Ticketfly

Venue Background
Marathon Music Works is Nashville’s newest locally owned and operated concert and event space. MMW opened in the Marathon Village neighborhood in November 2011, with the goal of hosting a range of private events, fundraisers, concerts, corporate events, video shoots, and more. Originally built in the early 1900s, the building features 14,000 square feet with modern amenities, and has a capacity of 1,500. Hosting three to four live events per week, MMW was looking for the right ticketing partner to launch and establish a strong following in the Nashville market. Artists performing at MMW within its first six months included Gavin DeGraw, Cage the Elephant, Ziggy Marley, Chevelle and O.A.R.

Challenge
As a new venue in “Music City,” MMW had an opportunity to disrupt the market with a new take on the live event experience. Venue management knew they needed to break through the clutter to develop fan support, and ensure their infrastructure and operations could handle high-demand ticket sales. Staff needed an increased focus on other aspects of the business, such as branding, marketing and artist relations to generate buzz and awareness. MMW explored numerous ticketing systems in their quest to find the partner who could best meet their needs.

Solution
MMW selected Ticketfly after a competitive evaluation process in August 2011, largely based on Ticketfly’s ability to manage the venue’s website, social marketing and newsletter with one system. MMW implemented the Ticketfly platform prior to the venue opening in November 2011, and received training from Ticketfly’s client services team to create a custom website, integrate its social media, and develop a turnkey newsletter template that could be used to promote future events. Ticketfly’s platform was a cornerstone in MMW’s promotional process, and the initial efficiencies allowed staff to increasingly focus on logistics to launch the venue.

Results
MMW is off to a strong start within its critical first year of operation. The integration of social media and newsletter communications proved to be effective for MMW. The venue saw conversions through its email campaigns of more than 12 percent, and an open rate of more than 30 percent, which is double the average of most email campaigns in the industry. MMW was an early user of Ticketfly’s Facebook Purchase App in December 2011, making it an integral part of the venue’s sales channels from the beginning. MMW gained greater national visibility on the History Channel’s American Pickers television show, which films nearby the venue. Management has also focused on green business practices by implementing green initiatives such as recycling programs and Ticketfly’s paperless ticket delivery feature.

by Amy Miller, Community Manager

I think one of the official rules in the South that you can’t really call something an event unless there’s a lot of good food involved. Zac Brown is taking this advice for a 2nd year in a row as his Southern Ground Music and Food Festival returns to Blackbaud Stadium. (Makes sense for a guy whose first big hit was a song called “Chicken Fried.”) The two-day event features some of the finest Southern cuisine, craft beers, and a TBA lineup to go along with Zac Brown’s country tunes. Last year’s inaugural lineup included the Zac Brown Band, My Morning Jacket, the Warren Haynes Band, Trigger Hippy, Fitz and the Tantrums, Steel Pulse, Blackberry Smoke, the Wheeler Brothers, Vintage Trouble, and many more. Pre-sales started this week and all tickets go on sale to the public this Saturday at 10am Eastern! Get on it, Carolinas.

Follow Southern Ground on Twitter and Like their page for updates!

by Amy Miller, Community Manager

Here are a few fun and crazy facts about mobile customers to spice up your Thursday!

• Over 15% of Ticketfly’s traffic comes from a mobile device
• Mobile shoppers will reach 72.8 million in 2012
• 49% of mobile users user their device for social networking, 42% for music and 33% for entertainment
• Smartphone users will reach 106.7 million in 2012, up 18.4% from 2011

That means if all of us smart phoners wanted to go to a show together, we’d need 5,524 Merriweather Post Pavilions to fit us all.

Luckily, Ticketfly now delivers the entire ticketing experience from event discovery to purchase, social sharing and entry scanning, on your mobile device. Now fans who purchase on mobile have the option of receiving a mobile-optimized ticket that can be scanned right at the door, lowering fulfillment costs for your event and saving paper. As it turns out, it IS easy being green!

As always, Ticketfly.com and Ticketfly-powered client websites are formatted for mobile devices, so fans can complete the full loop of discovery, purchase, and sharing without ever opening up a laptop.

Download more info about Mobile Ticketing here or contact us if you’d like to know more!

On May 24th at The Red Carpet Nightclub in St. Cloud, MN, a great group of bands and friends are all getting together to put on a show for Ricky Lind. Ricky is the child of a very good Red Carpet friend and he’s been diagnosed with a rare illness. The club is hosting a get together to put on a rockin’ show for the little guy’s medical and living expenses.Minnesotans can come rock out with Modern Condition, Under – A Sublime Tribute to 311, Electric Almighty, Travis Djbunkone Dyer and best of all, a REUNITED SIMPLICIA! There will be a silent auction and much more.

More info on their Facebook Page and below! Get well soon, Ricky!

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!