Background
Callahan’s Music Hall, outside of Detroit, and Local 506 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, recently switched to Ticketfly from the same ticketing partner after searching for a way to better manage and analyze their ticket sales.

A family team run by a pair of brothers, Callahan’s is a 200-capacity venue that offers live entertainment in Auburn Hills, Michigan. With deep blues roots and shows from various genres taking place 3-4 nights per week, Callahan’s had been working with their previous ticketing partner for four years.

Local 506 is a 250-capacity venue focused on live music that hosts shows 4-6 nights per week. For the past eight years, Local 506 used another ticketing platform, then switched to Ticketfly to build their website and grow their social media footprint.

Challenge
Callahan’s was looking to get better at their marketing and increase their advanced ticket sales. As a family business, Callahan’s has a small staff and limited social media experience, which made it difficult for them to make changes to their marketing strategy unless they found a partner willing to help guide them. When they joined Ticketfly, the owners were skeptical that their audience, which is predominantly blues fans between 55 and 64, would even pay attention to Facebook.

Local 506 was suffering from an outdated website and became interested in Ticketfly as a means to a refresh. It didn’t take long for management to see that they could get a lot more than a website from the Ticketfly platform, including automated social marketing and an integrated email newsletter.

Results
Callahan’s really wanted to stay in better touch with their customer base and improve their ticketing experience. Within the first four months of the transition, Callahan’s management saw a surge in overall sales, particularly on Facebook and via email.

Six months into the partnership, a third of Callahan’s ticket sales resulted from email marketing and they saw conversion rates of up to 90%, a dramatic improvement compared to their previous ticketing partner. The Ticketfly marketing team continues to be shocked by their email numbers.

Callahan’s installed the Ticketfly Facebook App, and started selling tickets from their Facebook Page shortly after launch, which generated even more revenue. Much to Callahan’s surprise, their older audience was very engaged with Facebook and the owners learned that social media wasn’t so tricky after all.

Local 506 saw a jump in ticket sales through Ticketfly’s Facebook Application, and now more than a quarter of their sales come from Facebook. Ticketfly’s Affiliate Network of popular music blogs and event websites is also driving a good chunk of sales, and Local 506 likes that the distribution requires no effort on their part at all.

Both Callahan’s and Local 506 are leveraging social media to help sell more tickets and engage their communities, all while saving time and money. We love to see small venues thriving! If you’d like more information on Ticketfly’s time-saving tools, head over to ticketfly.com/about.

by Eboni Jones, Ticketfly Marketing

It’s almost Camp time! You remember, that place your parents would send you in the summer to get a break from you. Only now you can go and get a break from yourself. And it’s a little swankier than you may remember; it’s held at a country club. - Camp Bisco is coming up!

This year marks the 11th for Camp Bisco’s annual party. From July 12 -14, the Northeast’s largest electronic-rock festival, featuring 3 nights with over 100 performances, takes place in upstate New York. There are GA and VIP packages available (The Platinum upgrades have already been snatched up!).  And hey, if you plan to trek across the US for this event, there’s even an RV option. Oh and if you’re familiar with the Silent Frisco crew, they’ll be there too.

The fest features performances from some of your long time faves and new breakout groups: Disco Biscuits, Bassnectar, Skrillex, Amon Tobin, Big Boi, A-Trak, Rubblebucket, Daedelus, Holy Fuck, Mord Fustang, and Thundercat and many more.

To keep track of the latest announcements be sure to like Camp Bisco on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

Break out your shorts, hats, and sunscreen and re-live some of your best childhood days with a bunch of other music lovers!

by Eboni Jones, Ticketly Marketing Intern

Last week, when the world heard of the passing of Adam Yauch (aka MCA), a little piece of us died. I mean we grew up to The Beastie Boys -underage drinking to Brass Monkey, dance routines to Paul Revere. Even Andrew Dreskin, founder of Ticketfly, held a special place in his heart for the Beastie Boys.

The Trocadero has come up with a great way to honor MCA. This Thursday, May 17th they’re hosting a screening of“Awesome, I F***’in Shot That,” The Beastie Boys’ 2004 Madison Square Garden concert that was shot by audience members and directed by Adam himself.

Think of it as a benefit for the contributions that MCA made to the music industry and hip hop overall. It’s a free event with a suggested donation of at least $5. Donations will be given to a charity of the Yauch’s family choosing. Ticketfly and The Trocadero are happy to donate all fees for this great cause. Get tickets here or click the poster!

by Shari Foldes, Director of Marketing Communications

Ticketfly is celebrating a milestone in our history this week: we were named the “Fastest Growing Company” by the San Francisco Business Times. We were chosen from more than 200 nominees and 25 finalists throughout the Bay Area, and faced some impressive competition. Check out the full article on Ticketfly’s growth.

