as add links for any charities or other events you’re supporting.

Spreading the Word: Social Marketing
Great, so you planned a festival. Now how do you get people to show up?

• Facebook Ticketing – By installing the Ticketfly Facebook App and enabling RSVP on your event page, you can generate healthy buzz and make it easy for fans to promote your event by sharing with friends.
• Email Marketing – Import your previous year’s attendee list and easily create branded email campaigns. It’s only a few clicks to send out new band announcements, sponsor emails and promos.
• Watch your sales! – Keep an eye on the Analytics Dashboard so you know which media outlets and sponsor sites are referring actual sales. In the months leading up to the event, you can continuously tweak your marketing efforts.

Managing the Festival: Box Office Operations
Most festivals happen outdoors, in spaces that do not have standard venue facilities including a box office. You’re all suited up with Ticketfly’s Entry Management tools. Now find a secure structure or trailer to use for your box office operations to protect your tickets and cash.  Here are a few more tips to help your event run smoothly.

• Local Staff – Find a local staffing company or venue to hire on-site support.  Task volunteer workers with scanning, and pay your regular trusted staff members to supervise and operate your box office cash handling.
• Scheduling – Take into account your busiest times for staffing. Typically, there will be a morning or early afternoon rush, and then things will die down until the headlining acts. Think about how you can effectively run your box office while minimizing your staffing costs.
• Line Management – It’s important to split your lines to speed Will Call and Walk-Up sales.  At a standard event when you expect 10-15% of your sales to be Walk-Up sales you should split your service windows appropriately – 50% should be dedicated to credit card and cash sales, 20% can be cash only allowing for speedy purchases, and the other 30% should be Will Call and Guest services.  As you see trends in your lines you can adjust during the day.
• Audits – Audit your banks throughout the day!  If you pre-printed tickets for cash only lines or have a big rush it is best to have your sellers audit themselves and have a supervisor check it.  Letting this go until the end of the day can lead to an even longer night and frustration over finding any problems if the reporting and cash is off.
• Deep Breaths – When working multiple days and long hours it is easy to make small mistakes.  It is important to slow down and do things right the first time!

And most importantly – Have fun!