There are many advantages when it comes to selling tickets online, especially e-tickets. We are in the era where purchasing online is second nature. With the ease and convenience of online ticket hosting, you’re able to collect more data from your audience which typically isn’t possible when selling from team members or at the door. Your events should be utilising all the methods possible to increase awareness and sales. We have put together a list of reasons why it’s better to use an online ticket service opposed to physical methods.
Time Efficient
It won’t come as a surprise that purchasing online takes far less time than having to go in and pick up tickets, taking orders over the phone, designing and printing tickets etc… At face value is easy to see how convenient ordering a product from you’re your computer is. It’s important to take note of all the “behind the scenes” admin work that goes into creating an event. The headaches come when it’s time to distribute tickets which as a process on its own, can take a very long time. One of the biggest benefits to using an online ticketing system, is that all the hard work is automated. There are loads of online ticketing platforms online and creating an account and your event can be done in 10 minutes. Once this is completed you can devote your time to other important matters like curating new ideas or planning other events. Digital systems automatically sends purchased tickets directly to the customer’s inbox, in turn this elevates the admin headaches that come with manual collecting and sending of emails, which as a result, saves a lot of time.
Reduces and eliminates costs
Using online ticketing systems are generally free, or they only charge a merchant or booking fee (that you can pass onto the customers for the convenience). If you’re using physical methods to sell tickets you could be picking away at your profits. Whilst these prices can be negligible if you’re hosting a very small event, the likelihood is if you’re reading this, you’re hosting an event with more than a few people. Manually printing and distributing tickets individually can become very costly and it’s an un-necessary drainer on the environment too (think single use, one time only paper tickets, ink and envelopes). There are also other costs to consider such as employee fees, available resources, printing and delivery costs + admin maintenance. When using an e-ticketing service, your event essentially becomes a passive function that requires little to no additional input from the event host. With tickets being delivered digitally and automatically to the recipient’s email, there is no cost for the organiser, allowing you to save money and make a bigger profit on your event.
24/7 Availability
If you’re currently using employees, organisation members or retailers to sell tickets, then you already have a major problem that you might not have considered: your customers can only buy tickets when it’s best for you not them. It’s common retail practice that the customer should always come first and is always right, shouldn’t this be the same for your event? Whilst using a ticketing service doesn’t guarantee that you will make more sales; it does give you more time in the day to sell, essentially, all day. Your customers are no longer put out by working hours and do not require direct contact with another person in order to make a purchase. Allowing availability at any time of day means your customers can purchase your tickets at their convenience, this can help make purchases from those who don’t necessarily live near the event and might not be able to travel in order to purchase a physical copy. Plus you can keep tickets up and online longer, even while the event is still running.
Accessibility
As the event host, you want to be able to access your event and it’s information at any given time. The issue with just using conventional methods is that if something happens to change with your event then you need to manually inform everybody who has purchased a ticket. what’s more frustrating is that any marketing material (posters, flyers etc) would also have to be changed and this could cause upset with your audience if they aren’t correctly informed. Using a ticketing service allows for you to change/add any information to your event when you need too. Having everyone also segmented into a specific database category too means you can clearly communicate with them leading up to the event, after or if you’ve any other like events in the future + you’re building and topping up your database as you sell. A great database growth strategy!
Secure Payments and Transactions
There are multiple methods you can use to check attendees into your event from traditional to digital. Using a traditional method: pen and paper provides an easy means to sign people in if you have a generally low number of attendees. This can be relatively slow if the person on the door has to sift through multiple pages to find the correct name, it can also become frustrating for your audience to have to wait in long lines. Similarly, you can also sign people in digitally, through the same method by using a computer/laptop instead and even smart phones have now become check in tools. The benefit of this is that if you are using software that offers a search function, you can quickly search for the name and sign them off substantially quicker. The main security issue these raise, however, is there is no way to ensure that the ticket is legitimate. The final method that we recommend you use is QR code scanning. One of the other benefits is that throughout the event also you can see how many people are at the event at that exact moment, so you then know what and when to expect the others too.
As the event host, you are the only person who has access to the secure side of your event (unless you decide to share access). Confidential information, customer emails, the number of tickets sold etc are only available to you, making sure that all information is kept secure and safe.
Add Questions to Your Tickets
Selling digital tickets can be a method to gain some extra valuable information from your audience, so do ask questions at registration and purchase. When you create your tickets, you have the choice to add a few fields that the purchasers can complete, you can make these compulsory to answer or not. These questions can be anything you want; making it important to decide on a goal you want to achieve from your event. For example; you may want to gain more information on where your audience heard of your event, thus you could ask: where did you hear about this event?
Securing Payment Pre Event
One of the biggest benefits about hosting and holding an event’s ticket sales online is that it means you have the money in your account pre event, therefore minimising the risk of people not paying, promoters who might be collecting cash not handing it in (or running off with it- which I’ve seen happen in the past). While some ticketing platforms will not allow you to draw on ticketing funds until after the event, most will hold your funds in escrow and once cleared you can access the $ all which are pushed right into your account.
You can also manage your cancellation and refunds policies all digitally too, while being able to manage the overall capacity of the event as well. Particularly helpful for staffing, catering, security and your bottom-line revenue too.
Making the purchase, deployment and access to tickets easy for both yourself and the customer is and should be part of your marketing and event strategy. If you’re looking for some assistance and support in setting up your own ticketed events and selling online, get in touch with the team at Creative Little Soul. We have some great partners we work with, and we can help and walk you thru the process.