The award gives us more recognition for what we have been working to accomplish: to grow rapidly and build an innovative platform that helps promoters and venues sell more tickets while saving time and money.

We are proud to be chosen as a winner from among so many other amazing companies in the Bay Area. Congratulations to all the nominees, finalists and winners in San Francisco Business Times’ Technology and Innovation Awards.

Read the full article about the awards here.

And follow @Ticketfly on Instagram for more photos!

by Amy Miller, Community Manager

Despite the importance of social marketing, ticket sales cannot live by Tweets alone. Email marketing is still crucial to your marketing success.

Ticket buyers have one overwhelming email desire: Targeting! Don’t just send me the same emails you send everyone else; send me what I want to know about and pay attention to how I behave when I receive emails. 75% of businesses report that lifecycle marketing programs out-perform blanket, untargeted outbound email programs. And we have good news for promoters, Ticketfly built social features, targeting and analytics into our email tool. Rad.

No matter what email tool you use, here are some tips to make your email campaigns more successful.

1. Target by Genre

   Ticketfly buyers are automatically associated with the genres of previous orders. Rest assured that if someone buys tickets for Washed Out, and Toro y Moi comes through your venue, you can easily alert the Washed Out fans by targeting your automatically generated group of Chillwave fans! Then you can stock up on promotional faux Ray Bans. Clients using highly targeted genre filters in the Ticketfly Emailer have seen click conversion rates of up to 90%!

2. Schedule Emails For Prime Sending Time

   Timing isn’t everything, but it does mean a lot. Use this as a general guide for email opens, keeping your own on-sale times in mind. As we all know, we’ve got our own highs and lows in the ticketing week.
   

3. Vary Your Subject Lines

   The most successful email blasts sent from Ticketfly clients have unique subject lines. Rather than naming all of your emails the same thing, use your subject lines to call out your most important upcoming events and offers.

4. Add Personal Content

   You may think that your customers want a no-nonsense email or don’t have time to read extra content, but the opposite is true! Emails with consistently unique content will motivate recipients to open your message, click your purchase links, and get to know you better.

5. Put the Most Important Content Up Top

   Seems like a no-brainer, but your top content will have the most visibility, so keep the important stuff high.

6. Send 1-4 Emails Per Month

   When emailing your entire list, about once a week is a good practice. For more specifically targeted emails, sending more often is OK as long as you’re spreading the love. The Ticketfly Emailer gives you the option to filter out customers you’ve emailed most recently.

7. Stay Out of Spam Folders!

   
   - Avoid spammy words like “Free”, “Guarantee”, “Click Here”, and “Credit Card.” Basically, imagine which emails you would avoid opening and don’t sound like them!
   - OVER EXCLAMATION AND USE OF CAPS?!?!?!?! OMG, NO DON’T!!!!!!!
   - Ditch the red text. Red leather couches and lightbulbs are fine in your club. Don’t do it to email.
   - Keep a clean list! If you’re importing lists from other services or previous ticketers, be sure to honor your unsubscribers. Ask your Ticketfly client rep for help if you’re not sure how.

8. Pay attention to your stats!

   In Ticketfly Backstage, you can see exactly who clicked, how many tickets each email sold, and an exact dollar amount you made from a particular email campaign. If you’re consistently below a 14% open rate, it might be time to re-think your email strategy! Use the guide below to decipher your campaign results.

   

9. Add An Email Sign-Up Form to Your Website

   Ticketfly powered websites include the option to add a subscribe form to your site. If you have your own site and email service, be sure to tell your designer to to place a sign-up box front and center!

   

10. Brand It!

    Create multiple email templates that match the style and feel of your website and brand. If you want to catch your customer’s eye, build different templates for things like general news, just announced, and announcements about one specific event.

    For more information on Ticketfly’s email tool, watch our video overview or head to the Client Help Desk.

    If you’re not yet a Ticketfly client, check out more of our tools on our About page.

by Ticketfly Founder and CEO, Andrew Dreskin

I was pretty broken up to hear that Adam Yauch passed away last week. The first time I came across the Beastie Boys was in 1986 when I was 17 years old. They opened up for Run DMC at a sweet sixteen that I attended at a home on Long Island. Yes, you heard me, a sweet sixteen! They had barely released Licensed to Ill at the time and if memory serves, Fight For Your Right hadn’t yet overtaken the airwaves. The Beasties were unlike anything I’d seen before. I remember them – probably 20 years old, clad in jeans, gold chains and baseball hats – hitting on middle-aged women in ball gowns at the bar. And the topper to the evening was when the mother of the girl for whom the party was being thrown found the Beasties rifling through the drawers in her bedroom. They got thrown out of the party.

Like most music fans growing up in 80s and 90s, I fell in love with the Beastie Boys. I went to see them more times than I can remember. I reviewed one of their concerts – at the UNO Lakefront Arena in New Orleans – during the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival for the seminal online music magazine Addicted to Noise. I saw the Beasties at Lollapalooza at Downing Stadium in New York City in 1994. That was one of my favorite Lolla lineups: The Smashing Pumpkins, Beastie Boys, George Clinton & the P-Funk All Stars, The Breeders, A Tribe Called Quest, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, L7 and a new band called Green Day. I went back to Downing Stadium to see Adam Yauch’s Tibetan Freedom Concert in 1997. The lineup was ridiculous: Beastie Boys, Foo Fighters, U2, Sonic Youth, Patti Smith, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Radiohead, A Tribe Called Quest, Rancid, Björk, Pavement, Blur, Michael Stipe & Mike Mills, Eddie Vedder & Mike McCready, Porno for Pyros, and Lee Scratch Perry were some of the acts that played that day. Free Tibet was a cause I could get behind and it gave me a new appreciation for Adam Yauch. It was clear that these guys had changed a lot from the first time I saw them.

After I sold TicketWeb I moved back to New York and dreamed up my next idea.  The East Coast needed a European-style rock festival, so I founded the Field Day Music & Arts Festival. Field Day is a long story for another time, but what I can say is that from the get-go I knew only two bands could help me get Field Day off the ground: Radiohead and the Beastie Boys. Who better to help launch a massive New York-based music festival than the Beastie Boys? So I made the pitch to the Beasties agent and management and even though they weren’t touring, they said yes. They got it. The festival didn’t exactly go as planned, but the Beasties acted with grace and aplomb in the face of a somewhat dodgy situation, which I think says a lot about them.

Years later, along with Seth Hurwitz of the 9:30 Club and Merriweather Post Pavilion, I founded the Virgin Mobile Festival. In 2007, we were fortunate to have the Beasties play at Virgin. They were amazing as always. One of the highlights of my career was watching the Beasties play on the main stage before The Police. We were told at the time that the Beasties were pretty fired up to be playing before The Police, of whom they were fans. I remember my son, who was 2 years old at the time, rocking out to the Beasties. It made a father proud.

For the past ten years I lived in lower Manhattan. On occasion I used to see Adam Yauch tooling around the City. I will miss those days.

by Eboni Jones, Ticketfly Marketing Intern

Just in time for the Indy 500, Ticketfly is happy to announce a new partnership with Radio Radio. Located in Indy’s Fountain Square neighborhood filled with shopping, restaurants, cafes and theaters, the venue was a welcomed addition to this up-and-coming area in 2001 when their doors opened.

Radio Radio was voted “The Best Live Music Venue” in Indianapolis! Known for its stellar sound system, the club features great national acts and give local acts the chance to play on a regular basis. Give credit to co-owner David ‘Tufty’ Clough who has a musical background. He played bass in Zero Boys, a punk rock band that recorded “Vicious Circle” in 1982, the most celebrated punk rock album in Indiana’s history!

Another highlight is that Radio Radio is one of Indy’s non-smoking venues. Wait, what? Indiana must be one of the last states in the Union to allow smoking indoors. (We had to check, there are 10 states with no statewide smoking ban). Overall, the venue is an excellent performance space and their patrons seem to agree. I mean how many venues do you know that inspire haikus like this one from a recent Yelp review?

“Never heard of them?
They play here. Add PBR.
Hipster nirvana.”

Upcoming shows: Amy Ray (Indigo Girls), Memoryhouse, Great Lake Swimmers, and Ben Sollee.

Stay tuned to what’s going on through social media channels: Radio Radio on Facebook and Radio Radio on Twitter.

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

Have you called us lately? Why not? You never call anymore. And you should. Because we have some of the coolest hold music in town. It won’t make you want to tear your hair out, and it won’t make you wish you had stuck with those oboe lessons in high school. We have the good fortune of employing a lot of performers at the ‘Fly, (including 11 guitar players, 8 drummers, and 3 stand-up comics!) and we like to showcase this bevy of in-house talent when we can. (Yes, of course we still pay them licensing rights!)

This video about Ticketfly features the works of PARENTZ, a one man operation out of Oakland, CA. Jeremy Sullivan has been making beats since the ripe old age of 12. The featured track is called Big. We use it in several videos, and it’s what you hear if you call our friendly Support team, where sometimes you even get to chat with Jeremy himself! Big is a throwback song that references the care-free, feel-good arrangements of the 80s while mixing in modern electronic sounds and production. Hear more of PARENTZ over on their label page or hear below about how he was inspired by the TV show The Heights, AKA one of the best shows of all time.

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